Growing up in New York City in the 1980s, I was gifted with an embarrassment of riches. Late afternoons, after school, at the Museum of Natural History, ice skating at Rockefeller Center, snow days in Central Park, weekend breakfasts at Barney Greengrass and dinners at Peter Luger’s. But nothing could compare to nights on Broadway. Back then, Times Square was particularly seedy. I remember clutching my father’s hand as exited a cab and waded through a sea of over perfumed women draped in fur. I saw my first show at 6, my eyes wide, nearly spilling from my seat in adoration. My father was convinced I was going to pursue acting, my love of theater was so strong. But I never wanted to perform, not in the traditional sense. It was the feeling of losing myself in the audience that I loved. The spectacle. The romance. The pageantry. It was magic and I couldn’t get enough. Venus in Leo, on might say. Or an outlet for my tightly controlled Capricorn Moon. But I think it was my Virgo Stellium, drawn to its romantic counterpart. The antidote to my more particular traits. An opportunity to surrender and merge with something wholly outside myself. The same way I would tear up at a painting, or lose myself in a novel. I wanted, more than anything, to submerge.
As I got older, I became less enamored with musicals and more enamored with sobering dramas that wrestled with the human condition. Yet recently, I’ve been called back to the classical musicals of my youth, to their ebullience, regardless of the subject matter. The dreamer in me, that despite the current cacophonous climate, that craves sanctuary. I found a Broadway playlist on Spotify, pressed play, and wept. For what, exactly, I’m not sure. But through the tears I reconnected with a long dormant part of myself - the dreamer.
Pisces reminds us that romancing isn’t relegated to what occurs between people. It’s also a heartset, a mindset and a lens. Cynicism, its cousin, is in many ways the easier choice. My first decade spanned the Eighties, but my second, potentially more defining one, found me navigating Grunge and disaffected adolescence. It was certainly uncool to care. Beneath my seeming walls, I always cared. Maybe too much.
Caring requires investment, and an enormous reservoir of energy (hello Cancer!). Pisces offers us another kind of feeling, one that takes us beyond the earth plane, that feels otherworldly, that invites magic and mystery and the unseen into even the most mundane of circumstances, that sees the world, even in inanimate, as animate. There is poetry everywhere, in every moment, if we’re willing to risk letting it in. Faith. That even the darkest moments offer glimmers of light. That something greater, some cosmic force, knows better than we mortals ever would or could. That there are reasons beyond our comprehension. That this world will never quite make sense.
We live in a cynical world, but we don’t have to submit to its claims. We can pause to take in the sunset, a twittering bird that crosses our path, the way the light floats in a corner of a room, a turn of phrase. We can choose into beauty . We can choose, despite all the advice to the contrary, to believe in the good, the transcendent and true. Not in spite of all the sorrow and tragedy, but because of it. Do we really want to lend ourselves to the worst humanity has to offer? Do we really want to give up that easy?
Radical Acceptance. Pisces invites us into the unseen world, into serendipity, and mystery. Not all things are meant to be known, or quantified or understood. Sometimes they can only be felt. Neptune softens the Moon here, Jupiter expands. But it’s not information we’re after. It’ll never be enough. The Hungry Ghost dwells within all. No, it’s something else. Tender, unprovoked, healing, grace. The barriers between us soften, our compassion deepens. What is it we’re so afraid of? The unknown? It’s all unknown. Every moment beyond this one a projection. Eclipses run on nineteen year cycles. September 2005. What themes are emerging? Have we evolved? Have we surrendered to this life, this incarnation, the sphinx’s riddle? Whatever the path, there’s a lesson to learn. The escape hatch a myth, is one. However circuitous the journey, it’s always a journey home. What - or who - needs to be forgiven? How long are we going to convince ourselves that the shame, anger and resentment are worth their cost? Maybe we don’t have the answers. Maybe we’re not meant to. More, as they say, will be revealed. It’s the mystery that sustains. The mystery that contains the magic. Let go and let God. The rest, the rest will sort itself out.
Some notes:
Astrology 101 Live Zoom Course begins October 22nd. Note that the rate will increase after the Equinox on September 22nd