Pisces New Moon; Confessions of a Vulnerable Virago

–James Baldwin

Fuck you vulnerability and the sparkly unicorn that you rode in on. I’ve done just fine without you up until now. So you can go peddle your promises elsewhere. Sure, I may risk living out my days being untouched by love. But I can also pretty much guarantee that I will remain unscathed by unfathomable loss (even though I know that is anything but true, I can at the very least trick myself into believing so). I will not crack, bend or sway. I will not swoon. I will not stoop. I will not belittle myself just to catch a fleeting frolic with you. If I work deep into the dark and lonely night, I can stave off an empty bed and hungry heart. I can be stronger than love, or at least more belligerent. I will not be tricked by your cloy promises of sweet surrender or your murmurings of redemption, recovery and revolution. I just so happen to be the only person on the planet who can fend you off, so it goes being terminally unique. Don’t blame me, I woke up like this.

And just so you know, if I were to call you in the middle of the night, broken, battered and bruised from my own self-denial and undoing it would only be because another piece of me had gotten loose; found an escape clause and slithered out the side door. If I were to show up on your doorstep heart in hand, begging for you to get out your defibrillator it would only be a moment of madness that had gotten me so excited. Because if I were to give over to your ways, to surrender my defenses, call off the troops and lay down my sword I would be placing my life in unknown and dangerous hands. I would cease to know myself as the wild animal that had survived on mere instinct and scraps. I would be forced to become the very thing I have always seen as weak insufficient and susceptible. Open to infestations of hopeful flights of fancy I would be paralyzed by day dreams and fantasies, incapable of controlling all the things that I think I do. I would be vulnerable to my own longings. These desires are strong enough to crush the very careful case that I have constructed.

So before you get the wrong idea, Ms. Pisces New Moon with your slow and sultry dancing partners, Neptune, dissolver of all boundaries and Chiron the wounded healer, let me say this: I am on to you.  I know you think that you can slip in and slide through the cracks of my shell that the pressures of time have made me defenseless against but I have your number and this system is on code red. I know that you aim to wash away the residue of resentment, fear and loathing that has collected around heart. I know that you promise relief from the suffering of isolation, neglect and separation. I get it. Plus I understand that Mercury stations direct mere hours before your arrival encouraging information to rise to the surface that has, until now, evaded my conscious mind. Yes, I know Mars in relatable Libra will station retrograde mere hours after you have gone decidedly dark, with Saturn following suit the next day in secretive, intimate and sexy Scorpio. Then Venus will Square Mars just to make sure that any and every relationship issue I have ever had gets worked until I wonder why I would ever even try to cohabitate with other humans. This does not scare me. I hear you talking and I see your lips moving, but I will not budge. I refuse to let Mercury’s change in direction dislodge an outdated thinking pattern making it so obvious that I am forced to address it as my former captor. I will not abide by Mars and let it “check” me about my issues with desire, passion, protection and rage especially in regards to relationships. And no, Saturn, I will not feature your lessons on mastery, authority, responsibility and boundaries especially in regards to my need for intimate exchanges and magical mysteries and Venus and Mars can kiss my big fat ass. I’m out of here.

So thanks, but no thanks astrology and all your New Moon Wish Lists, Mystical Mantras and Magical Manifestations. I’m done “transforming”. I’m so over “growth opportunities.” I’m sick to death of hearing all the astro junky jive about yet another “powerful” blah-de-blah “transit” wah-wah-wah. I get it; it’s intense, deep, life changing and mind altering. Whatever, I’m still here, I still hurt, bleed, fuck things up and get let down. Astrology doesn’t fix anything, new moons don’t solve anything and Mercury retrofreakingrades happen like, all the time. What good is all this knowledge if I am still rendered powerless in an unfair and impersonal universe where babies get cancer and Orcas Whales do too? In the face of a cosmos so vast that my pee brain can’t fathom even a fraction of it, I am a speck of nothingness. A miraculous creation so insignificant all I can hear when I close my eyes at night is a booming cosmic cackle.

I know. Pisces is about healing, creativity, inspiration, connection, spirituality. I know it has a voracious appetite for everything in sight, like everything. I know that it’s the soft gaze of Pisces that can melt the heart of even the fiercest of foes because it chooses to see the other as itself, as another manifestation of the divine. I also know that a new moon in this sign can be used as a meditation for opening, softening and becoming more aware of how we might flush out the infected wounds of our past. I know it’s a time to pause and consider how I may be brave enough to swim in shark infested waters with as little protection as its symbol, the fish, does. But the question remains what could be worthy of such a risk? 

What on earth could possibly shine bright enough to inspire me to risk everything just for a glimpse?

What’s that you say about old contracts I made with family members a millennia ago? The ones where I put their needs first and my own got a back seat (at best). Oh yes, I remember those. I will be small. I will not take up space. I will be forgiving. I will be a ghost lurking in the shadows. What’s that you say about being brave enough to unclench my tightly bound fists so that I may meet this moon with an open hand and therefore heart? What’s that about making peace with my past so that I no longer have to push it away? Or be bound to its dark secrets and devious demons? I know all about that. I have read the books and paid for the therapy. I know I can’t arm myself to the teeth and expect the world to cuddle me in a soft embrace. I know that there is no such thing as safety outside of loving myself through every single moment of my life. I know that in the end that is all I will ever end up with; a series of moments when I stood by myself in spite of the other choices I had. I know that the only thing that matters in this life is my willingness to meet each moment with as much authenticity as I can muster and that there is no right or wrong in that. There is only how I am from moment to moment. I know getting to even think about being vulnerable is a privilege that I do not share with many on this planet. I know that there is only me accompanying me on this weird and winding road that leads us all to one place. I know that this all ends, every bit of it. Knowing this is what makes it so brilliant, so unsettling and so imperfectly perfect. I know that there is only the mess of this moment that I can claim as my own and everything else is most likely an echo of me misunderstanding yet another offering of universal love. I know Ms. Moon. I know all of that, and yet I forget it all in an instant. I cling to my old ways. I repeat the reruns of episodes that ended badly without even knowing that I am doing so.

So (for hypothetical reasons) let’s say I was going to play this game with you. If I were to I would need to ask you for one simple favor. For the love of creation please help me to remember that I am worthy of moving beyond my past. Remind me that I am a resilient and brilliant insignificant child among children, worker among workers. I am just another struggling soul on her way back home no more or less worthy of love but always held in its embrace. But more than this, I would need you to help me feel this thing called love. If I don’t all of this knowing is no good. Then, you may have to slip me a little of your love potion when I’m not looking, get me drunk on your hooch and bowl me over with your beauty. You’d have to make a mess of me, because truth be told I’m too tired to fight you any longer. You would have to take me, and I would be yours.

Hypothetically, that is.

New Moon Blessings,

Chani

February 28

Mercury stations direct

Saturday 01 March

NEW MOON 12:02 am PST

Mars stations retrograde

Sunday 02 March 2014

Saturn stations retrograde

Venus square Mars