Growing up, my mom had a small box of tangled gold necklaces. She kept it in her dresser and gave me a dollar for every chain I freed. How necklaces sitting in Western Pennsylvanian stillness even get tangled, I don’t know, but lift the lid off the box and— blam!—metal hairball.
I learned fast that pulling legs of the octopus willy-nilly made things worse somewhere else in the beast. Shaking the knot at the sky, pleading “Why me?” also complicated matters. Sometimes I’d whisper bad words at it. Bad words like, “You’re such a butthole!” But the knot was stoic.
So frustrating.
Eventually I learned you have to hold the knot and lightly knead it like bread. The central knot relaxes just enough to reveal where a mini-knot is ready for liberty. Each chain leg may be tied up multiple ways—on its own leg and to other legs. The knot is never just one knot. But the way forward is not by axe but link. Link by link by tiny link.
It’s not a matter of force but of focus—of slowly feeling your way forward along each ridge with nimble squirrel fingertips and a vision of how many Swedish Fish that dollar will buy.
These days, lifting the lid off my eyes every morning seems to reveal an octopus knot of things to untangle. Starting with the mound of clean laundry at the foot of my bed that’s been there for almost a week now. And continuing on through calling the stupid Franchise Tax Board to see what their problem is with me and my suspended LLC.
The knots aren’t marked with a red arrow shouting, “Start Here.” I look at my ragged cuticles and doubt my squirrel fingers are up to the task of beginning yet again to try. To try to figure it out. I know the knot isn’t a personal failure or a cosmic punishment—it’s just what happens when life accumulates. But it’s still exhausting, no?
Knots rarely untie themselves. We learn to engage through contact, moving in the slow, focused, squirrel-paced ways that being human in a complex world requires. And we try to remind ourselves that this unknotting-work happens inside a larger world that is woven, not knotted.
The branches, for example, tangled outside my window, aren’t knotted but are growing in an ordered way that holds, shelters, makes room. Our personal knots sit inside a landscape that is larger, steadier, more interwoven than we feel in the moment.
My mom paid me a dollar per freed necklace (or 100 Swedish Fish in kid currency). Pretty sure that lesson was priceless.
CLOSE ENCOUNTER // 743.d
P.S. - Has this inspired curiosity about squirrels?
They specialize in “deceptive caching” - they dig fake holes and pretend to bury nuts while secretly keeping them hidden in their mouth. Same as toddlers.
Rotating their ankles 180 degrees, they can descend headfirst down trees. Until middle age, when that decreases to 4 degrees inexplicably.
P.P.S. - And interest in Sweden?
Do you know about Fika breaks? More than a coffee break, it’s a dedicated time to share pastries, socialize, and slow down, often observed twice a day. Same as in America, except we don’t share, socialize or slow down.
Thanks to Allemansrätten (The Right of Public Access), anyone can roam freely on public or private land so long as they respect the environment. Remember that time I almost got shot by a hunter in the woods outside Pittsburgh? Me too.
P.P.P.S. - Maybe solid gold?
As a "noble" metal, it does not rust, tarnish, or corrode. It can only be dissolved by a specialized acidic mixture known as aqua regia. Aqua’s a real bitch.
As the most malleable metal known to science, one ounce can be stretched into a thread 5 miles long. Gold has been advised to work on its boundaries, but it’s worried that will diminish its worth.
*illustrations by me
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