Back to work, as usual..and too relaxed? Could be.

Isabel Hickey (I'm very close to finishing the first read through of her astrology book) supplied a thought that seems to fit my experiences of late. It was echoed by a line in Brad Kochounis' astrology book, Astrological Imagination. Both thoughts had to do with an important quality in the personality, the realization that one can work without the expectation of catching happiness as a result.

I know that when I don't feel good, when I feel pressured, I'll run around in my head like squirrels chasing each other through the trees. I'm trying to figure out how I can adjust this or find that to make my life change for the better, so I can start doing all those things I'm 'supposed to'. And that's not a bad quality to have, obviously, but its benefit always seems to stop before it addresses the deepest need, and that is to feel like I've reached the asked for level of responsibility that my life is pushing me to find. Responsibility = ability to respond...to new, changing, or different situations. That ability, I imagine, makes one feel capable, and, as a result, secure, even when the future is unclear. It's better, for me at least, than the ability to fix everything. It doesn't require a person to have foreseen and prepared for every possible thing that could go wrong. Again, preparedness is a really good thing...but when it becomes an obsession, it kind of seems to narrow the field of experiences and makes one forget that life is about living - and learning.

In a recent blog, I wrote about the lunar eclipse, my speaking engagement with the Men's group at my old church, and the stresses of a job that culminated in an indefinite pause of work involvement. Two weeks later, after the last automatic deposit was made, the feelings of guilt and slipping self esteem began to accumulate and the stories I told to handle it sounded kind of hollow. In the end, the solution was to return a call and get back to work, earning another five hundred or so dollars in the last two weeks of the project I had trained for in late May. (Perhaps final - its seems you really never can say that when you work for the census).

The practical need for money is exactly that - both practical and necessary. And the deeper need, the emotional victory, if you will, is doing what felt uncomfortable to me without shutting off too many feelings or retreating from the Saturnian rite of passage that is a job; sticking with the work, both physically and emotionally - that is what I tried, and am trying, to do. Its kind of a revisitation of a theme of mine from the mid nineties, when I worked a series of temporary jobs and declared to my therapist (a little prematurely, as it turned out) that "I 'know' I will 'always' work." And I did, for almost ten years, before turning to my parents to support me more heavily again while I finished a dissertation.

I'm not feeling quite as good now, this past week, as I wait between paydays for the 'final' big deposit to be made from the hours put in on this project. I'm feeling like I've blown a bit of that earned money more carelessly than I feel like I should. At least half of it is already spent, or all of it, if I'm completely honest about every bill and expense outstanding. Still, I've paid off two of the three credit cards I routinely use for spending, and I've been able to supply all the extra spending money I usually have to find somewhere else, for several months, too. I've also paid for a few significant annual expenses - insurance, exams, that kind of thing. I still have a couple big bills outstanding, and I'm not exactly certain of how many more are coming up this month - too afraid to look, I get scattered in my mind about it.

I could use a break from the pressure, but also, some realistic opportunities on the horizon. There is some garden work to do - that paid for most of my trip to our annual family reunion. You know I want to have that class going this fall. And there's dribbles of talk about one more census activity, and I put my name in the ring.

Practical necessities. Important. But not in first place. Seems like I'm getting to a finish line and finding another leg ahead of me - or learning that was only the qualifying heat. But that's okay - it's more satisfying to feel like I'm addressing an underlying issue of life than looking creative while treading water on vacation.

I was given a silly Christmas present as a kid from a woman who occasionally baby sat my sister and I and was also a friend of grandmothers'. It was a framed, fake one dollar bill that said, "Money isn't everything. But it's way ahead of whatever's in second place." I wish now that moment hadn't been treated as a joke about my personality and left at that. Because it wasn't the best quality for me to cultivate. But I can live with it - lessons given are likely lessons deserved. Maybe I should put more effort into both earning some money and making it more clear that I don't think it's the greatest, most important thing around.

I guess the other option is to openly own that desire. Just let it out, let it release rather than trying to work it into some kind of proper expression. I'm less comfortable with that option than the first. Maybe it's from having a natal Jupiter in detriment. Which means expressing things precisely (it squares natal Virgo planets) yet without embellishment is important but almost impossible (quincunx to Neptune in Scorpio). A fifth house Jupiter wants to dramatize things, right? And Gemini likes to put a good spin on a story). When I release the feeling through pure expression, it simply feels great. It's very hard not to get bogged down in the details and the work of finishing goals. Which kind of brings me back to that qualifying statement about returning to work. It wasn't a goal I needed to accomplish, so much as a need to do experience of going to work, as usual.

The second big astrological event was the solar eclipse in, of all places, my sixth house, about a degree from that (seventh house cuspy) Lilith asteroid and directly opposite my natal Capricorn Sun. Didn't think sticking with a hard thing would be a result - I thought it would involve some kind of dramatic, rebellious change, as I usually do (natal Uranus-Pluto trine the Sun, trine the IC, and, probably most influential, a natal first house Mars in Aquarius). But choosing to have a level head makes a lot of sense now. Which also meant participating as usual in the family reunion the following weekend without starting up as many arguments as I might have in the past. Trying to see my own way through things....If you haven't viewed my photos from that trip, you can do that at Smugmug, which I have to remember to pay for so I can keep my photos up - hurry, paycheck! Here is the link.

http://pakman6.smugmug.com/Nature/Lake-Chautauqua-and-Forests-of/13085331_2PMFA#948345290_ZXrGz

For the astrologers: the first of two eclipses within a month's time has impacted my natal chart. The Full Moon and lunar eclipse on Saturday morning, June 26th, 2010 occurred with the fourth degree of Capricorn in the background. Natal Mercury is in the fourth degree of Capricorn in my chart, which is also the degree at which Pluto has been situated, in slow retrograde motion.

The following sequences of events were associated with the eclipse. A few days before the eclipse, the asteroid Pallas Athene, which is associated with vision and the mind, stationed direct in Scorpio within one degree of a trine of natal Vesta. Then, Vesta transited my natal Part of Fortune at 10 degrees Virgo, the Sun transited natal Vesta at three degrees Cancer, and Jupiter sextiled the North Node in Gemini/trined the South Node in Sagittarius. Nothing earth-shattering yet.

Just before the eclipse Venus in Leo opposed natal Icarus and Venus in Aquarius as the first connections in a transit of natal Venus-Mars conjunction. The Moon also transited natal Mercury in Capricorn, Mars transited the Part of Fortune, and Mercury inconjuncted the South Node in Sagittarius. The eclipse occurred in the same degree as my natal Mercury.

Shortly after the eclipse, Mercury transited natal Vesta and Pluto transited my natal Mercury, which was two minutes past my natal Mercury at the time of the eclipse (and approaching it, since it is retrograde motion). Venus then opposed my natal Mars (so the opposition to the Venus-Mars conjunction was going on during the eclipse). Mercury opposed natal Mercury, and Juno sextiled the Part of Fortune.

The Sun later sextiled my natal Moon, and one week later, Saturn in late Virgo finally made it to the opposition point of my natal Ceres in Pisces. Ceres is an asteroid and planetoid associated with unconditional love and acceptance of self and others, as well as the opposite, which is an angry withholding.

Saturn has been inconjunct to Neptune (and Black Moon Lilith for a while, too, though that has since moved over to hook up with Chiron in "just let it all go" Pisces.) Appropriately enough, I didn't discover the last piece until the next day. It involves retrograde Neptune within a degree of reapproaching an opposition to natal Vertex in late Leo, though it will take a little longer yet to get there.

So, in summary, there were three major components to this eclipse - the eclipse on my natal Mercury, with Pluto transiting right after the event; an opposition by Venus to my natal Venus-Mars conjunction that bracketed the eclipse; and a longer term rectangle of semi-sextiles and inconjuncts composed of Saturn and Neptune respectively opposed to my natal Ceres and Vertex. Both transiting and natal Vesta played a prominent role as well as transiting Mercury.

It is strange that at the conference in May, I was focused on the July solar eclipse, but this one must be the heavy hitter of the two. The solar eclipse, however, occurs nearly opposite my natal Sun, and close to a conjunction with natal Lilith asteroid. Being in the sixth house, I don't know that I can ignore this little asteroid's impact on jobs and health issues, especially with regards to the relationships I struggle to maintain with my self, my values, and the people at work or from whom I receive health care.

