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.
