HOME | DD

Description
Moon Over Marin
After work was done for the day, all of us covered in grease and the lingering perfume of smoke and metal, we would sneak from our quarters to Sector 11-0M.  We called it Marin Beach.  Long before, it had a different name.  But with the passage of time and the rise and downfall of so many different leaders, names had been lost, defining areas on old maps obscured or censored.  Instead, we had given the forsaken piece of shore a moniker reminiscent of the reason we were drawn to it in the first place.  We made our night-time excursion to meet Mamma Marin, and hear what she would say.
We crept through the sand, streaked and swirled with the blackened memories of crashed oil tankers.  Broken glass and ancient pieces of metal, wood, plastic, trash – harder still to identify through the foggy eyewear in our old regulation gas masks – impeded our progress, cut our bare, tired feet to shreds.  We clambered over great rocks made slippery with an ugly mixture of oil and bird droppings, diving behind them in a quiet sort of panic to avoid the searchlights sweeping the ugly beach.  We were each searching for something – a shell, an animal carcass, the skeleton of a long-dead Oceanside plant – to throw on Mamma Marin's fire.  It was both a tribute and an entrance fee; her only requirement.  We would all have paid far more to hear her speak.
On this particular night, I found my tribute on accident.  I had dropped low behind a large rock to avoid the light crawling across the sand, when I found myself face-to-face with the decomposing remains of a bird's nest.  There were three long-emptied eggshells, and I wrapped them carefully in my shirt, before cutting diagonally across the beach, towards the hanging ledge under which Mamma Marin held her ceremonies.  The sand grew blacker and the rocks grew larger and greater in number as we approached the beach.  It clumped together in stinking pools of muck, which were simultaneously slimy and gritty if you were unfortunate enough to step into them.  The sand was littered with sinkholes, dirty tidepools, the carcasses of long-dead and freshly-dead fish.  We evaded them well enough, though there was always the sound of the occasional slip and soft curse.  The outcropping of rocks that guarded the side of Mamma Marin's grotto was more difficult to navigate.  They were sharp, and slick with oily water and miscellaneous grime.  There were more accidents here, more splashes into the water and muted cries of pain.  But we all made it to the other side eventually, Where blackened and dirty roots hung down from the small rock-cliff above our meeting-place.  The sand was dirtier still here, but out of reverence for the woman, we had cleared away all the dead animals and trash.  There was only dirty sand and a very small fire-pit, and Mamma Marin.
Mamma Marin sat behind a small, putrid fire.  She was Amazonian in height and stature, with coffee-colored skin that had begun to tinge yellow with malnutrition.  Her face was caked with many different colors of paint, but the deep creases around her eyes and lips showed through in the distorting light of the fire.  The matted dreads of her hair were long and interwoven with beads, and her clothes were plain.  She greeted each of us individually (never saying our names – we knew her name, but she would not permit us to be so familiar as to know ours) and throwing our tributes onto the fire.  The old pieces of paper, broken bottles, animal carcasses and dead plants we offered as tribute turned the fire strange colors, made it hiss and spit rancid smoke in brown, grey, green and even orange-yellow hues.  We removed our masks to watch the opaque mass twist off into the sky, before shredding into a thin cloud, and eventually dissipating into the already dirty atmosphere.  As we were so entranced, Mamma Marin began to speak.
"There is no God," she informed us in a voice so deep and soft that we could not be troubled by the words it spoke.  "There never was.  We are not governed by a cosmic force that can be defined in such narrow terms as a single deity, or as many deities.  We are not, in fact, driven by anything at all but our own wills and instincts."
She carried a tattered ornamental bag with her, the old Witch Doctor that she was.  As she spoke, she often reached into the bag, pulling out a handful of something small and indeterminate that she would cast into the fire.  It would then flare up, sometimes changing colors or sparking out.  On most occasions, feet were only slightly scorched.  She would ignore reactions, and continue to speak.
