I think you may understand what I am driving at when I explain that until a dying wasp glances at you and suddenly dumps 34 million years of hymenopteran history directly into your mind in approximately 15 seconds, you will not really have the slightest idea what is going on around here. Or what has gone. Or even what is to come.

Until you have some sort of experience like this, and preferably a cascade of them, the stuff you call understanding … well, that’s effectively the shell of the egg. But it’s neither art or artifact — the thing was made to -hatch-, not sit there like a chunk of concrete resisting penetrations… and what emerges is nothing like our expectations… it is.. alive.