Scientifically, technically, it’s nothing more than a suspected Eudocima phalonia, a fruit-piercing moth of the noctuid family.
Superstitiously, well, I shun superstitiously, but it could be an ill omen, or it might bear the soul of a deceased relative or a close friend. That’s what the Chinese, and the people of many other cultures, believe of large moths at the doorstep. It was with a deeply unsettling realisation of the coincidental timing of the moth’s visit that I read the terrible news that reached me the next afternoon. That moths embody the otherworldly has always been regarded by me as unfounded folklore, but when a series of experiences over the years has come to form a collection of reliable coincidences, it becomes almost, perversely, irrational not to consider the possibility that it just might be more than myth.
8 February 2011, Hong Kong – Little did I know that it was to be the last time we saw each other. And the painful irony is that our next reunion was to be ten days from now, but ten days too late.
I will miss you.