Synthesis Number One

A wooden laboratory of a university in Japan on a rainy summer afternoon, grey light through wet windows, a long spinning apparatus, a pale grey-green steel angle frame on six legs with crossed braces, on top a row of silver pulleys and rollers linked by leather belts and chains, an A-shaped stand with small bobbins at the left, a thin rod rising in the middle, a grey electric motor at the right, at the front a thin glass tube dripping a fine stream into a long shallow bath, a single white thread running over the silver rollers to a bobbin, a hand testing the thread, every surface plain and unmarked.