The Flutter That an Encounter Brings

Through a certain occasion, I visited a small factory of scientific glassware that makes test tubes, flasks, and beakers. Until then I had assumed that glass was shaped by winding molten glass onto the end of a long metal pipe and blowing air into it, or by pouring molten glass into molds; but I learned for the first time that they shape it by a completely different method, and I was honestly astonished and moved.

Asking the craftsmen all sorts of questions, I heard that there are many kinds of glass—ordinary glass, heat-resistant scientific glass, acrylic glass, crystal glass—each with different methods and properties.

Even having lived sixty years, I am surrounded by things I don’t know, I felt anew, realizing the preciousness of lifelong learning. The method for scientific glass is a skillful handcraft: a glass tube is fixed to a centrifuge, and the craftsman, a carbon mold in one hand, puts a thin tube in his mouth and, blowing and drawing breath, swells the glass tube or narrows it, finishing the form by eye. Learning further that it is superb glass—highly durable and strong against heat—I, together with a certain story taking shape in my head, could no longer restrain the desire to make by this method a mini vase that does not yet exist in this world. With nothing to lose, I took the plunge and asked a young craftsman, “Won’t you make with me a mini vase that makes flowers happy?”—and back came an unexpectedly welcome answer: “I too had wanted to try making something other than scientific instruments.” Good, it’s settled. In these days when society is anxious over COVID, there is a storytelling necessity to the significance of deliberately making a vase from scientific glass, under the title “Flowers are medicine for the heart and body.” After that, our scientific-glass vase-making, having hit it off, proceeded smoothly; and rather than racing for the top spot, under the shared value of “for the flowers, and for the people who enjoy them,” I am grateful beyond measure that, through this precious and unexpected encounter with him, a new drawer of purpose and reason for living has been added to me.