Wondrous Layers

Lawrence Wechsler begins to uncover the many layers of the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Object lessons prove more complicated than we might think:

"[David] was quiet a few moments, and once again the ironylessness seemed momentarily to crack. "You know, certain aspects of this museum you can peel away very easily, but their reality behind, once you peel away those relatively easy layers, is more amazing still than anything those initial layers purport to be. The first layers are just a filter..."
He was quiet another few moments, and just as surely I could sense that the crack was closing up once again, the facade of ironylessness reasserting itself inviolate.
I mentioned the stink ant. "See," he said, "that's an example of the thing about layers. Because at one level, that display works as information, as just this incredibly interesting case study in symbiosis, one of those adaptations so curious and ingenious and wonderful that they almost lead you to question the principle of natural selection itself--could random mutation through geologic time be enough to account for that and so many similar splendors? Nature is more incredible than anything one can imagine.
"But at another level," David continued, "we were drawn to that particular instance because it seemed so metaphorical. That's another one of our mottos here at the museum: 'Ut Translatio Natura.' Nature as Metaphor. I mean, there've been times in my own life when I felt exactly like that ant--impelled, as if possessed, to do things that defy all common sense. That ant is me. I couldn't have summed up my own life better if I'd made him up all by myself."
"But, David," I wanted to say (and didn't) "you did make him up all by yourself!"

--Lawrence Weschler, Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology (1996)