My essay
"The Magic of Porches" appears in Llewellyn's 2008 Moon
Sign Book, available now.
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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 whom 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."
