As I am sitting in one of my favorite cafés in Zagreb, I find myself thinking about the painting of a bug on my wall in Motovun (“The Motovun Bug,” June 24, 2011). I kind of miss it. Not for nothing have I picked the cockroach as my totem a couple of years ago (“My Totem,” November 15, 2012). Thus I pick up my laptop and start searching for ways in which shamans choose their totems. But the World Wide Web is hardly a place for such an exercise. Judging by the number of websites dedicated to the subject, shamanism is very much in vogue nowadays. And so are totems that go along with it.

In short, there is an amazing load of crap about the subject of choosing one’s totem. The best I could do under the circumstances is to browse through a number of lists of totems on offer together with their supposed meanings. Not surprisingly, powerful animals, such as lions and tigers, come on top. Powerful birds like eagles and owls come next. Cute animals or birds, such as deer and robins, are not far behind. Of course, scorpions, praying mantises, and spiders are there, as well. And so are butterflies and ladybugs on the cute end of the spectrum. But the closest to a cockroach I could find was a scarab. Scarab?!

Wannabe shamans are at sea when it comes to powerful creatures of this day and age, and especially those living in cities, where most of humans live nowadays. Where are rats among the totems? Where are seagulls? And where are mosquitoes, the most deadly killers of them all? Thus I abandoned my search without much ado. Wannabe shamans and their totems are of no interest at all. They are at sea. Chances are that I am the only living shaman with the cockroach as my totem. But I must add that I was not wise enough to select it myself. In fact, it selected me, which makes it so much more powerful as a totem, too.