Pointed

A Chinese proverb gesticulates in my mind: “When a finger points to the moon, the imbecile looks at the finger.” So, what’s the point?

The moon visions seem endless. (“Look: Up in the sky. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s…”) We see an old man’s face, or a frog or moose or buffalo or dragon. The Chinese see a rabbit pounding medicine, while the Korean or Japanese rabbit makes rice cakes. Another rabbit dances with abandon. There is also a cook bent over a fire amidst three stones. Or we can see a well-coifed lady with sparkling pendant. There is a flipped yin/yang symbol, the Talmud’s Jacob, and for the Shia Muslims there is inscribed the name of Muhammad’s son-in-law. More humbly profane, there is a young boy gathering wood with his little dog.

Before the Apollo 11 moon landing, Houston asked the crew to look for Chang-o, a beautiful Chinese girl banished there 4,000 years ago for stealing the pill of immortality from her husband. With her is yet another rabbit, this one standing on his hind legs in the shade of a cinnamon tree.

Einstein pointed like this: “I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it.” What’s his point? What is there?

Dark mare, the moon sea, in contrast with surrounding lighter moon area provide occasion for pareidolia, a psychological phenomenon in which the vague and random are perceived as significant. A pirate knows the essence of human cognition as an uncontainable, completely passionate press toward the pointed creation of meaning.

Perhaps rational perspective would call this a Type I error, a false positive, a case of excessive, extravagant sensitivity. George Bernard Shaw said: “I don’t know if there are men on the moon, but if there are they must be using the earth as their lunatic asylum.” Is there a difference between the custodians and the custodialized? In Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland “we are all mad.”

Who has seen the emperor’s new clothes, and who has sewn them?

On Oct. 9, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite Mission blasted, faster than a speeding bullet, a hole in the moon. The two-ton kinetic weapon created a five mile wide crater. The expected outpoured plume of debris was to be analyzed for the presence of water.

Article IV of the United Nations Outer Space Treaty, a general assembly resolution, calls for all space activities to be exclusively peaceful. There is to be no testing of weapons, no military bases, and no military maneuvers. There are those who say that the two-ton something that was launched was not a bomb, but was an artificial meteor launched in the interest of all humankind. Others wonder if this was an act of war on hidden life forms already on the moon. Others say it is the intended basis of a future imperialistic claim. Why else would a scientist look for water in a plume that never happened, water that would only have immediately evaporated under these explosion conditions? (“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.” So said Mark Twain.)

Buddha said: “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”

Pilate asked Jesus: “What is truth?”

Perhaps my coming pointed response will discredit me. But if it does, I have no one to blame but myself. For I never heeded my own mother’s advice not to sleep in the light of the full moon.

Truth be told, being discredited will only please me and fill me with ecstasy. I look with George Carlin for “… nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.”

For me, Luna is not merely a rock. She is a goddess seen beyond the pointed finger. I worship her and I make love to her as she changes behind her diaphanous veils. I love her hiding; I love her in her generous revelation.

And today I look up with a heart broken and pounding in knowing that I had no power to hold her over and against the onslaught by testosterone driven innocents who want to understand flies in pulling off their wings and to conquer flowers by pulling off their petals. And I am ashamed: They, too, are pirates.

And I, with her, have yet another hole to fill pointedly with love’s chrism.

Got the point? Please. 

— Rx is the FloridaW eekly muse who hopes to inspire profound mutiny 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 may e ven inspir e the muse. Make contact if you dare.