jute · 31 cm · age uncertain · keeper: uncertain
a piece of brown jute about the length of a forearm, frayed at both ends, knotted once in the middle for no reason you can now reconstruct. it has the colour of weak tea and the weight of nothing.
every pocket has, at some point, a length of string. yours arrived around the parcel of a book sent by an aunt who liked to wrap her presents properly. the paper was put in the kindling-basket; the string went, as string does, into the pocket "in case it should come in useful", and then into the second pocket, and then into the third. it has not yet come in useful. it has not yet been thrown out.
string is the patient cousin of the safety pin and the loose button: a small reservoir of future repair, held against an emergency that civilisation has, on the whole, made unlikely. still, you keep it. one day a parcel will need wrapping, and you will untie this knot, and the knot will remember how it was tied.
field-note · the knot is a granny, not a reef. someone was in a hurry.
pencil stub · ribbon · thimble · ritual