Of Rope and Rust
Every once in a while in my new life in the city, I come upon a coil of rope and it takes me back to a different time, when rope and steel were what held the world together.
A large cargo ship is essentially a barrel-like steel contraption with a massive diesel engine, a single propeller and thirty-odd souls to take it across the seas and back to make a few men very rich.
This little world is held together by authority, comradeship, money, oil, rope, wood, steel wire and pictures of the opposite sex.
If rust and fatigue are one’s most formidable foes, chain and rope are never-failing, though high-maintenance, companions.

They need to be handled well, though-passing a wire the thickness of a grown man’s wrist through a hole in the ship’s side down to a Tugboat and then have it pull you into Harbour is an experience worth having.
Chain Blocks, the Swiss Army Knives of a ship, piled up on carts pulled by men across decks as the horizon dips and rises as she rolls across the ocean.

You never leave the ropes on deck to be splashed with salt water, no matter how tired after days in port, to be splashed with salt water. First the rope sleeps, and then you do.
Ropes are also beds, to be coiled and snuggled on, stealing ten minutes of sleep under the stars on the open deck while rolling into a frozen port in the St.Lawrence seaway.

Rust, the old enemy, always kept at bay with machines, paint and gritty eyes,
Crawling into rusty pipelines, armed with pneumatic needle guns, an old t-shirt wrapped around the face for protection,
All rewarded with a wonderful sandwich at midnight, ones days labors over, filled with delicious things that Norwegian sailors eat.
Always strong, always yielding, often brittle, sometimes soft, a vehicle for creation,
Be rope.
Relentless, tenacious, intending to stop only when the last of what man took from her, has been returned to the Earth.
Be rust.
