I’ve had time to muse recently and realised how prevalent the knot is in our lives. Here follows a short chronology of their entwining in my life.
One of our first moments as a human involves the severing of the life blood cord, that energy transfer complete and a tying off, so that we forever have a little reminder in our belly of that primordial link. In times gone by the women of the house were encouraged to let their hair down and untie unnecessary knots to aid the mother in childbirth, any knot was considered an obstruction.
Babies’ clothes are secured with ribbons and tapes, soft and pliable against new born skin.
I was given hairbrushes for my babies, bald as they were, but sure enough there was always a delightful mass of knotted hair at the back of their heads as they grew older. I did my best, but their agony often made it a fruitless exercise and by the time my third child, with a halo of peroxide white curls, was old enough for the brush I never bothered. The knots worked themselves out or were cut off.
Tying shoelaces is truly a mark of independence in a child’s life. Suddenly the knot makes sense, there is a tactile and intellectual understanding of the mechanics of a knot and its uses. You can tie a knot behind your back by sensation alone!
I remember having to go to my parents’ room and stand while my father with morning breath wove the ends of my school tie into a large miraculous knot around my neck. He liked a generous knot and had a particular way of tying it. It was that morning breath that drove me to work out how to knot my own tie.
Primary school insisted on girls producing a sampler of embroidery stitches. I could never understand why at the time but still have that limp, tortured fabric with a front of carefully woven stitches and a forest of knots and ends on the underside.
Girl guides seemed to be particularly concerned with knot tying, there was a badge for it. I did not earn one, but I did become enamoured of the reef knot and still use it. ‘Right over left and over, left over right and over’.
Macramé was popular in my teens, we made bracelets, place mats, belts, hanging pot plant holders watch straps…..Knots were in vogue. There seems to be parallel with macramé and pot plants, they are both back in fashion. My interest waned after a year or two and was replaced with what was to become a ritual of repetition and a calming practice that I enjoyed for years. The art of wrapping and knotting a line of fibre to form a three-dimensional object, knitting. I toyed with embroidery, weaving and crochet but always the comfortable rhythm knitting created centred me.
My most treasured possession during my late teens was a simple silver knot ring, shown in the pic. They were common but mine was, I thought, perfectly formed and not clumsy like others I had seen. I wore it for years, had my fortune read with it, and it now hangs on a necklace of other much-loved pieces gathered over the years.
Other knots like those necessary for fishing, or boating I acquired alongside the knots we unconsciously weave while forming relationships. Programmed to believe that somewhere out there is ‘the one’ we look for linkages, bonds, unity in thought and ultimately tie the knot with another person. To verify this we use ceremony, jewellery, and ritual, all the while weaving a net of emotional tendrils around each other to ensure security, where in fact there can be none. Heart break is an oxymoron, even metaphorically. Such a fleshy sinuous, tube filled muscle can only ever be ripped, torn, bruised, and cut. It is not a brittle thing, it is a tangle of fibres and wishes, loves and agonies knotted up in a pulsing organ. A tangle that has its genesis in thought but is manifest in our bodies. We allow our thinking to create such stress in our bodies that we go to a therapist to massage out the knots in our muscles. We can make ourselves ill with knots in our stomachs, throats and bowels. Energy constricted, redirected or allowed to build up in the wrong places.
A knot can hold fast, save lives on a rock climb or in a hospital theatre. Ships would never have sailed without knots, and fish would not be caught. There is a branch of mathematics given over to knot theory. Witches have used knot magic for centuries to direct, protect and control energies. Their tying of a knot is a ritual in itself and the untying, or not, releases the spell imbedded within.
I have been seduced by the magic of the knot and my making is beginning to reflect the variety of materials used. I intend to delve further into the shapes of the knots themselves.