Ire of the Pirate

Do you know what makes me mad? No thing and every thing. Now, that's a pirate answer, full of purpose and paradox. But to unpack the treasure chest of it, let's look at the word that is key: "mad." Our word "mad" comes from the Old English "gemad," which meant foolish or crazy. And as the mad, mad, mad world whirled through time, this little word acquired many more meanings.

It's absolutely mad (inexplicable) that I am mad (carried away by desire) about the mad (wild or frantic) adventures of the mad (furious) mad (insane) mad (rabid) dog of a pirate dwelling in my body. It's a mad (foolish, crazy), mad (hilarious) joke. Isn't it maddening?

Do you know what really makes me mad?

I mean, first, mad in the sense of furiously angry. What makes me angry mad is no thing.

I mean, there is no thing outside me that makes me mad. It is my own insides that are maddening. When I am mad of the furious type, I feel that because I create an experience, a perspective, a point of view. That vision, which originates within me, is no out- side thing. It is, rather, an inside job. It is a caricature. Just like a cartoon artist, I take what I am experiencing and distort it, exaggerating aspects according to my own bias. Angry mad is born of the concretization of an ever-changing stimulus into a nasty, ugly solid with no redeeming features. Someone else might see what I see as an angel while I myself am certain it is a demon that is before me.

Just one example from history: Gavrilo Princip, the man who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his expectant wife, is seen as the murdering terrorist perpetrator of World War I by many. But in Yugoslavia he is often portrayed as one who gave his life for the freedom of his people. After all, the formation of an independent Yugoslavia was an effect of WWI.

The real challenge of anger is to find the caricature in our own perspective, the no outside thing that generates our madness. That is a worthy act of piracy.

What really makes me mad, in the second sense of insane, is every thing. I would define insanity like Einstein did: the doing of the same while expecting the different. Nothing is of the essence of same like that which has been concretized into a thing. A thing is, by definition, lifeless, unchanging, inanimate. When we construct our surround in the image of stultified thing, no matter what the thing looks like, we are constructing a world of insanity. We are making ourselves mad. Every thing contributes to our madness. Every thing locks us into a being that is infinitely smaller than the largeness of our flowing sanity.

So what do we expect a pirate to look like? What is the thing into which we turn our ever possible emerging pirate? Do we see a swashbuckling, sword between the teeth, lusting, looming eye patched thing caricature? Who are these ever possible pirates really? Do we see the current raiders off Somalia's coast or hackers or stealers of music and text? Do we see infringers of copyrights, trademarks, and patents? Or transmitters of unregulated signals? Or far out philosophers who don't believe their own words?

Any and all of these caricatures may seem to the untrained eye to be a pirate. But the whole thrust of Musings is to provide profound education about the nature of piracy and mutiny. Ordinary lust and feigned anger are merely childish pranks, not piracy. We must not allow ourselves to be duped, to live in the fog of confused belief.

The bottom line is this: Please continue to be faithful readers of this column. Herein lies our best chance of meeting a real 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.