Why Span of Thread? Just this:
It was in his paternal grandparents’ cellar where he first felt the sense of thread, when standing, a small boy, and hearing his grandpa at his treadle sewing machine around one bend of the cellar; and suddenly the boy knew a sense of thread going through him, starting on his left, passing through him, extending to the right and going on and on and on…. The thread seemed to come from an impossibly long distance (the stars?) The boy knew right then, five-six years old, that no matter how pulled or plucked the thread would remain intact! He knew that thread, tough and fragile at the same time, as the line of individuality that he was and would remain.