MUSINGS

Can you believe it? Today someone asked this muse: "What do pirates see when they close their eyes?" Is this merely a trick question aimed at drawing me into a compromised intimacy? Or is the inquiring mind a poet? Perhaps he is a poet struggling with his own vision and visibility, looking for a mentor. In any event, he seems to be wearing a cloak of invisibility much like my own.

I know from playing video games that cloaks of invisibility have their limitations. There are always signs of the edges. Perhaps we see a curtain of undulating blurriness, like a rising of heat waves. These waves manifest indirectly, through counterfeit movement in the unmoving stable objects behind what is invisible. Or maybe there are elusive footprints, sans creator, pattering along. There is always some sort of sign for eyes that are open.

And I can vouch that pirate eyes are always open. Pirates never close their eyes. Even in the brightest sunlight they never blink. In moonlight that would lull into oblivion even the most suspicious and paranoid of creatures, pirate eyes are steadfast. Pirates are like fish, eye-lidless floating scanners.

Then those ever vigilant pirate eyes continuously send the gathered data to pirate brains that never sleep. These pirate brains assemble the data, making pictures out of the sands and the salts of the seeing. Assembly proceeds non-stop, a production manager's dream come true.

Most pirates would not admit what happens next to all these invented and reinvented tales. But because you have asked, I will tell you freely. You can wonder about the truth of what I say. In fact, I know you will ponder it all because I am now convinced that you are a pirate, too.

From the analytical brain there is seepage down, into the heart. It is only in the heart that invisibility meets open eyes and visibility meets closed eyes. All the distinctions collapse here. The heart is a Pandora's treasure chest that cannot be closed, full of booty for the taking. It is a pirate's paradise, a pirate's raison d'etre. The pirate keeps eyes ever open to tweak the ambient vision, to render the visible altered and the invisible possible. For the pirate, this is bliss beyond all telling.

The only arena for doing this is in the heart. Collapsing distinctions in order to generate is only possible by plunging into the waters of the heart see. And that place is, of necessity, one that is invisible. It is the kind of invisible that happens when you pour water into water, a stream becoming more by disappearing from sight into larger being.

To a poet in the poet place, this is awesome. But it can also be terrifying, awe full. We pirates know this well. After all, the word pirate comes from etymological roots that mean to experience, with an emphasis on dangerous experience that creates fear, necessitating the always vigilant watcher. And it is this watcher who is ready for attack.

In the best of pirate experiences the attack is really a perfect seduction. It is the softest sell because what is offered is most desired by one and all. It is the desire written both in the fleshy substance of the human heart and in the ethereal impermanent unlocated eye that never closes. And it must also be the hardest sell, one done from a place of ever alert discretion, because it threatens the very fabric of the ordinary, the ordered and expectable that makes us visibly dull and rigid.

So for our inquiring mind there is good news and bad, both the easiest and the direst implications. But I feel that you, too, are a pirate. And if you are that, the seductive invitation that is the journey itself cannot be refused. Before all and after all, you are free. You are armed with open eyes and a cloak of invisibility. You are a pirate.

— Rx is the FloridaW eekly muse w ho hopes t o inspir e pr ofound mu tiny in all those who care to read. Our Rx ma y be wearing a pir ate cloak of in visibility, but emanating fr om within this shado w is hope that readers will feel free to respond. Who kno ws: You ma y e ven inspir e the muse. Make contact if you dare.