... so, what's with the cruiseships? ...

... following the tragic and titanic fail of the Costa Concordia on the rocky Italian coastline, we won't look at these behemoths quite the same way for a long time to come ... but at rivieras and coastal hotspots worldwide, they're still crucial to livelihoods as emblems of maritime leisure - swank high-seas accessories ...

... and, loathe as I am to flash yet another vista dominated by a shiny-floaty city, I could scarcely resist today when lookalike sistership, Costa Luminosa, took a reach-out-and-touch route, more hither than yon, gliding into and out of my view ...

... I'm fairly certain this skipper had both hands on the wheel, a "sonar-my" of computers, dolphin spotters for co-pilots and his most reassuring "this is your captain speaking" vocal delivery for all the starboard peepers with one eye on the Antiguan rocks ...

... the "A" in Antigua ...

... fortunately for humans, our properly functioning brains being of infinite potential, tend to operate in a mode of information-acquisition from birth to death, created as we are with pristine and curious tabula rasa in our crania ... individual and collective intelligence over lifetimes and generations offset knowledge-deficit through accumulated experience ... the learning is perpetual, sometimes frustrating, testing of faith and concepts of infinity, and still the (human) race doesn't ever quite get to the place I'll just call "there" ... even with the drugs ...

... on the brighter, lighter side, the yet to be informed portion of the brain will consciously or subconsciously head for the higher state we've come to identify as "imagination" ...

... my imaginations were aroused last week with the juxtaposition of Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko's avant garde yacht, designed by Philippe Starck, with the scrubby hillside backdrop and colonial stone ruins of Rat Island in Antigua ...

















... as I understand it, this is the site of one of Antigua's oldest colonial defenses in what became a strategic outpost for the proprietary British Royal Navy in service of the New World (order) colonial aspirations of the times ... the hillock in the inner harbor at capital town St. John's, which featured four cannon and barracks for a regiment in the early seventeenth century, isn't an island in the strictest sense, being connected to the main island by a narrow causeway resembling perhaps ... a rat tail ...

... Dr. Evil meets MI5 in appearance, this unique gigayacht might have changed the course of history had it stopped in for refueling three hundred and fifty years ago ... I suspect it would fare worse against cannonfire amidship, in multiples of four no less, than against a modern satellite grid guiding cruise-missiles ... any shout of "avast ye landlubbers" has no frequency-band or equivalent and may confound operators of the onboard navigational systems ... even the name of the interloper, the single letter "A" displayed only on the stern, would arouse sentries on the lookout for marauding fleur-de-lys ... (though personally Phil, I'd have gone sans-serif, but wha' do I know?) ...

... Antigua's geo-trigonometry, like that of Bermuda where "A" is registered, is currency on maritime maps and seafarers of all sorts pass though here ... Rat Island, which now hosts the commercial wharves where "A" tied up, must have seen 'em all come and go over the years ... I can't tell you the going exchange rate between rubles and doubloons but, if it costs a million and a half US dollars to fill the fuel tank (at pre crisis-in-Libya oil prices), that cargo-weight in gold bars, jewels and thick, heavy old-time coins would sink anything that floats, I imagine ...

... a Haitian Comfort zone ...

... one day, not so long ago ... a floating symbol of sanctuary, immunity and hope pulled into my world and dropped anchor ... the bold red-crosses-on-white-background altered the view for long enough that vacancy seemed palpably wrong when it left ...

... every day for weeks I had a great view of the itinerant coterie operating from USNS Comfort ... I observed them at work and came to know their patterns ... the ritual clacka-clacka of choppers readily invoked images of M.A.S.H. and war-zones ... I was witnessing one arm of the octopus that is U.S. influence in the Central American and Caribbean arena ...

... if my observations are anything to go by, the drills executed during weeks of non-crisis service will serve everyone well in the coming months in Haiti ... many a doctor has commented since international earthquake response began, on the need to evacuate critical cases from field units to medically equipped locations ... Comfort comes fitted, stocked and trained for this sort of situation ... they run a continuous succession of round-trip sorties, by air and sea, moving medics, patients and supplies, to and from the converted tanker ...

... sailing from home port Baltimore this mercy craft/support vessel which saw duty in 9/11 Manhattan, the Iraq invasion to remove Saddam Hussein and hurricane Katrina, will reach Haiti in a matter of days ... this adds a flight deck which accomodates the largest helicopters, a thousand hospital beds and distilling plants which can turn 300,000 gallons of sea water per day into potable water ... not to mention the logistical expertise ...

... when raw power in imagery of stark destruction combines with emotionally demanding stories by the thousand, there has to be an attempt at balance with hopeful counterweight ... that's where my psychic energies go ...

... as Comfort drops anchor in Port Au Prince, hope finds another place to hang her hat ...