A Short Thread of Thought

Ann Cognito
Oct 31, 2021
2 min read

I’ve been talking with a friend about the strings that keep us from changing, while packing the old worn lines not currently holding the boat and wishing I hadn’t packed the sewing stuff… the kind of doing that allows thinking and percolating and processing things in a background-app way… and this post came up.

Ursula K LeGuin was one of then most profoundly brilliant humans ever. She wrote truths years ago that we’re still afraid of, or learning.

The words above may be dreamed rather than actually attributable to UKLG, but they are words she would absolutely say and fully mean, and who knows, maybe they’re recalled from something she did say somewhere.

Staring at these words, I saw a gallery of threads… frayed, twisted, cut short, broken, knotted, burned, ignored, mouldy, rotting, lost, forgotten… threads in every hue imaginable and so many more… threads that throw scintillating reflections… threads so thin and ephemeral as to be invisible, threads stronger than iron, threads with unrepeatable textures… an entire world of living threads.

Threads of queerness… and of so many shades of trauma, of pain, of lived experience… threads made of questions, of responsibilities, of hope.

Threads that connect us to love; threads that bind us to fear.

Threads can be made of textiles, of chemicals, of gaslight, of blood, of love, of misunderstanding, of of experience, of fear… threads can be made of anything.

Our threads have all been worn and stretched too thin and dyed and hung out to dry.

They tie and bind, hang, cut… they hold us safe… they pull us in conflicting directions.

They also weave and spin and patch and darn. They stitch, knit, sew, and embroider.

We all have threads. We’re made of the threads of our own stories.

So, what will you mend with that thread?

What will we weave?

With hope and determination,

Ann

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If you can help spin a budget out of straw, here’s how…

Sporadic and one-time support through Chuffed, at

https://chuffed.org/project/climate-emergency-sailboat