Sun: pisces (water/mutable), 7:03am - 6:04pm
Moon: last quarter, scorpio (water/fixed)
Earth: quite a bit of sunshine all day, though still cold and very little melting going on - the bird seed I scattered after last week's thaw thinking, foolishly, that we were in the clear is now under three to four inches of snow, except for the seed I scattered on the low partition wall just outside the dining room window, where the birds have brushed aside what little snow snuck in under the awning and made a feast of it where the cat can watch them
There are a lot of things to be angry about these days. Let's start with the good news: today, the scale said I'd lost a pound, despite the gorging on holiday chocolates for the past week. Also, early this morning, the package from Amazon arrived with Jeff's Official Valentine's Day present for me: two new books, including the new David Abram that I've been salivating over for months (and another, about the role of fiction in the evolution of the human mind).
Now the bad: The check from my last invoice was only just mailed out today, delayed almost two weeks because the person who has to sign off on these things was traveling. This is the second time in in the past few months with this new job that a check has been delayed so long that I've had to go nearly a month without income. With bills and student loans to pay, not to mention wedding savings, the unreliability of a regular income even while I'm working the max number of hours I'm allowed to according to my contract... well, it's frustrating. I have to be one of the more fiscally responsible adults I know, and yet even with my "cushion" of savings, it's hard to go so long without money coming in, and especially frustrating as I know that I have been putting in the hours and that the money will arrive eventually. I am, technically, allowed to send an invoice whenever I want. I had been sending them regularly every two weeks, on the dot, assuming that even if there was a wait of a week or so, after a few weeks of working those checks would be arriving regularly, albeit delayed. But as it turns out, I receive payments seemingly at random, sometimes within a day, sometimes more than two weeks late, with no way to predict. It is certainly a change from the immediacy of earning cash as a waitress when I knew, even if over time I didn't earn as much, what I did earn was mine immediately. You never starve when you can earn cash enough to at least buy your next meal. But a person could get into real trouble with all of this imaginary money being promised to them, and the checks never seeming to come.
But that's just on the personal side of things, and even that's not a big deal, just a minor frustration. On the socio-political side of things: I may have to rethink my policy about not voting unless there's a candidate I actually support. As news comes out, week after week, of all of the truly disturbing, woman-hating, worker-hating, minority-hating legislation and policies coming from Republicans since they won back their coveted power-seats in the last election, they are really challenging me to redefine the "worse" of two evils. The idea of paranoid game-theory in the voting booth makes me sick to my stomach, when the "lesser of two evils" seems still so very evil and backwards and destructive and militant. But if you had wanted to argue with me that "things could be a whole lot worse" back around election time, you would probably have made some headway if you suggested that, once voted in, Republicans would take serious and far-reaching steps to roll back women's and workers' rights to pre-1950s standards. Of course, I wouldn't have believed you. I would have thought you were exaggerating.
I feel sometimes like the ones who walked away from Omelas. Except that I can't walk away, not with Jeff's kids. It's not even like our jobs prevent us — anywhere-with-internet work-from-home stuff would be so very liberating.... but in the end, they just prove frustratingly unreliable, an excuse for Emily and others to assume that our schedules are infinitely flexible. (And thank the gods we don't have the kids this weekend, since my check being so long delayed means we barely have enough money between the two of us to feed ourselves. Like we live extravagantly or something, with our oatmeal breakfasts and our puny salads twice a day.)
I am so very bitter and frustrated sometimes. I feel helpless and overwhelmed, when I get emails from MoveOn.org and other places about protests and petitions. There will be protests on Saturday in solidarity with the union workers in Wisconsin, and my first reaction was: I wish we could go, but we have the kids. When I mentioned it to Jeff and he reminded me that this is our first weekend off without the kids in more than three months, my next thought was: so we could go.... until he asked, "Is that really how you want to spend our only weekend off?" Just the thought of it made me tired. We still haven't been able to officially celebrate Valentine's Day because of these check delays and our schedule being jammed so full it hurts. But not to go... feels so selfish, like I am weak and small and, just like everyone else, so busy running the rat race that I have no energy left to resist. I didn't want to be that kind of person. When did I become that kind of person? The other day, a woman came door-to-door asking for donations to a Clean Water initiative to help raise funds to prevent hydrofracking in the area. We tried to explain that we barely had two pennies to rub together between us, but I think she must hear that all the time, or at least enough to be only very politely disappointed. I got her information and went to their website after she'd gone to send them an email offering my time as a volunteer if they needed anything, since I have (just barely) more time than money available to donate these days. I haven't heard back from them. Part of me feels relieved.
