Today's Change in the Mars Chain of Command

Sun is in upper left quadrant at 29 degrees Virgo 47 minutes.  Chart for 11:32am Sept 22, 2013

“The buck stops here” does not apply when there are few or no planets in their signs of rulership. 

Today at 5:30pm in our town of sidewalks rolling with acorns, the Sun will leave the sign Virgo and enter the sign Libra.  The Sun’s position is always important, but while Mars is in Leo we focus even more on our local star’s location.

Rulerships are a good way to gain a deeper understanding of planets and signs.  It can seem silly to think of the Sun as being under the influence of little Mercury just because it is in the sign Virgo.  One way to think of it, without having to learn a bunch about the geometry of the ecliptic, is to think of the signs as activities the planets pass through.  Whenever any planet passes through a sign associated with basic communication, it is under the influence of the planet that communicates.  The planets are the ‘doers’ and the signs are the various activities the ‘doers’ cycle through.

What the Sun does is shine- so when it is in Leo, the sign of radiance, it is doing what it does best.  It is ruling.  When it enters the sign Virgo it is passing through the activity of fruit ripening.  It is no longer in its favorite territory of eye catching flowers but reduced the task of making sure fruit is getting just enough light to help it reach maturity. 

Mercury does not shine like the Sun but passes back and forth in front of and behind it.  Without ever going far from the Sun it rapidly cycles back and forth like a short antenna sweeping the bounds of local territory.  Mercury is a communicator, constantly making small adjustments.  It rules the sign Gemini associated with sprouting of leaves, and Virgo where the fruit ripens.  

While Mars is in Leo, the sign of steady outgoing energy, it is ruled by the Sun—but while the Sun is in Virgo it is weakening, rapidly.  Yes it shines just as brightly as the rest of the year, but we in the northern hemisphere are getting a lot less of its radiation with every passing day.  We are aware of a need to adjust to the loss of energy.  All organisms in the northern hemisphere that have evolved over the last 4 billion or so trips around the Sun know the schedule and are well prepared for the change, whether they use words to talk about it or not.

So today the Sun passes from Virgo to Libra, it crosses below the celestial equator.  (UNL Daylight Hours Explorer) But Mars is still back there in Leo rising fairly high in the sky every day, still in that place associated with flowers and courtship.  So what is Mars good at?  Mars rules Aries actively and Scorpio passively.  In Aries the seed explodes and the truth comes out, and in Scorpio all not consumed begins to decompose except the seed.  Mars is the truth, either revealed (in Aries) or hidden (in Scorpio), that life is a mess of competing interests.  Mars is the competitor, hero or soldier.  While in Leo the soldier has to play a game, or engage in theatrical activities rather than actually explode and smite the competition or sneak behind enemy lines and steal some ammunition.

While the CEO of the theater company (the Sun) has been down the block in Virgo, Mars is engaged in intellectual theatrical productions.  There has to be some socially redeeming moral to the story the hero is acting out.  Virgo productions are less geared toward entertaining the crowd and more toward encouraging them to follow the rules.

So while the CEO of the production Mars must dance through has been in Virgo (Sun in Virgo), why don’t we look and see what Virgo’s ruler is doing?  Mercury is in Libra, the sign of the harvest, actively ruled by Venus. 

We’ve got a long chain of command going here—Mars ruled by the Sun, the Sun ruled by Mercury, and now Mercury ruled by Venus!  So our hero’s theatrical production is not only overseen by a goody two shoes student but that student is under the rule of Venus calling always for balance and generosity.  But wait a minute…. balance and generosity are not exactly front page news right now.  If Mar’s current chain of command leads to Venus, then we also need to know what Venus is doing.

“The buck stops here” does not apply when there are few or no planets in their signs of rulership.  Venus right now is in Scorpio, under the passive rulership of Mars!  The planet that should ultimately oversee Mar’s Leonine march down victory lane is in its detriment. 

Detriment is an astrological term for a planet in the sign opposite its place of rulership.  Venus rules Libra, the sign of generosity; and Taurus, the sign of accepting things as they are. It is the planet of growing where one is planted.  But right now it is in Scorpio the sign of retreating into the darkness and hiding the seeds of the next generation until conditions are right for them to sprout.  Venus, a planet of peace and generosity, is in a sign of secrets and withdrawal of life.

Not only that but if you look at the charts, you can see that Venus has just finished up a meeting (Sept 18) with Saturn, the planet of discipline.

So we have a chain of command that circles back on its self.  Mars in Leo is ruled by the Sun.  The Sun in Virgo is ruled by Mercury.  Mercury in Libra is ruled by Venus.  And Venus in Scorpio is ruled by Mars. 

When the Sun enters Libra this evening the command will bypass Mercury and go directly to Venus, removing a good deal of intellectual activity from the Leonine production that Mars is engaged in, and focusing more on Venus struggling to radiate kindness from under a pile of fallen leaves and a few worm eaten apples.

Sun is in upper right quadrant at 0 degrees Libra 02 minutes.  Chart is for 5:32pm Sept 22, 2013.

Moon conjunct Saturn Today

Today we look at a stellar preview of tough love as the moon completes its passage between earth and Saturn.  Included in this post are two charts; one for the morning when exact conjunction takes place and one for evening (9 hours later) when the sun has gone down and the planets are visible.  Venus will catch up with Saturn Sept 18.

