Knotted in Memory

I do my best thinking while my fingers are busy doing somewhat mindless repetitive work. The house is quiet, save tunes softly playing and occassional traffic on the street, neighborhood noises in the background. I think about everything. My mind wanders all over everywhere, back through time, and ventures into future possibilities. One thought leads to another with not much rhyme nor reason.

The unfinished macrame project was boxed after the jute was cut to some excessive lengths, with a dozen cords folded over a three inch brass ring and secured by one of those wrapped jute things with a name that eludes me. I am knotting from memory as macrame was a craft done in my youth oh so many years ago.

I am recreating a hanging birdbath that I made in 1977 (or bird feeder in which to lay full heads of dried sunflowers, if holes are drilled through the terra cotta planter dish so rain won’t turn the seeds into soup). The design is different – six sections instead of four, different pattern of knots – but the size and purpose is simular.

I don’t know what happened to the first one. It was hung in a tree on the far edge of a huge lawn near the front cornfields at that rented farmhouse across from the Courtney’s out on Winona Road. I cannot remember seeing it again so odds are that it was accidentally forgotton, left hanging in the tree when we moved over to Depot.

My fingers tie the knots, square knots and those half things that make spiral twirls, simular knots by the same hands while my thoughs skip back through those 35 years, how I thought my life would be and how it ended up, circle round and back again, reality tainted by hopes and dreams, nothing ever as it seems.

: : : LATER : : :

Company stopped by so I clicked off for a visit. A neighbor’s mother came bearing gifts – dried flowers, box of art & craft books, and a big bag full of counted cross stitch kits and transfers and pinking shears and all sorts of goodies. I promised to pass on what I won’t use… yes, on to my sister.

It is always a trip when people come in who have never been in here before. They usually react one of two ways. Some people look around like the place isn’t up to par. (One quote from a relative: “you live like you’re on welfare” and okay, so I rebelled from the look like a magazine spread decor? The funny thing is my child rebelled against my laid back comfy style to go all prim and proper, with tastes like my mother.) Others, like the older couple who came by today, check out the paintings and handmade things and make comments like “this is cozy” and “this reminds me of places I used to go to when I first started getting high” (?) and how they like the “old stoner” tunes.

Okay, so I still listen to Janis Joplin? I think Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young was on the CD player when they walked in. I do listen to modern music, just depends on what mood I am in and right now, Janis soothes me.
The macrame is ye done. I snapped the photo with an old 16 inch diameter hat box lid before tying off the bottom. It might need some adjustments and I’m not exactly sure if they sell 16″ dia. terra cotta dishes to go under pots, might have to get a 14. But, then again, a 12″ dia. bowl fits fine so maybe it will end up hanging a spider plant instead of a birdbath. I cut the bottom tassle at about 30″ so overall, I don’t know… it is about as long as I am tall.

Something twirling in my mind that maybe I shouldn’t write out loud, almost hate to even put the thought to the wind. It is a viable solution to a common problem, a logical alternative, what most people do when money is too tight to live on their own: they hook up with someone and pull resources, cohabitate or get married, work together for the common good, enjoy each other’s company. I don’t want to say it out loud because I know what it means if he goes for that option and chooses someone else instead of me. I would have to say goodbye and I am too knotted up in memory.

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