The time was humbling. On Thursday, there was a major storm and electricity was out for miles around - no functioning air conditioning on the hottest, most humid day of the year, no traffic lights on major roadways, and few businesses, including gas stations and restaurants were open. I did complete a case for the census that evening, which is how I know about the conditions around this town and our neighboring region. But it was wearing me down. In my efforts to complete the work, I was becoming more anxious and more aggressive at closing the deal, and I was not finding the right things to say to set people at ease. Not entirely my fault, as people have been generally disagreeable about providing a very small amount of information that their supermarket probably already has on its data bases. But, more importantly, I felt that I was losing touch with my values, even as I was succeeding at handling some tough assignments and earning some decent wages. This has been one of the lessons that I think I have gotten in this process - income and achievement is one of the necessary goals, but not the major one, and it can never be the only one that is necessary. Perhaps I have to develop a sense of serving impersonally with work and mastering my prejudices and stereotypes while defending my values and taking care of myself from a perspective, though, that transcends selfish needs. Next goal -- to put that in plain English and actual behaviors.

On Friday, I just lost all the energy to handle these kinds of situations. I wanted to yell at people sarcastically or crawl under a rock and hide. I might as well have been sitting at the bottom of a latrine and letting the world shit on me, except that I was also seething just below the surface. On Saturday morning, when our group met at the McDonald's that we had been meeting every morning at, six days a week, I turned the case over and told my supervisor I needed to stop for now. I don't think there wasn't anything right or wrong about the decision. It was just what I decided to do. I had said I hoped to have work through the end of that week, and I did - we did. It was close to the end of the project. Nevertheless, because of that decision I endured a couple days of self-imposed exile while I tried to catch up with the processing of events and meanings of things that were said (this gets very hard for me to do when I am unable to find familiar comforts, like solitude, nature, friends, healthy, relaxed conversation, or supportive family). I equate the Pluto transit and the Saturn opposition to Ceres to my ability to bear up and endure intense, negative thoughts that tore ceaselessly into the landscapes of my mind. These are the thoughts that I can't keep down or inside any longer - that I want to deal with rather than looking pretty for the camera.

There was a slight respite that also seemed to focus these issues, because, in the midst of this job transition - on Friday night - I presented a speech to the men's group at the neighborhood church which I grew up going to regularly. My mother and father were there, and many of the men were familiar to me, though it is depressing and thought-provoking to see how much the size of these groups has diminished since I last participated in church events in the early eighties. They seem mere ghosts of their former selves, and also seem to be struggling to find a focus or purpose for their activities. The state of the churches belie the successful, stable middle class suburban landscapes that surround them, and indeed, which they themselves contribute to in a very noticeable way. The speech was good - it was organized, it said what I wanted to say, and afterwards, I retained the organization fairly well through the open-ended question/discussion period.

Afterwards, I felt more of a focus on being extremely honest with myself - almost like I had taken some kind of truth serum and the thoughts I discounted because they were uncomfortable, I freely and gladly admitted to for the purpose of wanting to get to work on them and the fear of losing the clarity and the sense of purpose they brought. Perhaps its hard to lie in God's house. I hate to admit to such a old-fashioned thought, but there it is.

Afterward, I also got into a kind of fight with my parents at my house - they came over to drop off some chairs from a garage sale I had had at their place the previous weekend, and I showed them the gardens - they were mostly inattentive and unfocused and that bothered me some, but I'm past expecting much from them, and its not really right for me to be tooting my own horn, anyway. I had to tell them about some things that needed attention around the house. My dad owns the house, but he doesn't want to put money into it - he's just anxious to get the money from selling it to pay for their future at the complete care community they moved to three years ago. I understand that, and I also now, once again, get that I'm allowed to be a little irrational, too, at times, because it just plain sucks when you make a contract with someone to do something, and they just don't want to put any kind of positive energy into the project ever, at all.

I also get that there can be no more unhealthy stuffing of things that need to be said. A more passionate family would say they were just "having a discussion," but in our family, it must have seemed like the world was coming to an end. And sure enough, the next day, I felt guilty, as I do now, for expressing what would not be held inside ("have you no respect..." the voices say. "Yes, I do," I want to reply. "I am finding some for myself and for life." "No, I'm sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me. I should respect my father" the other part wants to reply. Mostly, I realize I need to find my own way, and deal as honestly, firmly, and objectively as possible with the practical issues that arise when we must collaborate on the house or other shared aspects of my tenure here as "caretaker and closer-out" of the house.

I think the major message of this eclipse is one that's been developing for a while - that I had better watch it - be very careful with nostalgic attachments and place no hopes for something good to come out of collaborative family relationships. This is the time for me to go inward and find my own path while not being so recalcitrant and stubborn that I sabotage opportunities to help myself become more self-sufficient and less isolated.

Here is the text of the speech I presented to the men. The pastor said, she had received a call from the leader of the Men's group asking her if she thought I would present the same speech that I had given to the Women's group the previous autumn. She had said, "I can't see why not?!" Perhaps I overheard that conversation on some level, because I had to preface my remarks about the geography of the region with some background about who I was and what role geography and teaching played in my life. Perhaps I also need a karmic cleansing of my aural canals. I started out writing the speech with a real chip on my shoulder - later I became aware of it, and decided they weren't there to battle me, so I was able to soften the tone. I've been working on respecting my own ego in the presentation of myself, too, but as you can see, that still hasn't completely arrived. I'm loathe to give up the critical self-reflection that's couched in philosophical tones, but it's getting there. The question might be, do I need to write blogs if I really become completely honest with myself? Maybe, as I concluded in the speech below, there is something too precious about an unwillingness to do something that you think you've evolved beyond - that it becomes selfish to withhold what you've worked to learn and share with others just because you don't feel elated with yourself after talking about it, or feel the same kind of passionate excitement that you did before you became more self-aware.

Text of the speech:

These days, I'll grab just about any chance to make a few bucks. There's a lot of things I can do, or learn to do, that I'll find interesting enough to see myself through to the bank, because there's a lot of neat things that I want to do with the money. Yet, when someone wants me to take the stage as an expert of some kind or another, there's another side of me that pulls back because, while I've often told myself that I enjoy the attention and the rewards that come from sharing knowledge and information with others, being in a spotlight easily blinds me to some of the personal values that tell me who I need to be in this life.

I'm still uncovering and recovering these values after years of scrambling to make it appear that I'm normal, on top of things, and having a good time. It's a long-term process, but I feel like I'm getting to the point where I realize my values aren't all that far below the surface, and they don't have to alienate me from other people - in fact, they're probably helping me to connect, and not only with those of like minds. Its just that I've gotten used to stuffing these values down, failing to value them, or pushing them too forcefully at others.

As a person's inner courage to be who they are develops, good things start to happen, and the needs that seemed so intense began to get met; things start to fall into place, but it's not like the cookie cutter dream you might have had growing up, where you thought this or that kind of situation would solve some uncomfortable problem you've had to put up with all your life and you could just kick back and relax and stop struggling through difficult thoughts or hard emotions. No, its more like real life - up one day, down the next, acting like an angel one moment, and a buffoon the next. I'm trying to find a kind of balance between learning to respect myself and defend the values that define me on the one hand, and, on the other, staying open to the reality that I haven't yet learned everything that I need to know, and that not every teacher turns up only when and where I expect to find them.

One of the soul compromises that I made in order to give myself an opportunity to continue learning and sharing with others was to complete all the requirements for two graduate degrees from the University of Nebraska. And when I moved back here after living in the Midwest for almost 23 years, I brought along this thing I was fond of talking about called the geographic perspective. So, I exchanged some emails with people at the night school, reviewed a bunch of books online, and purchased a few of them from Amazon. Then I sat down to my table and got to work applying my teaching and learning experiences to the task of determining whether I could use them to see the place I grew up in in a broader context - and have some fun inspiring others to look at their surroundings in a new way.

I couldn't afford to consider whether I would actually be successful in my endeavor - I just needed to do something to use my skills, to make me feel like I belonged, at least marginally, to the rest of the working world. Teaching night school doesn't meet all of a person's financial needs, and the first classes were rushed and anxious, but over time I became more comfortable with the material and maybe also with the people who were in my classes, though I still haven't been able to focus on something other than the fear and anxiety that shows up every time those catalogs get sent out and I wait to see how many, if any, students sign up for my classes each semester.

