In Maruata

When we arrived in Maruata the moon was full-- great yellow bulb ready to sprout, full of portents and potential.  It was a glossy onion, translucent and layered.  But it began to darken.  A scythe of shadow advanced across it like the silhouette of the blade of a thief in the night until it was dark brown like a silent town obscured by smog rising from a thousand guttering oil lamps.  We were filled with dismay.  But then the stars awoke and jumped with fervor and began to sing to us where we sat under the mute palm fronds.

In Maruata, swimming in the azure waters with the waves lapping so amniotic on the shore stretched out like entrails, a vision came to me:

There were fish and suddenly I was one of those fish and we were many but of one mind as we darted the deeps.  An octopus wearing spectacles floated by, reading a book from the library of all wisdom, but as we all drew near to hear his words in our collective mind the ink spilled from the pages of the book and created a great curtain, hiding him from view.  Then the curtain was rent from top to bottom but the octopus had returned to the dark grottoes where he keeps the library of all wisdom, exiled from man or woman, bird or fish. 

And I left my fellow fish to find the grottoes and was suddenly flying alone, an albatross fleeing from an arrow, an albatross seeking absolution in pure motion in the starlit air.  I saw a fish under the restless surface of the sea.  Dove.  Caught it.  Was filled with remorse from my former life and let it drop and flew on in the night while below the crabs scuttled on the rocks to pick at the broken piscene body and the waves bashed themselves endlessly against the bluffs. 

In Maruata the sea was suddenly seized with a fit of charity and whispered to me as I swam, "Cast your nets on the other side" and while I reeled bewildered I saw a sparkle and flash on the shore and hundreds of sardines sailed out of the water and onto the tectonic crust of the continent and lay dying.  And we walked along the rim of foam and were in awe at the destruction as the hundred transparent bodies quivered and expired and offered up their flesh to us. We gathered them with trembling hands, fried them in in oil and garlic, and ate until we could no more. Still there were fish-- hundreds of fish with unseeing eyes and gaping mouths.

I dreamed that night and in that dream came to me a women, and offered herself to me, and suddenly there were thousands, and they all lay dying of thirst on the rocks and crying out for water.  The night came and a great shadow came down from heaven, obscured the moon, and said to me, "Go into the wild and do not look back." Then I was standing on a mountaintop and time was no longer and I stood motionless forever above the snows and anguished valleys of heat and desire and rotting flesh.

When I awoke I was in Maruata. The sun was lunging into the sky, the foam stirred around hidden rocks way out at sea, and under the surface the current ran swiftly southward.