Starting college 11 years ago I wrote my first paper ever (in my life), which was about the experience of stepping aboard a sailing ship for the first time and learning the ways of a sailor. It's kind of cute and I was reading a lot of Coleman Bark's translations of Rumi, so it's all in his style of exclamation marks, ecstaticness, and improper sentences. I found the text file today while backing up my crash-imminent computer, and it just seems such a good reflection of who I was at the time. Several years later with various professional licenses pointing me towards a career as a captain, I walked away from it all and never went back. I don't regret that at all, but that time seems like a dream now from a different life. Here is the paper in its entirety:
A scrap of tightly woven canvas sits in silent waiting inside the snug cabin of an aging sailing ship. Its edges are rough and coming unraveled while its thick strands are still clean and stiff from lack of use. Yet it does not protest its dull existence. And how could it? It’s simply a bit of cloth until it is noticed and given a purpose.
When a sailor steps aboard a sailing ship for the first time it is quite the surreal experience. Attempting to take in the bustling surroundings, one feels as if they may be shrinking into the wooden planks of the deck, worn smooth under years of scrambling feet. Stout masts tower over you while the seemingly nonsensical web of rigging reaches towards the sky to support the expertly crafted spars and sails. The ship sways beneath your unaccustomed feet, comforting the weathered sai lors like a mother rocking her children to sleep. An occasional sea shantey is heard mingling with the whispering wind that teasingly brings the scents of foreign lands. This becomes home as your shipmates become family and rarely will you ever see one so caring for each other than on a ship like this.
As time goes by, a realization sets in that the canvas has an important role in this strange environment. With that, a small circle of about a foot across and a rectangle of its girth is neatly sliced with the sailor’s trusty rigging knife. With care, the fraying edges of the stiff shapes are folded under to protect the exposed ends of the weave, and matched together with steady hands to guide the entire form into a something much like the tall h at of a masterful chef on land.
With such seemingly simple acts one would think this creation would be a quick affair, but that is surprisingly far from the truth. While learning the skills to take on this task, a sailor’s hands become hard and strong from arduous hours of work, while free time is short and far apart. The rough canvas threatens to chafe your hands raw, while patience and strength is required to make the delicate cuts necessary.
And this is merely how the simple foundation is set! Now, much more is necessary to hold this all together.
As you sail, shipmates share marvelous tales and proudly pass on carefully honed skills like the generations before them. Until soon, painstakingly even stitches are made by hand with a thick needle as it protests the force required to squeeze between the tough strands of the always evolving form. Several small lines are attached to the open edge as if creating a little parachute, but then woven together in fanciful knots making a clever handle unique to what any other sailor could or will ever form.
Tool by tool, the creation is slowly filled until it seems no more could possibly fit. Then it’s time to start patching the holes worn through the form over the ages. That is why the sailor’s tradition of crafting a Ditty Bag is important to me.