"No, the force in the universe, in all universes, is not something that lower beings such as ourselves can define.  It is almost like a mist, a cosmic river that has no defined sides, no specific beginning, and no true end.  Imagine something that goes on forever.  You cannot do it.  You assume it ends past your field of vision, and in that you still believe it has an end.  You may attempt to picture it wrapping around your entire body, and in that you are enshrined, but you will still believe that there is an 'outside' of sorts.  You will instinctually try to find its end.  Nothing alive can truly comprehend something that has no beginning and no end.
"When we die, our spirits are returned to this force.  Our bodies decay, and in relinquishing their place in the world, they too will return to the stream.  There is no 'life' after death, and there is no 'heaven' or 'hell'.  There is no true 'good' or 'bad'.  All things flow together and blend, to a point where nothing is defined.  When we all die, there will be nothing but that peace.  Some of us may retain our sense of self for long after, but eventually we will be swept away in the stream, and no longer need that sense of peace.  We will know everything.  We will be everything."
She paused, her eyes sweeping over us all, pausing momentarily on each face.  She offered us a gentle smile, and raised her arms.  "We bring sacrifices to the fire, although the cosmic force does not require it.  It asks us not for sacrifices, nor does it give us a moral code to live by.  It is not a god.  It merely exists, and has always, and will always.  We release these things, dead in their own rights, to the cosmic force.  The smoke this fire releases into the air symbolizes ourselves, as we are released into the cosmic stream that flows through everything.  We will be lost in it, as the smoke is lost in the atmosphere."
Mamma Marin then fell silent, and we pondered her words.  After a time, when the fire had died down and the bright light and smell were much weaker, she stood, and thanked us for coming.  She told us to go, but to be cautious as we did.  They were searching more thoroughly, she said.  We should be wary of who we invite.  We climbed over the precarious rocks and left Mamma Marin out of sight, to once again dodge the passing searchlights and broken glass.  We crept into our living quarters, tired, cut and bleeding, each making beelines to the bathroom to shower away the filth of the beach that had mingled with the filth of the day's factory work.  Newly washed, we let ourselves fall into bed, all of us drifting off to sleep as we found that, strangely enough, Mamma Marin's profound words comforted us.

Description
Moon Over Marin
After work was done for the day, all of us covered in grease and the lingering perfume of smoke and metal, we would sneak from our quarters to Sector 11-0M.  We called it Marin Beach.  Long before, it had a different name.  But with the passage of time and the rise and downfall of so many different leaders, names had been lost, defining areas on old maps obscured or censored.  Instead, we had given the forsaken piece of shore a moniker reminiscent of the reason we were drawn to it in the first place.  We made our night-time excursion to meet Mamma Marin, and hear what she would say.
We crept through the sand, streaked and swirled with the blackened memories of crashed oil tankers.  Broken glass and ancient pieces of metal, wood, plastic, trash – harder still to identify through the foggy eyewear in our old regulation gas masks – impeded our progress, cut our bare, tired feet to shreds.  We clambered over great rocks made slippery with an ugly mixture of oil and bird droppings, diving behind them in a quiet sort of panic to avoid the searchlights sweeping the ugly beach.  We were each searching for something – a shell, an animal carcass, the skeleton of a long-dead Oceanside plant – to throw on Mamma Marin's fire.  It was both a tribute and an entrance fee; her only requirement.  We would all have paid far more to hear her speak.
On this particular night, I found my tribute on accident.  I had dropped low behind a large rock to avoid the light crawling across the sand, when I found myself face-to-face with the decomposing remains of a bird's nest.  There were three long-emptied eggshells, and I wrapped them carefully in my shirt, before cutting diagonally across the beach, towards the hanging ledge under which Mamma Marin held her ceremonies.  The sand grew blacker and the rocks grew larger and greater in number as we approached the beach.  It clumped together in stinking pools of muck, which were simultaneously slimy and gritty if you were unfortunate enough to step into them.  The sand was littered with sinkholes, dirty tidepools, the carcasses of long-dead and freshly-dead fish.  We evaded them well enough, though there was always the sound of the occasional slip and soft curse.  The outcropping of rocks that guarded the side of Mamma Marin's grotto was more difficult to navigate.  They were sharp, and slick with oily water and miscellaneous grime.  There were more accidents here, more splashes into the water and muted cries of pain.  But we all made it to the other side eventually, Where blackened and dirty roots hung down from the small rock-cliff above our meeting-place.  The sand was dirtier still here, but out of reverence for the woman, we had cleared away all the dead animals and trash.  There was only dirty sand and a very small fire-pit, and Mamma Marin.
