Growing up in a familial compound meant being related to every other resident in some way. A few houses down the road were cousins and extended family going back multiple generations, so that the actual basis of these relationships became elusive over time. If, perhaps, we attached strings to the structures to indicate how each house on the street was related to one another, there would be no space for the trees to grow – like the pear tree situated in the arbitrarily defined center of the community, planted over the tombstone of someone unknown, at least to people my age. Together, the tombstone and the pear tree, which I do not recall ever seeing produce any actual fruits, provided sanctuary for the older youths; they would sit out there in the evenings and talk about whatever people that age talked about; and on more humid afternoons, it provided warmth.
In his novel Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino described the fictional city of Ersilia, where the residents use strings to signify the relationships that sustain the city’s life. Its inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of their homes to indicate the relationships; string colours – black, white, gray, or mixed – indicating whether the connections are familial, economic, or political. When the city eventually gets overrun by the strings so that its inhabitants can no longer pass between them, they abandon the city and rebuild Ersilia elsewhere.
Every society is formed by the common bonds that connect its inhabitants, going back to the early Paleolithic hunter-gatherers who relied on each other and the environment for well-being. As these communities grew and cultures became intertwined, modern society evolved into complex civilisations over time. In biology, the Circle of Life, beyond the conventional journey through birth, growth, death, and then rebirth (or the continuation of life through an offspring), the circle is nourished by food webs and nutrient cycles, where the decomposition or death of one organism provides resources for the continual development of another. In some species, the parent dies to reproduce the offspring. The mother octopus stops eating and wastes away shortly after laying eggs and dies before the eggs hatch; sometimes they kill and eat their males for sustenance.
In 2015, scientists released an updated Tree of Life showing how over 2.3 million species of organisms are related (photo below). Not only are the connections living things have with one another and their environment necessary for survival of the ecosystem, these connections are complicated and significantly interconnected so that the removal of one could lead to instability and eventual collapse. Animals migrate from one habitat to another to sustain their survival; and sometimes when plants are removed from their natural habitat, they die because the resources in their new habitats are either insufficient or in excess.
Over time, we create new relationships as our needs evolve, and these relationships become increasingly more complicated as we journey through life. As in Ersilia, relationships sometimes become too complex – too tangled – that we need to take a step back and rebuild. When the people of Ersilia move from their overrun city, they demolish the houses, leaving behind only the strings and the structures that support them in place. This labyrinth of strings and poles that remain signifies the relationships and connections that live on even as everything else crumbles into dust.
Ersilia’s people never find resolution, only compromise – a cycle of abandonment and repetition; but one could argue that the emigration from Ersilia was more out of necessity than of self-serving desires; the desperate longing for their community to continue as is. Because, isn’t life really all about continuity?! – the mother octopus dies so new octopuses get to live and keep the specie going. Like DNAs, meaning and memory persist and provide a segue for progression. Even when we leave behind some relationships as we move on to create new ones in new places, those relationships still live in the strings that tether us to past communities, real or imagined.
The relationships that we build – or abandon – along the way, are equally vital for our survival. Every interaction and every relationship, good or bad, adds a layer to your personality; sometimes it's a new taste in music, and other times, it’s a free lesson on human behaviour. Within the labyrinth of our pasts lies evidence of growth, each knot and twist representing a lesson learned, a relationship nurtured or relinquished. It is in the act of detangling and restringing that we find resilience. As in nature’s endless circle of death nourishing life and collapse enabling renewal, our own journeys are marked by beginnings and endings, sorrow and hope.
Perhaps the answer is not in finding lasting resolution, but rather in the willingness to adapt, settling for alignment rather than endlessly pursuing balance; honouring what was while making space for what might be. The city of strings may fall into ruin, but the bonds and legacy of shared stories and mutual influence remain suspended in the air ready to anchor whatever comes next.
I think of myself as a product of all the people I have met and all the experiences I have had. On some of my darkest days, I think about where I grew up, I imagine the little structures – trees, stalls, electric poles, abandoned constructions, and that godawful grave stone where budding relationships were fostered and friendships were strengthened. These memories serve as a scaffolding on which every new experience, and every new relationship, is strung.
The rest of Calvino’s paragraph reads:
From a mountainside, camping with their household goods, Ersilia’s refugees look at the labyrinth of taut strings and poles that rise in the plain. That is the city of Ersilia still, and they are nothing.
They rebuild Ersilia elsewhere. They weave a similar pattern of strings which they would like to be more complex and at the same time more regular than the other. Then they abandon it and take themselves and their houses still farther away.
Thus, when travelling in the territory of Ersilia, you come upon the ruins of the abandoned cities, without the walls which do not last, without the bones of the dead which the wind rolls away: spiderwebs of intricate relationships seeking a form.
Here’s my favourite song this week:
and here’s what I’m currently reading:
A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o - a fictional novel set in contemporary Kenya in the events leading up to the country’s independence. The novel explores key themes of colonialism, identity, and community.
Apple in China by Patrick McGee - An account of how Apple, the company, came to establish its supply chain in Asia. The author explores how the company has come to be almost entirely dependent on China for its production, and the (geo)political challenges that threaten its continued existence.