Friday, March 2, 2018

More about Desperately Seeking Arshad

Dear, DEAR readers, whoever you are and wherever you may be,

it is now 9:56, Friday March 2, 2018 and I am writing my first essay on my new (Acer) computer, and before I do anything else I must wrap up my story of Desperately Seeking Arshad. When I finally came out of my Scorpio tunnel that Friday so many weeks ago and laughed at the techno wizard husband’s wisecrack, I had to tell the Leo moon wife all about the day of Jupiter meeting my natal Scorpio moon. After hearing me explain the quiet wisecrack that made me laugh she asked about what was going on in the stars, which really means what’s going on in the solar system. I gave a long drawn out story of knocking on doors of strangers from distant lands and talking with the friendly guy from Acapulco in the parking lot. But when I told her the story I forgot to mention, mainly because I plain forgot, that this little adventure was not associated so much with the transits of that day, which were significant, but with the transit of my natal moon. Jupiter was in the same spot along the ecliptic as the place where the moon was the moment I was born-- that combination has for centuries been associated with an uplifting of the soul. But I just wanted to tell the story of the people I had met, the little grandmotherly looking women with children crowded around them, who could only understand a few words of English. The older black woman who was enjoying a conversation on the warm day, after the bitter freeze of the week before, with a younger African American woman. When I approached them instead of going up the stairs, to ask if they knew of a man from Pakistan named Arshad, the older woman bristled and said they had nothing to say to me, “Let’s go inside,” she said to her companion and they went in and shut the door.

I was a stranger in a rundown apartment complex full of strangers and the only one who came from this country was determined not to talk with me; her rejection was energetic. But that family behind the left door at the top of the stairs had two children of middle school age who translated for the grandmotherly woman. The girl recognized Arshad’s name, but the woman sent the boy with me to show me to his apartment. As we walked toward the next apartment I asked the boy if Arshad was married, a bigger than a breadbox question to see if we were talking about the same man, and he said, “I think so.” Uh oh. My Arshad was here alone. He lived with a roommate from his country. Had he stretched his story or did I have the wrong man? The boy left me as I knocked on the door.

Another apartment with children from preschool through middle school. This time a girl thinks she might know a man by that name and volunteers to take me to his apartment. Somewhere in all this, I think it was the girl from the apartment before, who seemed to recognize his name immediately, said, “his father is dying...” Things happened so quickly. As I walked with one of the middle schoolers from one unit to the next I asked what country they were from. Afghanistan. The light went on. I was telling people he was from Pakistan but it was Afganistan. And there is the seed of this little exercise which seems on the surface to be futile and frivolous.
That is the chart for now. First time I have managed to insert a chart into the middle of a post in over a year. Ahh. Luxurious blogging.

America just came through. This propels me forward in the DSA story. At the end of the day, after the futile search and the linguistic treasures that came from it, America wanted to ask a question. (I told my Leo moon customer/friend about this part too; the Leo moon people in my life are the best audiences.) Lately a question from America is about someone leaving a mess in the bathroom. I stiffened up, ugh. She had a notepad and wanted to ask me how to pronounce a letter! She had been gone in the evening for the last two weeks and I never asked why. I wondered if she was working late or what. It turned out she had started taking a literacy class at the local community college. She has tried, many times over the 14 years I have known her, to learn the alphabet and each time gets a teeny bit further, but then goes for more that a year without studying. Work has been really slow and boredom worked its magic. In years past she did not have her own car during these slow times, but now she does, and has taken advantage by enrolling in a class that meets for a few hours 4 evenings a week. She read the whole alphabet to me with only two snags. I was elated. That was the end of my Jupiter meets natal Scorpio moon day; discovering that America was finally learning to read and write. 

 

As I was sending the astro.com chart via bluetooth to my computer, she came through and asked, “what word is used for ….” and she put her hand to her chest, pecho, in Spanish. We had a discussion about chest, chest of drawers, breasts and senos. Senos is the word in Spanish for breasts, as in examen de senos or breast exam. She talked about how she can understand what the teacher says or writes on the board, but cannot say it. The tongue, like the fingers, is slower than the brain. And she said she needs to learn not to be afraid. No one sees the thoughts we have, but the words we pronounce are vulnerable to criticism. But America’s giant step toward literacy and speaking English is jumping ahead in the story. I guess I should stop here and get ready for work. Once again I am writing on a Friday that I clean for the Leo moon customer and her technically advanced husband. They are a magical pair. I clean for them every other Friday. Maybe I will take my new laptop to their house and ask for permission to use their internet so I can upload this post to blogspot.com.

