March 2010 Michael Franich:
Along the beach small bits of quartz accumulate over time, sparkling crystals that dry and blow away in the wind, the way snow does, just above the surface. Who was it so long ago that puzzled out a way to increase the heat from a wood fire, to melt mineral grains into a permanent liquid, one that flows in its own time and space. Humans transform nature into altered artifacts, and in this process, for a time they might experience more completely who and what they are. The story that remains over time reflects through shades of color, angular cuts and delicate lines. For as much as time might be captured, held against its insistent need to erode and erase all that came before, time is held in a piece of glass, as a way to remember.
A cruise ship on the Mediterranean is a wall of white metal, speckled with pieces of glass. On a sunny, flatwater day the view spreads out to the horizon. On a stormy, the wind driving rain against the glass, a wave approaches, rises up thirty feet and smashes through the window, killing tourists and spreading panic through the decks. Waves of two and three, traveling across great distances will rise up and reflect off solid objects. Like the window on a cruise ship, there is so much we take for granted, the window that offers protection from the wind, a room with a view, and then suddenly, the earthquake, the storm smashes through and life becomes a different experienced. Glass so much like a face and workplace attire, a boundary between the world and all the fragile life inside.
Glass begins as so many grains of sand, molten, fire red in a furnace of the sun, formed into practical plates and cups of Greek design, shipped over waters the cruise ships now travel. How the early craftsmen and women produced these goods should remain a mystery. The fact of fire that hot, contained and concentrated deserves a reverential respect. When ships are overcome with waves, when glass is left undisturbed at the bottom of a shallow sea, even with the angry waters above foaming in ten meter waves, the glass would seem to be eternal, sea green, at rest with the treasures waiting to be found, waiting to explain.
How often did Galileo reconsidered glass, in terms of a curse, forming and shaping a rough surface, polishing the lens to extend his vision well beyond his reach, to grasp the sight of Jupiter's moons and thereby deduce that earth, as precious as it might be, was not the center of it all. For all human efforts a price must be paid. And not being able to contain a truth like that, he endured house arrest, a villain in the eyes of a church that, at the time, would know all truth and demand that others respect this fact.
Glass preserves the fruit and pickles, seals out bacteria that would otherwise reduce the treasure of summer to unpleasant circumstances. Glass protects the stout and porter, the pale ale and fragile bite of clear Rhine wine. In the form of varied stem-ware, glass reveals the color of a personality, the scent and secrets within the bottle. Sauerkraut and artichoke hearts, mayonnaise and mustard, immune and beyond the effects of mild acid environments, glass protects and preserves.
There are those moments late at night when prescription glasses can be removed and the eyes peer outside to see the world another way, ring after ring of auras glowing in sparkling colors. The miraculous vision may be do to a cataract, or the general condition of near sightedness. At other times, the lens defines the experience of life, manipulates waves of light into a realistic image, seen through glass, or the modern equivalent of polycarbonate. How it is the simple curve of a convex lens can change all things, bring into focus in a clear and immediate way, those objects near and far way. At times, perhaps as a form of escape, the glasses might be removed. For a time, walking or paddling along, enjoying an alternate reality becomes a simple pleasure, as innocent as imagined afternoons that appear in the middle of a busy day. When reality intervenes, the glasses go back on. They dip into the bathtub once a day, washing sweat off the nose piece, dust and dandruff flakes, to be shined and polished for the day to come, all the magic that might be seen when the world is approached, one breath at a time. They are no longer heavy glass but they remain a reminder of eye exams, the years that build a pile of different colored frames.
There is more than one way to see, to know and understand, to look and search inside, and to bring forth into the world an image of what this experience means. To gather up a glowing ball of light, to work and shape the surface, paddle here, inflate with the force of straining lungs, twist, flame, rotate and spin into existence what never was before. Asbestos gripped and lowered, cooled in the darkness, waiting for what the light reveals about the efforts of many hands, glass tells a story in its unique way, a newer page in the book of time, the legend of the world.
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