Something to Think About
What is real? This is a question I've often asked myself, and although the answer seems simple enough, the more I think about it, the harder it is to figure out.
In looking through ancient bestiaries, I have found countless entries for animals most people would say couldn't possibly be real. Yet in some of those texts I have seen illustrations and highly detailed descriptions of creatures like cockatrices, unicorns, mermaids, and even faeries, all said to be based on eyewitness accounts. These stories stretch back hundreds and sometimes even thousands of years. This folklore feeds many famous fairytales. But just because those ancient accounts are today mostly used for the delight of children, does that mean that no part of these accounts is not or ever has been real?
While on tour for the Spiderwick Chronicles, Holly and I met a little girl who shared that she had seen a living unicorn. Her mother didn't belive her. The little girl wanted us to vailidate what she had obvserved, and while her experience could have been imagined, she was convinced that it acutally happened. Who are we to say it didn't? So what is real?
I am often asked if I've ever seen a faerie. As if not seeing a thing makes it less real. I can't see microbes, but they are everywhere, in the millions. They are just too small to see with the naked eye. And for hundreds of years people didn;t even know they existed. That doesn't mean they were not real. I've never seen many of the bizarre deep-sea fish that exist in the inky depths of the ocean, but I've observed models of them in museums with detailed note simalar ro rhose in ancient bestiaries. How do I know that they're real? If we haven't seen faeries, perhaps it's because we don't have the right tools, or we havn't looked closely enough, or we've simply chosen not to acknowledge what we have seen or learned.
The more researchers and scientists explore the Earth's natural and ancient wonders, the more they discover. Who knows where these new discoveries will lead. The more folklore Holly and I read and compared with the fantastic observation of Arthur Spiderwick's, the more aware we became of what we didn't really know. And the more we wondered: What Is Real?...a chance to ponder what is real.
Tony DiTerlissi
Amherst, Massachusettes, 2005
From Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You