Fossil Memory

There are things we’ve always loved, and don’t know where the love came from, because it seems to have been there all along. As if we were formed from it, something we carry in our cells. And then there are loves we can trace right to the moment we fell. 

That’s the way I love blown glass. 

I love glass because it is fixed, but holds a memory of fluidity. That what’s transparent, once glowed red. That this hard and fragile thing was forged from fire, and shaped by muscle. That every piece is a fossil memory of its maker’s movements. 

Back when my love of glass was sparked, I couldn’t say any of that. I wasn’t even old enough to go to school. But from the first time I saw glass being blown, I felt it.

And it didn’t go away.

This early no one wakes
but the glassblowers
secretive insects in their hive.
At the end of each sting
a dollop of luminous honey.

Susan Glickman,
“The Glassblowers, 6 a.m.”

from The Power to Move
Montreal: Véhicule Press, 1986.

Making impressions.

Some years ago, Larry and I went to have lunch with the writer Susan Glickman and her family, and I met her husband Toan. Who is an artist. Who makes glass. 

By then, I was an artist too. A writer. So of course I expressed my enthusiasm with language worthy of poetry. I said,

“Really? I love glass glassblowing! Ever since I saw it on Sesame Street!” 

And the celebrated artist Toan Klein didn’t laugh. He beamed.

Because he remembered that segment too. And the day in Montreal that they filmed it, in the studio where he was working. A young artist, blowing glass. 

“On Sesame Street?” Toan said. “That was me!”

Count with me all the ways this is wonderful.

One! The coincidence of my meeting Toan. Two! That I blurted out my story. Three! That, before I even started kindergarten, an act of creation affected me so deeply that I never lost my appreciation for the art, or forgot the moment. Four! That the moment came to me on the living room floor of my parents’ rented house in a small town in rural Ontario. Five! Because—all hail public television!—some CBC producer decided that, Yes! Why not? Glassblowing in Montreal is just what Canadian children need to see. 

And maybe also, Six. That the producer was right. At least when it came to me.

I think you know now how this goes. 

Somewhere between my visit to Toan’s backyard studio, and our departure that afternoon, Larry secretly purchased one of Toan’s works. For months, it waited with Toan and Susan until Larry could pick it up, ferry it home, and then hide it in a van full of children and March Break luggage, in order to surprise me on my birthday. The piece is gorgeous—a beautiful gift under any circumstances. And also the first piece of original art I’d ever owned. Created by the maker who’d inspired a love of glass—and stoked a love of art—in me.

There’s more art now—glass, and otherwise. Toan’s creation makes its home on our mantlepiece, along with two other pieces he made. Here they are: a cluster of pinks and purples, throwing colourful shapes onto the walls.

My photography can’t do them justice. How they look, or what they hold inside.