 

         Now for the view of moon separation from Saturn at sunset

 

Moon Moves from Jupiter to Mars

Saturday the Moon lined up with Jupiter at about 1pm and now it has finished lining up with Mars at about 2:20am Monday morn.  That means it has taken about 37 hours and 20 minutes for the Moon to advance from Jupiter to Mars.  Of course the Moon isn’t actually near Mars, we just see them together in the sky.   

  

 

It took the Moon about 37 hours, or one and a half days to get from the Jupiter conjunction to the Mars conjunction; in that period the earth revolved on its axis one and a half times.  In the chart this is shown through the different house placement of the planets.  In Saturday’s chart Jupiter and the Moon were shown together in the 8^th house, while in this morning’s chart they are in the 1^st house getting ready to come up on the eastern horizon.  

Below is a series of 10 mini charts beginning with the one for Saturday afternoon when the Moon was conjunct Jupiter and they were in the 8th house.  I labeled the houses in the big chart above, but not all of the mini series-- houses are always 1-12 beginning with the first pie slice under the eastern horizon (on the left side of the circle).

Watch how all the planets rotate through the houses 1 and 1/2 times clockwise, while the moon advances step by step from Jupiter to Mars in a counterclockwise direction.

 

 

 

 

Moon conjunct Jupiter in Cancer (Aug 31, 2013)

The Moon is lined up with Jupiter this afternoon, which can be associated with a pleasant day.  Hope and promise are in the air. 

This is a good year for Cancer natives because Jupiter is in their sign.  Today is especially sweet because the Moon is drawing attention to the great benific like a soft laser, or halo.  People born July 5, 6 or 7 are especially under Jupiter’s spell right now.  It feels good while the planet of soaring insight is there, but soon he will move on to take his promise elsewhere and all that will remain is the lesson gained from an inspiring experience.

Jupiter is in Cancer, which can be thought of as the 4^th of the twelve equal segments of heaven we call the signs of the zodiac.  Aries is the first section of the sky where the ecliptic crosses above the celestial equator, the next section is Taurus, then Gemini, and the Cancer section of heaven is where the ecliptic turns from a northward direction to a southern direction.  In other words, the heavenly arc of the ecliptic tops out at the beginning of the sign Cancer.  As the arc follows its descending path Cancer is the sign of giving- potential energy that has been stored is being released as kinetic energy, or spent, like water going over a fall.  That is the area of heaven where Jupiter is until July 17, 2014 when it moves into the sign Leo.

The moon will leave Cancer and enter the sign Leo by 8o’clock Sunday night.  But it will come around to Jupiter again many times before Jupiter is finished with its journey through the 4^th sign of Cancer the Crab.  Think of the moon as one of those strobe lights they shine into the sky to advertise a big event in the city center.  While Jupiter stays in the same section of the sky for months at a time, the Moon passes quickly through that same section in 2 ½ days, and is only lined up with Jupiter for several hours.

It is days like these when the Moon is in its sign of rulership (Cancer) and aligned with the planet of surpassing expectations (Jupiter) that existence is so alluring, even though we have Pluto staring the hopeful pair down from the dismally distant far side of the sun.  This pair of the earth’s satellite and the closest gas giant bring balance to our Plutonian awareness of how small we are in the scope of the universe.

Marching through the Meeting of Uranus with Pluto

Here we have Mars almost 5 degrees ahead of Pluto, but notice the little 'r' beside Uranus, Pluto and Mars, indicating that all three planets are going retrograde.  That means earth was passing between those planets and the sun.  See the Sun on the right side of the chart at 17degrees Pisces?  We are in the middle of the chart, turning on our axis, and as we circle the sun it looks like it is going through the zodiac.  There is a very cool optical illusion that happens when we overtake any of the slower outer planets- they appear to go backwards.  Anytime you see the sun on the opposite side of the chart from an outer planet you should also see that little 'r' telling you that it's retrograde.

1965 was an astrologically significant year because that is the year Uranus met Pluto.  You know how 12 o'clock is a significant time of day because the big hand is over the little hand pointing straight up?  Wellll back in the olden days.... when two planets met each other that was considered significant.  When the Moon met the sun that was the beginning of a new month, but the meetings of other planets happened less often and so were more weighty as far as time goes.  

So how often do Uranus and Pluto meet?  The last time before 1965 was 1851- so that's about 114 years.  Talk about the clash of the Titans.  Modern astronomers were not fooling around when they chose names for the outer planets.

Mars takes about two years to go around the zodiac, but when earth passes between Mars and the sun, the god of war loses a bit of ground.  Mars is on the march making its way around the zodiac for 20 months until earth comes around and the militant hero seems to grind to a halt and slip backwards for almost 3 months.  That's what was happening during the marches in Selma, Alabama in 1965.  Mars had passed Uranus and Pluto in early Dec 1964 and, after slowing down in Jan 65, by March was actually going back to visit again with the two outer planets in the middle of their historic meeting.  So Mars had a longer period than usual lined up with Uranus and Pluto in Virgo.

 Here is a link to an article about the Selma Marches with several significant dates.  The chart is for the March 7, 1965 demonstration referred to as Bloody Sunday.