Mamma Marin sat behind a small, putrid fire.  She was Amazonian in height and stature, with coffee-colored skin that had begun to tinge yellow with malnutrition.  Her face was caked with many different colors of paint, but the deep creases around her eyes and lips showed through in the distorting light of the fire.  The matted dreads of her hair were long and interwoven with beads, and her clothes were plain.  She greeted each of us individually (never saying our names – we knew her name, but she would not permit us to be so familiar as to know ours) and throwing our tributes onto the fire.  The old pieces of paper, broken bottles, animal carcasses and dead plants we offered as tribute turned the fire strange colors, made it hiss and spit rancid smoke in brown, grey, green and even orange-yellow hues.  We removed our masks to watch the opaque mass twist off into the sky, before shredding into a thin cloud, and eventually dissipating into the already dirty atmosphere.  As we were so entranced, Mamma Marin began to speak.
"There is no God," she informed us in a voice so deep and soft that we could not be troubled by the words it spoke.  "There never was.  We are not governed by a cosmic force that can be defined in such narrow terms as a single deity, or as many deities.  We are not, in fact, driven by anything at all but our own wills and instincts."
She carried a tattered ornamental bag with her, the old Witch Doctor that she was.  As she spoke, she often reached into the bag, pulling out a handful of something small and indeterminate that she would cast into the fire.  It would then flare up, sometimes changing colors or sparking out.  On most occasions, feet were only slightly scorched.  She would ignore reactions, and continue to speak.
"No, the force in the universe, in all universes, is not something that lower beings such as ourselves can define.  It is almost like a mist, a cosmic river that has no defined sides, no specific beginning, and no true end.  Imagine something that goes on forever.  You cannot do it.  You assume it ends past your field of vision, and in that you still believe it has an end.  You may attempt to picture it wrapping around your entire body, and in that you are enshrined, but you will still believe that there is an 'outside' of sorts.  You will instinctually try to find its end.  Nothing alive can truly comprehend something that has no beginning and no end.
"When we die, our spirits are returned to this force.  Our bodies decay, and in relinquishing their place in the world, they too will return to the stream.  There is no 'life' after death, and there is no 'heaven' or 'hell'.  There is no true 'good' or 'bad'.  All things flow together and blend, to a point where nothing is defined.  When we all die, there will be nothing but that peace.  Some of us may retain our sense of self for long after, but eventually we will be swept away in the stream, and no longer need that sense of peace.  We will know everything.  We will be everything."
She paused, her eyes sweeping over us all, pausing momentarily on each face.  She offered us a gentle smile, and raised her arms.  "We bring sacrifices to the fire, although the cosmic force does not require it.  It asks us not for sacrifices, nor does it give us a moral code to live by.  It is not a god.  It merely exists, and has always, and will always.  We release these things, dead in their own rights, to the cosmic force.  The smoke this fire releases into the air symbolizes ourselves, as we are released into the cosmic stream that flows through everything.  We will be lost in it, as the smoke is lost in the atmosphere."
Mamma Marin then fell silent, and we pondered her words.  After a time, when the fire had died down and the bright light and smell were much weaker, she stood, and thanked us for coming.  She told us to go, but to be cautious as we did.  They were searching more thoroughly, she said.  We should be wary of who we invite.  We climbed over the precarious rocks and left Mamma Marin out of sight, to once again dodge the passing searchlights and broken glass.  We crept into our living quarters, tired, cut and bleeding, each making beelines to the bathroom to shower away the filth of the beach that had mingled with the filth of the day's factory work.  Newly washed, we let ourselves fall into bed, all of us drifting off to sleep as we found that, strangely enough, Mamma Marin's profound words comforted us.