This is not fun, or freeing. There are days when I just want to slip back into my lonely life, where at least there was quiet, and stillness, and in that kind of solitude even loneliness and grief could be beautiful. Now, half the time I feel like I'm just running around trying to keep up with the millions of demands — and sometimes, Jeff feels like a leaky bucket, so willing to always give and give to even the most unreasonable expectations, that I'm in a kind of quicksand watching the energy I invest in him slip away into half-finished projects and a million ideas that never get off the ground. And I read something today by Thalia Took, in her blog about her OCD father and the junk he made their home in, and how she had learned the "demand resistance" response to always say NO! first whenever anyone asked because she learned it from him, and from the unreasonable, unhealthy, unfair expectations he always put on her and her sister. I learned that from my mother. I had to learn to scream NO! at the top of my lungs in the face of insanity and cruelty, or I wouldn't have made it whole into adulthood. And I've spent a lot of time learning the art of yes! and the deep roots of generosity... but sometimes, I wonder if Jeff, whose mother is so supportive and accepting and Zen that she's barely there sometimes, never learned that no can be necessary. Intellectually, maybe, but not really. Sometimes I still don't know if his agreements with me are real or if he's just so good at being agreeable. And I can spar with him in debate and talk about different topics, because he'll play devil's advocate even for the devils, even for people he doesn't agree with. Which is why he's interesting, and why he challenges me. It's like being in love with everyone who ever disagreed with me. But.. sometimes, I think I need him to agree with me on important stuff, and say no! when it really matters.
This is something I'm going to have to talk to him about. And also probably having to do with my Saturn Return work, now that I think about it. It's no surprise that I have authority issues, but I think I've been successfully grappling with those issues for years now. So maybe this is the curve ball of a Saturn Return: when I ask myself the journaling questions Jeff wrote up for me, when I ask myself what restrictions and limitations I resent and that keep me from feeling free: my answer is not others' authority, it's others' childishness and neediness (and that's true for the kids themselves, too). Since I've chosen not to have kids of my own, I hadn't anticipated facing that particular yoga. If I'd had a choice in the matter, I would have stopped at a healthy, sustainable number (but that feels like wishing Josh and Fiona out of existence...). And now I'm almost laughing at myself and remembering the mini-crisis I had the other day when reading about Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and realizing I couldn't just dismiss it as complete gibberish. There are some very harmful, sad little ideas in it (like how intelligent people are so very rare and special and they're never wrong about their wonderful little inventions and they never make mistakes) — but there are things like integrity, creativity, self-reliance, things that I really go for. And more than that, the feeling of fatigue and resentment that made Rand first muse, "What if all of us 'creative minds' went on strike?" I know that feeling! I get it, I really do. I think Rand was selfish and childish to write a fantasy world in which an elite class of "thinkers" could hold the world hostage... but I know the feeling, of being so tired and frustrated and wondering why anyone else isn't stepping up to the plate to take care of all this shit, why I feel like I always have to do everything. Except I'm not stupid. I know everyone feels that way much of the time these days. People talk about apathy and nihilism, but I really don't think that's what's wrong with this country. What's wrong is that everyone is so fucking tired. And we're tired because of the way we live in this country. And we can't seem to change the way we live because we're all too fucking tired.
Or maybe I'm just cranky and dealing with post-moon headaches and my "day off" today I spent mostly drafting an essay on "Pagan pacifism" which is going to end up far too long and unwieldy to be much good anywhere, and is probably going to take a huge amount of research and, damn it, writing is hard and I've gotten lazy. I like being able to just spout off ideology, I like "talking points." They're quick, ready-made. Writing takes so much out of me. On my "day off" I spent all morning working and got only three or four decent paragraphs out, with the rest of the article looming in front of me like a monster ready to guilt trip me and gobble up every spare minute of my free time. So instead, I write rambling, whiney diary posts. And do tarot card readings. (And rethink all those stupid reasons that I stopped writing poetry.)