Look where Venus was on that day. 

Window Treatments

Today I cleaned for ….let’s see what name should I give my friend with all the little chairs around her house.  I’m tempted to call her the chair lady.  Sandy-that will be her name.  Oh I was so determined not to clean a window today and I ended up cleaning two.  Sandy has some of the coolest decorating ideas.  One of my favorites is paper taped to windows.  Or leaves.  I don’t know where she finds the paper, the edges are soft instead of clean as they would be if the pieces were cut with scissors, and there are usually specks of something mixed into the translucent fibers.  The windows I cleaned today had paper on the lower full sized pane, and a whole leaf taped on each of four long skinny panes for the upper window.  Sandy lives in an old house in the same neighborhood where the Anthony’s used to live. 

Ok I just remembered, I already gave Sandy another name.  I’m off to look that up.  Ok Liz Hunt is now Sandy Hunt.  I like Sandy better.  I started cleaning for Sandy not too long after she moved from the hood near the Guv’s Mansion, where we (more about ‘we’ later) used to live, into the other old neighborhood where the Anthony’s used to live.

I think I write better when I don’t feel good.  Today I felt great cleaning Sandy’s; that’s why she got two windows cleaned.  But I did skip dusting downstairs and cleaning one of the bathrooms that never gets used.  I never used to leave anything off.  If I took extra time because of a project I still stayed until I got all the usual things done that I would normally do.  But I’m getting so much more relaxed.  It took more than 25 years to break me, but I am definitely now leaving things undone that I would never have walked away from 10 years ago.  I used to turn around and go back to a house to finish something I realized I had forgotten.  Now I just send an email.

So now Sandy lives in the more scrappy historic neighborhood.  I’m getting into the local politics here which I know nothing about, but that won’t stop me.  There are two historic white (as in Caucasian, not the color of the houses) neighborhoods, one has a candle lit tour of houses decorated for Christmas every year and the other has an Art Walk where local artists sell their wares from porches and yards of the houses.  I don’t think I’m the only person who would call the Art Walk hood scrappy compared to the Candle lit hood.  The Art Walk neighbors can turn out an excellent party and get some serious music going.  The Candle Light neighborhood suffers from being too close to the governor’s mansion.

Oh.  I’m going to regret this.  Both neighborhoods are way too fixed up for their own good.  I could certainly never afford to buy a house in either of them now that they have become such popular areas to live.  They used to be great for low rent dumps- old houses that had been divided into apartments.  That had always been my style.  But then I’ve got no ambition and no desire to fix up a house like the people in these neighborhoods do.  It is amazing these houses. 

Yes, feeling good today and full of myself.  Some days I wonder why I can’t be more like my customers and fix up my house and wear nice clothes and cut my hair and take care of the fleas eating my dog, like exterminate them take care.  But today I just wonder what drives people to have such big houses and put so much work and money into making them so beautiful.  I’m glad they do, because it is a pleasure to clean them.  It just seems like an awful lot of work and I go back and forth between feeling like a slug and feeling like a slug.

Now I am thinking of the snail in Pinocchio who took FOREVER to answer the door when he was desperate for some kind of help.  I guess that’s how I feel in my own home.  The house I live in will probably be rotting from the ground up with the roof sagging and leaking when they find my body a few days after I die.  Why do I think this is so funny?  How many days do I cringe at the thought of what a failure I am because of the pile of tree trunks in the front yard and the paint peels about to fall from the ceiling?  But today it is funny.

Will I have the guts to hit the publish button on this post? 

Back to Sandy’s cool decorating ideas.  The theme for today is windows.  In her main bathroom she has three frames that look like they came from beside an old door-they each have four small panes of glass.  Each frame is just one set of these four small panes from bottom to top.  There are three of them hung side by side from a pair of hooks screwed into the top with a wire run through them attached to hooks in the casing of the fixed bathroom window.  These are old frames with generous thick wood trim.  Then on each little pane Sandy has taped cut outs from a collection of pictures of front doors.  Each frame has a picture of a completely unique door with its own bit of surrounding wall and landscaping.  There might be ivy, or potted plants, or flowers in bloom, or just bare brick.  Today I dusted each little ledge of trim between the glass panes and did not even look at the pictures. 

Now that would bother me if I had not gotten so much delight from each well preserved leaf that was encased in some kind of laminate and attached to the slender upper panes in her bedroom, and the delicate paper that covered a lot of the lower pane but did leave several inches open to full sunlight at the bottom and had fair margins on the top and sides.  Sometimes I take the paper down and then replace it.  Today I just cleaned up under it a ways, and did not worry with the rest.  What had bothered me was the black ook that deposits on the storm windows and frames from condensation.  I had to get rid of that.

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I stopped writing at about midnight and went to bed.  I still feel good this morning and eager to return to telling my story.  There were so many things on my mind to write when I was putting peanut butter on toast for my son before he goes off to school.  I offered potatoes and eggs because I wanted to finish off a pot of lentils; my husband builds meals around beans, but I tend to use them more as a compliment with grains or potatoes.  When I imagine myself in front of a bowl of beans with a spoon in hand I just loose all desire.  Now if it’s a pot of beans my husband has cooked that is a whole other food experience.  He puts things like apple juice and raisins in his beans so they have a lot more flavor than what I put together.  So I offered a lettuce and tomato sandwich or eggs and potatoes (I didn’t say lentils, I was just going to put them in there with the onions) and ended up making the quickest – peanut butter and homemade raspberry jelly from Anne, who actually contacted me yesterday to offer a Christmas tree that had been banished from the house for giving her a rabid allergic episode.  I said “no thank you.” 

