These string figures are thinking as well as making practices, peda-gogical practices and cosmological performances. Some Navajo thinkersdescribe string games as one kind of patterning for restoring hózhó, aterm imperfectly translated into English as “harmony,” “beauty,” “order,”and “right relations of the world,” including right relations of humansand nonhumans.

Relays, string figures, pass-ing patterns back and forth, giving and receiving, patterning, holdingthe unasked-for pattern in one’s hands, response-ability; that is core towhat I mean by staying with the trouble in serious multispecies worlds.Becoming-with, not becoming, is the name of the game; becoming-withis how partners are, in Vinciane Despret’s terms, rendered capable.7 On-

It matters what matters we use to think othermatters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with;it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, whatdescriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters whatstories make worlds, what worlds make stories

Playinggames of string figures is about giving and receiving patterns, droppingthreads and failing but sometimes finding something that works, some-thing consequential and maybe even beautiful, that wasn’t there before,of relaying connections that matter, of telling stories in hand upon hand,digit upon digit, attachment site upon attachment site, to craft condi-tions for finite flourishing on terra, on earth.

We all naturally have a desire to create — to bring to life something good, true, or beautiful.