(red) String theory
There is a cat's cradle aura surrounding you. In the midst of divine fingers there are threads. Tiny fate filled marionette strings, not controlling but connecting us to our maker, each other and this often magical material world.
Your very body looks like a road map full of red string crossings. Your veins are so densely packed that your lips and hips would be clearly articulated if you took everything from your body but your circulatory system. If you were to unravel all your redness you would have enough veins to stretch around the earth twice. Nearly 100,000km of red strings knotting you together.
Not only are you a tangled ball of yarn, but themes of thread, ribbon, string, cord and line weave their way through folk lore, Greek myth, religious texts, and quantum physics — leaving a bread crumb trail of what ties us together.
Bloodline
Your veins aren't the only red string up your sleeve; there is also your blood line. The words blood, Adam, human, and earth share the same root word for red in Hebrew, dam.
In Genesis the first human family committed the first murder when Cain killed Abel: the beginning of countless acts of bloodshed which have become a human legacy and an indelible bloodline. We are also inextricably linked to the earth as our very name, human, suggests. We work the land, live off of the land, and return to the land in death. From dust we came, according to Ecclesiastes, and to dust we shall return. We are magnificent and brutal sand sculptures.
But interestingly there is another word for red in Hebrew, shani. Shani is most often used to describe a type of crimson string. This thread is used in purification rituals and in the textiles of the Tabernacle and later of the Temple. It has holy and royal significance.
In the Bible, in the book of Joshua chapter 2 verses 18–21, a woman named Rahab who lived within the city of Jericho assisted the Israelites in capturing the city. To indicate that she and her family were to be spared she hung a scarlet thread from her window.
Also in the bible is the story of Tamar and her twin sons Zerah and Perez. Zerah's arm extended through the womb during birth and a nurse tied a red string around his wrist to indicate he was the oldest, but his arm withdrew and it was