Untangling Knots for the Future

Today I spent several hours untangling knots and unwinding and winding kite strings. Though I was also occupied in other listening based activities while I de-snarled, my hands and eyes and thinking were predominantly occupied by this Penelopean undertaking. Throughout the day I tried to understand why this task, on this day, this day before the Winter Solstice, why this task was in my hands. There must be some underlying meaning. These particular kite strings have been untouched and tangled for at least six months, but today I just had to get them clear. I did think of cutting them a few times to make the job easier, but I rather persevered. All the knots came out. I rewound each string neatly, tightly, with a spiral hand motion moving away from me, down, up closer to me and away again. It is true there was some satisfaction in this clearing, in the untangling, in the "fixing," but the real challenge is in the why of it. These are the times for which I have been trained to get quiet, ask the question and wait for the answers to come from another person or an interaction or a newspaper article or anything really but it requires attending. Sitting here, writing about it helps too. There are so many snarls to untangle in the world right now. The new tax bill that just happens to include a provision to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. More fire in California and sixty degree days with hardly any snow in the Colorado mountains. I was so violently ill three days ago that thinking too complex thoughts, thoughts that required attention to several steps, a process, such thinking invoked nausea and dizziness. I have never encountered a virus so poignant and potent. The very ground seems made of gravy and the highways are museums of wrecked cars and displays of flashing light sophistication. I used to get high and be paranoid and now I'm clear like a monk and I'm paranoid everyone's high- high on weed, but more high on drugs served with scripts and handed over a counter at CVS- high like they don't even give          a                   shit. This has gone nowhere, the kite strings lie in the kite bag, clean and wound with precision, the country's high on opiates and anti-depressants and power and cash, tomorrow is the darkest day of the year, this perhaps the longest night of the year, I repel into the caverns of my soul in search of a light I hear dwells there, inextinguishable and profound in its luminosity. I untangle knots in kite strings because the children love to fly kites. They throw their arms in the air, mouths agape, voicing sounds of awe when they take flight. They chase them and throw them in the air and revel in their crashes to the earth. They are winded and red-cheeked and arguing and laughing and sharing and all things good about childhood and humanity. There they are, the colors are those of the rainbow, they truly dance in the sunlight, on the wind, the children and kites tethered by strings taught, nearly imperceptible against the blue sky, unencumbered by knots, free to unwind with a gust or the daring running of a child.