The Rope

I live in the cave with my parents and I am old enough for rope duty. It is a privilege of age.

The cave is this: There is a big shaft, and it seems to go on forever. There is light coming from the top of the shaft. There are rooms and shelves and nooks on the walls of the shaft. There are stairways to go up and down a few levels and corridors to go around the shaft. It is a real maze, but you can walk around and meet other people. The rope goes down the middle of the middle shaft and then there is another piece of it going through the small shaft in the cave wall. People have easy access to the small shaft and it is small enough so you can jump over it. The piece in the small shaft goes down so the piece in the big shaft can go up.

The rope duty is this: you have to pull the rope, so it does not stop. You pull it down. You take a place at the edge of the small shaft and you grab the rope up high. You pull it down. Then you grab it up high again. You pull it down.

They say there are people above you and below you pulling it all the time. Some say the shafts go up and down forever and there are people pulling the rope all the way up into forever.

Now listen, sometimes people take a ride on the rope. They make their own tiny rope and tie it to the rope in the big shaft and they sit in its loop. The rope in the big shaft pulls them up, up, up. Sometimes I ask them where they are coming from or how long they have been traveling, and sometimes they respond, saying it is a little different down there. Some have been only doing it a little while, others for a long time. They get off sometimes and spend some time on rope duty and getting to know the people who live there. Sometimes they stay forever, I think, but if it were me, I would keep going.

Posted by: Paweł Kowaluk