Tales of the Moth

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.