How do people write novels?  How do they decide what to say and what to leave in their mind?  I just want to dump it all out there like a kid emptying the toy box so they can get a good look at everything, including the toys buried at the bottom.  Ok I might leave a few in the box and close it and stick it in the closet while we’re playing.  But this concept of being a thought dj and stringing things along according to some kind of theme is a skill I sorely miss.  I need an inner editor.

The Ornament

I feel pretty rough this morning and I really want to write about that and an exchange yesterday with another concerned customer (about my health) but this ornament must have its story told.  I said it looked like something the artist son would have made.  We’ll call him John.  I feel like I’m assigning letters to variables in algebra equations!  More about that- the process of choosing fake names- later.  John is the older son and studied art or design at a fine university I think in New York State.  It has been years since I’ve seen him.  He was the first one to leave the nest only a couple of years after I started cleaning for the Anthony’s.  Though he has not been around for me to see him, the house is full of his art work from over the years. 

In the old house one of his paintings was in the kitchen, one in the upstairs bathroom one in the media room, geez I can’t remember all of them off hand.  And now as I bring them to mind I am struck by the variety of subjects he chose to paint; the one in the kitchen was a still life of a potted plant in their cellar that had vines draped over exposed pipes.  I never asked about that one but I’m positive it would be a good story.  The painting in the upstairs bath was a large canvas of a male figure seated showing the back and the lowered left shoulder; a calming study of the complete figure.  It looked like he was studying the use of color to express degrees of warmth.  The one in the media room was of a solitary older man in mid stride, a fairly distant perspective of the subject compared to his other works in the house, except for a small whimsical piece in his bedroom of a hot air balloon in flight.

What makes me think the sculpted figure ornament is one of John’s creations is a wire sculpture of a male figure that used to be perched on the light fixture of the half bath in their old kitchen.  I did ask Lisa about that one and I swear I remember that smiling quality of a really happy mother recalling the surprises that come with children; I think she told me the wire had come from one of the neighborhood refurbishing projects, very thin, plastic coated in various colors, and how John had used it in his creations.  That same figure now sits in the guest bath of the new condo, looking like a modern Ponderer.

I hate to stop here, I’m afraid I’ll get distracted and never come back, but my eyes are very sore and the discomfort in my chest has spread this morning to the neck and head and despite aspirin is intensifying.  I have to rest in the hopes of being able to work tomorrow with out too much pain.  I’m sorry to be such a whiner, but I’ve never been noble that way, and I do hope one day someone with this same condition will find courage and comfort when they come across an account of the same pain they experience.  It is very humiliating to read medical descriptions of painful symptoms subsumed under the heading of hypochondria.  Until science has a way of chemically revealing this subjective pain, like acids changing the color of litmus paper, people who live with it need to hear the accounts of cohorts to remind them that they are not victims of their own faulty imagination but people in real physical distress.

Goodbye to the 14th Floor

I finally made it to the Anthony’s yesterday at 12:15 and finished at 6:45 which meant I was still there when Doug arrived from the airport with their son and daughter in law.  I had cleaning gloves tossed on the rug under the dining room table, and spilling out of the plastic grocery bags I use to tote them to and from houses.  That same rug was also cluttered with a stack of boxes that I had moved to wash the surrounding bare floor.  The condo was in various stages of disassembly (to get at hidden dirt) and I had not even cleaned the guest room.  But of course I was lucky, as I almost always am, because they were just coming to stow their luggage before going back out to pick up Lisa at work.  She had to work late yesterday.  We haven’t seen each other nearly as much in the last three years as we did before she took this job.  She is working for an organization that has something to do with education and scholarships or fellowships.  I think it is connected with the University.  It sounds like she has to put in very long hours and is still focused on the job when she comes home from work.

When I was racing through the last tasks, trying to finish up the most important ones- I did neglect a few minor things like vacuuming Lisa’s closet and washing the part of their bedroom floor that doesn’t get drip marks- I glanced up quickly at the nightscape from the south windows.  I get a pang of regret now thinking I will never have a chance to enjoy that view as a solitary housecleaner again.  Last night I raced to wind up the cord on the vacuum and put it away even as I thought I should take a more leisurely last look and smiled at the thought that I would miss the view more than I would miss Lisa and Doug.  One day we will have a chance to share a laugh about how they live on such a posh piece of real estate the house cleaner didn’t want to retire and miss gazing down on the city lights.

This morning, as I write about Lisa’s job, I am reminded of what I will miss about her.  I admire all of my customers.  It is one of the most difficult aspects of my role as house cleaner, the psychological effect of looking up to the people I work for.  I will miss the role model that she has been for me.  I guess this gets to one of the top reasons I am writing about my years cleaning houses, this need to document how my customers have set a spiritual example for me of a life dedicated to family and community.

