Not Really Astrological : Big Sky AstroBlog

Jun

4

I’m at an interesting crossroads with my writing, as may be evident in my lack of output in recent months. At first I was burned out from having written the book. But I finished the manuscript about a year and a half ago, so I think that excuse is probably getting a little worn out. Then I thought, well, maybe it’s the forms that are stale; I’ve been writing about the New and Full Moons, and writing my blog, for many years now, and maybe I’ve just run out of things to say about the Moon and my cats.

But it’s not exactly that, either. Occasionally I looked back at some of the old pieces I’ve written - usually with an eye to rerunning them in my regular slot at MoonCircles when I can’t come up with anything new - and mostly I’m sort of immodestly dazzled by them. They seem so insightful, so well-crafted - like something that sprang fully-formed from someone else, and not painfully midwifed by me at all. But it’s getting harder and harder to relate to the woman who wrote them. She was so introspective… and, between the lines, so unhappy. It all made for good writing, but not a terribly enjoyable life.

I’m happier now, I think, than I’ve been for many, many years. I’m more sociable too - that progressed Moon in Aquarius, I suppose. And I find that I don’t really know how to write about happiness, about contentment. It’s something I’ve rarely allowed myself, going back to that terrible day in 1970 when my father died and the rug of my life was pulled out from underneath my happy little feet. The legacy of that event is that I’ve always had a hard time trusting and enjoying the good times in life; they feel transitory, a fleeting aberration from the self-absorbed gloominess that seems to have become my default setting. No one likes to feel like a fool - and when my father was killed, I felt like a fool for having believed life was a certain way, for harboring certain happy expectations about the way the world worked.

Always a shy but remarkably sunny child, I came, overnight, to identify with Saturn: “to do is to be.” By doing, and performing - and most importantly, by never letting myself get my hopes up - I could gain some measure of control over my circumstances.

It’s taken a very, very long time to get past that… but lately, I feel it’s beginning to happen. Call it transiting Jupiter getting ready to cross my natal Saturn. Call it the silver lining to the black cloud of middle age. Whatever it is, I’m content right now. And as a writer, I’m not exactly sure what to do with that. I have found neither the words to describe it, nor the faith that my general sense of well-being is an interesting topic of conversation.

I sort of long for the unexamined life - at least until my progressed Moon moves into Pisces.

Are you good at being happy? And are you just as creative when you’re happy as when you’re miserable?

June 4, 2008 | 14 Comments

Dec

3

toothy Our saga begins a decade ago, in a neighborhood about ten minutes from here. The veteran of two root canals, I immediately recognized the dangerous throb in my number 14 molar. Having recently returned to San Diego, where I’d never really found a dentist to call my own - I’d been hoofing it to L.A. twice a year for exams, until one of my dentist’s hateful underlings crossed me - I didn’t know where to turn. I ended up in the office of the most regrettable dentist of my considerable life’ s experience. She forwarded me to an endodontist who performed an efficient root canal and packed me back to devil woman. For reasons that are lost to history, the tooth was never capped, but built up and filled.

Fast forward ten years, to the office of my shiny new dentist, referral from trusted friends. “Why wasn’t this tooth ever capped after the root canal?” she puzzled, tapping the x-ray. “It wasn’t?” I boggled. “We oughta cap that,” she recommended. Weeks later, after receiving dispensation from the insurance company, I’m in her chair, stressed beyond belief because while dental procedures cause me no angst, I’m definitely uncomfortable in any situation that requires me to recline prone with strangers hovering over me and impeding my movement. She finds decay. She finds a crack. Alarmed, she shuffles me to another endodontist to get an answer to the musical question, “Can this tooth be saved?”

One hour and two scary, buffalo-strength shots of Novocaine later, after lying inverted for twenty minutes, marsupial style, in a frickin’ chair with a dental dam, a hose, and two sets of hands in my mouth, I hear the heartbreaking words: “I’m sorry, but we can’t save it.” Cue poignant, level buzz of flatlining monitor…

So the tooth will out, and something artificial must fill the gaping void. To understand just how traumatic this is for me, please understand a few things. First, I grew up in the 1960s in a rural place where a complete set of teeth was still a luxury few could afford. My own father wore dentures, and haunted by Dentugrip and the toothless maws around her, my mother vowed no child of hers would lack for a full mouthful of original condition, factory-installed choppers. From the age of five I was in the dentist’s chair twice a year. The longest I’ve ever gone without a dental exam was two years. I brush. I floss!

