The Time of the Lion

My Dad is Dead



In this later portion of the month of July heralding in the time of Leo in the year 2008, I find myself in the sad position of having to begin mourning the death of my father. What makes this especially strange and disorienting for me is the fact that he is still very much alive, but in the late stages of Alzheimer’s disease in which it seems like his ability to move around and to eat by himself is at long last winding down. He is often in and out of the hospital for various ailments that involve the shutting down of his connections between his brain and his body. He is having grand mal seizures even though he is on anti-seizure medication. He is no longer able to walk on his own; it seems like only yesterday, however, that he was carrying groceries for my mother and washing a few dishes. The two of them would walk down a short hill to a market close by to their home in Espoo, Finland and shop very slowly and deliberately for food items.

My mother, Taina, is my father’s sole care provider now and due to some of her own neurotic proclivities, my sense is that she has suppressed her noticing of the steady decline within my father’s general condition. Both my parents reside in the cold clime of Espoo, Finland and I am their only child.

As for myself, I live in Burlington, Vermont – ironically not so different from Scandinavia in both temperature and climate. My wife and I are late bloomers and are just now getting our own acts together in our mid forties. My wife’s father is already deceased.

Back in Finland, my mother still today seems to interpret my father’s guttural utterances as real speech and the fact that he wears diapers and soils them as a simple adjustment in lifestyle. I guess that this could be viewed as a powerful kind of lasting love – yet it is still sad because it seems to involve many levels of fantasy and misperception on her part. My sense is that she doesn’t know that he is going down for the count very soon. The fact remains, however, that the person that I knew as my father has been gone for almost a decade now. It is frustrating for me because I don’t consider myself as having been a very together twenty something. When I was in my twenties …wow!... that would have been the time to have had more serious conversations with my father and to have asked him about those life defining issues that had defined our early family experiences together. It was too late to ask my father these kinds of serious questions even ten years ago when I was 33 because it was obvious that he was no longer completely there. His personality had patina all over it and his answers to my inquiries were blunted and listless. There was no real wisdom in him to impart anymore.

What makes this process of grieving for my father strangely complex for me emotionally is that for years I was angry that just when I had reached some real truths about my own very flawed childhood and youth – he had already begun to diminish like a flickering light bulb in a David Lynch film. The bastard had escaped my complicated questions – not that he had done this on purpose, it’s just that the illness seemed to really come on at a strangely perfect time for him. He was drifting out of harbor when my well-stocked boat was finally beginning to come in. It is hard not to be resentful of this dynamic that on some level went his way. There was never a reckoning between the two of us.

When I turned forty years old in 2004 I was particularly ready to call Juha on his anger, his foolish going along with my crazy mother’s plans and desires and on his hyper criticalness of much of our early family life. These topics were fated never to be discussed by Juha and me, however, because his mind was long gone by the time I had arrived at an understanding of these dysfunctions. I am not sure if I had wanted him mentally healthy in later life for purely selfish reasons, so that I could debate him and win, or so that I could simply let fly with a few of my own points of pain from my upbringing. Regardless, I was never to have any of these conversations with him because his mind and personality were already floating out to sea in crackling iceberg-like chunks.

My present therapist seems to think that all of these conversations and barbed questions about my childhood actually being put to my father wouldn’t have accomplished anything anyway for any of us. My father was who he was -- an angry and scared little boy who would take chances on new ways of life only to find most of them relatively difficult to sustain. Juha was smart and good at being “under the gun” and I think that he was by nature a friendly guy; this was the part of his personality that I could best deal with. His defending of abused animals and bullying human behavior was a thing of beauty for in this act I could see him as a strong and just man who would launch into action even against larger foes. He also stoically held my hand when I cried at my fiancée’s funeral in 1997, but there was no way that he could really relate to the hugeness of that particular loss for me. He never asked me the simple question of “Will you be able to go on?” The double Libra that I am would have wanted to hear such an honest, direct, and loving question. Instead, I had to fend for myself and decide on the answer.

Today during the summer of 2008 my mother still sends me a steady flow of pictures of my father. His face is wrinkled and ashen and there is an unmistakable lost look in his eyes; I don’t see much “soul” in there anymore. I try to imagine what he is thinking or seeing from behind those squinting eyes behind thick glasses. In his eyes I think that I see a tired and wiped out “youth”. Maybe in his reverie he is back in rural Finland during the war years, or maybe he is in New York City attending Columbia University, or maybe he is actually in a world from within a storybook in which fun and good times are being merrily had by all. Possibly he is out fishing as a youngster with his own father.

Whatever the scenario is that he now inhabits, the fiery “nowness” of him (he was a Leo) has been gone for over a decade and really it has been my crafty mother who has led my father around quite efficiently these past fifteen years. She’s kept him alive to be sure with proper nutrition and exercise, but has he been happy for this service? This is a difficult question to answer and it contains many levels ... I mean was he happy (is he happy?) being kept alive or would a quicker demise have been preferable to sitting in soiled diapers and being spoon fed bananas? My mother loves to infantilize him and in a strange way it is a blessing for her that his later years instead of being full of fury over their angry marriage have been about Mommy making food for “little” Juha. Wow! That is perfect. He became the grandchild I assume they both always wanted from me. Her hyper-controlling care giving was finally put into permanent work mode. She had received a care giving project 24-7-365.