Break.
So just as I was about to move on to my tarot reading, Jeff finished what he was working on and we sat down to have what turned out to be quite a long talk, mostly about all of this. I tried to talk to him about the drained feeling and the "demand resistance" story and how it related to my mother, and comparing it to his experiences. This led into a conversation about Saturn Return, and me expanding a bit on what I wrote above, on grappling with childishness and immaturity as kind of nontraditional conceptions of authority and restriction.
As we talked, several things began to fall into place that I want to just note here quickly. First: the idea of confronting childishness seems, the more I talk about it, like a very obvious aspect of my Saturn Return work. Reflecting on my meditation the other night in my ritual for Manannan, I mentioned to him about the many images that seemed to stem directly from kids' movies like "The Little Mermaid" and "Finding Nemo." I'd assumed at the time that this was just a kind of "bad connection" that was dredging up all my mental stereotypes of underwater scenes, but this issue of childishness puts that in a new light. It also relates back to my last "conversation" with Brigid during my personal Imbolc meditation, when she appeared to me as a playful young girl running in bare feet through the grass and counseling me to "lighten up" a bit. I was more receptive to that message, at that time, as being so obviously good and sage advice — but I'm not sure I've been all that good in following it. Instead, I've continued to fight against childishness (or perceived childishness) in others by increasing the pressure on myself to be responsible and adult about things, to buckle down to the discipline of being mature and reliable. If Saturn Return is going to be about confronting and integrating figures of authority in my life, and the "figures of authority" that I am struggling with are (or seem to me to be) characterized by childishness, neediness and immaturity... then it makes sense that I may have to do some work on nurturing and encouraging my own "inner child."
These are just thoughts. But having talked things over with Jeff, I'm already feeling more relaxed and optimistic about it. (Also, he made me a little teacup of chocolate sweet almond milk! Mmm, nutty!)
Diary Tarot Card:
The Nine of Wands poises ever-vigilant, straining against the uncertainties of the coming future, toughened and hardened by past conflict. Perhaps too suspicious, too ready to perceive a threat, too on edge to relax and find respite — yet in the past, such vigilance has served well, cautioning against indulgence and lassitude and allowing the instinct to self-preservation enough reign to do its necessary work. The figure sits astride his lion, a hand resting retraining and reassuring on its curled horns and armored head. Still, when does vigilance turn to paranoia and pugnaciousness? When does strength become blinded by the urge to armor and arm ourselves against uncertainty and adversity?
Strength rests her hand lightly on the brow and jaw of the lion where she stands, a lion unencumbered by armor and yet seemingly more powerful, mightier and freer than his subdued counterpart in the Nine of Wands. She is the gentle guardian of strength, draped in white, vulnerable in her half-nakedness, who can open and close the lion's great muzzle with the lightest touch — the lion of the subconscious and animal soul, whose power is sleek and fierce. He is not subdued and reigned in, yet neither is he destructive and dangerous in his wildness; she listens to the dark rumblings in the lion's heavy throat, a purr or a warning, as she listens to the promptings of her own animal soul, knowing when to heed the sound and when not quiet its noise. With courage and gentleness, Strength does not need to fear her animal, and so does not need to subdue it either.
The Three of Cups dances in joyful celebration of community and togetherness, a moment of happiness and playful camaraderie. Though full of energy and enthusiasm, there is in this card none of the tension or fire of the previous two, but instead the active flow of exchange and communion, sharing the pleasure of laughter and good company. While each of the other cards face outwards, looking either into the past with wariness and hard-earned memory, or into the future with quiet will and receptive strength, the Three of Cups circles merrily around itself, caught up in the moment.
The overall message of these cards seems to be that through excessive vigilance and worry about the uncertainties and potential threats of the future (perhaps arising from past hurts), we turn our backs on our truer, more powerful inner strength — the Great Secret at the heart of this spread. By accepting that inner strength and appreciating its proper role, as gentle but courageous guardian of our animal souls, we open ourselves to opportunities for true connection and community — a cause for celebration and joy — for we can trust ourselves to playfulness and exchange without worry that such engagement will spin out of control and cause damage or harm.
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