I once lived in the small coastal community of Squamish, B. C. One afternoon, after school, as I sat near the railroad tracks, I saw a long-haired young man with a guitar and a pregnant girl walking towards me. They were homeless and I invited them to my mother and step-father’s apartment to clean up and have a hot meal. Soon, they found financial assistance, rented a nice little house and the man scored a good job at a factory.
My family moved to North Vancouver shortly afterwards. By the time my public schooling was finished and Summer came, I was tired of the city and I decided to hitchhike to Squamish to stay with my new friends until I could get a job and my own place. When a car stopped, the driver proved to be a middle-aged businessman. He asked where I was going. I told him and he said he was also going to Squamish.
As we chatted, he asked me where else I had lived. Having lived in many places, I began to list them. When I mentioned Beaumont, Texas, he informed me that he had visited Texas once on a holiday from Quebec. He had been involved in a serious traffic accident in Beaumont and both his car and his back were damaged.
The woman whom had caused the accident paid all his medical bills and to repair his car. She had insisted that he stay at her house while he convalesced. She informed him that her husband was out of town for a long term. They had an affair. He still remembered her name and also vividly remembered her thirteen year old son, because the boy was a gifted artist who drew cartoons. I asked him what the boy's name was.
When I heard it, I instantly recognized it because I had been that boy’s classmate and he used to show me those drawings. I told the driver the family surname, the first name of the boy and I described the rather violent theme of his pen and ink drawings. We both became slightly uneasy and when we approached Squamish, he asked me what street my friend's house was on. I told him and he began to laugh nervously. He happened to live on the same street.
As we motored past the Stawamus Chief, I remembered that my random, railroad wandering, Sqaumish friend had the same first name as the boy artist in Texas. His young wife had the same first name as the boy artist's mother. I told my host this, and he quickly grew hesitant to illuminate any further synchronicity. Neither of us spoke another word until we reached town.
The coincidences of that numinous day did not end, however. Because when my driver asked for the exact address and offered to drop me off at the door, he broke into a nervous laugh like the skin of ice on a semi-frozen puddle being trodden as he coasted to a stop at the house next door to it.
“Dude!? Seriously, you live here?” I stammered.
“I know. It’s nuts!” he replied and quickly disappeared inside his house.
I stayed with the couple for several months, sought work, read poetry and lived on tobacco, peanut butter, coffee and crackers. Even then, the concatenations from Beaumont did not cease and there were unsettling overlaps, although I never spoke to the businessman again. This true tale of ripples in the pond is intended to give you a small example of what awaits you within the excellent book under review, A Mantis Carol.
It was written by Laurens van der Post, a superb writer. Laurens was born in South Africa, but later became a British citizen and a Knight of the Realm. Mr. Lawrence, a character in the movie, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, is based on the real experiences of Laurens van der Post. He wrote about the Bushmen of the Kalahari in two of his other books, The Lost World of the Kalahari and The Heart of the Hunter. All of his books are exceptional.
A Mantis Carol is a wonderfully strange story about bizarre chains of coincidence or “synchronicity,” as Laurens' personal friend, C. G. Jung, called them. The lead up to the true story is this: A woman in New York began to have recurring dreams about a praying mantis. Her name was Jaeger, the German word for “hunter.” She wrote letters to Laurens, because she had read in one of his books, that the god of the Bushmen was a praying mantis. She had hoped that Laurens could help her to interpret her dreams, as her psychologist had failed to do so.
Laurens did not open her letters for many weeks because he was busy writing, The Heart of the Hunter. Eventually, he read her letters and later visited America. While he was abroad, he gave a lecture on the praying mantis god. At that lecture, he met a young woman who proved to be inextricably tied to both Ms. Jaeger's dreams and to Laurens' own research for writing The Heart of the Hunter.
From those few threads, a vast, intricately woven tapestry emerges. We are all part of that tapestry. Read this book and meet the incomparable, enigmatic Hans Taaibosch. You will learn to look at your own urban desert through his pure Kalahari eyes and perhaps come to know that the dream has always been dreaming you
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