Last night was a perfect illustration of their unfailing tolerance- I did not detect a single note of impatience or disappointment in their voices or actions when Doug arrived with his two tired travelers from the airport.  They had been on planes for at least 12 hours and were ready to rest and relax, but came home to find that the well paid housecleaner still had not finished.  All I got was a friendly “Hi Mary Pat, how are you doing?”

When I said, cringing, “Good, but I’m late!”- their only response was, “Well don’t mind us,” in a completely relaxed tone.  I had not met Ha, and Tim brought her to the bathroom where I was scrubbing the sink and introduced her.  We had a quick friendly exchange and they returned to the living room where I could hear Doug discussing something about the Christmas tree with them.  No one seemed the least bit inconvenienced by my tardiness with getting the job done.

The Christmas tree brings up another joy of being a housecleaner; the amazing THINGS people have in their homes!  Their tree this year- how do I describe it?  First of all it was just sticks, maybe an inch by half inch thick.  Secondly, it was suspended from the ceiling.  They were very short at the top increasing in size toward the bottom, and arrayed around a central cord which must have been very strong but thin, because I didn’t notice it.  The ‘trunk’ was really formed by the central intersection of the several sticks spaced in all directions to make several diameters of a circle, or branches of a tree.  It was adorned with traditional ornaments and hand crafted originals such as a spray of small wheat stalks tied with a colorful ribbon, and a small sculpture which looked like something the artist son would have made one Christmas as a fun exercise in forming the human figure; formed of dark modeling clay it was…well I have to stop here again and explain something about art in people’s homes.

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I got up to make some tea and realized just how bad I feel.  Is it just how bad or badly I feel?  These are things I never worry about when I write in my journal.  I feel like sh…  Aspirin is helping but this is no fun.  The thing is I know these aches will return often so I don’t have to worry about failing to describe them.  What I do want to relate is the delicious taste and texture of a sweet bread I toasted to go with my tea.  When I left I grabbed, without even leaving a scribbled thank you note, a big bag full of goodies from the local natural foods store.  There is so much to tell about; the ornament, the big bag of Christmas goodies, the card I have not opened.  I have to approach this like cleaning a house and just take one item at a time and give it the time it needs for completion.  But even cleaning a house I skip from one area to another, changing from cleaning a sink because my gloves are soaked on the inside and I want to give my hands a break from water so I dust, or return to running the vacuum cleaner.  When I clean a house I don’t have to worry about losing the customer’s attention or boring, or confusing them.  I am glad I have read authors like Camilo Jose Cela, otherwise I would despair of anyone taking the trouble to read my story.

This bread is healing me.  It says on the package it is a sweet from medieval Sienna.  Pan Forte: an Italian holiday dolci with honey, hazelnuts, almonds, orange peel, citron.  Flour and butter are at the end of the ingredient list.  I have never eaten fruit cake and have always been afraid of the day that surely must come when I will be forced by Christmas courtesy to try a taste, but this bread gives me courage.  The powdered sugar on the outside of the round loaf helps, but really, after a little warm-up in the toaster this treat makes me forget what ails me.  One more piece and I hope to return later.  Right now Una (that’s her real name, everyone else gets an alias) is sitting at attention beside me.  That could only mean it is time for the morning walk.

Last Cleaning on the 14th Floor

Today I clean the Anthony’s for the last time.  I wrote a little bit about them in the Good Neighbors essay.  I’ve learned over the years that the sense of loss at these farewells creeps in quickly and is stronger than I would expect.  I used to say goodbye to friends as though they were going off on a weeklong trip and we would be seeing each other again soon, which cloaked the parting in a festive air of liberation.  If a friend was leaving I was looking forward to seeing how upcoming adventures would change and invigorate them.  In the case of customers the relationship sometimes ended because they were moving into a retirement home where housecleaning was included in the deal, and I felt frankly relieved to shed responsibility.  As much as I love my customers, I am always happy when a work obligation, no matter how well rewarded when fulfilled, is removed from my life.  I float on the anticipation of freedom that will come with extra time and energy and look forward to new opportunities that I will be able to explore.

The Anthony’s are from the beginning of my second wave of customers when I went back to work after a three year break to take care of my son.  They all came to me through Liz Hunt, a friend and neighbor from when we lived near the Governor’s Mansion.  To tell the truth I really don’t feel up to writing about all this, which is ironic since it has been one of my fantasies ever since I started cleaning.  Even when I worked as a server on the salad bar in Balentine’s Cafeteria I spent hours thinking about what how I would entertain an audience of other food service people with insightful and humorous observations about the job of feeding the public.  So here I am taking one of the first well deserved steps toward retirement from a very fulfilling life cleaning other people’s homes and facing the fact that I’m not sure I can do this (write about it) now that the time has come.

I guess I am like my customers who appreciate me when I don’t come even though it might be an inconvenience; when they do a job I would normally be doing they remember why they hired me to do it in the first place.  Among many other things they remember the patience required to complete the details that will go unnoticed by casual observers, but add up to a home that feels orderly and well cared for.  As I go back and forth between this essay and washing my own dirty dishes I wish someone else would tell my story, or that I could tell it to them and they would present it in coherent prose that doesn’t put the reader to sleep or make them cross eyed with incomprehension.  I have yet to read an account of a servant who has enjoyed the depth of friendship that has benefited me for the last 27 years among my customers.  I see so much advertising about employees being members of a corporate family and think how lucky I am to have real intimate and honest partnerships with every one of my customers.  We trust each other, tolerate each other, sometimes we get irritated with each other and barely keep from striking out in anger.  We experience in the limited amount of time that I’m in their house most of the emotions that are associated with home and family, in the sanctuary of the family.