As for my other goal, of seeing my home in a new light, I found that there are only so many buildings and roads, so much history, and so many plants and rocks that a person can talk about before wanting to connect to more sociable topics, things that have meaning for them and imagination and have an impact on a person's understanding of themselves (though people can be awful strenuous as well). I can't say yet that I've concluded that my 'home' is here, but sometimes I think home must be where you make the effort to create a home and the people in the communities you make it with - including yourself - and in this context, I'm finally starting to feel the beginnings of my work paying off.

Teaching geography, I experienced this ever-present but never acknowledged sense that I was avoiding developing some other interests and aspects of my personality, and that they weren't going to let me get away with that without exacting an occasional toll, and so I threw myself into other endeavors. Not that everything has to be purely grounded in some very precisely defined spiritual mission in life, although it often gets to feeling that way in me, so much so that in the end, I might give up trying to define it and do whatever seems easiest - or do very little, because nothing seems to fit or be good enough.

It's important to test one's ideas and ideals and simply do something for them in real life, otherwise, that way of being can get awful precious, and I think everyone would agree that there are many things in the world that could benefit from useful, well-intentioned action, whether it was executed with supreme competence and perfected skills or simply done with something more worthy of a human scale.

So, I've worked out what to say here tonight, in spite of the fact that the importance of geography, and the preaching of its gospel according to 'Paul', has waned considerably since the last time I spoke here. In actuality, this whole geography thing has become incorporated into a routine of learning and growing that revolves around a set of activities I've developed over the last three years. They do a relatively good job of maintaining a manageable mood and addressing basic needs, and "I get by with a little help"...from my friends family and a few select professionals.

The emphasis of my studies has shifted into other subjects, as has my passion for teaching, and my feelings about my role as a teacher have changed as well. I try to tell my stories in everyday language rather than spouting 'academe,' but that is really hard. I'm also trying to teach myself to listen to others tell their stories - to simply allow many experiences and opinions to be there and to be what they are. It seems to be important to my growth as a human being and as a soul, and I would guess that something like that is important to many other people as well.

So, I don't know what your reactions are to my speech here tonight, but if there are any things that any one of you would like to know about this region, I am agreeable to talk about what I've learned and if I think of something interesting now, I'll just go ahead and share that, too, but I couldn't just lecture without prefacing it with some context about the man behind the curtain of information.

I shared something about how the collision of continents 250-300 million years ago has influenced a large proportion of the landscape people pass through every day in this region. I talked about the events and the resulting physical landscapes as well as the characteristics they were responsible for, such as the lack of ports, the presence of early turnpikes and the first inland cities in the colonies, the ridges at Gettysburg and the Great Valley's influence on migration into the Midwest, the creation of anthracite, which delayed the industrialization of America by fifty years, but kept Philadelphia clean, unlike dirty Pittsburgh. Then many of the men had questions about the region and comments of their own, which I tried to just listen to. :)

Perhaps like the last speech, this marked a turning point in my relationship to geography and teaching. The last time, I felt finished. This time, I feel maybe like I should just take on the responsibility of teaching more of this stuff to others just because it is worthwhile and someone with the background knowledge that I've gone out to acquire should be doing it. The question becomes, how do I handle the emotions and the ego?

There was another aspect of this speech that related to what I went through in the following days, and perhaps it had a lot to do with my parents being there, too. I had the thought that I was feeling everything I wrote about having gotten through. All those good things I said develop as you grow - I had to feel all the opposite, painful emotions, as if I were just beginning the path to reach them, or had dared to talk about them before I was really there. More neuroses, perhaps. I don't know - my dad's the one with the PhD in psychology. I'm just the young whippersnapper that thinks he knows something about life and keeps pulling the rug out from under him until he stays on the ground.

Wanted: The Grounded Muse

I function most productively with a muse - a friend or a teacher or an article that gets me thinking, writing, researching, or creating. It's really hard not to be stimulated in this way. And hopefully there's a chance to continue developing the conversation, because I often move ahead with that expectation, whether its realistic to expect a continuing engagement or is just an assumed or hoped for wish. When it's a fantasy, or simply a poorly planned reality, there's a strong chance of disappointment, which usually causes my mood to take a nose-dive, and become disillusioned or get stuck and have to withdraw to recover....If I pick the right kind of muse, though, and proceed with a healthy dose of both honest desire and realistic expectations, then I might get the opportunity to work through the issues that arise with the people involved and move on to the 'advanced level' - or at least the things I work through won't be as frustrating for as long the next time they surface. That's the best kind of muse to have. If you can't get this kind of muse, I suggest being a little more detached from your lofty visions and expectations so that you can function with less disruption, and then maybe things will work out just fine on their own.

Maybe this is what my friends can't figure out about me

I wrote a long letter to a friend who's been struggling to understand me, as I often do, too. It seemed to have enough valuable insights to shape it into a blog post. I adapted it because I want to keep some separation between my personal sharing and my blog posts, and because the writer in me wanted to make it appeal to a wider audience - not that I'm expecting one, or anything like that - well, maybe I am. At any rate, here it is, mildly altered for your reading pleasure.

I've been wrestling with defining a certain issue lately, one that inevitably drives friends who try to get close to me absolutely bonkers (and it's no picnic for me either!). It has been the downfall of several attempted relationships. If you'll allow me to use a system that I know will explain things precisely and quickly, I'll tell you that I keep going back to something I read about Capricorns in a book called The Inner Sky. Its by Stephen Forrest, who's written some wonderfully accessible astrology books, and it provides the simplest and best fitting explanation for my eccentric behavior in relationships that I have right now. Having that reason is comforting, if only intellectually.

Capricorns, first, love to work- they feel it is their duty to work, and I feel that. So, if I'm pushing myself past my comfort boundaries, trying to do social things with new friends or trying to meet other people, for instance, then I think I must be doing something worthwhile, just because it feels like hard work.

Capricorns, second, need to succeed at what they do. Which adds an additional requirement to the mere presence of a feeling of hard work. And when the goal is to learn how to have fun or to "do something fun" (as friends will occasionally tell me to do) you really need something more than just the feeling of hard work. :) In other words, I need to feel comfortable hanging out or doing things with others, and not just wanting to feel that way, or thinking I should feel that way.

Finally, Capricorns are by nature, solitary folk who do what they commit to doing and usually see it through, but the most important thing, Forrest says, is that, even though they often do what they do in the public eye and get recognized for their work, they can never play to the crowd (as Leo's do, for instance). They know when they've succeeded and when they need to do better. In fact, the only one who really defines success for a Capricorn is himself, because he or she alone knows what it means for him or herself. If they define success by others' standards, they are lost. This for me, is a bold new idea, because it means its okay to accept my feeling of working apart from others as natural and healthy, that I'm not just standing apart because I'm angry about being excluded.

So, what I think is going on with new friendships, is that I try really hard because I think it's worthwhile work, but I'm not always honest with myself about what I really want, really need, and am really experiencing. The focus often goes to others and their reactions, rather than what I want, need, and know how to do. For example, I might be thinking that I need something just because I'm afraid others will leave if I stand on my own. But I feel strong when I do things to stand on my own, and that can mean making an effort to be more socially connected, as long as that effort grows out of my own values rather than my fears of being accepted by others. Simple and complex as that.

When I'm trying new things, I, like some other friends I know, can get really scattered. I simply don't connect things that I've just been doing to conversations I'm having, for instance. Then I think I actually make myself bothered about that, because I want to be seen as being responsible (the Capricorn energy again) and always bettering myself (Virgo energy). My folks reinforce this behavior continually, and it is just starting to lose its power over me - thanks in large part to the other people I'm getting connected to in my life, and the 'work' I'm doing in analysis, astrology, and writing.

When I'm anxious in this way, I can't process things. As soon as I feel I've taken care of those needs - usually by finishing off a list of things to do, or letting someone else help me, or by connecting with an old, familiar friend or way of being - then I lose the paranoia and things start to reconnect, and I feel calmer. The challenge now is to stop myself from automatically jumping into these anxious states when I am doing something 'new.' New things are often variations of old things - the template is in place, and widely applicable.

