Red Thread
The term “red thread of fate” originates in Chinese folklore, referring to a bond between people who haven’t met, but who are destined to be with each other.
The term is also used, contemporarily, in reference to an invisible connection between people or things—often, a connective ligament that stands out like a bright red thread when you notice it, but which is quite small and easy to miss if you’ve never intentionally sought it out.
I heard this term used in reference to writing stories during a random conversation many years ago, and have since adopted it for individual projects—tying together seemingly disparate ideas in books or essays, for instance—but also for the holistic collection of work I’ve produced.
I’ve found that while not everything we do will be unifiable through the application of a single theme or tone or genre-description, we can often bundle together more than is initially obvious by focusing less on attributes that are sensical within a specific profession or medium, and more on characteristics that span our work, our pastimes, our relationships, and our lives as a whole.
My red thread, I’ve discovered over the years, is more about curiosity and interest and understanding than it is about writing or travel or analysis. It’s not any specific philosophy, but rather a portfolio of philosophical concepts that orbit around a central core of discovery and comprehension, and then sharing my enthusiasms and learnings the best I can with other people who might also find value in these things.
“Desire paths” are informal trails and walkways eroded into the environment by the passage of people and animals: they show where we want to go and where our actions tend to take us, rather than where we’re supposed to go and how we’re supposed to get there based on math and engineering and the desires of urban planners and lawn maintenance professionals.
Our red threads are maps of the desire paths we carve through life. They’re tricky to identify and grasp because they will almost always resist concise, clear, cartographic labeling. They’re seldom symmetrical or clean, and they’re generally “us-shaped” rather than templated.
But if we can get a sense of the general figure our threads trace, the resulting glyph can help us decide where to go next, how to get there, and how our future steps will correlate with where we’ve been before.
—
If you found some value in this essay, consider supporting my work by buying me a coffee.
Projects
Brain Lenses:End of History Illusion & Number Systems
Let’s Know Things:Bolsonaro’s Brazil
Curiosity Weekly: May 18, 2021
One Sentence News: Info / Subscribe
Interesting & Useful
Some things to click:
The Endless Acid Banger(fun music tool for your browser)
Open Syllabus Galaxy(map showing how educational books and articles correlate with each other)
Movie of the Night(tool for figuring out what to watch, or for finding a film that you vaguely recall but don’t know the title of)
Bureaucats(article about cats with jobs)
Trails of Wind(map showing the orientation of airport runways; strangely beautiful and compelling)
Super Mario 64 on the Web(exactly what it sounds like: play the legendary Super Mario 64 in your browser for free)
Decommissioning of the MV Kaami at Kishorn Port(interesting timelapse video of a giant ship being taken apart)
Outro
I’m about a week out from my move to Milwaukee, where I’ll be setting up a home base from which to work, and from which to travel as soon as that becomes feasible and prudent.
I enjoy the process of setting up new homes, wherever they might be located and however long I might inhabit them, and I’m looking forward to the sequence of discovery associated with putting down those sorts of roots—though I’m also anticipating a lot of errors and headaches and discomfort between where I am now and where I’d like to be in regards to my new setup; it’ll be a journey.
Part of that journey has involved closing a lot of tiny loops here in Missouri, which has been satisfying and, at times, bittersweet.
I didn’t anticipate being here anywhere near this long. But despite the great many painful, inconvenient, tedious, uncertain, claustrophobic attributes of my life since early 2020, I wouldn’t change how it turned out. I’ve been fortunate to navigate this weirdness with family, and fortunate to be able to keep working from home: work that has allowed me to connect with countless amazing people from around the world at a truly discombobulating, historic moment.
Consider sending me a quick email to say hello, tell me something about yourself, and if you’d like, to tell me how your year has been, what you’re looking forward to, something you’re struggling with, or whatever else comes to mind.
I respond to every email I receive, so even if you just need to vent or share your weirdness with a stranger from the internet, feel free to contact me at colin@exilelifestyle.com or by replying to this email.
—
You can also communicate via the typical channels: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or 3D-printed house made of raw earth.
If you’re finding some value in what I’m doing here, consider supporting my work via one of these methods: Become a patron / Buy a book / Buy me a coffee