I wish I knew how to shape a story to convey the sense I have gained over the years that a house really is a sanctuary for its inhabitants.  Even if people don’t have altars in corners with candles and pictures of saints or loved ones, there are relics of special bonds to loved ones throughout the home.  No one has more opportunities to handle these brittle icons of hopes and memories than the housecleaner and, if they are lucky enough to be able to visit and share stories with the customer, the various bones and images are literally brought to life, infused with the history and aspirations of the owners.

So today I go to the Anthony’s, who moved from their big old house in a historic downtown neighborhood of shady streets and progressive families mixed in with a few remaining low rent rooming houses, into a 14^th floor unit in a new high rise building.  They can see their old neighborhood from the floor to ceiling windows in the new condo, as well as the highway leading south to the beach.  At night they look down at moving lights on the streets and see the lights stacked in windows of all the other tall buildings of our growing city center.  Last spring I watched the sun set, the bottom of the great orange circle touching the distinct line of the horizon, and stood transfixed at the western window watching it …now here is a problem.  How do I describe the motion.  I have to stop because I cannot think of a word that contains the deliberation of movement that impresses me with such a view of the sunset.  It reminds me of a dancer making a deliberate, pageant like exit from the stage, gliding with perfect control not a millisecond too soon, into the wings.  This is the impression I got from watching that one sunset from their west window, followed by the appearance in the darkness of Venus and Jupiter like two jewels suspended in the fresh sea of night.

Well, I suppose it is now evident that I would bring romantic notions to any job or situation.  I guess what’s important to me are the people who can live with that, the customers who have kept me over the years are the ones who could put up with a woman who sees magic in everything and looks for love in every nook and cranny.  All this romance can be very distracting.  It fans the flames of emotion and leads to a lack of self control.  What I’m getting at here is that my customers have been heroically patient with my habit of showing up later and later and taking longer and longer to complete tasks.

This morning I am calculating for the last time how late I can arrive and still have plenty of time to finish before they get home.  I can probably get away with 11am; there would be time for 30 minutes of rest, or time wasted and I could be leaving by 5:30.  Their son and daughter in law are arriving tonight from Taiwan, so there’s no telling what their schedule will be.  What time do flights from the other side of the globe usually arrive?  My first guess is late in the evening.  I want to make brownies before leaving but only half of the dishes are washed and I’ve got that funny feeling in my chest.

I went to work yesterday with the intention of working only two or three hours to hold a customer over till I could come for a full cleaning- I wanted to be in good shape for the big final cleaning at the Anthony’s today, but of course I got intoxicated on the after party dirt in the Hat house (they have a collection of hats hanging in the breakfast nook) and ended up rushing through to finish in 4 ¼ hours.  I still must take my dog for a walk and take a quick bath.  I know I will need 30 minutes in the bed before I leave just to keep the shaking down.  Brownies would be so nice.  But with an hour left before time to leave they will have to wait.  I can’t rush anymore.  I can’t fit things in the way I used to, like spreading light or peanut better a little bit farther.  My body rebels at the least expectation of hurrying through life. 

The Luck of the Irish

“If you had the luck of the Irish, you’d be sorry and wish you were dead.

You should have the luck of the Irish, you would wish you was English instead.”  Lennon/Ono

I have taken the day off and resolved (again) to start writing about my life as a housecleaner with Grave’s Disease.  Yesterday was a day of worrying about what my customers think of me.  When my neurology customer asked me how I was feeling and I said fine but shaky, he took my pulse and said it was “a little fast but strong, no fibrillation.”  

To a person free of all but the normal anxiety about paying bills and getting the kid into a decent college that news would be reassuring, but in my case I was robbed of the one physical explanation I had for the mysterious feeling that haunts me under the breastbone and grows to an intense pain in my neck, head and eyes in irregular cycles.  I spent the rest of the day in circular thoughts wondering what was causing the sensation in my chest if it was not related to the heart and resisting the impulse to defend myself against the logical conclusion that I have hypochondria.   By the end of the day I returned to the Wikipedia article on Grave’s Disease that I’ve read twice before and was reminded of the tears that popped from my sore eyes the first time I read it.

It has been my plan for several years to write about my life as a house cleaner and tell the story of how I grew up in the nurturing atmosphere of my customers’ homes, strengthened by their kindness and inspired by their patience.  Now that I have been living for 3 years with the knowledge that I carry this chemical difference, and have had some time to consider the various ways it has affected my moods and behavior, I realize how important it is for someone to tell the story of what it’s like to live with Grave’s Disease. 

