Ludwig
The capatain crushes pepsi cans in one hand as his other hand makes an open fisted glide over the birch table top, inspecting for crumbs from last nights bowl of popcorn, a spilled beer or rum rings. satisfied the table is clean, he clears his throat and looks out through the oval door, off the side of the ship caught in the oceans stare. Not like the drunk german from the night before farting and tickling kuna women off the coast of panama. Hes natural now like a gull riding a hot upswell lost on a mission. I see him like I see myself in my head, a man with a purpose.
“this boat is iron” he says to me yesterday, he’s correcting me cause I called it steel. Im thinking about a useful piece of plate, not an expensive table, where your getting graded on the needle top half moons layered like a roll off peas against a prouve chair leg. Im thinking about 220 tons of something that saves lives and stands on its own without its fathers words to protect it. “its before steel, its iron, if you slice it you see lines like the life of a tree”. The galley is black because the sun, just awake herself has not found its way from the horizon down the long flat field of water to this ship. Dark photographs like framed negatives of three masted schooners from the fifties. The boat on the wharfs of germany, hauling lines and trawling for cash in the north sea. theres a birch table with coffee on it, a warm vestige of land. a raft when this whole world goes, and you with it, bobbing in the surf like a bloody piece of bait. Im blinded for a second as the sun focuses through the open eye of a turnbuckle, laying light accross the walls like a lazer cutting a hole in ice. Ive been talking to ludwig, telling him Im a welder, trying to trade work for a free ride down to new zealand from the gallopogos in february.
“dont ships strap zink billets to the hull for a anti rust coating?” I learned that some where, when buying zink sheets in new jersey for a bar I built ten years ago. ludwig could care less. “zinc anodes” he coorects me.
“like a battery ?” I ask. Isnt there something I can do to make a dent in this morning. why is it always so dam hard to talk plain. Ive been on the boat two days so far, where sailing through the carribean san blast islands indigenous kuna indian outposts, on the way down to columbia. Im a passenger sharing the boat with a four person german crew that shuttles travellers between colon and cartagena. steve, andrew the two michaels, felix, jess, christian, esther, zasha, gabby, ete, and a new columbian girl we picked up who was stranded on one of the 1/2 acre islands named lady, and eight others whos names have escaped me. starfishes under the azul carribean water like crushed red bottlecaps on another foreign constellation.
“its like a battery” ludwig says “because of the salt water the propeller spinning creates electricity”. I get excited “an arc?” I ask. I know about arcs from welding. I hope it is the arc, the only energy I can control, a mans word, some communal surge, the blue light, the cracking carbon, lapping nickel sized moons on a stainless trunk, argon shrouding gas making an oxygen depleting world of two elements getting basic. but ludwig dismissevely makes that european snitch noise and shakes his head. “no arc, just stray current seaking the weaker metal. its the battery effect” I try hard not to make him my dad, and to understand something new. Its got something to do with metals carrying an electrical current through salt water. salts a conductor and the current can stray, looking for ground. looking for something weak that cannot protect itself. like the hull or the steel keel, or the propeller shroud. the anode is the decoy, it is the weakest metal that attracts the current, its the expendable. He’s looking out the oval door onto the flat back, the lazer light cutting into me now, like a doctors knife, and everything is silent. the ship bobs and everything that cannot be proved burns in the sun. all this time I hoped I was a man like him, like this ship. the silver sliver of sky and land that duel at the end of the world, I pretended I was the hull something heavy defying the ocean, all these eternal tasks mine. when I used to weld I imagined I was the arc, the radiant blue light, damning metals intio union, a gated quarter breed banging out a dogs song. I lied to myself on my pillow, and said I was the keel, pressing the wave down, chartered under the bright red dials of north and south. But no, the truth is I am the anode, the weakest of all things, begging a maverick pulse, thats me dissolving into a brine of alkaline swell. thats me the expendable, attracting all the energy of the world, the loose electrons that want my heart. I am the bait metalurgic, I am nothing but frozen alloy, a weak infantry man, dieing slowly as the beautiful things of this world eat me alive.
“this boat is iron” he says to me yesterday, he’s correcting me cause I called it steel. Im thinking about a useful piece of plate, not an expensive table, where your getting graded on the needle top half moons layered like a roll off peas against a prouve chair leg. Im thinking about 220 tons of something that saves lives and stands on its own without its fathers words to protect it. “its before steel, its iron, if you slice it you see lines like the life of a tree”. The galley is black because the sun, just awake herself has not found its way from the horizon down the long flat field of water to this ship. Dark photographs like framed negatives of three masted schooners from the fifties. The boat on the wharfs of germany, hauling lines and trawling for cash in the north sea. theres a birch table with coffee on it, a warm vestige of land. a raft when this whole world goes, and you with it, bobbing in the surf like a bloody piece of bait. Im blinded for a second as the sun focuses through the open eye of a turnbuckle, laying light accross the walls like a lazer cutting a hole in ice. Ive been talking to ludwig, telling him Im a welder, trying to trade work for a free ride down to new zealand from the gallopogos in february.
“dont ships strap zink billets to the hull for a anti rust coating?” I learned that some where, when buying zink sheets in new jersey for a bar I built ten years ago. ludwig could care less. “zinc anodes” he coorects me.
“like a battery ?” I ask. Isnt there something I can do to make a dent in this morning. why is it always so dam hard to talk plain. Ive been on the boat two days so far, where sailing through the carribean san blast islands indigenous kuna indian outposts, on the way down to columbia. Im a passenger sharing the boat with a four person german crew that shuttles travellers between colon and cartagena. steve, andrew the two michaels, felix, jess, christian, esther, zasha, gabby, ete, and a new columbian girl we picked up who was stranded on one of the 1/2 acre islands named lady, and eight others whos names have escaped me. starfishes under the azul carribean water like crushed red bottlecaps on another foreign constellation.
“its like a battery” ludwig says “because of the salt water the propeller spinning creates electricity”. I get excited “an arc?” I ask. I know about arcs from welding. I hope it is the arc, the only energy I can control, a mans word, some communal surge, the blue light, the cracking carbon, lapping nickel sized moons on a stainless trunk, argon shrouding gas making an oxygen depleting world of two elements getting basic. but ludwig dismissevely makes that european snitch noise and shakes his head. “no arc, just stray current seaking the weaker metal. its the battery effect” I try hard not to make him my dad, and to understand something new. Its got something to do with metals carrying an electrical current through salt water. salts a conductor and the current can stray, looking for ground. looking for something weak that cannot protect itself. like the hull or the steel keel, or the propeller shroud. the anode is the decoy, it is the weakest metal that attracts the current, its the expendable. He’s looking out the oval door onto the flat back, the lazer light cutting into me now, like a doctors knife, and everything is silent. the ship bobs and everything that cannot be proved burns in the sun. all this time I hoped I was a man like him, like this ship. the silver sliver of sky and land that duel at the end of the world, I pretended I was the hull something heavy defying the ocean, all these eternal tasks mine. when I used to weld I imagined I was the arc, the radiant blue light, damning metals intio union, a gated quarter breed banging out a dogs song. I lied to myself on my pillow, and said I was the keel, pressing the wave down, chartered under the bright red dials of north and south. But no, the truth is I am the anode, the weakest of all things, begging a maverick pulse, thats me dissolving into a brine of alkaline swell. thats me the expendable, attracting all the energy of the world, the loose electrons that want my heart. I am the bait metalurgic, I am nothing but frozen alloy, a weak infantry man, dieing slowly as the beautiful things of this world eat me alive.
posted by bigworld06 at 7:03 AM
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