tigerlily

so the other night, i saw another raccoon. not nearly as thick headed as i used to be, i immediately took note that i'm supposed to be learning something here. sometimes you just see animals, like the pigeons you passed, and ignored, on your way to work this morning. and then other times, the absurdity of their appearance in your life forces you to take pause. like the first time i worked with raccoon medicine, or teacings, it could not have been more obvious. it was the end of 2002, just before halloween. prior to the incident i'm about to mention, i had already been having odd run ins with the little bandits. such as hearing odd noises outside my boyfriend's apartment at ocean beach, and upon exploration, discovering that it was 6 raccoons engaged in a game of chase up and down his stairs. interesting enough without the final encounter.

some of you may know this story, so i apologize for being redundant. but i was sitting at the sf shambhala center, near the sliding glass door that leads onto the roof, doing (or trying to) my meditation practice, and, as fate would have it, wearing a fuzzy hat with ears. as if tapped on the shoulder, i suddenly turned to look at the glass door, and saw two things....my fuzzy head reflected back, and a startled black and white fuzzy head that was not my own. the raccoon and i gazed at each other in total open surprise, and then, deciding i was not the largest relative it had ever seen, he/she ambled off, deciding to get meditation instruction at another time. it was that night that i decided to make the halloween costume that you see in my 2nd set.

but even at the time, as potent as it seemed, i really never quite GOT whatever lesson i was supposed to be figuring out with all the raccoon mischief. my regular reliable sources of information failed me, and i eventually just put it on a back burner. that time was filled with a lot of transformation (and then again, when ISN'T my life like that ), and i decided i'd gotten the point, on some level anyway.

but to have them show up again, especially at this point in time, feels very surprising and odd to me, especially because NOW feels nothing like THEN. it was also just before my saturn return, so somehow it feels relegated to that time alone. i was prepared to ignore it until my second sighting the other night.

so today, altho i was unsuccessful with this 3 years ago, i googled raccoon medicine to see what would come up. and lo and behold, i actually feel like i got some clarity. the two things that are obvioius about raccoons, are their hands, and their mask. agile hands that allow them to manipulate their food in water, but also their world, and gives them the power of choice and options. and that mask. the ability to disguise and transform, to reveal only what you want, to present only what you desire. but it can also be a handicap, preventing the external world from witnessing the true self.

and i thought about how i've been feeling lately, that tender heart and it's desire for deep connection. which really can translate into a desire to be deeply KNOWN. and i think of my struggle lately, to be as authentic as possible, at all times, with all people, in all circumstances, striiving to step forward with nothing but my most precise truth, my highest self. and the frustration with other's perceptions, their interpretaiton of my mask, as well as frustration with myself...with the often automatic and knee jerk response to don whatever disguise will make me the least threatening, the most understandable, the most likable to another. and all the while, my mind operating like hands, fine manuevering through the ever shifting rubble of my personal psychology.

or shit. maybe it just means i should eat more crawfish.