93/03/24 4:15 am

The procedure wasn't anywhere close to the leading edge. The people in the lab were not the stereotype scientists we imagine, in white lab coats and carrying notebooks.

They were kids, between 23 and 28 years of age. They were playing. At the same time, they were learning to become the next frontrunners in the biological sciences.

I was visiting in a University of Toronto laboratory, watching post grads Jim, Austin and Elizabeth extracting chromosomal material from a sample of Austin’s blood. The exercise was part of a study to find a particular gene responsible for a particular condition.

The procedure was symbolic. The lab was symbolic. It was all symbolic to me.

I saw the extracted chromosomes through a binocular microscope, and it was like looking into the distance, to the stars, but the stars were in a microscopic universe of wonder, the stuff of life.

When I talked to Jim, I saw that the chromosomes were really as still unknown as the stars, that no one really knew what it was all about, but that we were pushing the edges of knowledge into the unknown, and that the unknown was slowly releasing itself into our world.

I also came to realize that the chromosomes that I saw were from Austin, and that they were from the white cells of his blood, that I was seeing what Austin really was, a series of chains of molecules, integrated into a being, who was pushing back the edge of ignorance.

It was, in a way, scary; because in that, I found that I have really little hope of finding what I am looking for. I felt that sharing personal knowledge of a personal reality is almost impossible. The passion for understanding the unknown is an individual venture. Carried out with a respect for the universe, and the awareness that it truly exists at the microscopic levels, and sub atomic levels, and that there is a basis for thought, and that consciousness is physical, and that that in itself, is a wonder and an amazement.

Lark