Reminds me of a situation at a high school music performance where a girl I was obsessed with getting to know finally paid attention to me. Turns out she just wanted me to remove a chair that was vacant from the row of instruments in front of me. I smiled and demurred - no, I didn't want to come up and sit next to her. She kept trying to get the point of what she was saying across to me, but finally rolled her eyes, sighed quietly, and stood up to remove the chair herself. Cute and silly example we can all relate to - she was taking care of a minor, practical thing; I was thinking of all the roses and candy hearts I had been wanting to give her for the past two months and worrying about I could present them without earning rejection. I guess it's still like that for me, but there are more things I've gotten anxious about than being the guy who gets the girl - or doesn't. I guess that one is still there, though.

Things are getting easier. It used to be, I always be trapped in this anxious state, unendingly suffering and feeling lost. And while I was feeling that way, I was also getting a PhD, teaching full time, creating course innovations for students (and my own sanity), planning trips, reading novels, making this or that thing for the home…a lack of talent, flexibility, or fortitude isn't the problem. Feeling okay about things at my core and knowing how to take care of my emotional self (versus dramatizing it) is the problem -sorry, challenge - sorry, opportunity. :)

There is a groundedness that some people have - a comfortable, earthy patience that says, "I can take all you got and it won't phase me - how 'bout coming to sit on the porch and have a glass of iced tea?" even while chaos rages around them. It's probably something successful hairdressers and bartenders and nurses have - I hope I have it too, since I can visualize it. Sometimes I think I remember how to be that way. That I don't have to create some big, important, impressive persona to be accepted by others. My folks did that, like when my dad got his office job in the big city on the east coast and my mom had to host a fancy party at a place that wasn't even her house. Well, knowing that people who say they're always overwhelmed actually can do what they need to do and learn the rest...that's a topic for another blog post. In the meantime, I just note that that anxious people pleasing has never left our family…though we've done worthwhile things, too.

I can stop myself a little more easily now from running around like its an anxiety emergency, if I try to remember that I'll feel okay by being my usual self. But sometimes I can't find the place where my usual self resides in my mind or in my body. That's also getting easier, but it takes a long time to build that comfort level with others around, and when I'm in situations that feel stressful. These might be those situations I thought were valuable just because they felt like hard work - I feel better and better about declining to get involved with many of them. But, I've run all the way to a frikkin' PhD for chrissakes, and learned astrology by myself, not to mention how to care for a house on my own! :) That's a lot of frantic activity, and its finally getting through that I don't have to do all that to be okay or to be accepted by others - in fact, I have to stop, just to know my self, be my self.

I've also said that I'm a dreamy-eyed romantic idealist. The saving grace there, is that I actively and continually search out lessons and learn from new or stressful situations, so that this dreamy, idealistic romeo can define and experience his own brand of success in this harsh, unforgiving world. I've been following the idea that a guy gets the girl and is okay for life since kindergarten. I hardly ever get the girl, but I do make sure to get something valuable from every encounter. Its been the hardest damn desire to chip away at, to get to the place where I realize that I might want to let go of this way of looking at the world long enough to get what I need most right now, and that is to succeed at taking care of myself, developing confidence in my ability to choose activities and jobs and friends that help me feel like I'm a unit in the world who can support himself - emotionally and socially as well as financially. Saturn issues, I guess, but across a broad spectrum.

Given the slightest chance, however, I'll escape from doing those things quicker than the sparks fly from a roman candle. And when I do, even if it's to "have fun" or celebrate something or take a "vacation," I'm inevitably thrown for a loop. It seems that what I need to learn how to work without making it such hard work and so little fun as well as how have fun without escaping a healthy responsibility - my Pisces placement of Saturn doesn't seem to allow for strict boundaries or too much effort - it would rather just go with a nice, quiet flow, learning the lessons of life and the universe as they come to him.

Perhaps this also takes a combination of commitment and patience. I feel like I've worked around another little corner in the census work lately. I reflected on how many more details of a new friend's story I know now than when I was pursuing them all intensely and sharing so many of mine with her - something new and lots of it all the time, every time. Now maybe the process is more relaxed, more stable, more realistic. And that's shifted my perspective, got it back down within the normal range of experience.

Well, okay, I'm also really hesitant to dream, because so many dreams get dashed so easily with Juno in the early degrees of Pisces. Sometimes that's part of the process, and it's okay. I learn not to be attached to my passions or their outcomes too deeply. Isabel Hickey says I also need to really work my ass off to pursue those dreams and to get what I need, and I never really considered that before. It's cracked open a whole new world of possibility and - chance to experience feeling okay about myself and empowered by patient, quiet work - if I can stay tuned in to that deeper, subtler wisdom that guides the choices we make. What Hickey says feels like a good fit, but I bet it can generate a hornets' next of anxieties as well as feelings of courage and competence. Kind of like getting into the pool for the first time after being afraid of the water.

I'm always needing to reinforce the idea that without a basic grounding in worldly responsibilities, thinking dreamily that I'm going to get what I need from friendships and romance, from the typical kinds of comforts and pleasures that people enjoy...is just dependency, and that brings in early childhood/past life/whateveryouwanttocallit issues that I'm finally getting to in analysis and with astrology.

I don't know what those issues, thoughts, and feelings are yet, except that its likely I've been deeply trained to suppress honest truths as to what's going on with me, or even suppress simple opinions, in order not to upset others or make them appear improper. I might react by rebelling and being super harsh in my critique. Like "the emperor has no clothes" story, only I'm really mean about it. There really are a lot of very basic fears I've grown up with that center around talking about basic human things, things most other people base everyday communication and interactions around - things that are just part of being human - unless of course, you're a repressed Protestant :).

I'm just getting to the point of understanding that and knowing, too, that it's okay to take care of those fears - not to push too harshly - to be okay with boundaries and achieve less than total awareness and solution as soon as you possibly can.

Maybe I don't know anything more clearly than that, so I might sound like I'm being evasive. Let's just say, one example, was my friend from Oregon who grew up on a farm. Biological processes of every kind are a part of life when you live on the farm. You don't last long if you're squeamish or muffle all talk of sex, birth, death, crap and body parts. Well, the only animals I lived with until I was in my twenties were fish. And the reason why, if you ask me, was that we lived in this atmosphere of fear and hurt that kept us from developing a healthy, communicative environment, which included the fact that we lived in bodies that were human, and I'd say it was greatly my mom's influence, though my dad didn't step up to the bat when he had the chance. Fear of death and loss, sex, and all the animal parts of ourselves - well, Virgo doesn't like all that improper stuff right off the bat, but still, I've not done my work to get over it the way I want to. I automatically assume everyone else feels the same way and censor myself unnaturally. You think I'm bad at this. Seeing how my mom is almost makes me want to cry or yell - it's that bad. At least with my dad there is an interest in exploring these topics intellectually or philosophically. My mom just clams up. Part of her history, I guess, along with the shadow of male intellectual superiority. I don't know how to talk about it. We were trained not to.

It's one aspect of what I'm trying to work toward understanding and releasing. Tierney says these things are the realm of waxing or lower squares, that first ninety degree point on the journey of two planets through their cycle of relationship to each other. I read the section on squares a couple months ago, and I'm still assimilating what I read.

I hope this isn't way more than people want to know about. I'm more afraid not to put things out there than I am to sacrifice my ego. I get to thinking and it's like, why not start to work on it...(Mercury in a cardinal sign). Of course, I do have a choice to control what I start - and what I share - to be responsible in that way. And its about time I started owning that responsibility. But, lacking a partner or other close friends that I share my activity space and emotions with on a routine basis, this kind of interaction and public exposure is a valuable source of lessons and growth. It's hard to keep bringing up the same issues once you've laid them out and posted them somewhere for others to see. Hopefully, they have less power over you and become easier to let go of.

I don't have to "figure it all out" before I dare to interact with anyone, but that's what I tend to do, or want to do. Reading through this as I write, I'm getting a sense just now that I'm putting all the focus on me, and that sounds pretty anxious in itself - trying to make it look like I'm super-responsible, but honestly, I'm feeling a bit egotistical and self-centered. That's a tricky moment, when you feel vulnerable because you've done something generally considered to be less than stellar social behavior. You can relax and realize the folly of what you're doing in a good-natured way or you can try covering up what you've done - or think you've done. It's easier to relax when your friends aren't adding to your anxieties by insisting on fitting in, and making you fit in. The Chinese culture values saving face much more than we do, and when its part of standard procedure, I think it helps a person to let go, because everyone knows the reality, but also takes care of the personal feelings.

