Some time between the Stone Age and the Bronze Age, while the peoples of the Mediterranean were cobbling together myth and asterism and time as eventual attributes of a religion of connection, the tradition grew that a small triangle of rather dim stars a little more than a handspan east of the Milky Way resembled a goat, and as Capricorn (Goat Horn), it was the right place for the Sea-Goat to inhabit, eternally watching over the children destiny doomed him to lose.
By now, the Moon is aware of being meat in the sandwich of science and superstition, and by increasingly presenting his own perspective, is attempting progressively to emancipate himself from the prejudices and preoccupations of earthly folk-history. Nevertheless, he cannot evade the path to meaning indicated for him by the witches’ hats of the Sun-goddess, despite the senseless complexity of their pattern—she is primarily responsible for magnifying the Sea-Goat’s loss by uncoupling his constellation from the seasons, and reducing him to undeserving obscurity. It is beyond belief that the Moon might ever evolve back into a rock, so how does the Drone know when to fly, and in what direction? He follows human practice, of course, and devotes himself to his Thou!
No wonder the Drone is so seldom successful in finding a subject for his devotion!
But wait! Driven by loss, the Drone will inevitably find the Vertex in the Eighth House, even should the wind-blown recipient of his devotion there have no hope of perpetuating her hive. Here it is, in the middle of the ocean, and neither seasons nor Milky Way could guide him, only the mythical cry of the Sea-Goat.
Are-you-there-for-me? It is an interesting question—at a very busy intersection of hotly contested terms which endanger the life of anyone crossing against the lights—which is answered in the affirmative, not without trepidation, and in a voice barely audible and without echo, by the Drone.
Yes, the Stone Circle of Wurdi Youang may well mark the setting Sun from solstice to solstice, and I can sympathize with the satisfaction of the layers of the stones, but it seems a comfortable confirmation of what we already knew, that the Sun’s arc is shorter in winter than in summer, as though they were saying, people migrated out of the Tropics, problem solved. What problem?
The problem of the cardinal directions: I know where I am, right here, but how do I describe it? How do I relate it to you, my hunting team, when you can’t see me? In our almost instinctive knowledge that the Sun rises on our left and sets on our right, or vice versa, we short-circuit an astronomical heritage more ancient and fundamental than Wurdi Youang witnesses. To say, “the kangaroo is on your sunset side,” or “the crocodile is to my south,” we have to all know what the shadows mean, which way the stars are revolving, where the Sun rose, where noon is, in front or behind.
Relationships can be like this. If the Other knows exactly where they’re going, to the extent they know where you’re coming from, and you’re actually from a different hemisphere, just get out. Simple. If you have history and want to plough it into a brand new present, and they say, why? There you have the epitome of short-circuit. Your emptiness just got invaded by the Other’s presence, or rather their self-composed fullness. If reality is not there for you to invent, merely discover, you’re still in school, at least according to the teacher. Is it so stupid to only trust those who don’t know what they’re doing? Don’t answer that.
It is quite normal to trust the ones who know what they are doing, who are in a story with interconnected chapters, beginnings, middles and an end, way off in the distance. It is quite normal to find oneself integrated into a web of connections between things and events as they are in themselves, and to spend many years of childhood and adolescence discriminating among possible meanings to keep things real. It is quite normal to take unconscious advantage of those whose reality has fallen apart, rather than to confront the insecurity of the social construction of one’s things. It is quite normal to discover it is the self as creator who is responsible for unlovability, and to have recourse to psychological reassembly.
And although it may not be normal, who cannot forgive the one who learns how to protect the heart by making love permanent, by idolizing objects as expressions of perfect love, for denying the enduring hormonal reality of romance, rejecting in the very last chapter of one’s individualist narrative needy romance’s cauldron of transformation, life’s offer of transpiration to the skeletal things one must keep connected, the trees of one’s wood?
It is self-evident that the Earth is a thing which does not move, for example in a rotation on its axis, or at varying speeds around the Sun. One cannot see the Earth rolling towards the sunrise, but one can see the Sun as a thing rising above the flat Earth. Once in a generation perhaps, one human imagination has played with the idea of the Earth rolling and the Sun staying still. Try it. It is almost impossible. Leave everything you know out of the equation, the kettle, the toaster, the fridge, the smartphone, the TV, the radio, and imagine your world flying through space faster than anything you’ve ever seen, without a hair out of place. That one is a more recently recorded experience, early in the twentieth century, of the emptiness of things.
Imagine yourself without an imagination. Dream that you’ve never had a dream. Believe it or not, there really are men who have never imagined being a woman, and women who have never imagined being a man! Not to mention men and women, the very definition of Bogan, who have never imagined themselves to be men or women! So you see that this is how everything is connected, how Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere can be a lion, and in the Southern Hemisphere a water-carrier, not by the reversal of absurdly fixed seasons, but by not assuming anything, by playing with appearances, by imagining the impossible. A crab really might empathize with the kids playing in the wet sand above its castle: a King Crab, the Lion in Winter.
Yes, you who learnt yourself as real from your parents and teachers, and what fell into place with the television, the economy and social canon allowing only a few kosher [sic] alternatives, must heal. The fabric of reality is damaged because yours is wrong, in the sense that every object is wrong, until you create it yourself in relation, shorthand for, say, “Careful, a crocodile is in the westernmost waterhole!” Perhaps with Sun and Moon conjoined in Cancer, you will be in Tropical Aquarius, and perhaps you will be in Leo. All that parents and teachers are really saying is, this is where I am. That’s all I’m saying too, and all that I’m hearing, now that you’ve discovered you’re not normal, is where you are too.
Like all creatures, we live only for a short time and then pass into oblivion from whence we came. Our immense blessing is to be aware of this, because together with fear and grief come joy and compassion.
Happiness is easy. All it takes is to be one with the universe, like a bird. Joy is more difficult. It requires conscious finitude and transcendence at the same time.
It has become fashionable to deconstruct the self, to “get out of story”, realize cosmic oneness in “the moment”, and be “present” in relationship. These contrivances too are easy.
What is difficult is to be in love with someone: lonely and connected; insignificant and eternal; guilty and forgiven; afraid and monumental.
This description fits the definition of limerence, an acutely painful disorder which it is fashionable to identify with a wound we need to heal, by dealing with our “stuff”, by doing “deep work”. In fact, limerence exists only in the mind of the friend in Justfriendistan, the one who is not in love.
Our wound is our humanity, people. We were born to carry it and know it. Our most precious moments are our most finite, our most grievous and most joyous, those moments when life explodes like the galaxy in a death-black sky.
Raphael, the archangel, is the archetype of healing, but do not understand him as one who makes suffering go away. Raphael heals the avoidance of suffering. He returns eyesight to the blind. His sarcasm stings to remind you that you are not a fool, not a baby, not a coward. How dare he, indeed! And how dare you pretend your finitude is not happening!
Venus will be free of Justfriendistan Saturday, and while the Moon sinks humbly into irrelevance, Venus, goddess of love, will once again be the resplendent Morning Star, a naked warrior, and worthy Jupiter is above the horizon.
Praise of the ground of our creatureliness is Regulus’ reward.