Today the awareness that shines most brightly for me is my appreciation for both this condition and modern medical science.  I sometimes say condition because calling it a disease contradicts my feeling that I am lucky to have it.  I am reminded of the students at Gallaudet University who protested the hiring of a hearing person as leader of their institution in 1988, beginning the ‘Deaf President Now’ movement; their demands for a deaf university president raised awareness of a culture that chooses to regard difference as an opportunity rather than a disability.  To receive a diagnosis of Grave’s Disease at the age of 51 after the body has been revved up by the effects of an over active thyroid for many years, is the same as being diagnosed with a mental illness that bears a shameful stigma.  It is handled very much in the same way that people once handled the diagnosis of cancer back in the days when it was a death sentence carefully guarded from the patient.

In other words, I was never told I had Grave’s Disease.  I had to put the puzzle pieces, which by mere chance fell in front of me, together.  If I had not repeatedly sought out available literature and asked questions of medical professionals, and if a friendly radiology technician had not told me the story of a fellow soldier’s mental breakdown, I would never have received an explanation for the wild mood swings and intense bouts of pain that I have lived with for years; I would be just another confused woman unable to control herself.

Mother without a License

When I discovered that I was pregnant at the age of 36, without health insurance, savings, or any other trappings of the corporate dream, I went to the county clinic.  Other than STD clinics I had never patronized medical establishments, but I liked the waiting mothers’ clinic; I liked seeing the various parents and guardians with infants and toddlers that circulated every month, just like me, through the waiting room and lab stations.  Eventually, I even liked being called ‘mom’ by the workers in the clinic, after wrestling with the inner conflict of feeling like a comrade in a state reproductive program and deciding that I could resist the repeated appellation as a social rank or let it help me prepare for the new life I was trying to fathom.  How in the world one of those small turkeys would come out of me was too frightening to consider.  I chose instead to meditate on the variety of women progressing through stages of abdominal growth and scolding restless children, and trust that if they could do it, somehow I would manage too.

Every month I was given two pages with a drawing of the corresponding developmental stage of the fetus.  I loved studying all the information and projecting where I was in my journey to motherhood, I loved telling my guy about the latest scientific gem that I had gleaned from the handouts or a book from the library.  I was uncomfortable accepting the WIC coupons that I was automatically signed up for and found the bureaucratic labyrinth I was subjected to every three months to collect them tedious, but like an embedded journalist I never missed an opportunity to sit in the waiting room and go through the experience of being told how I should plan and prepare meals for my family.  I learned a lot about government funded prenatal care and became a big fan of Jimmy Carter.  It was the last 2 weeks of the pregnancy and delivery that opened my eyes to why the American medical institution is casually demonized by the same people who can’t seem to get enough of it.

Ever since I was literally restrained in a hospital bed for the birth of my son I have been engaged in an uneasy standoff with the institutions that are the pride of the average American and yet the first target for blame when lives are compromised or lost.  This account of my life with a difference called a disease is not an indictment of science, American health care, or the medical community.  It is the story of my effort to make the best of the body I was given, and take pride in the woman I am.

Name Your Poison

Grave’s Disease is a name commonly used in America for the autoimmune condition which causes the thyroid to produce thyroid hormone indiscriminately.  Robert Graves was a revered Irish physician of British ancestry who published a two page article in 1835 describing 3 women suffering from heart palpitations accompanied by enlargement of the thyroid gland.  There are, however, earlier descriptions of the condition in medical literature, including one in the 12^th century Thesaurus of the Shah of Khwarazm by Al-Jurjani.

Credible Accounts of Creation

"Assigning intellectual achievements to one culture over another is a process which carries a heavy ideological load."

                                              Tamsyn Barton

                                               Ancient Astrology

My natal saturn had an incredible visit from mars Friday, Nov. 9.  The hour I was born more than 50 years ago Saturn was in the 3rd house (east coast USA) at 25degrees Sagittarius, and I do find that I bring a sober frame of mind to discussions of philosophy.  I like humor and polemic, but at bottom I approach discussions of philosophy and religion with an awareness that they shape institutions.  So I was glad to have spent the several hours leading up to that meeting of phantom and physical planets in Sagittarius with someone who cares deeply about friendly conversation and spirituality.

Western astrology teaches that the spiritual preparation for seeking truth is to enter subjective experience and face with courage and a steady hand that which we find within.  There are usually few if any people in an individual's life that have the will and capability required to accompany them on the journey into their private night.  I was fortunate to be with just such a friend Friday when preparing for the meeting with old philosophical beliefs in the process of being dissolved.  I think of beliefs as not so much things we hold to be true, but ideas which are dear to us; visions that we treasure for their ability to help us make sense of life or lead us to the kind of life we would like to live.  Beliefs to me are ideological treasures luring us into a more beautiful life, one as yet only imagined.

Myths are accounts of how life came to be as we know it, in the context of all existence and nonexistence.  Our ancestors have taken a collective look, over various cultures and countless generations, at what they perceive to be their common origin, the point from which all the miracles and suffering emanate; the first cause. 

This is the purpose of myth, to weave what we know about existence into a memorable story that captures the depth of meaning in what we are experiencing as a race of divinely inspired creatures.  We feel grateful for the gift of life and look for someone to thank, we want to know them, we are drawn into the past in a quest to give a nod of the head to them, maybe to shake their hand; some of us would like to spend time among ancestors listening to their stories, reliving their lives, past, present future in the language of music and poetry, number, nature and change.