And now I’m losing a tooth, all because one dentist was incompetent and another I called my dentist subsequently - for something like nine years! - failed to point out the a dead, brittle, vulnerable tooth hanging out in my mouth. A ticking time bomb of tooth terror, if you will. Suddenly, all that stands between me and the hillbilly patina my mother feared is a stub of jagged tooth remnant with a hastily applied temporary sealant. I suppose we’ll have to put off re-roofing the house and get me an implant, because I’ll be damned if I’m getting bridgework, which the incessant television commercials of my youth trained me to regard as a slippery slope leading inexorably to Depends and Lawrence Welk reruns. I’m only 46 years old, people!

See what happens when Saturn in Virgo wrestles with natal Pluto and Neptune, kids? Innocent teeth suffer.

December 3, 2007 | 5 Comments

Oct

22

Once again, San Diego is on fire - and it’s looking a lot worse than 2003, when we actually evacuated north to escape the smoke. We’re a good distance from the action, at least for now; there are massive fires to the northeast and southeast, and somehow we’re not even getting much smoke here. Yet. But anything’s possible with these crazy-ass winds blowing from the east, straight toward the coast. Send good thoughts to San Diego!

October 22, 2007 | 7 Comments

Jul

6

Jeffreyâ€™s post about a certain Pisces Male Blogger Who Shall Remain Nameless and his ambivalence toward marriage got me thinking about that honorable institution. Somehow my career as an astrologer took a weird turn somewhere along the way and I settled into a sort of niche as a wedding astrologer. I work with brides a lot, my book is about marriage, and most importantly Iâ€™m the veteran of 14 years of happily wedded thingamie. So I suppose I have a certain measure of credibility on the subject.

But do I? Really, all I have is my own experience and a lot of opinions. Iâ€™d love to jump in and tell Mr. Pisces Male Blogger (PMB) what he should do about his marital status, but the truth is, I donâ€™t have a clue. His situation is worlds away from mine when I decided to marry. I was marrying a man Iâ€™d known for about a year and a half; PMB has lived with the same woman for 15 years and shares a child with her. I found someone I didnâ€™t want to live without, and his immigration status happened to force the issue of marriage. We wanted to get married anyway, but would we have had the nerve to broach the subject to each other without that pressure? Itâ€™s hard to say; weâ€™re both kind of shy. In the end, it didnâ€™t even feel like a decision. No one proposed to anyone; we just started to talking about it as a fait accompli (â€œwhen weâ€™re marriedâ€¦â€).

And it’s been just great. I mean, we’ve gone through some tough times together, but I have literally never regretted marrying him. Like most people I’ve seen a lot of horrific marriages, so I must say I feel pretty damn lucky.

Just after the wedding I asked my mother, long widowed, what was the best part about being married. â€œI think,â€ she mused, â€œthat it’s having someone to talk things over with.â€ All these years later, I can’t argue with that. But of course, you can have great talks with a person without marrying them. You can buy a house and raise a child, cook dinner, fight and make up, get the car fixed, and haggle over laundry chores. You donâ€™t need to be married to do any of it (if you doubt it, ask your gay friends), just a good lawyer to help cross the t’s and dot the i’s. So why get married?

Unless you have very specific religious or cultural beliefs, the best reason I can think of (which also happens to be the only argument in favor of having children that makes sense to me) is: Because you really, really want to do it. I’ll tell you, there was something sweet and powerful about standing up in front of people who had followed my hapless and debauched escapades through the years and announcing, â€œI choose this one. Loving me means at the very least tolerating him. Try to come between us and you will lose. I donâ€™t care if you gave birth to me or shared a playpen with him, you talk smack about him to me at your peril. I am your daughter, your sister, your sister-in-lawâ€¦ but before any of that, I am his wife. Trust and honor this commitment, and offer us your love and support. Weâ€™re gonna need it.â€

But thatâ€™s my thing, you know? Maybe, too, that stuff is more important in the beginning of a relationship; I might feel a little silly saying all that now, even though it’s still absolutely true. Living together for years, burying parents, watching the birth of a child, shepherding each other through illness and job changes and fights with friends - all of it is profound beyond any words you can use, and makes those words feel kind of embarrassing because they’re so inadequate to describe the reality of being committed to somebody.

Well, good luck PMB. It must be scary to consider changing the status quo 15 years into a relationship. Luckily relationships, like people, are pretty adaptable organisms. And as Woody Allen once famously said, “A relationship is like a shark - it has to keep moving or it dies.” Whichever way it ends up, it sounds like things will be changing. And that’s as it should be, of course; you don’t want a dead shark on your hands.

July 6, 2007 | 5 Comments

keep looking »

Sign of Leo

Moon sextiles Mercury at
4:20 pm on Jul.5, 2008

Moon opposes Neptune at
5:22 pm on Jul.5, 2008

Moon trines Pluto at
3:05 am on Jul.6, 2008

Moon goes void of course at
3:05 am on Jul.6, 2008

Moon enters Virgo at
4:04 am on Jul.6, 2008

Moon conjuncts Mars at
9:19 am on Jul.6, 2008