Bink (click for portfolio) painted this portrait of her Taurus friend Jim, after he died, aged 38.He's flying kites (more clearly, in the original), which they used to do together. His kite string has been cut by one of the Greek goddesses, the Fates, who decide these things:
Atropos is is the eldest of three sisters who determine each mortal's life span. She cuts the thread of life, when it is time for a mortal to die.
Her sister Clotho spins the thread of life.
Her other sister, Lachesis, sets the length of the thread.
Jim would have turned 52 this week.
But Atropos's name means "without turn."
This painting is actually titled "Clotho's thread",
ReplyDeleteIn my mind I wasn't thinking so much about Atropos having cut the thread short (which she certainly did), but about how when you get busy flying kites it's easy to lose track of how much string you've fed the kite (unless you made a point of unrolling your string and tying it to your stick in advance). So there you go, unwinding the thread, watching the kite rise, and opps! the string is running through your fingers with no way to stop it and the kite escapes and flys away.
So I was thinking about how the thread of life just gets away from us sometimes. Slips away. Hopefully when it slips away we're at least keeping our eyes on our kites.
Oh, that's good. Thanks for clarifying: you said it better than I could.
ReplyDeleteAnd I didn't remember that was actually the title of the painting.
It's so beautiful.