I went to a few EA meetings way back when - my therapist pushed me in that direction, seemingly annoyed or harried by my complete and utter cluelessness and the fact that I didn't seem to take much action about correcting it. I felt compelled to follow up once the suggestion was put out there, and, despite the anxiety and the voices that said I didn't need this path, I went…I didn't really get it - I wasn't really aware enough to do my own work then and without support of friends, there wasn't much motivation either...but the first time I talked, a person across the circle says, "We're not expecting a PhD, just give us something simple."…That was before I started grad school, but I got that PhD, didn't I? and I still have a heck of a time talking in plain language. Get the picture? I do have to write a PhD sometimes - until I know I've said enough and got enough out in a format I'm satisfied with to let it go, be done with it - not because I should be done with it, but because I actually am done with it.

There's the need and then there's the compromise - giving up that hard headed attitude (I have semi-squares involving Mercury, and my Moon sesquisquares my Sun, which does the same to the North Node; Uranus opposes Chiron and trines my Sun.) Sometimes I get it - that I can trust the world - they're not the family I grew up in, so I don't have to come out in full battle armor, and even with my family I can trust MYSELF around them more and more these days. I can trust, and then I get a handle on that pigheaded attitude and let go of it. But not automatically, and not always in every situation. Still, it makes life so much less exhausting when you can get along and not be afraid of being unheard. When you remember that you can shut off the overactive defensiveness.

"Live" communication is not easy for me. Writing about things is and organizing things...that is something I've worked to develop. That's been my guardian protector.

I'm going to try to state a point more clearly with the hope that it describes a confusing part of my behavior that I'm very unsure of. To use shorthand, "in a past life" I think I may have been intense, adventurous, a good-time boundary stretcher, who probably enjoyed wine, women, and song...and paid for it, or maybe I wanted to do all these things, as well as perform some renowned work, but I was not ready for it and got into situations beyond my skill level that caused me to talk wildly and anxiously without much truth or power behind my words, and that led others to receive me very differently than I was expecting. This is the part of my personality that doesn't square with these other, more introspective parts I've been talking about, and I think I've figured something out by examining my natal chart from the perspective of Stephen Forrest and by using the techniques he outlines in his book, Yesterday's Skies. It is that healing those inner aspects of my personality by continually developing good, honest, and emotionally connected communication will help me grow by creating and maintaining the security of a home and a family (in the broadest sense of the word) that I want, and that's what my direction in this life is to be, already is - rather than the worldly achievement, adventure, and accolades. Its hard to change a heading, though...when I want to get to know someone, I'm still trying to be "good time Charlie," and the seductive, intellectual knight in shining armor, but even succeeding at that is not going to be much of a useful success. Well, maybe I'm just extra harsh with myself because I'm afraid to hope and to dream, except in private.

If I do go that path of boy meets girl, boy likes something about this girl, boy has to do something to "get" girl…I get so far and then I don't know where to go with it…not sexually - I'm skilled in that department - but interpersonally - and at that point checking in with myself emotionally becomes vitally important, as is connecting with someone else on that level - not in a "I'm so sensitive, don't you want to be with me" kind of way, but more like an honest, "I don't know what is going on or what the best solution to this situation is, but I'm in it again - do you know how to handle it?" Eventually I learned to frame this kind of process as a learning experience and an experiment. Somewhere in there, that quiet part of me is actually healing and connecting, but it's usually the first part of me that drives the car.

Astrologically, I think its interesting that Mars and Venus in first house Aquarius and Pluto and Uranus in eighth house Virgo all quintile the South Node, while Chiron in the Cancerian decan of Pisces, the Moon in Virgo, and Vesta in Cancer all aspect the North Node in the Fourth House. Other objects have aspects to the North Node, most notably Juno in a nearly exact (to the minute) orb of a square to the nodes, but all three of the first aspects I mentioned, plus the Node itself, have a lunar component - the Moon, Cancer, or the Fourth House. Adventure and intensity versus home, healing, and inner life. That was what appeared in an utterly logical and unmistakable way on the diagram I made of each of the lunar nodes and their aspects. I drew it up after finishing Yesterday's Skies. It was like following instructions and being really surprised because they gave you a result just as predicted, because you saw it on the page rather than imagining it in your mind, or expecting it to flow from your theories. Kind of like plugging numbers that form no obvious pattern into a statistical formula and getting a result that actually means something.

I must look pretty goofy, confused, or downright brooding and spaced out to my friends sometimes, especially when they've seen me being so confident and engaged at other times. I try to look normal and sound enlightened. This is what is going on. Except when my evil twin wants to act however he wants to just to show that he doesn't have to accept the rules of the rest of society and that he can honestly find a good explanation that justifies any kind of odd behavior, like astrology, for example! Yeah, finally caught that dichotomy, as I was reading through the final post. Both of these things are going on at once, and the second one doesn't fit the self-image I feel like I should project (have been trained to project). The first part is usually mortified by the second. I've adopted personas to make the whole thing look rational and within the bounds of normal behavior. But now, I'm beginning to actually believe that I don't have to settle for that way of being. That I don't have to stand apart or wait forever just because my folks do, or because I'm different in some ways (who isn't), or I don't "get" things at all, it seems. I really am finally starting to believe that I am part of the regular human race, and if I want to be different, I can choose to be, and if I want to be part of it, I can learn to be. And it actually could happen! - That kind of thing. This is me trying to pull it all together, and I've learned from glancing back through old journals that there is often more truth in these things than I might know when I write them, but I'm afraid of being embarrassed for finding out they're a very elaborate concoction for a much simpler, but less comfortable truth.

What else? I'm also discovering that I automatically tell myself, and others, that I'm having fun doing things, even when I don't know whether or not I am, and whether that's even a relevant question. It might be that I am actually having some fun - I certainly need people to get me away from just 'working' on myself all the time or trying to be pure or perfect about everything in my life, and I also don't want to spew negativity about something a friend's done for me just because I'm trying to hold on to life by my fingernails that day. It seems so self-centered, but I really don't know how to simply be gracious. And, okay, the truth. I know it is really important for me to meet my friends' friends so that I'm not just focused on one person, which is not healthy. I've got a clearer picture of a new friend and what I been told about their world. It wasn't easy, and meeting up with anyone from my far past is a challenge, because of the uncertainty about whether I've moved on or am still stuck in the past, compared to others. I know I need to give myself time to work through things, and handle my insecurities and different ways of processing information. Like everyone else, I suppose.

That's most of it as far as I can tell. I'm afraid to express some things more directly, but I don't want to miss opportunities or shoot myself in the foot for no reason. It would be nice not to have to act naive when I don't really need to. I don't know how to read people - or I used to not be able to - so I stand back and observe and use my wizard of oz systems of knowledge to build up my sense of confidence. I wait for things to calm down so I can find out what I really need. Or maybe I'm just a garden variety neurotic. Trying to accept it, either way.

this feels oddly like rocket fuel

The planets Uranus and Jupiter have just moved in to Aries, which is an impulsive, active fire energy. I believe I can feel that shift palpably, and my blood pressure has risen ten points, according the person who checked it last week. It feels like there's rocket fuel in my system, and just about anything will bring it to the surface and ignite it.

But, when I'm trying to find my way through the world, I notice my usual strategy is to try adapting on the fly, shifting things around automatically to accommodate people if I believe it will get me what I've determined is the thing I need or want. I'm philosophical about it, too, trying to find nuances. I study the problem, looking for ways to find it fascinating rather than facing it squarely and firmly.

Well, Uranus and Jupiter in Aries are having none of that candy-ass shit, and Pluto, backing over my natal Mercury now, feels like the volcanic event that it is.

Until my session today, I had been complaining about the way the energy felt (and worrying that others would think I was devolving if I admitted to doing so). I guess I was coming at it from a perspective of holding things apart while I weigh them, balancing needs for others over my own if it didn't create too many problems, and trying to be responsible and aware by incorporating all I'm learning and reading about into all my decisions. And, just to appear appropriately non-depressed as well as appropriately responsible and up to date, I was trying to "have fun," i.e., convince myself I was enjoying doing things "everyone should enjoy doing," though, to be honest, there was little heart involved in the effort, and not much actual reason for trying (other than to avoid being a total recluse, which is important).

All that effort to cover pretty obvious inclinations has mostly resulted in my feeling very depressed and acting in what I can only describe, in retrospect, as extremely and transparently passive aggressive (almost to the point of being a little funny) whenever a set of challenging issues surface.

