Metamorphosis
In the mid-Sixties, a bunch of guys began to jam together. They had different musical styles, so it took awhile for them to get it all together. But they began a process of turning several separate musicians into one tight knit band. It has always reminded me of the caterpillar, spinning a coccoon, and transforming into something that bursts forth with beautiful wings taking immediate flight out into the world.
So it was very appropriate to me when, in 1966, the lead singer and keyboard player of the band, Doug Ingle, named hs new group "Iron Butterfly". He wanted a name that spoke of both beauty, and having it all together...solid....strong. (Everyone knows the rock classic that came out a couple years later, " In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida")
I was searching for a metaphor to describe what I am going through of late, with all the Pluto energy in my life. Pluto is known for ruling death, but some people forget that it also rules rebirth as well. The process of entering into a coccoon, and going through a metamorphisis, is in effect the death knoll for the caterpillar. But if the universe looks upon him with favor, he comes alive as a whole new creature....so different from the caterpillar that it boggles the mind that one begat the other.
I've been a caterpillar for a long, long time. Like the little creeping insect, I've been bound to the earth, my very emotional nature keeping me from soaring. I've clung to an emotional need to be loved the way the little guy clings to the plant's stem as he crawls across it.
I grew up shaping my self-image based upon the attention I've gotten from others....most notably members of the opposite sex. Whenever the woman of my dreams dropped me from her life, it hurt so bad because I only saw myself as having worth if I was loved. And what is worse, I would compare myself to other males who got more attention than myself, and then suffer intense pain because I lacked whatever it was they had.
And when I was hurting....the rest of my life would suffer. I couldn't give my projects the attention they deserved, and the only creativity I was able to show was in writing poems and songs about how badly I was hurting. (That is, when I didn't play all those sad, sand songs over and over again written by other people.)
Pluto's come around to me now, though. I've grown increasingly tired of the hurting. I've begun to enter my coccoon, and watch the old me begin to die. At first, I held on tightly to the old me, because it is the only me I've ever known.....it might have been responsible for putting me through emotional hell over and over....but at least it was familiar, at least it wasn't an unknown.
But finally, I've come to the realization that I want the old me dead.....because it was never really me. It was a simulcrum, a construct. Finally (after dealing with Pluto smacking me aside the head, and the heart, sevreal times), I looked at the god of death straight in the face and said, "I'm ready. Strip me naked. I want to stand before you totally vulnerable....but with nothing here that is not me. Show me who I am, and midwife my birth into the real Zane."
And the tears inside of me welled up one more time. They wouldn't stop. For hours. Every hurt over love lost....every pain over not being 'good enough'....flashed before my heart one more time. I'm glad you weren't here to witness it....it must have been a horrible site.
But then, the last tear fell, and there were no more. I tried to bring back the pain of being told that she loved someone more than me....and it wasn't mine anymore. I felt sorry for him, that he had to suffer. But I didn't feel his pain as my own.
The change is not complete. The metamorphisis is not finished.....but already I can feel the wings pushing up against the top of my coccoon. And I know I'll have no trouble bursting free when the time comes...because Pluto is not just turning me into a butterfly (beautiful, able to soar...but still very vulnerable.) No, Pluto is turning me into an Iron Butterfly......powerful wings to soar higher than I ever imagined, and a solid sense of self, no longer dependent upon the attentions of others. I won't be indestructible.....but now I realize that no one can ever hurt me again unless I give them the power to do so....and I'm going to be too busy exploring the world for the first time in my life to ever hand someone that type of control again.
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