Scorpio Full Moon Reflections:
What's So Bad About Feeling Good?
by April Elliott Kent

All week, I’ve been fighting an uphill battle against profound laziness. I blame my new shoes. They make my crummy, defective feet feel so marvelous that I’ve been gliding around for days like a smug motorist in an oversized luxury car, in no particular hurry to get anywhere. I’ve lost the motivating angst of orthopedic torture. Then, too, the house next door to ours finally sold after sitting empty for nearly a year – and our new neighbors are wonderful. There goes that worry. Add spring weather that has been utterly sublime, and all I want to do is fall into a hammock under a shady tree and enjoy my many blessings. In short, I’m in Taurus mode – happy with who I am, where I’m at, and what I have.

But there’s work to do, of course, more than I can reasonably expect to finish in the time allotted because I’ve never developed the knack for saying "no." Plus, impending visits from a series of exciting houseguests have inspired me to repaint our guestroom. I love painting; it’s my favorite form of meditation. Consequently, I’m even more behind in my work because our guestroom is also my office, and I can’t seem to resist sneaking odd hours here and there to slap on another coat of satin finish – it’s such a happy, mind-emptying exercise with a pleasing and uncomplicated payoff.

While I paint I listen to NPR, which seems determined to harsh my mellow with its more or less constant stream of dreadful news. The economy is tanking, apparently, and the race for the Democratic presidential nomination is growing more bitter and divisive by the day. Food and gasoline prices are skyrocketing, and the news from Iraq is not good. I may be in Taurus mode, but the voices on the radio remind me that there are plenty of unpleasant truths in the world that should be goading my passionate, Scorpionic side into a grim determination to keep the world from careering into total, disastrous collapse.

But for the moment, our household is in pretty stable shape financially, thank goodness, and I'm honestly not partial enough to either of the Democratic presidential hopefuls to get that excited about their squabbles. As for Iraq – well, I’ve been complaining and stressing about that one for five long years, and my wellspring of outrage is pretty much tapped-out. So in the immortal words of REM, "It’s the end of the world as we know it… and I feel fine."

Contentment and well-being are unfamiliar emotional territory for me. Born with Pluto (Scorpio’s ruling planet) prominent in my birth chart, I’m by nature a rather intense personality. As for all Pluto/Scorpio types, my congenital curse is to notice everything that is dysfunctional about the world - so I’m usually disgruntled about one thing or another. What’s more, transiting Pluto is now standing in opposition to my natal Venus (Taurus’ ruling planet). A few years ago I endured a long string of really awful Pluto transits, so I’ve been eyeing this Pluto/Venus thing with wariness. The astrology books I’ve consulted have been less than reassuring: "Be ready to lose things you love," they warn, and "Let go of your attachment to things, and even to people. Clean out your closets!"

So I’ve been preparing for the worst. What I didn’t prepare for was to feel so… Venusian. I thought I’d be feeling tortured, driven, and half-mad with passion. But instead, I’m lazy, happy, and self-satisfied. Almost… relaxed. I have been cleaning out my closets, but it’s an exercise motivated less by an urge to purify myself than by a craving for more closet space. I’m eating a lot of chocolate these days. I’ve even become utterly infatuated with the color pink, a color I’ve always loathed and the color of Venus’ frilly Sunday best.

Each year during the Sun in Taurus season, the Scorpio Full Moon asks us to halt our hedonistic Spring revels and take a moment to remember those unhappy truths we would prefer to ignore, such as suffering, destruction, and mortality. But this year, I’m learning something new: namely, the same penetrating Scorpio insight that needles us with inconvenient truths can also make us keenly, ecstatically aware of our blessings.

Meanwhile, the radio serenades me with its mournful lullaby during my long, happy hours wielding the paint brush. "Here’s what’s awful today," announce the dignified but compelling voices of Carl Kasell, Linda Wertheimer, Robert Siegel, Michele Norris. I listen dutifully, but with something like a mental shrug, as if to say, "What else would you expect?" Smoothing another coat of Baltic Green onto the guestroom doorframes, I catch myself humming Taurus’ favorite tune, "Eat drink and be merry." And then, because it doesn’t scare me as much as it used to, I add the wry Scorpionic refrain: "… for tomorrow, we die."

© 2008 April Elliott Kent
All rights reserved

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