“…myths are basic truths twisted into mnemonics, instructions posted from the past, memories waiting to become predictions.” — Richard Powers, The Overstory

I acquired a collection of precision lenses from a lab that produces nuclear weapons. Each one is in a clear plastic jewelbox case, with size, thickness, amount and type of mirroring, and other optical properties written carefully on a paper sized to fit just inside the lid. The only information I can decode is a date: they’re from the 1990s, now clearly decommissioned. 

And yet like new. The 30-year-old tape holding the case shut disintegrates as I open one, but inside is a pristine and perfectly machined piece of glass, protected by foam and a thin slice of tissue paper. It’s translucent, and reflects a rich spectrum of colours in the light. Just imagine what it does to a laser beam.

A scientist from the lab assured me there’s no chance of any lingering radiation.

There are a few prisms in the collection, but no spheres. Yet, these objects are like the proverbial crystal ball, used since antiquity to foretell events to come. Thirty years on, these glass jewels link past and future to shed light on how we live now.  As an anthropologist in one of my lives, I study how material culture merges with cultural practices to produce past, present and future realities.