I've had some actual challenges in the past few weeks - my car wasn't running well, bringing back memories of July 1993 when my Mitsu Colt committed hari kari at a gas station in suburban St. Paul; I had a new health concern surface - a little blood after I urinated - that looked like it needed to be addressed, and that isn't something I usually have to deal with, even though I almost always seem to worry about doing something for my health; I don't know if I'm working with others the way I should in my job, and, more immediately, it feels like it has been taking over my personality, even though that pay and the routine interaction with my compatriots are probably two of the things I need most for my well-being. I meet new friends and feel like I don't know how to adapt enough to their ways of doing things - or keep myself from over-adapting, let alone simply relax and do normal things with others.

I feel like I'm using a lot of other people's words here, but like the symbols in astrology, they're serving the purpose to express both my understanding of what is going on and documenting the fact that I'm making an effort to do so, which seems inordinately important to me - I have a twelfth house Mercury in Capricorn.

Back to Pluto and Uranus and Jupiter saying "Enough!" Enough figuring out, enough fine tuning, enough sampling this and that. Okay, I'm listening. But what do I need to accept your perspective, to trust their energy to get me where I need to be going?

I guess you could say my life is like a house of cards, having been precariously built with extreme precision and easily blown to the four winds. I also think of my process as doing a puzzle - scanning all my experiences and learned skills and the facts that I've gathered (the assembled puzzle pieces) to find the exact place (or set of words) to fit the piece (or feeling) that belongs exactly there. Which is fine, but sooner or later all that hunching over, close scrutiny, and balancing of cards or fitting of pieces gets to feel really cramped, and I can't help but conclude that my complaints about this new feeling of "rocket fuel" in my system might be stemming from the way I am forcing myself to keep working on that puzzle or add "just one more" story to the perfectly balanced house of cards when there are other kinds of activities that are called for to respond to this new energy.

I started my session today with the complaint/joke that the only thing Uranus and Jupiter have done for me in Aries is to raise my blood pressure and make frustration erupt onto the surface more quickly and easily than I've ever felt before. The analyst asked if I would listen to a suggestion, which was that I start providing details about the events that were causing this frustration to surface. I got into a few of the details and was trying to construct a story with a definite beginning and end, then all these other details and associations poured out at the same time, but that was okay - I may be all over the place these days, but unlike before, I know I will get where I want to go if I can just get myself underway. It doesn't have to be polished.

Where we finally arrived (with more than a few loose ends I was still trying to tie up as I was exiting the room at the end of the session), was at the fears I had about what would happen if I gave away the events of my life in a detailed manner - how I would expose my secret fantasies and vulnerable feelings that provided the structure of my house of cards, and how that would make me feel open to embarrassment or even rejection from those I had or believed I now do depend on for security. This was not hard to articulate. There was no elaborate story with tortured filtering and distracting sidebars; rather, I replied by quickly stringing a few thoughts together that drew on things I have been reading and thinking about and free admissions to the thoughts that were probably behind the feelings I was actually having.

I generally feel solidly confident in my ability to convey an understanding of myself this way, but it does take time. I have to find some comfort first, before things flow. Without that basic requirement met, I'm an anxious mess!

Astrology: Haumea (an idea, based on a web page interpretation that seems to fit my experience well) tightly conjunct natal Moon trined to Mercury, but Moon is coming into opposition to Saturn and squares the North Node in Gemini. As a side note, the South Node ruler, Jupiter (in detriment) quincunxes Neptune and the Ascendant (which I bet accounts for the odd, inaccessible physical sensations that would be so distracting and worrisome when I was blabbling at the mouth in a classroom - and i do mean blabbling - that was a useful criticism of an ineffectually applied fifth house Gemini Jupiter).

So, the security concern was based on feeling unsure about how much to share and what details to include. It was met, not by solving the problem - fixing it, in other words - but by articulating it! That released the pressure and created a significant shift in what seems to have been a pattern of thinking in which I was stuck. Because...while driving home through West Philly a half hour later, I became aware of my mind connecting the complaints I was trumpeting about the new energy of Aries and the Pluto transit to my demonstrated ability to articulate my needs, feelings, and concerns. I suddenly believed that the energy I was trying to convince myself was unhelpful was actually helping me to release the pent up anger and frustration by pushing it past the fears.

I think the key was that once I saw that I could still put what I needed to into actual words that were articulate and being heard by someone else I had grown to trust on a feeling level (even when we're fighting on an intellectual level), I felt okay about the energy and being open to the potential it was offering me to keep growing (the planets are coming into a sextile with my natal North Node). I didn't have to be afraid of releasing this crap inside me, since I knew that I wouldn't lose what I had gained in terms of confidence and communication skill, nor would my sense of a healthier, more level-headed responsibility disappear just because I felt more easily angered - that a little blood in my eyes wouldn't blind me, but might actually help me get to a calmer, stronger place.

Immediately after that I thought of a situation where an assertion of my new insight would be challenged, and the energy sunk wordlessly below the surface. It will be a challenge to not simply swallow assertion whenever someone shames me for being "unthoughtful." Or whenever I'm fretting over finding the perfect words and wondering how to convince others that they are valid. Just as it is always a challenge to stave off the desire to grab hold of some argumentative, aggressive energy and fight my way to the "right" position (that ol' South Node Sagittarius).

This I seem to strongly believe - that sometimes its more important in healing to allow a person to stumble or thrash their way to the real words they need to describe their feeling or their idea than to demand a refined, pleasant exchange from the outset. Now, who be demanding that? Hmm...where's the mirror? (Also sounds suspiciously like that aggressive energy I was talking about in the previous paragraph. Moving on...)

The interesting thing about all this is that I've just realized that I've been having a similar issue with regard to my father and my finances, which he in part provides. My father doesn't know how to be diplomatic or clear about financial arrangements, and I literally felt threatened by his inappropriate and patronizing demand to know every detail of my spending habits. What was really strange was how free and honest I felt when I accommodated his demands and felt my anguish and struggle - as well as the threatening energy from him - disappear. Not because I was the "errant son" who came clean, but because when I found that I could be honest in a situation and not be harmed. It was as if some kind of grace entered into the equation and the threat disappeared. I don't really how to describe it, but it isn't the first time this has happened.

Once when I was really angry at my dad - I was a teenager, and he wasn't giving me my freedom, most likely, as he still doesn't really know how to do - but I responded differently. Instead of arguing myself into a tense, insomnia-filled night, I wrote the letters "D" "A" "D" on a card envelope that I had in my bedroom, over and over in all shapes and sizes until the entire envelope was filled, and magically, in that process, the ranting anger and frustration transformed into a feeling of love and appreciation - not for the way he behaved, or the way I did, but just for the person, I guess. I don't know what caused me to do what I did that one time, but the memory has stayed with me and can still be useful when I want to melt some of that hard edge that I get. The gifts my dad gives me are very subtle and spiritual and don't come directly through his personality or the words he communicates with. Nor are they tangibly practical, though not too long ago, having listened to his opinions long enough without dismissing them in favor of my own equally strong opinions, I discovered that I've been automatically dismissing some normal sounding practical advice - some. I guess having confidence in yourself and knowing what you have to say is worthwhile - as well as having a sympathetic audience that is willing to consider what you are saying - are two very important components of an effective interpersonal communication. That, apparently is my father's day message.

the perfect blue house

There was a period of time after college when I walked through my neighborhood in St. Paul searching for a perfect blue colored house. I was trying out a fantasy that I would feel something full and exhilarating that I absolutely needed to feel healthy - something like the sound of a dozen brass horns playing in unison. I was also putting off dealing with realities like finding a job and paying rent by dreaming about finding a paint color for a house I had no means of purchasing for a family I hadn't even begun to establish. Perhaps the perfect blue flame of a warm functioning furnace would have been more effectual, or buying a pint of blue at the hardware or art stores down the street and painting a piece of furniture, but that probably wouldn't have seemed grand enough.

