| My name is John Wozniak and I sing and
write the songs for Marcy Playground. I was
thirteen years old when I discovered the
shapeshifter lurking in my shadow. I grew up
in a house where African shaman, Indian
medicine men, and Tibetan monks could
frequently be found rifling through the
cupboards for peanut butter on any given
morning. We always had some type of holy
man sleeping on the couch. My mom
seemed to have a knack for befriending
these people. For years I thought every kid
grew up that way; it was all very normal to
me. So, it was with a hearty "Aw, do I have
to?" that I labored into the car for a ride over
to her friend Sandy's house to meet Rolling
Thunder, a very famous and powerful
medicine man. He was the Cherokee
medicine man. He was in town for a
conference of tribal elders and had been
staying there for about a week. The year was
1984. I remember the hubbub surrounding
his being in town. It was a big deal because
his wife had taken ill, and he didn't do much
traveling. He sat in a rocking chair smoking
his pipe, looking into space. I sat on the floor
looking at him. He was an old man then,
although his face had retained the energy of
a much younger man. Still, he wasn¹t what I
would have expected a Cherokee medicine
man to look like. He wore a beret with a
silver and turquoise pin on the front. It was
obviously very special to him. My mom and
Sandy were in the kitchen making tea, so it
was just the two of us. I didn't know what to
say. So, I said nothing. I just sat there quietly.
After a while, he looked at me and said, "So,
tell me about this spirit following you around."
His tone was warm and resonant. I waited
momentarily off guard, hoping he'd end up
telling a story. He didn't. And finally, when I
shook my head, he looked positively
annoyed. "You don't know, or you won't
say?" He poked his pipe in my direction, and
then waived it in the air. "I see energy like
dust in the air. Sometimes it's not around,
but when it's there, I see it." He started to
smile. "It's a lady spirit. Over by the window."
He pointed out a little finch perched on the
windowsill outside. "It's been there since you
came in. You must be very powerful to have
a spirit like that." "A little bird?" I asked. He
shook his head. "A shapeshifter. It's a spirit
that comes to teach us things through our
life. Sometimes it plays a trick on us when
we're not careful. So you give your spirit
respect and say 'ho' when you see it. If it
was just a bird I wouldn't have pointed it out."
He smiled. My mom came in the room with
some tea or juice or something and the
conversation changed. When we left that
night, my mom smiled at me "So, what did
R.T. say to you?" I sighed, "Oh, nothing." My
eyes were too busy trying to follow a large
bat that was circling just outside my window.
I watched it for a while until it disappeared
into the darkness "Ho." I whispered after it.
"Ho."
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