But….there is one cool thing I want to insert. It got me to sit down and write this post. I have been studying the Greek/English version of Jason and the Argonauts by Apollonius Rhodius. Wednesday morning I discovered, from my trusty Liddell Scott Greek lexicon, that argos means not only swift, but brilliant, white and bright as in lightening. It is the lightening association which epic poets were referring to when they used ‘argo’ to describe something as fast. But the word argo was also familiar to Greeks as a contraction of ‘a’ and ‘ergo.’ ‘A’ meaning not and ‘ergo’ meaning work. The lexicon uses the example of a craft shop during idle time being ‘argo.’ That word, argo, and the little package of meanings that go with it was floating in and out of my thoughts Wednesday and yesterday.

I finished work late yesterday, 7:20pm. It’s not as grueling as it sounds since I didn’t start till after 12:30, but for a tired old (59) housecleaner that is still a long day. I came home to a serious cat fight, the fur was flying is not just an expression; if I had not seen the two cats myself I might have been worried by the amount of fur I was sweeping up in the hall. I had gone to the store after work (to buy cat food) and was transferring some of the food from a 16lb bag to yogurt containers. Easier to dispense at chow time. The youngest cat, who was the one attacked (I often refer to the attacker as the Empress. She goes after all the cats, but when they are outside they can run and get out of her way.)….The young cat was safe in the house and trying mightily to get to the food as I scooped it from the bag into the containers. I store all the food in the freezer. They seem to like it better that way. A call came in from a friend in the middle of all this after-work activity and I swiped it to the ignore side.

This morning I was writing the friend whose call I had ignored. She lives about 80 miles distant and has no internet or wireless so it’s either a phone call or a letter. In the letter I mentioned my latest Jason and the Argonauts studies and as I wrote down the part about ‘argo’ as a contraction meaning idle from working I recalled my dream last night. I didn’t just recall it; an association between the Greek word for idle and the idle nature of the workers in my dream popped into my head. Those neurons are amazing little factories. I try to imagine the last molecule building the bridge to make that connection. This weekend I will probably have my nose in the Cell Biology by the Numbers book.

In the dream last night, I don’t remember all of course, but the part I remember well was this guy running some operation that I was either new to, or maybe going to join as a worker. I asked him how he could stand it when workers were slack or did something wrong. I said I would fire them. He said he just talked to them and worked with them till they got it right. When some women were showing me how a wooden structure for funneling grain into bags worked it seemed like no one was really worried about getting anything done. The guy in charge was very relaxed and friendly. We were sitting at a table and I asked about a strange little tool he had, it seems like it was something on a key chain. There were various shapes on it. My memory here is vague, I’m only positive of the fact that I was intrigued and when I asked he said that he used to want to be a carpenter.

Any way. When I woke up I was struck by the fact that no one was really getting anything done, but it seemed like a really cool place to work. I have been thinking the last couple days about Jason and the Argonauts being a sort of genre of epic where the task is futile, or seems to be of no practical value, like Sisyphus. I have also thought about the recurring theme, in Greek plays and epics, of people trying to use the information provided by soothsayers to avoid inevitable life outcomes and always failing.

My customer Wednesday was close to tears talking about the current administration. She counted the members of her family who have worked for the government over the years, trying to make this country a place where workers are treated fairly. She said the only way she can live with the strong emotions is to see them as stages in a grieving process. She is grieving the loss of workers’ rights which so many people have sacrificed so much to gain. All day Thursday I thought about her. I have many friends, and she is a friend as much as a customer, who are marching in the streets to protest what is happening. She cannot march. She is 90 years old and I can see in her gait that she has to be careful. What do we do with this sense of futility in the face of life?

It has been years since I studied Jung’s Red Book. It was a big help, along with Man and His Symbols even more years ago, in learning to immerse myself in the strange language of my own dreams. I am lost trying to make sense of other peoples’ dreams. I am usually lost trying to make sense of my own dreams. But sometimes associations come into my mind that make me mentally stagger. I am awed at what comes in the darkness of sleep.