Hostage to emotion

My natal Moon in Capricorn wants to rant.

Every now and then I get sick of being told how closed off to emotion I am, and I accuse all those astrology textbooks describing people with Cap Moons as cold, brittle, harsh, and ambitious as being part of the conspiracy!

Speaking for my own Cap Moon, it frequently feels under siege by more feeling types who privilege the immediacy of their intuition and sensory knowledge over those of us who take longer to get there. It has become politically incorrect to make quick judgements about people who are slow with reading and writing; but it seems perfectly acceptable still to consider people slower to access their emotions as having none.

I’m sick of it.

Just because I don’t always express my emotions clearly doesn’t mean I don’t have them. It doesn’t mean anyone has the right to hurt me by insinuating I’m incomplete, damaged, or worst of all, dishonest. Sometimes it takes me two days before I even realise I’ve been hurt, and then they think I’m crazy for bringing it up two days after the event. I’m sick of it!

The hardest word

Love Story (Arthur Hiller, 1970)

In this classic film, Ryan O’Neal’s character utters the memorable lines: ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry.’

But what if love has nothing to do with it?

Are people noticing that ‘sorry’ is becoming an increasingly rare word? In the world of work and business, at least. No one seems willing to taking responsibility for mistakes anymore — the Wikileaks saga encapsulates this on a macro scale.

A noodle story

I was watching a movie about noodles yesterday (seen it countless times, and it still always makes me hungry) and had a craving for some but didn’t have any. At lunch today, I fancied some noodles again but the nearest noodle bar was just that bit too far away. Third time lucky (in a manner of speaking), I went to my meditation group tonight, and they were unusually talkative — someone mentioned noodles.

Anger with a smile

The confidentiality clause I signed when I went into therapy was that I was allowed to share incidents that impinged upon me directly, and without revealing identities, of course. So I’m sharing one today — had a really interesting session earlier where I found myself telling off the new guy for appropriating my narratives without sharing any of his! Mars direct in Leo?! Or according to Elsa P.:

The Moon in Aries conjuncts Venus while it squares Saturn and Pluto and your average woman is deeply pissed and frustrated. I don’t know what to say but best not poke her… or best poke her.

Ha! She’s definitely describing me today.

Mars retrograde in Leo: It’s clobberin’ time!

I am finding it really interesting that Mars retrograde doesn’t necessary mean that the Martian anger turns inward or goes away. Perhaps it is the Leonine need for self-expression, planetary retrograde or not. I’m glad to note that other pro-astrologers have pointed this out: for example, astrobarry writes about waking up ‘enraged’, and Julie Demboski writes that:

For everyone, the retrograde will bring forward issues of the ‘I am,’ particularly in terms of where we ’shine’ in the life. We will examine our own personal effectiveness, especially in how our Beingness serves (or fails) to bring us attention and interaction in the world. We’ll be acutely aware that we’re on stage in our own lives; the retrograde will make us ask, ‘Who’s the star of the play?’

Maybe because Mars is now in retrograde squaring my natal Chiron in Aries (Mars-ruled), and trine my Ascendant, and the anger is triggered by the Chirotic wound to the self, but as much as I try to be reasonable (see previous post), sometimes the universe keeps throwing you curve balls until the situation gets an appropriate response. And sometimes, that appropriate response might be an angry one.

Saturn transiting the 10th house: Meet the parents

I wondered what the New Moon in Scorpio (in my 12th house) would throw up from my unconscious (Neith shares an amazingly frank experience on her blog). With Saturn in my 10th, Uranus in my 4th and Pluto in my 1st, I have been busy looking out for career, home and self issues, but forgot (or repressed) the fact that the 4th and 10th houses also deal with the influence of one’s parents (see this very interesting chart).

Pruning

After some mulling (but not too much!), I have slashed my Facebook ‘Friends’ list down from over 120 to 99. All my mercurial planets insist that communications count (Sun, Merc in Gemini in 6th house), and count seriously (Saturn in Gemini conjunct Sun and Merc, and Pluto in Virgo).

Not playing the ‘Who’s the bigger victim?’ game

One of the types of people that feed off my energy and whom I am slowly weaning off are the ones who play what I like to call the ‘Who’s the bigger victim?’ game. These are the people that appear to connect with you quickly from the start by sharing their problems. Because of the highly personalised and emotional nature of the stories, the intimacy of the relation is escalated very quickly.

The relation then becomes defined by you having to rescue them or at the very least, being available to listen to their endless tales of woe, which you realise much later, they aren’t interested in solving, merely recounting over and over. Try sharing something of your own problems with them, and you find that they can get competitive, and try to convince you that you’ve got it good, and your problems don’t come anywhere close to theirs, or even better, you find you have to turn around and comfort them for having inadvertently ignited their insecurities with your own!

Lunar eclipse conjunct Mars: Lights go out

The recent Capricorn lunar eclipse didn’t seem to have affected me in a dramatic way, but more subtly. The eclipse occurred a few degrees away from my Mars and I know I woke up on the day feeling like my fire had been put out. I was fortunate enough to take the day off.

Projection: Channelling by proxy

More thoughts on being projected on. (Note: I am aware that this doesn’t absolve me from my own projections, but that’s not the subject of today’s topic).

I was musing the last time about MV reading deception into what, to me, are neutral requests or statements. There is no better time than while Mercury is retrograde in Gemini to try and review this process.

Negotiating with gremlins

Why do we negotiate with gremlins?

This phrase popped into my head as I was trying to explain to a friend why I thought it was unhealthy to give all the bullies and bastards in our lives (and especially at work) so much power over our space and time that staying angry at them ultimately prevents us from nurturing what nourishes us.

Just think about that old apocryphal tale, but one we all recognise, of the man who gets yelled at by his boss, goes home and yells at his wife, who yells at their kid, who yells at their dog, who growls at the doll. The chain of negativity, set off by one bully, affects a string of others, only stopping because the last link in the chain is inanimate. Imagine an alternate chain where the man leaves the bullying to the bully, comes home and kisses his wife, who smiles at their child, who tickles their dog, who nuzzles the doll.

Walking the dotted line: Thoughts on Mercury retrograding in Aquarius at the Cancer Full Moon

[Cross-posted on my Mercury Retrograde blog.]

Elsa P.’s blog on the Saturn-Uranus opposition and boundary issues prompted me to post a comment there, and to address the blast from the past I’d previously repressed.

This is what I wrote:

Very insightful as usual, Elsa! Thank you!

Funnily enough I have my IC/MC on the axis of 19+ Pisces/Virgo, and last week I just told two people off about crossing boundaries. Much like you I didn’t say anything too nasty the first time, and ‘got a bat’ out the second, and they acted so surprised. The conversation went down with one of them something like this: