Rust: A Rant

Rust is life. Rust is what separates us from the Egyptians. Rust is the natural process of our unnatural achievements.

Most of the time, we think about rust as what happens when iron turns to crap. Rust is the destroyer, rust is why we have to wash the car after they salt the roads. Like a lot of annoyances, rust simultaneously draws our attention away from what’s valuable and makes us concentrate on it. We have to protect what we want to protect, which makes us decide what we want to protect. If you don’t oil your gun, it’ll stop working. If you leave a car in an old field behind a barn, the barn will fall down and the car will rust away. You just have to be patient.

The Egyptians, and here I’m referring to the Egyptians of antiquity, and I will make a lot of generalizations, and some people’s heads will explode, but on the whole, what I’m saying is that the Egyptians didn’t believe in time the way we do. It takes a lot of work not to believe in time. When time passes, things change, and if time doesn’t pass, then things can’t change, and if things don’t change, then we have to build things that will last forever, and we have to make all the things that have changed into things that haven’t changed, by changing them thoroughly enough. And our kings have to wear the same ceremonial beards and have the same names and features, and be standing in the same places at the same times. That’s comforting enough, in it’s way, and like a lot of comforting things, it’s utter crap. And you know what? They all died, anyway. The Sphinx’s nose fell off, and the pyramids were plundered, and Cleopatra’s Needle fell into the Bay of Biscay and was bombed by the Huns, and Memphis is in Tennessee.

When stone weathers and breaks, though, when concrete spalls, when the leaves that the October trees shed rot under them in the forest, it’s just the breakdown of something that once had structure into a load of rubbish. When iron is exposed to oxygen and water, it makes something. It makes rust. Rust is a new thing. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes frightening, sometimes delicate. And, yes, destructive. If you left an iron bar in outer space, it would just float there forever. Here, things change. Things are created that didn’t exist before. Iron and oxygen and water become iron oxide and energy.

That’s another thing about rust—rust is iron and water and air. Now, I grew up in the desert, where there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot of water in the air, and I didn’t see a lot of rust. Rust means water, and water is life. Iron is, well, iron is technology, iron is the ability to build tall buildings and have some hope that they won’t fall down, so iron is the ability to live together in cities. Not to mention the core of the earth and all. As for air, I myself wouldn’t want to live without it. When you see rust, Gentle Reader, meditate, just for a moment, on the air, on the iron, and on the water. Take a moment from cursing the rust to appreciate the cause of the rust, the inevitable mixing of necessities, leading to the oddly-colored pitted or swirled chaos that time has made of them. If you choose a thing, you choose the consequences of that thing; nothing remains unmixed. Separate the rust, if you can, into air and water and iron; reverse the flow of time. Or turn with it. Make new things, things that will rust in more air and more water, and more time. Or go to work to save whatever has rusted, because you think it’s worth it. We in the US evidently spend $276 billion (3.1% of the GDP) on fixing stuff that’s rusted, which means that if there wasn’t any rust, there wouldn’t be so many jobs. But the point is that it’s a commitment to fight rust, to clean the bridge again and paint it again, because we like to have the bridge, and we can’t just sit around and let our grandfathers have done all the work.

Iron, itself, is interesting. The Iron Curtain, and an iron fist, the iron furnace. The Lord, in Leviticus and again in Deuteronomy threatens the Israelites that if they disobey, our heaven will be as iron, and our earth as brass. Iron sharpeneth Iron, it says in Proverbs, and so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. When the temple was built, the altar was to be made of stone unhewed by iron, because (the rabbis say) the instruments of iron are instruments of war. Iron symbolizes war, and strength, and firmness, and all those things are best exposed to air and water, as are you, Gentle Reader.

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.