Lately,
I’ve been reading a lot about astrology – my natal chart, which planets were in
which house, which angles were formed between which planets at the moment I was
born. If you’ve known me for years, this won’t surprise you, because it’s an
interest that goes back a few decades – I can remember going over my chart with
my dad as a ten year old – and it’s not a secret. I mean, read the title of
this blog.
Perhaps
by now you are used to this quirk of mine, and put it in the same category as
my dislike of ice cream and chocolate – weird, but not that important in real
life. But yesterday I read something that made me stop and consider. I’m not
generally thought to be irrational (at least, if so, you haven’t told me).
I’m not superstitious about shoes on the bed or keeping wishes to yourself (I
remember the bewilderment I felt when my drugged, post-appendectomied sister,
who could barely sit up and say her name, mumbled a stern reproach at me for
daring to rest her flip-flops on the hospital bed for a minute, as a sign not
of poor hygiene but bad luck – and even more so, when I related her bizarre
behavior to my mother and she responded with, “You never put shoes on the bed!” – I mean, did I grow up in the same
family as these people? When did we learn that?). I have a perhaps too intense
interest in evolution and am an agnostic because I see neither concrete
evidence for nor against the existence of God. My mother once woke up in
the middle of the night back when I was in high school, convinced my spirit had come to
her as a sign I was in trouble. My predominant reaction was not gratitude or
sympathy but excruciating embarrassment, since she had called all my friends'
parents at one o’clock in the morning. I did not for one second believe that my
“essence” had communicated with my mother (the fact that I was home watching TV
in the basement while this happened didn’t help).
Having
firmly established myself, then, as a rational and logical thinker, how do I
explain my belief – or, more accurately, my absence of disbelief – that the
location of the planets at the moment I was born can possibly reflect my sense
of self, emotional temperament, and social maneuverings? I mean, logically
looked at, that’s just crazy talk.
This
morning, I randomly picked up Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink and started
to read it. It’s about our “adaptive unconscious” – AKA our intuition – and
how it makes accurate judgments before we have sorted and analyzed information
to form a conclusion. This is the part of myself I am most uncomfortable with.
Often, I ignore my intuition because I don’t want to face what it is telling me. I remember a few moments with Alex, for example, when I just knew that the emotions between us would
not keep us together. Raising this point to him one night, he insisted I was
wrong, and pointed to our many mutual interests in writing, language, travel,
family, etc. as evidence that we had every reason to expect our paths to continue
running together. And of course, less than a month later, we were as
emotionally distant as I’ve ever been from an ex-partner.
This is
not to say that I think I can solve my problems through my birth chart. But
maybe I can learn something about myself, even if the most important thing I
learn is to accept myself both as a logical, rational thinker and as a feeling,
sensitive, intuiter – someone who is interested in both fossils and the rising sign
at the same time. Rather than seeing these things as oppositions within me, I
can see them as existing side by side – maybe even harmoniously. That I can be
emotional and irrational is uncomfortable for me. This whole weekend, in fact,
I have felt in desperate flux, as if I were vibrating along an out of tune
piano string. I didn’t feel “grounded” – my stomach was in knots – I felt
“off.” These metaphors are difficult to analyze logically (How can a person
feel or not feel grounded? What exactly does that mean?) and the disconnect
between my prefrontal cortex and my hyperactive limbic system left me jittering
like someone on a caffeine high. I am therefore attempting to breathe deeply,
watch the ocean, and get out of the house today. Do regular, normal things that
put you in contact with friendly strangers. I should really go play tennis, but
I don’t own a racket myself (nor do I have a tennis partner, come to think of
it) so the strenuous exercise therapy will have to continue tomorrow when Mr.
Gelli sends me jogging around the court and tortures me with practicing my
forehand (side-note: Learning to play tennis is just as difficult for me as
learning to drive a manual car was. It is SO hard for someone with my lack of
multi-tasking ability to concentrate on that many different things at once! Keep
your elbow out! Finish the stroke! Keep your body side-ways! Keep the racket
parallel to the net! Distance yourself from the ball! Don’t move your body
forward! Do hit the ball with the racket forward! I mean, ahhhhhhhh!!!!!
Fortunately, I have the experience of eventually becoming a proficient manual
driver behind me to give me hope that one day it will all “come together” and
I’ll be able to do all this crap automatically and just focus on hitting the
damn ball!).
My point,
I think, is that I am not an entirely rational person and rather than scorning
that side of myself as contemptible (in my first year of college, I actually articulated a belief
that needing others made you weak and pathetic . No wonder
I was single that year!), I should try, instead, to understand it, accept it,
and breathe through the psychic discomfort.
In case
you’re interested, below are a few of the passages from the book that made me
start this rambling…
North Node in Cancer:
This lifetime is about your emotions and intuition.
You’re here to discover what makes you feel secure and how to establish that
base so that you can fulfill your potential. When you work from a centered
place within your own feelings, your life unfolds right on track. Open your
heart. You probably feel that it’s a sign of weakness to depend on other people
or reveal too much about your feelings. But it’s to your advantage to look
inward and tend to your inner life.
Sun Square Moon:
Your feelings and sense of identity pull in differing
directions. This challenges the ego. It is difficult to feel good emotionally
and achieve ego satisfaction simultaneously. What satisfies the emotions pulls
at the ego, and vice versa. This may create inner restlessness… A big enough
vision of life must be created to include satisfaction of all needs rather than
alternatively choosing some needs and then others.
Neptune in the 4th House:
You have close emotional ties to family, coupled with
an idealized picture of how family life should be. This is the way you see your
own family – as better than or worse than they are, but not realistically. As a
child, you may have been placed in a care-giving role. As an adult, you have a
compelling sense of obligation. You are loving and nurturing towards family. A
part of you feels the need to mother the world… Living by, or being near, the
ocean can provide much needed tranquility.
Saturn in Libra:
Relationships are taken seriously, and you may have
fears of relational loss or social disapproval. This can make setting
appropriate boundaries with people difficult. The tendency is to either
inappropriately go along with other people’s demands, or to set rigid standards
of relational behavior. It is important to distinguish when compromise and
acceptance represent the best course of action and when standing up for
principles is more appropriate.
Moon in Taurus in the 9th House:
You value harmony and dislike conflict. In most
situations, you are easygoing and avoid disagreements. However, you are much
more stubborn than you appear to be, and once you make up your mind you are
unlikely to change it, even when you should… You are emotionally comfortable
any place in the world. You have a yearning to experience different cultures
and a desire to know what is around the next corner. Your worldview, including
religious, ethical, moral, and philosophical beliefs, is influenced by your
travels. Yet this worldview is also colored by your emotions.
Jupiter in Scorpio in the 3rd House:
You value justice and admire truth. You are intense
about your standards. There is an attraction to the mysteries of life, getting
to the underlying meaning of situations, and uncovering the true motivations of
people. Your thinking is expansive and your outlook broad. This placement
conveys intelligence and expands your interest in intellectual horizons.
Interests may lie in writing, publishing, and communicating. At the very least,
you are a good talker.
