Edit one year later:
Noir said:
Light necessitates darkness, the shadow created by anything physical. But black is not only the lack of light -- it is also the complete absorption of light. The void and reservoir of what we want, what we need; light is power, it is knowledge. When we look into the deep, velvety black eyes of moths we see both emptiness and the absorption of light. No one understands why moths are attracted to light. It's neither to mate nor to eat: many moths don't eat at all; some don't even have mouths. Like butterflies, moths are almost as light as air, but they're the poor, ostrasized cousins. Choosing to live their lives at night, flying from nowhere towards the end of their lives -- fragile, dusty wings in tatters. A moth will bounce across a ceiling, orbit a lamp, fly into a flame, or self-immolate like a Buddhist monk.
A couple days ago, I was so lost. I didn't know where I was going, physically or metaphorically, and I was so, so angry. I prayed for a guardian, something to watch over me and protect me.
That night, a moth danced across my computer screen the whole time I was there, periodically landing on my hands or arm. As if not only to let me know that it was there, but that it was there for me. This continued for two nights. I have no proof it was the same moth both nights. I just know it was.
Last night when I headed to bed, I saw the tattered, fragile brown moth with eyes darker than death sitting in the hallway on the carpet facing my door. By the time I woke up to pee in the middle of the night, it had crawled under my closed bedroom door and sat. Watching, guarding.
This morning, he was so still that I thought he was dead, so I crocheted him a cocoon out of the most brightly-colored ticker tape I have so that I could put him in it and hang it from a tree. That way he could metaphorphasize into whatever he's meant to become. I tried to pick him up, and he grabbed onto my finger. I put him back down. He hasn't moved. He hasn't eaten. He just sits there at my door.
I love him so deeply. And I cried when he did die a few hours later.
I tied him in his cocoon on the east side of a tree at the top of a hill where the sun hits brightest in the morning. Now he'll always be in the light.
Most moths die flying toward the light. This one died flying toward me.