A Question in Colored Glass

Although it was true that my father taught me to make stories in colored glass, it was a very long time ago and I wondered how much I remembered. 

As soon as I woke, ate bread and fruit left while I slept, and put on new clothing laid out just as surreptitiously, I went to the table with the colored glass pieces.

Just behind the table, there was a wood cabinet I hadn’t noticed before. It was against the wall and went all the way to the floor and up over my head. When I opened its doors, pulling knots of wood at the center, I saw sheets and sheets of glass, all the primary and not so primary colors, standing upright along individual notched grooves. With all those colors, I could tell the story of a Welchefarbe or a mandarin duck. 

Instead, I made something entirely different and disturbing. It was a dream I’d had since I could remember. The Keeper of the Library, who asked me to call him Guardian, suggested I put my questions into the glass. The answer to this dream was one of my questions. I wondered if it would surprise him that I wasn’t asking about my family. He already knew those questions.

There was a large board on the table framed at the edges with wood. The scene had been in my mind so long, it was easy to draw. Once drawn, I would start with black line and color the spaces. I’d imagined the scene in colored glass for many years, so I knew exactly where to put the lines. 

The black line, or “came” as my father called it, was coiled in a spool. I pulled some out. It was extremely malleable, more so than any I’d ever worked with. I used one of the tools to stretch it a bit so that it would remain straight. Then I measured it against the line in my design and used one of the most amazing knives I’ve ever held to cut the black came without squashing it. 

Immersed in the work, time ceased. Hours, days, months, years may have passed and I wouldn’t have known. That’s what creating does. I was taken outside of time and outside of myself. Loss, fear, pain, worry disappeared and I was one with the work.

Some of the lines curved in places and I was delighted at how easily the came rounded and bent.

Once the black lines were in place, I could color the spaces. 

However, I had forgotten to make the patterns for the glass. How would I make the pieces the right sizes and shapes without drawing patterns? I searched for a way to make them and found some sheets of thick, heavy paper stored in shelves above the glass. I had to move the black lines off the drawing in order to make the patterns, so I wished I’d thought to do it first. Next time.

Once the patterns were drawn, to remember which were which and what color was in my mind for each piece, I drew symbols on the patterns. Then, I put the came back into the drawing so that I had room to work with the glass and a place to put the pieces when they were cut. It was tedious work and I fought against the temptation to hurry through it. When creating, so said my father, every moment mattered, even the tedious ones.

Some of the smaller glass pieces already on the table were large enough and the right colors to be used, so I started with these before bringing out large sheets.

I could hear my father’s voice as I picked up a glass cutter to score the glass. 

“Apply gentle even pressure. Make a faint line like a piece of hair lying across the glass. If you score too deeply, it will look like a trail of salt and it won’t break cleanly.”

I did my best. Not every score was a success. Not every break was clean. There were all sorts of tools to try: four different cutters and five different pliers. There was even cutting oil if I wanted to make sure the tools were rolling properly. 

My father made his own glass. He collected ash from burning wood and mixed it with sand. If he didn’t want clear glass, he mixed in colors. He created the colors himself, too, grinding different metals and minerals and experimenting with the result. He laid it out on a huge flat tray and got his outdoor oven very hot and put the tray inside with tongs. 

Once I’d scored and broken all the pieces and was satisfied that everything fit together correctly, I decided to rest before the last steps. It had been a great effort. I imagined most of the day had passed, but in the dull quiet of a room with no windows, it was impossible to know the passage of time. I didn’t like feeling trapped. I didn’t like not knowing what was happening in my world and with my family. I wondered what the pathway out of this would be and if I would ever be home again, at least, home as I knew it. What were the many changes in my world that Guardian mentioned? Was Guardian a friend or an enemy? Why would the people of my world send me and other young people to learn at a place that was so dangerous and risky? It didn’t make sense.

There! There are my questions, you Guardian! Can you read my thoughts? Here, trapped in this room? When will you come and meet me again?

I drank some water, ate a bit at the table, and laid in the bed to go to sleep.  

When I woke, once again, someone brought food while I was sleeping. I’d have to try to stay awake to meet the visitor or visitors. Was it Guardian? I wondered what the visitor thought of what I made. I remembered my father telling me that it didn’t matter what anyone thought of what I made with the glass. 

“Just follow your heart and make it. Be true to the work,” he said. “Strive for excellence in craft. Clean up the mistakes, remembering that some mistakes are quite beautiful and should not be removed.”

“How do you know which mistakes are beautiful and which aren’t?” I asked. 

He smiled. “The mistake is beautiful if it is beautiful to you. You can’t decide what will be beautiful for someone else, only for you. You hope that someone else will also find beauty in what you made, but you can’t expect it.”

I looked at what I made the day before. It was not what I’d imagined. I saw the errors.

So, with determination, I rescored and rebroke the glass that I didn’t like, and remade the black lines that weren’t right. And when I was satisfied, I used the heating tool to weld the joints.

Exhausted, I ate some food, poured water over myself with the pulleys, put on the white robe, and slept. 

When I woke again, I looked at my creation before even thinking about food. It was still there. In my dreams, I saw the details to draw in the glass. There would be no room for error. What I painted would remain. 

I ate an apple while steeling myself for the task. I wasn’t sure why it was so important to me to do this well, but for some reason, it was. 

Absorbed in the work, I painted the details of the scene: its eyes and chins, its tables and walls, and even the things that I didn’t know what they were, the imagined things. I worked slow and small, painting with great care, unwilling to allow myself a mistake in spite of my father’s words.

When it was finished, as if at the end of a long tunnel, I held it up. If only there was a window in the room. If only I could see what it looked like with light streaming through the glass. At that moment, I felt that it was a great work of art although something nagged within me that I had only to sleep again and look at it once more to know that it wasn’t. 

It was heavy enough that it was difficult to continue holding it in front of me, so I stepped to the wall and set it against the stone. If only it was a window. I looked at it upright for a few minutes and then decided to pull it away. Only, it didn’t move. I pulled and pulled again and it wouldn’t move away from the wall. I was afraid to move my hands from its sides because I didn’t want all my work to crash to the floor, but it felt like it wouldn’t fall, like the wall had somehow incorporated it. How was this possible?

I continued to tug for quite a while before giving up and stepping back. It didn’t fall. And I could see the completed work. And I did like it. Maybe no one else would, but I liked it. It was the scene in my mind, in my dreams, for so many years, and now it was real in the glass. And then light began to pour through and its colors came to life. Ah! It was so beautiful! Had my wish for a window made one so? I stepped to this new window, reached out my hand to the glass, and it kept going through the glass and into the light of another place on the other side. I moved toward it and found that I could put my whole body into the light. I lifted my legs over the bottom edge of the window and I was in my dream, in my creation. 

Next: How a Lifetime Friendship Began

This is the fifth in a series of stories. Following are the previous installments starting with the first:
1. The Library
2. Listen, Move, Hide, Repeat
3. A Necessary State of Alarm
4. Anches