Later, though, I had an unusual dream that featured a brilliant blue color. I shared my dream with a psychiatrist, who wondered what it meant but didn't offer an interpretation. It was one of those flying dreams that ended with a blue kite, which I had been during part of the dream, angling above a long, high slightly rusted chainlink fence - the kinds you see around schoolyards - and then it did a kind of maneuver where it made a tight pivot and snapped into place along an invisible horizontal line and the blue color became electrified with silver energy and I felt exhilarated. It sounds a lot like the little mechanism that turns ignites the gas burner when the temperature gets too cold, but about twenty years later I come across Isabel Hickey's symbolic description of Aquarius - the clear, blue electric air of winter - and now I think I understand something about the dream and the feeling associated with that color, regardless of its source - I analyzed every symbol in my diary/journal and it all made sense. And given the chilliness of midwinter, I would have to say the appropriateness of finding warmth in the deep blue of an Aquarian intellect is even more suspect. I've steered myself toward more calming colors now.

There are a lot of things I've accumulated to wonder about in my adult life (and from before), and when an answer comes twenty years later, it is, like the electrified blue kite, also a little exhilarating. I think that getting these kinds of answers just normal everyday functioning for some, or perhaps 'they' don't keep thinking about these things the way I do. It's getting easier for me in that regard, and I like the idea that some day in the not too distant future, I'll make peace with this side of myself, or understand it better - that part that isn't clued in like the rest. It would be nice if I knew the answers to 'life's persistent questions' and could use that knowledge instantly in conversations and other interactions, but maybe that's a need I'll learn to let go of - or make more practical - like the need for a perfect shade of blue, which I found and used to paint my bathroom.

I'm gradually scraping that blue paint off the walls and replacing it with a lilac shade. I was nervous and forgot to sand the original coat, so a fingernail peels it off, and lilac is a color that I've read is calming for high-strung Virgo Moons, which is what I am. Might as well try it out, as an experiment, I reason convincingly - see if has the right effect on me. In any case, I'll get a nice looking bathroom, and it will have been me that made it look the way it does. With the experience I get learning how to do it in a relaxed, gradual manner, it will be easier to do other things even more creatively in the future - now that's the proper use of Aquarian energy!

Given that my first house Venus and Mars conjunction in Aquarius aspects my South Node rather than my North Node (a quintile, continuing on to a biquintile to Uranus-Pluto in the eighth), I think its useful, for now at least, to suspect that searching for fourth house comforts of the North Node in chilly intellectual pursuits of Aquarius is going to be about as fulfilling as substituting backlit pictures of food dishes for the actual thing. Although, to stretch this metaphor as far as I can, perhaps the conversation that goes on around the meal and during the preparation will be the real sustenance while the food is a really nice accent. This I base on the fact that the North Node is in conversational Gemini.

The lone quintile to my North Node is Chiron, and that is positioned in Pisces, second house. If Chiron represents the wound of separation we carry through life, and which we become more conscious of as we develop the potential and possibility for understanding and healing, then maybe searching for that object - a perfect, deep blue colored home, was a way of coping with the pain of separation I felt as I tried to maintain a space separate from my family, who, despite their good intentions, offered little in the way of guidance or support but quite a bit of anxiety-ridden pressure to do something along the traditional lines of pleasing others so as to get by in life.

Perhaps I was trying to understand why I hid my fear of 'normal' jobs and interactions with others. Had I not earned my achievements and received the academic accolades that I had always frustratingly striven for? Yes, though every once in a while I glimpsed a maddening difference between certain other peoples' interactions with ideas and the people who talked and wrote about them, and my own straight down the pike, hard-headed, and equally maddening way of hammering out of assignments and studies with no gentle reason or method for doing so. I admired these others but I didn't know how to access their 'feel' for things.

I think I can find places in my natal chart where these stories from my life and the image of myself they portray originate. There is the tenth house Sagittarian South Node always seeking another (important) adventure to be off on; its ruler, the fifth house Jupiter with its inconjunct to a Neptune MC that has often blinded me to an honest assessment of my actual skill level and my standing among others, which I need even more dearly. Its T-square to Chiron on one side of the chart and Uranus and Pluto on the other, pushes me intensely to get at this problem, but doesn't endear me to others - or sometimes myself. Vesta in sixth house Cancer has certainly added an emotional challenge to jobs, that I've not until recently been able to be firm but gentle about. (It's also made food service feel like an always available option.). Maybe even my latest find - asteroid Lilith in Cancer opposite my natal Sun has something to do with the extreme resistance to fitting into a traditional mode, even while I try anxiously to serve.

I need a purpose for this recitation. I imagine it's an exercise routine for my Aquarian Mars - trotting around the chart, finding explanations for things, honing one's understanding, while I expand and deepen descriptions of other peoples' charts at the same time. I know that showing it off is an easy outlet for me and yet uncomfortable and a little dangerous (that T-square again, perhaps) - I don't hear myself too clearly when the words are too loud and anxious. They feel dishonest in my body, and that actually causes a lot of discomfort, and I worry incessantly about that as a good, brooding Scorpio energy often must. But honest expression feels very different - a release - and simple, very simple; no need for embellishment or compulsive repaving. Which goes against my training - what do I do with all that time and energy that I'm using to belabor or refine a point I can't get quite right? That's all okay, but enough navel peering. I fear the tread of little feet walking out of the classroom.

I still find myself trying to get that big, full feeling from objects, like perfect blue houses. These days its flowers and gardens, the perfect arrangement of things on shelves, the purest collection of items, containing only what I want and need to create that sublime, big, full feeling. I've had this compulsion to winnow, though it isn't without practicality, ever since I moved into a dorm and subsequently had to move every few years, while managing all those other things that go on in one's life. I guess if I look at it from a different perspective, as something that is part of routine or a coping skill that I employ regularly, but know that I'm not doing it to find the source of life energy I mistakenly thought it contained, then it becomes an artistic process or an organization skill.

I've recently taken photos of several objects that I've had for a long time (and had been using regularly) and then I discarded the items - an expensive skillet cooking pan that I bought from the clinic I had been going to around the time I was hospitalized (I burned it and dropped it a few times, but it always managed to scrub up nice and function well enough), the flint ware sauce pan I inherited ten years ago from my grandmother when she passed on at the age of 92, the Health Valley rubber jar opening pad that finally wore out after twenty years - that one came with the sample box I ordered from the company the year I was part of the German House crew at Macalester College.

I also discarded a spatula I believe I borrowed from them or bought from a yard sale around that time. In that case, I might have been premature - the ergonomic 'eco-friendly' variety I bought from BB&B to 'upgrade' it appears to have melted along the business edge. I guess I admit to hoping to hang on to old friends and happier times with these items, and I'm not saying that kind of thing isn't worth respect. With Chiron and Saturn in the second, I don't take lightly the consequences of purchasing something unnecessarily or unwisely - or parting with objects that truly have value for me, personally, even if others might impatiently roll their eyes or grit their teeth. Writing about them and photographing them are the ways to honor them in parting, and it seems to be doing the trick for me, increasingly with more kindness towards the emotional side and more gentle determination on the 'moving ahead' side. Taking the objects apart and recycling them is also a patient exercise that honors the values I'm trying to cultivate in my life, by choice. Death - a part of the natural cycle of life. Honoring and moving on both important - necessary! And no big, full feeling needed to move on - just whatever is there.

At the beginning of the month (May 2010) I attended an astrology conference in a nice, but mostly anonymous hotel near Cleveland. This was the second time I had attended this particular conference and it is the first astrology conference I've attended more than once.

I did a couple things differently this time, the most significant of which was getting a room at the hotel that the conference was taking place in, and sharing that room with a friend I had met there last year. You see, at the heart of things, I feel I don't deserve to be around other people.

That's basically it, though 'it' is not quite that simple and straightforward. Some of 'it' is that for a long time I didn't feel okay with my genuine need for solitude; another significant chunk of it is that I'm not used to being around people who are simply themselves and actually want others (including me!) to be that way, too. I run into that problem even amongst my relatives, who are a 'pretty regular' crowd.

If you put the two together, maybe you could say that I need the solitude to filter out all the reactive behaviors I've engaged in that day in order to get along in a social environment. Only when I get enough of the 'good' interaction and the 'right kind' of solitude to go with it, do I feel like I'm feeling like who I 'am' again. And then there's a complicating factor - this kind of reactive sensitivity builds up a lot of resentment and pressure to express myself, so that eventually I end up acting a little unforgiving and anti-social regardless of how much I try to cover up. I'm analyzing my worries again. :)

There is more blunt analogy I can't resist using to describe this issue. In the second grade, I learned that the harder you squeeze your butt cheeks together in order not to fart, the louder the fart comes out. If you completely relax, on the other hand, it might come out smelly, but it doesn't make a sound. Sometimes it's fun to really rip out a loud fart. Other times you don't want to attract the attention. And what I'm learning is that it's okay not to attract attention sometimes.

