What Happens When You Jump

I just moved and now I live in an inside-outside house. It is a step closer to how many Mexican villagers live, with their outdoor kitchens and open areas for gathering. I have doors that shut off rooms with mosquito netting on the windows, and I have a huge “outdoor” area that is open to wind, rain, dust and the insect world. I was glad that my past living situation was easily closed off from the outside, as the whine of mosquitoes and other flying night creatures causes me to tense up. Still, I always felt I was missing something as well: a connection to the natural world. So now I can’t avoid intersecting with what comes alive in the nigh, t as every closed door opens to the open air. The first weeks in my new home I felt nervous about this. My breathing became restricted as I thought about the fact that I had no choice but to live among insects. Daily I see moths and tiny butterflies that died in my halls or bathroom in the night. Beetles crawl or die in the night as well. I sweep them up or drop them out the window, resigned.  Last night, though, we had a visitor that shook me out of my resistance and held me captivated with awe.

I was standing at the bathroom sink when a heavy-bodied moth the size of my palm flew in, banging one wall then the other in pinball like fashion. Chandla (my dog) came in and watched it with me, deciding whether to try to catch it.
We stood and followed the rapid-fire, haphazard and fretful path of this huge insect with it’s, sharp and intricate black and white design. My inner voice said that it was the moth’s death dance. Then it just stopped on the back of the sink and lay completely still. I blew on it. No response. I lifted my heavy dog’s paws up to the front edge of the sink so she could see what had become of her potential “toy”. I said, “Look Chandla. It’s dead. That was its death dance. Isn’t nature amazing?” Looking in Chandla’s eyes as I spoke to her about what we had just shared, I saw and said, “and you’re part of it!” Then I saw and said to myself, “And I’m part of it too.”

The moth whose final moments we were a part of

Last night’s experience initiated me into a different realm of relationship with the insect world, which when compared with us in numbers, reveals our utter powerlessness. It is good, and so with calm now, I enter into the mysteries, dance and relationships that I will have in my home, at the intersection of my human world with the other-wordly mysteriousness and order of the insect nation.