Noah’s arc

We are conversant with pirates of many sorts. We know Blackbeard, Calico Jack, Jack Sparrow, the Somali pirates, Captain Hook, and many others. But for me (and who would know better than I?), the primal pirate is Noah. You know, Noah from the Biblical book Genesis.

He has all the excellent pirate qualities. He sailed the vastest sea in a ship built by his own hand.

He endured the scoff of the immoral majority who did not hear voices, who placed no value in bizarrely absurd plans with no clear present reason, no ancient precedent, nor future goal clarity.

Noah is outside boundaries, the interstitial invader of yarns in all the Abrahamic religions. He even appears in Hindu texts, albeit under the alias Manu.

And let us not forget that in his spare time, after voyaging, he invented wine. We know how he fell into a drunken stupor, inadvertently exposing the family jewels to his son who, for this very reason, was cursed forever.

Is this sort of behavior consistent with the moniker of blameless man who walked with God?

Will the real Noah please stand up? The Latter Day Saints believe he is the great archangel messenger Gabriel become man. Some remember him as working on the Ark slowly in order to give the scoffers time to repent.

Quite good form, that: Very pirate-like. But others say he did not follow the custom of the time that demanded that one pray for those one killed. But I suppose that could also be construed as possible pirate attribution.

The Noah character arc spreads across the narrative seas just like the rainbow arc that was sign to him.

Both have a compelling lack of stable clarity and an abundance of clarity which exists as mere dependence upon perception in ephemeral contexts. Rainbows have their air moisture, reflecting light, dust particles, and auspiciously positioned observer. And, ultimately, Noah has the animals.

He brought them all, it is said, in fornicating pairs. But all for holy purpose. The Latin etymology suggests animal as the breathing being, the soul, the living of air. And yet we know animal nature as wild, raw, base, unhindered by social code.

The ungraspable, uncapturable Noah himself captures the reproductive beast flesh that Adam had captured earlier in his naming of the animals over whom he conceived dominion.

And we follow suit. We bring our bias to the seeing of the animals with all the slipperiness of rainbow arcs. We see cute, nuisance, food, friend. We eat them, hold them, exterminate them, pet them.

We do science on them. They are experimental flesh fodder. And mind fodder as well, to cognitive ethologists not content with mere label of anthropomorphizing. They see ravens fooling, ants saving, elephants painting, plovers feigning injury.

We ask, too, even if with scientific naiveté, what is it like to be this creature? What is their consciousness? What, after all, is our own mind? Buddha claimed that all happiness, complete enlightenment, was nothing more or less than the realization of mind.

I think of Noah, qua pirate, as sign of mind, the inebriated instigator of kaleidoscopic animal kingdoms, rainbow impermanence, slippery attributions. Beyond reflex arc, he catapults us. Beyond mere circumference part, arcing into a limitlessly possible potentiality more than bow or heavenly orbit, beyond even continuously progressing nets of story development we arc.

I do only what all pirates do. Saint- Exupery, pirate of the air, says it well: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

This is the Noah arc calling. 

— Rx is the FloridaW eekly muse who hopes to inspire profound mutiny in all those who care to read. Our Rx ma y b e wea ring 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.