Returning to the theme of being oneself: you can't get a much better example of a group of people who are simply themselves than you'll find at an astrology conference. I'm not guaranteeing that line to be 100 percent accurate, but it sure makes a statement - and I think it's probably true, though I'm discovering that there are real people everywhere. In any case, I was, for many reasons - dogged intent, accupuncture treatments, psychoanalysis, returning friends - more at ease with my discomfort this year and generally not worrying about getting into the right lecture session or talking to all different kinds of people. Yeah, I spent a few of the periods in between sessions staring at the trees behind the hotel, or pulling weeds in the landscape beds in the parking lot, but I also hung out and chatted with the smoking crowd, which included some of the people I had met there last year, staying up late having great conversations with my roommate and other friends, and just trying to be okay with it all. I kept seeing myself amazed at the fact that I'd done all this - gotten myself to this place - by myself - no classes, no professors, no parents, no colleagues - I'd learned astrology by getting the books, teaching the local students, finding astrologers and writing to them or chatting with them on the internet, and then driving to the conference. That's really pretty amazing to me, and I was also aware that I need to eventually get over it and just do the astrology with the others I've gotten myself connected with.

Last year was when I didn't know anyone at the conference, except the keynote speaker, with whom I had had some helpful, but not entirely comfortable interactions on facebook. He's a well-known astrologer with a double Aries - not exactly the type I would easily get to know, but I bravely shoved myself into the social aspects of the conference, handed people my chart and the little book I had just finished, poured over the program to choose which lecture to go to, and talked to people at lunch and dinner, always heading back to the fancy hotel room on the other side of the interstate when I had had enough. I'd figured saving money and preserving my quiet space would be a good strategy, so I found a hotel through hotwire, which has ludicrously low rates on all kinds of rooms, but you don't know the exact hotel you'll be staying at until you make the reservation. By the end of the conference I was feeling very insecure and angry and wanted only to drive home as quickly and directly as I could. Afterwords, I thought about making an even more radical statement about 'not being one of the crowd' by renting a room at a mom-and-pop place up on the lake next year, and then I took the time to think it through - by staying apart, I was making my insecurities about belonging even more obvious - obsessing over them, you might even say - which would be fine, if I really was into being apart and alone, but I'm not. I realized I was only drawing attention to my feelings of not belonging by separating my self physically at the conference. I could blend into the woodwork a lot more quietly if I had a room at the same hotel!

I've just connected this to a piece that came later that spring when I drove up north to camp for a few days. Upon arriving at the isolated campground near the beautiful stand of virgin hemlocks (a few of them started growing when Bill Shakespeare was still writing new plays), I was surprised to realize that the thought of driving into town to the grocery store felt more pleasurable than communing by myself with nature. I'd been sold a bill of goods! I wasn't just 'nature boy.' That was another cover up for the loneliness I felt growing up and that no one in my family could deal with - including me. This is me learning about myself. Hopefully there's at least one or two other persons that finds it interesting. :)

I've been reading about squares and semi-squares and the south node in the tenth house and retrograde Venus and Virgo and Scorpio and twelfth house planets...all of the things that - holy shit! - explain this stuff I've been writing about, exactly - I mean, how cool is that?! And they organize all into a system that is both ancient and ever-evolving. It is really cool, but you know what? You still have to get out there and live life! Tierney says it's the drawback of sextiles to be stimulating, but ultimately intellectual. Squares, on the other hand, are demanding action! (Nothing is good or bad in a chart - only skillfully or clumsily expressed; only balanced or needing balance.)

Clever words and a well-written essay is a part of what I feel like I need to do so that I feel accomplished and can rest peaceably at the end of the day. But another part of it, even deeper than this, is the need to just be okay with what I do and respect it without it having to be something - the best, the most clever, the hardest work. When the conference was over, and I dutifully drove straight home with only a stop for dinner and gas, I was oddly drained of that enthusiasm to be clever with words. They just didn't have much a reason to be put together into sentences at that moment when I figured I should write in my journal in the Indian restaurant at the I79 interchange with the turnpike.

I think of how that started in high school, and you know what's coming - when a lot of my friends were hanging out with friends and getting action at parties (or talking about it, at least), I was riding my bike all over the place by myself and improving my English papers with a lot of complex, flowery language. And now I have to say again that none of that is bad, but it is incomplete. Come to think of it, I was also the one who was listening to them when they had questions about what they were doing or wanted to share with someone. So, what's the issues keeping me from developing along the lines I think i wanted to way back then? Hmmm.....



The light and changeable breezes of spring - that is the image Isabel Hickey uses to describe the Gemini energy, and doesn't that sound pleasant - especially when you juxtapose it to the Libran hurricane or the electric, midwinter Jet Stream of Aquarius.

Gemini is also supposed to be famous for spinning a tale so good they can't recognize the truth themselves. I've got some pretty significant Gemini energy in my chart and I seem to always be making new Gemini friends at certain turns of my life. In most cases, the Gemini energy in my chart isn't straightforwardly or harmoniously connected to the rest. One of the ideas I've had about it (after reading Stephen Forrest's Yesterday's Skies) is that I'm to shift the emphasis away from an attention-grabbing fifth house Jupiter in Gemini and draw it into a quieter, more emotionally tuned-in energy represented by my fourth house Gemini North Node. Another is that I'm too express (fifth house) my emotions and thoughts purely, without judgment, no matter what they are. The times I've been able to do that - it's like getting that thread through the eye of a needle - a real relief and feeling of pure release - the energy gone from where it was clattering around, bent over itself in my head...

Teaching is a good test of my ability to make these shifts. I was really aware - and worried about - how I automatically step onto the stage and revel in the attention, while getting more and more scattered and emotionally tongue-tied until I run for home and sink into a bottled up period of lonely self-loathing. I observed this behavior pattern objectively during my first class of this spring, and when I met with my lone student in the subsequent class, I had times where I felt that I broke through - that I simply dropped the act. Simply dropped it - I didn't hurl it to ground to show that I knew it was act or keep pretending that I was having a good time acting that way. You know what? It isn't hard to drop the act - once you get a handle on it. It's just really hard to find that off switch! Even now, I'm acting, and i know I could be more real, but this is fun, like a good workout. But why do I have to take this act to the extreme? There's obvious psychological explanations - and there's also the simple truth that when I see others not bother to go deeper or slow down to ponder something, it bothers me. But you know what else? I'm getting tired from being an eccentric oddball, swimming against every current he can find. I'm saying lately that I want to be a normal oddball - which is probably what I really am.

I noticed that I couldn't be my honest self sometimes at the conference. It was almost impossible to get present for a tarot card reading and not simply joke around, because I was having fun hanging out with my friends. You wouldn't think that's bad - but there's something that is detrimental for me if that's as far as I go. I think back to a lecture at the first conference in 2009 - the karmic lessons of the fifth house, which I later discovered were reiterated by my nodal placements - the south node ruler in the fifth and the north node ruler in the twelfth. What's most important is finding your own truth and living it. And if that's a quiet, simple truth, then that's what it is. If it's frightening and odd, it's that, too. But it usually isn't something (for me at least) that I thrust at the world, no matter what the consequences, because when I'm being like that, I'm so braced against the possible impacts, that I can't find my own soft, relaxed self, either, and there's no reward in the interaction.

I couldn't be myself when I met with my lone student ten days after returning from the conference. I think part came from convincing myself that I was enjoying the overnight 'vacation' I took at my timeshare (:"You have to enjoy yourself at these things, you know - otherwise, you're wasting money and the efforts you made to get here, and that's a crime!":). Not that I didn't want to go, am sorry that I went, didn't get to do some astrology with a couple people from the sales staff, or didn't discover a really cool yarn shop and an astrology/tarot/reiki place that I'll probably go back to...It was just intense and I didn't feel very centered after I came home.

Working diligently to be someone better than who I am - it's a deeply ingrained habit that's hard to break - the curse of Virgo, you can say - and I can't break it completely by writing about it or going to others for understanding and sympathy, but...it does have an effect - the simple act of writing it down in some kind of formal structure and putting it 'out there' makes a statement that you're wanting others to see where you are and help you get to where you want to be.