We know this human story to extend hundreds of thousands of years into the past within a solar neighborhood that we describe in billions of years, but many of us do not know that there are sacred documents of sister cultures that date back 3,000 years which outline this same story in multiples of billions of years, following and projecting the trajectories of stars above us far into the past and future.  Many of us are not only unaware of, but convinced that no ancestors exist as far back as 3,000 years who could predict the whereabouts in the sky of a star 100 years or 1 year in the future.  We are like the indigenous people of a colonized land that have had our language systematically repressed.  Those of us who are ignorant of astrology are literally an indigenous people colonized and robbed of their native language, unable to discuss fluently our collective knowledge of life.

The language of organic time, of which Plato is a fairly recent philosopher, is widely seen as nothing more than a cheap self help distraction at best or an insidious con game at worst.  Students in American universities are taught the works of Boethius but discouraged from studying the same math and astronomy which he practiced under the guidance of Philosophy, the apparition of redemption who consoled him and lifted him up to the heights of wisdom at the hour of his death.

This is the value of astrology; not predictions, but the consolation of philosophy, the real understanding from the first duality of two particles with opposite polarities to the infinite permutations generated from there to here; all the light, explosions of stars and attractions that come from what we know not and through billions of years created us.  Our real past and future is not secret, it is shamed and stripped of the dignity of poetry, soul and assumed unity and direct inheritance from the ultimate source.  Those who embrace astrology acknowledge their oneness with all that exists past present and future and seek to understand the meaning of life through the humble study of the passage of organic time.

Now this is what I'm talking about when I say I love astrology.  Frankly it makes me feel much more sane than using clocks as exclusive measures of time.  This is the chart for the moment I clicked the send button on the above post.  How can anyone not cling to such a system for evidence of the divine? 

Our Sky Horoscopes September 2012

Aries:  You are now more than half way to the goal of breaking down barriers (April 2011) at the same time you’ve gotten a more intimate look at the function they serve.  By Sept 3 outsiders seeking to build will look to you for the inside scoop.  Sept 15, 16 you feel the need to invest ephemeral gifts of fortune wisely.

Taurus:  Sept 2 you enter a position of authority on a mission of diplomacy by standing firmly for tender life forms.  Sept 6 you leave the protective atmosphere of the greenhouse for direct access to the sun.  The 21^st a hobbit you’ve been sheltering begins granting wishes; 26^th you question whether pageantry is for power or edification.

Gemini:   Sept 1-16 will fly by in a blur of uncertainty.  When the boss looks to you for answers Sept 17-21 you’ll have enough fluency to present clear and balanced explanations with your partners.  Sept 26 you soar with eagles.  The 27^th restrictions begin to apply as you approach an inescapable task.

Cancer:   A 17 month process of stripping away the distractions of life and drinking deeply of its essence begins Sept 1, just as the survival instinct is focusing on immortality.  Sept 5, 6 your spiritual approach to security will respond to the challenge of carrying life through times of loss.  Sept 12 enjoy a good laugh with someone you love while sorting out what to keep and what to let go.

Leo:  Sept 5-7 you begin putting the puzzle pieces together.  Over the next few months you are in a position to view an upcoming challenge from various angles and test the most promising ideas.  By the 17^th you’ll be ready to seek another opinion.  You’ll have the most control Sept 18, 19; and then necessity to prepare for the future will start opposing other interests.

Virgo:  This is a very productive month until Sept 16, 17 when your mind turns to having fun with friends and being creative.  Sept  20, 21 you help someone zero in on the truth by keeping the channels of communication open.  Sept 25, 26 as you approach a long term task there will be strong opinions.

Libra:  The last half of this month if some one looked up the word flawless in the dictionary they would find a paragraph about you, and you even get to celebrate your perfection Sept 22-30 when people will recognize your charm and your creativity.  Next month the god of time leaves your neighborhood; it may take a while to adjust to less responsibility.

Scorpio:  You finally get all the control you crave but it comes with the ball and chain of responsibility.  By Sept 16 you’ll be able to see that 18 wheeler in the rear view mirror and start fiddling with the controls on the radio.  Use what you hear as a prompt to compose and refine your argument.

Sagittarius:  Some people pay to go through mazes and experience the thrill that comes from emerging after the horror of being lost.  Some pay good money to have others do their tax returns.  If intuition is the ability to connect and reorganize experience, then you are building a strong base till Sept 16.  After that you’ll get to compare notes to start composing a map.

Capricorn:  Sept 6-12 leave cares behind and have some fun.  Sept 13-17 study and practice your presentation.  Sept 20 you’ll have the wit and Sept 21 the poise it takes to square off with history and make sure at least two sides are heard.  Sept 23 you’ll still be getting things straight, but people will want to show their appreciation.

Aquarius:  This month you get a good look at what goes on behind the scenes of change.  Complicated deals and power plays that many lack the stomach for will benefit from your dispassionate judgment.  Where others see a corruption of ideals you see inevitable compromise.  Sept 2-4 begins approach to balance and 20, 21 it is reached intellectually.  

Pisces:  The beginning of Sept even if you are not a political pollster, you will be swimming in data.  The 9^th and 10^th will be passionate hunts for pieces of information and their correct place.  Late on Sept 16 you show someone what you’re doing and the process opens up to wider possibilities.  Tensions are high Sept 20 as competing views face off.