Movement and Containment
The limiting nature of the space aboard ship has affected our energies and our physical and mental capacities. We have both slowed down. But the slowing down is necessary: a coping mechanism without which we might go crazy. Our bodies respond appropriately to the situation, they rest and wait. As the weeks pass, Katy and I react differently to the new world we are in. Katy allows herself to relax into it – to enjoy retreating into novels, and her internal world of thoughts. But I become increasingly energetic, and that’s when cabin fever set in. The ship becomes a prison. A pleasant one, where we have comfortable beds, plentiful food and our own (limited) entertainment. But it is nonetheless a space of confinement, entrapment. We cannot leave.
Aboard this Container Ship, I start to think about what ‘containment’ means. In the absence of a dictionary I check Microsoft Word’s synonyms. It suggests: ‘repression, suppression, control, restraint, or inhibition’. I think of the way we speak of a person being ‘contained’, not revealing their emotions. I associate containment with a lack of freedom, and yet sometimes it’s useful to contain yourself, it’s a form of protection. Containing something can mean keeping it safe. Katy says one of its meanings has to do with being full of something, for example ‘containing wisdom’, so it’s not always negative.
The reality of being contained in the world of the ship is a limiting of our movement, of company and of stimulus. Although we are moving all the time, covering thousands of miles and passing by numerous different countries, our bodily movement is contained within the limits of the boat. Each day, the same movements are repeated: walking down four floors to the officer’s mess where we eat; walking up one floor to the bridge to watch our progress; walking to the front of the boat to watch the waves. As I grow more frustrated with the lack of anywhere to go, I invent challenges for myself. Each day I ride the rusty exercise bike, pedalling furiously as the bike stays obstinately on one spot. We work out that a total circuit of the deck is 200m, and we walk five times around, to make a kilometre.
The only real means of escape is in the worlds of our imagination: we create new worlds to overlay on the world of the boat. We fancy-dress, draw, read and watch films. We discuss philosophy – altering the way we see this experience by trying out different theories as a series of different lenses to look though.
Tim Ingold describes all living creatures as Wayfarers. He writes: ‘Wayfaring is a movement of self-renewal or becoming… Making their way through the tangle of the world, wayfarers grow into its fabric and contribute through their movement to its ever-evolving weave.’[1] There’s an important difference between being a wayfarer and a transported passenger: where you take no responsibility for your own journeying through the world, and don’t engage with the environments you encounter.
On this journey, I feel like we are transported passengers: gliding across the surface of the sea, our means of locomotion totally in the control of Polish sailors. We are transported, carrying our inner worlds with us. We can switch off from the world we are moving through if we choose. We are not completely disengaged from the environment of the sea, nor the environment of the boat. But we are not engaging as ‘wayfarers’: we are not really a part of the world we pass through. The deck is too high for us to touch the sea with our hands; we only feel it through the constant movement of the ship. Our dialogue with our environment is limited. The sea offers limitless horizons, but the boat prevents us from reaching them.
In Walvis Bay, after two and a half days of waiting at anchor, we finally go into the harbour. We are allowed off the ship for an afternoon’s freedom to roam this strange desert town. It’s a pleasure to walk, to eat what we please, to see different people. But I also have a strange feeling of having become so familiar with life aboard ship that the real world is a bit challenging. We are glad to return to the safety of the ship, to scuttle into the cabin and lock the door. We have become familiar with our own containment.
Rebecca Beinart
[1] Ingold, LINES: A Brief History Routledge, 2007, p116
