Documenting the Search

This is a continuation from previous post:  Desperately Seeking Arshad

A few minutes after getting the 2:48 chart from astrodienst, I left to take Ms. E on her errands.  She pays me $25 every other Thurs to drive her to the grocery store.  Sometimes we also go to the bank and or the pharmacy.  Even though she pays me for the service we consider ourselves friends.  She just turned 80 last week.  I'm not a very good friend;  I went to a birthday  party her neice gave for her at the neighborhood pizza restaurant a few years ago, but have not kept track of her Capricorn birthday since.  She is a Capricorn with a Pisces moon so she is too forgiving to worry over whether people remember her birthday.  She mentioned it on the way home from the pharmacy and grocery store.  "Aghh!  I completely forgot!  How old did you turn?"

She had a smile on her face.  "80."  Pretty cool!! 

The hour and a half we spent together was pleasant, as usual, and after putting groceries away, we said our good byes until the next time and I was on my way.

Instead of going home i went past my house and headed for the apartment complex where Arshad lives.  Or lived.  It has been at least six months since I met him there and drove us to the city center where we went for a walk.  A very fast walk.

I soon let him walk ahead of me and just fell further and further behind; he seemed incapable of slowing down.  I thought resentfully about the women I've seen following anonymously behind male family members and felt myself already engaging in a battle of will with this man from such a distant land.  When it came out later that he had been a farmer in Afghanistan, his long, purposeful strides made more sense to me.

He wanted to take me out to eat, but I had no appetite.  He was so glad that I had called him; it had been months since our meeting in the Walmart.  I had no idea where we should go, it was a Sunday afternoon and there were many people out and about enjoying the fine weather.  He slowed down in front of an old fashioned looking little place that said Remedy Diner and it looked cool to me so we went in.

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As I write today Sun Jan 14, 10:06am, there is a cat rescue operation getting under way in the park across the street.  A young woman's cat ran up a big old live oak, the kind with leaves all year through, and won't come down.  It has been up there since yesterday morning.  When the owner saw my housemate going to her car and asked about a ladder, I got drawn into the ordeal.  I have resisted getting deeply involved.  I declined to even see if the ladder in my garage was available, until this morn, when I learned that my other housemate had changed the lock when she replaced the rotting door.  No matter, I'm nervous about ladders in trees.

Now there are two people with ropes and safety equipment for climbing trees.  Yesterday my American helpful housemate called an arborist buddy and he got his hand on the cat but its claws were dug in to the bark and he was worried about squeezing it, so came down empty handed.  Now, I guess he has returned with another arborist to make a second attempt with a partner.

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I usually think of my writing as a self indulgent pass time, but maybe there is some value is this exercise.  I may never know.  If it was worth all the time and effort.  To anyone other than me.

Venus and Sun meeting Pluto.  There's also the Mars Jupiter lineup and Mercury coming in for a quick talk with Saturn.  To me, these random goings on are lovely manifestations of the stories writ in our language of heavenly cycles.  I want to preserve the memories for posterity.

But there are chores appointed for today in order to fulfill obligations tomorrow.  So before taking a break from writing I will fetch the chart for 5pm Thurs when I began knocking on doors in the Peterson Street apartment complex.  I will tell you now that I did not find Arshad.  That's part of what makes this account such a wonderful example of full, but invisible, Venus meeting Pluto.  The other part is the collection of little joys that came from the search.

There was also a great surprise right before going to bed.  But all of that will be documented with the 10:48 pm chart on a future post.