1/23/14 Brooklyn, NY
___ ______ in the tropics,
This weekend I stayed at my friend’s apartment while she was out of town to take care of her cat. She lives pretty near the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, a huge open space curated with different plant species, a real celebration of plantology! So I go one morning before work. I leave the house without looking outside first (common) and find that its snow/raining. Not too much a bother. The flakes increase and I'm laughing! I get to the gardens and sit down on a wooden bench with a covering. It overlooks the Japanese coy pond. I am sitting and just breathing (intentionally). Not too long am I there when a huge bird flies over my right shoulder (I wonder if it’s fleeing or arriving). The bird flies around and lands on a branch in complete view on the tree above my left shoulder and faces me. I am happy to have the company (even if I cannot identify its species: Owl? Falcon? Hawk? Osprey?). The longer I sit the more I realize what an occasion the creature’s visit is. The bird is just looking at me. I begin to question the encounter. Why did the bird pick that particular branch that does not have very good covering from the weather? Why facing me? Why did I notice? The snow stops and it’s about time for me to head to the underground. The bird must feel the transition and ruffles its feathers, turns to reveal an orangy-red highlight underneath its top layer of tail feathers and takes flight.
My sister talks about a point in her therapy when she started to see magic like that. The process the process the process. The thing about the moth and the butterfly’s transformation is that they don’t really change. Everything about who they will become is inside them. After shedding their old skin a caterpillar extracts the cocoon out of their body and once inside their original form essentially melts. They loose everything aesthetically about what they were and turn into a goo. Somehow they come out a different creature wrapped in wings that need unfolding! But the most interesting part, which was tested, is that the new moth or butterfly still retained its memory from caterpillar life. As I confront my past, wriggle in the present, my future self is unfolding.
Hello, how are you? Tell me
PS I was going to send you a poem but it was too gross?
Phoebe Moon
