What I thought was a dragonfly shaped
circle of writers and shaman was actually a moth of wisdom. Walking
back to my car after class, my attention was caught by a moth, a
rather large moth, fluttering several feet above my head.
Moth first came to my attention a
little less than 20 years ago when I first started reading Carlos
Castaneda in the wake of my brothers death. In the early spring of
1995, I knew my brother was going to die and I found myself almost
transfixed, staring at the then current selection of the month in
the catalog for the Quality Paperback of the Month club. They were
offering an omnibus edition of Carlos Castaneda's books that included
The Teaching of Don Juan, A Separate Reality, and Tales of Power. I
did not have any religious or spiritual practices at the the time
and, even though I had tried to read a Castaneda book some years
before and found it disturbing my dreams, I knew that in the wake of
the coming stresses I would need some form of spiritual practice to
through myself into so I ordered the book.
Later in 1995, in October, I went to
Los Angels, Culver City, to participate in a weekend Tensegrity
workshop, October 10 sticks out in my mind so it would have been a
little over 5 months since my brother had died and I had started
devouring the works of Carlos Castaneda. By this time I must have
read Tales of Power. I flew out of Milwaukee's Mitchell Field so I
went to visit my mom and aunt. My aunt made me breakfast that
morning, oatmeal, too salty to eat, as I recall, and before heading
for the airport, my aunt wanted me to shoo away what she thought was
bat that was clinging to the side of a storage shed. I went to look
at it and it was one of the strangest, most beautiful and ugly moths
I had ever seen. I took it as a good omen because much of Tales of
Power had to do with Carlos Castaneda learning wisdom from a moth.
Since I read Tales of Power from the
omnibus edition, I never saw the actual cover of that book for some
months after this point but the moth on the original cover of that
book matched the one that was on my mom and aunt's storage shed!
I was thirty at the time and felt ready
to embark on the adventure of a lifetime.
Now, I am 48, or so they tell me. The
ability to remember how old I am is not innate in me. How old is Now?
Now it is nearly October again and I
just finished the first writing class I have taken since high school,
well, so it feels. And all around these last three weeks of class and
writing the world has bloomed around me in ways I could never have
expected even though some things were planned for a very long time.
Now I find myself siting in a circle of
writers, citing our favorite poets, journeying to other realms, all
the while taking part in forming the message of the moth.
