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Pirate Parable
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Unto you it is given to know
the mystery of the kingdom of God;
but unto them that are without;
all these things are done in parables:
- Mark 4:11
King James Bible
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“C’mon boyz, ya gotz it ‘n ya! Yah! C’mon Haagenti! Yo ho ho! Zagan’s puttin’ moar muscle ‘n it den ya! Hah! C’mon Zagan! Ya gonna be lettin’ Haagenti ketch up wich ya, now? Yah! C’mon, boyz! Yah! Moov like ya wuz chasin’ a heiffer! Yo ho ho!”
Goaded by the gruff old pirate’s wisecracking taunts and sibling rivalry, the pair of ruddy bulls strained against the capstan to which they were yoked. The twin oxen, Haagenti and Zagan, provided the bulk of the muscle needed to hoist the cyclopean keystone into place at the center of the massive gateway-arch, but they were only part of the small army that labored to build Jonestown. If everything proceeded on schedule, the entire complex should be finished in little more than a year.
Louis was ready for the work to end. For the moment, he was satisfied with simply letting the worries of a hard day slip away as he reclined in the shade of a palm tree outside the Brew D'Agon. To be honest, he was dog-tired and yearned to return to a life at sea, even with all of its storms and battles. Building a utopian paradise in the New World was much more dangerous than he had anticipated. Working stone as an apprentice to his uncle back home in France certainly hadn't been such a bug-infested and diseased occupation.
He didn't know why he hadn’t gotten the fever and gone delirious like Murph and Eddy, two of the other pirates recruited for this so-called "labour o' honour" cutting stone in the jungle quarry. Perhaps it was his enthusiastic loyalty to the Corpiration that had protected him this far? Ever since he had been told the mission of the Brew D'Agon Traiding Compagnie, Incorpirated, Louis had been genuinely zealous in performing his duties. Louis had always believed wholeheartedly that all people should be free from all forms of oppression; if that truly was the mission, he was proud to be a part of it.
Louis truly believed it was a great honor to be part of building Jonestown, and a higher honor still to cut and polish the stone necessary for the restoration of the ancient, ruined pyramid. The Right Honourable Reverend Doctor Heronimus Jones had promised the pyramid was part of "a monumental attraction of global import". Louis had no idea what a "monumental attraction" was – other than the unbelievably deep romantic attraction he felt toward the raven-haired girl – but, if The Right Honourable Reverend Doctor said a “monumental attraction” was part of the Corpiration's mission, Louis would charge unarmed into the mouths of Hades and wrench the needed stone from the Devil's teeth. Jungle heat here on the Spanish Main’s Cayenne Coast is easier survived than hellfire, he supposed. The intense heat, oppressive humidity, and constant humming of mosquitoes were maddening, of course, but at least Louis wasn’t hearing voices.
Only lunatics hear voices.
Of course, he did actually hear voices sometimes in the droning of the biting insects, but he knew this was just his overactive imagination. Sometimes, Louis even talked back to the voices, but he was only joking to relieve stress and boredom. He was only joking with himself.
Louis grinned and shook his head, laughing out loud. Life in a utopia would be merry enough once the quarry work was finished. The Compagnie had helped him escape an undesirable fate before; Louis trusted it to do so again. And hadn’t he already seen the first prophetic sign? He had seen her again. She was here in Jonestown as well.
It must be fate at work.
Louis sipped from a hollowed coconut and licked his lips, savoring the "powerful thirst-quenching ability" of the Right Honourable Reverend Doctor's VodouBrew™. In his mind, Louis could still see the raven-haired serving girl's smile – and her eyes, he would always remember her eyes. How could he forget? When that deliciously lithe lass had brought him his refreshment, Louis had been shocked into an abnormal shyness. He had simply smiled innocently and thanked her, pretending as if he didn’t recognize her as the hostess from aboard The Brew D’Agon. Then he emptied his cup before she could leave, and asked for another. She smirked and shook her head, laughing quietly as she left.
His resolve to speak to her had almost faltered when she returned, but he found his lost courage before it was too late. Cheekishly, he dared to inquire what type of fruit produced such succulent nectar. Before she could reply – perhaps afraid he would let his chance slip by again –, he quickly answered his own question with a question, whispering huskily and (he hoped) seductively.
"It is the fruit of passion, non?"
She smiled, like a cat about to eat a canary, as she handed him his drink. Their fingertips almost brushed, missing by a hair’s breadth – across that infinitesimally small space, a spark arced.
Louis de Lyon remembered. Mon Dieu, he thought, how could I ever forget? He had stared far into the depths of her eyes and read fiery letters writ thereupon in strange alphabets. Have I caught the fever after all? He wondered as he heard the written word spoken aloud by a supernatural voices. If this is the fever than it has given me the biblical gift of tongues. What he would have once thought grotesque gibberish, he now understood all too clearly. He imagined he could hear a singular, illustrious word; an awesome word, unpronounceable by human mouths. He imagined he knew what this word meant. Her eyes cried out for him.
Come.
In her eyes Louis saw delight, but her wine-red lips uttered dark words, pitiless words, words which appeared to have a terrible meaning utterly opposite of what he wished. The vision he saw and the words he heard crashed against each other like day against night at dusk and at dawn; in that moment, opposites bled together, becoming one. Those words, he would always remember those words, that made his heart flutter like the wings of a songbird trapped in the dubious safety of its cage as the foreboding growl of a feline stomach grows ever louder.
“The knowledge you seek has been forbidden.”
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Drinks of all kinds have been used by almost all peoples
as allegories connected with the search for higher knowledge.
- Idries Shah
Tales of the Dervishes
Although the Sufis and others often clearly state that
‘magical drinks’ (wine, the water of life) are an analogy of a certain experience,
literalist students tend to believe that the origin of these myths
dates from the discovery of some hallucinogenic or inebriative quality in potations.
According to the dervishes, such an idea is a reflection
of the investigator’s incapacity to understand
they are speaking in parallels.
- Idries Shah
Tales of the Dervishes
aqua-
Word-forming element meaning "water,' from Latin aqua "water; the sea; rain,"
cognate with Proto-Germanic *akhwo, source of Old English ea "river,"
Gothic ahua "river, waters," Old Norse ægir, name of the sea-god, Old English ieg "island;"
all from PIE *akwa- "water" (cf. Sanskrit ap "water,"
Hittite akwanzi "they drink," Lithuanian uppe "a river").
- www.etymonline.com/?search=aqua-
a beverage made from the wild coffee plant
seems to have been first drunk
by a legendary shepherd on the Ethiopian plateau,
the earliest cultivation of coffee was in Yemen
and Yemenis gave it the Arabic name qahwa,
from which our words coffee and café both derive.
- www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22190802
Qahwa originally meant wine,
and Sufi mystics in Yemen used coffee as an aid to concentration
and even spiritual intoxication when they chanted the name of God.
- www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22190802
In Mecca, Cairo, and Instanbul attempts were made to ban it by religious authorities.
Learned shaykhs discussed whether the effects of coffee were similar to those of alchohol,
and some remarked that passing around the coffee pot
had something in common with the circulation of a pitcher of wine,
a drink forbidden in Islam.
- www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22190802
Some scholars opined that the coffee house was “even worse than the wine room”,
and the authorities noted how these places could easily become dens of sedition.
However, all attempts at banning coffee failed, even though the death penalty was used
- www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22190802
"No doubt of it; but come, Jack, keep the liquor stirring."
- T. Crofton Croker
The Soul Cages
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