Colloquially we call it a possum and drop the phonetic 'o' for some cultural reason. They are western hemisphere marsupials like koala bears. Late one night I nearly killed one with my vehicle while staring at a waning full moon. It was full earlier in the dark, now just partial. I had a lot to think that night; a long day of paralyzed movement in the crowds of rushing faces. They come and go to and from dark places. This wish for longevity and hate themselves for their security and shitty workplace attitude. They print off receipts with heartless desire for something beyond.
"What makes his heart beat?"
I saw into the soul of this creature. My headlights glinted off his eyes like a common mirror. This possum, however filthy and riddled with neglect and rabies, is a part of this earth as much as I. The possum lived with a more distinct purpose than I. Without obvious intellectual capabilities, this creatures lives simply to survive and in a nowhere near natural situation must do horrible things in order to accomplish this survival. The longevity this creature wishes to have is based on a pulsing of blood through it's tiny corrugated veins.
Dream dictionaries describe an opossum as a symbol to use appearances to our advantages and to become strengthened by a masterful working knowledge of this. We front and succeed. If we front, we can also easily spot the ones who are fronting, who are lying through their teeth for personal gain and it becomes more obvious than ever with years of garbage-eating and willful experience of incredible tragedy. The possum represents how we can use deception to our advantage or conversely how we can spot those using deception to their advantage. (though if spotted, to their detriment.)
Then there are sources that align the movement of a possum with the moon. This is a spiritual belief due to Native American animal totems. These are virtues that the natives believed animals held in their very beings and thus can be transcribed into our lives for a deeper understanding of ourselves and our places in the world. Use these symbols to enrich your own life, even if not every possum you meet is a deceptive creature. They are metaphors and without metaphor we'd have to take everything at face value, which would destroy all of the creative people in the world without recognition that they were ever creative. We must believe in the abstract in order to survive the real.
Opossums have prominent sagittal crests, much like earlier hominoids prior to the break of in the lineage to form the musculature of modern humans. It took a few years to diverge but we both were better off. Evolutionarily fit to survive in diverse situations without the assistance of one and other. There is no communication between possums and humans. Neither understand the role of the other. They must be terrified of flashing lights and cars because these are not inventions of millenia and the forest growth. They are our technological advancements that diminish the mothering role of mother nature in our age. She was a god damn helicopter parent anyway, constantly hovering.
They can survive the bites of rattlesnakes and cottonmouths. Their immune systems are ones we study for anti snake bite vaccinations and remedies. Many possums are killed on highways while scavenging for roadkill.
Do you see the similarities?
What do we symbolize for them?