When my father retired in 1999 from teaching in an adult education institute in Jyvaskyla, Finland – he was sixty four years old. As I think back to my mother’s fawning over him while on the phone with me as she discussed how he was feted by the principal and faculty of the institute at a retirement dinner, I can’t help but wonder if he had been forced out of that position a little early because he was no longer in control of his once methodically quick mental faculties. From pictures of this dinner event I see a growing dullness in his eyes. He was probably an excellent educator at that point with a specialty in accounting and business management and I felt sadly for him that he was not allowed to age well like some folks get to do; I recently read a review of a John Fogerty concert in Helsinki and at 63, Fogerty is said to be doing the best work of his life on stage! Though an ex-superstar, Fogerty is achieving that real depth of self-actualization late in his career perhaps in the same way as the Rolling Stones continue to do while touring well into their sixties.

This was not to be in the case of my father and for that I am very sad. More and more I believe that my father was put out to pasture as a steady decline had begun within him and I doubt that my mother even noticed it at first. My mother should have seen the decline and brought him to see a neurologist a decade ago, not that anything could have been done. It would have at least been an example of “it is the thought that counts.” Instead, she did nothing and let him drift off.

My mother may have secretly welcomed the slow down; I can’t believe what would have served her better than being gradually able to care for Juha, now as her faux grandchild or some such thing. Probably his resistance to her controlling behaviors went down to zero and my mother was able to transform herself into the perfect dictator a la nurse Ratchet from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. What she said was the law from then on and Juha had to comply.

When my father visited me without the company of my mother in Massachusetts over ten years ago, I remember even then seeing his frailties and this was at the same point in time when I was about to begin psychotherapy during which I would really find out what was going down within the Kaarla family dynamic and how supported I had been in our early family years together. At that point in time I was living in Wareham, Massachusetts; I was 32 and he was 63. During that summer’s month-long visit which began at the graveside of my fiancée, I believe that he felt mixed emotions about me and the funeral although I have no way of knowing what he was actually thinking.

After the funeral I was finishing grad school in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts and showing him the seaside wonders of the Cape (he loved the ocean), I believe that he must have felt some kind of satisfaction from seeing me teaching tennis, playing guitar and recording songs and negotiating the writing of the masters thesis towards my MA degree in Professional Writing from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Though he himself had gotten an MBA from Columbia, I think that he may have sensed that I was getting to be a bit more competent even than he was at negotiating life. It’s not like I beat him at anything, though. His start as a war orphan in Finland was truly terrible and it is amazing that he achieved what he did. Juha had lost all of his family during WW2 and had ended up being shuttled from one location to the next incessantly for his first eighteen years of life. Is it any wonder that his career ended at a master’s degree and a series of disparate jobs? I have no doubt that he would have enjoyed reaching the level of tenured history professor for a major university … but that was not to be the case.

From my lowly perspective, however, my Leo father’s criticalness of me never ebbed during his final semi-competent visit with me. As I showed him a video of my band playing in a large club on a high stage, he kept shouting at the screen and saying that the whole band really needed to move more and that the singer needed to put more of a show on. The video had been shot by my deceased partner who had breast cancer at the time and just getting to that show had been an arduous undertaking for us. My father couldn’t have played a G chord on the guitar to save his life. His criticism of the best group that I had ever gotten together stung like salt-dipped darts and I felt strongly that I would never amount to anything good in this lifetime for always whatever I got together was to be inferior. I am not sure what my father’s rising sign was, but he certainly knew how to launch into stinging criticism.

As my father visited during that summer of 1997, I noticed that there was plenty that I didn’t like about him. For one, there was his “silly drinking”. I call it silly because his drunkenness was never angry or noisy which was fine by me; I don’t like to make a scene either when I knock a few back. I do feel that he would lose control quickly of time and schedules, however, and just keep drinking beer after beer at our favorite pizzeria in Onset, Massachusetts by the name of Marc Anthony’s. The Italian owners loved this skinny pale man because with each gulp of pizza and splash of beer he would exclaim “Erik, this is the best pizza and beer I have ever had.” I did love his boyish enthusiasm, but he couldn’t stop himself from drinking Bud on tap and gorging himself on pizza. It was strange, then, at 32 to have to start in with “Dad, we have to leave now. I have to correct student essays tonight.” I kept having a sense that he could have kept himself more together for me; I had just lost my partner of nine years to cancer and instead of being “aware and alert” as he had beat into me as a mantra during my teen years and young adulthood … he just allowed himself to party down. Maybe that was OK – he was certainly overdue for some kind of a vacation. My mother had henpecked him to death, but I was grief stricken and under the gun at school – why did I have to play older brother suddenly? I thought that he was supposed to teach me how to keep it together.

Perhaps the connection that my father and I share quite significantly is the sense that “We could have been contenders.” Just as Marlon Brando uttered these lines in the famous film “On the Waterfront”, I believe that this idea is one that I sort of received both from my father first hand and then enacted through my own actions in life.

The whole Kaarla family script was, in fact, “If only blank had not happened, then blank would have happened for us.”
There was this crazy belief that we all could have been something great… if only. My mother could have returned to learning something at the graduate level, my father could have held on to one job and found job security and I would have done consistently well in school and become famous at something.

Strangely, I truly do believe that my father could have amounted to something magnificent if his life had contained more resources, luck and opportunities … and isn’t that what all males want? I am not sure that we men necessarily want to be remembered for all time, but I do believe that we want to achieve a competency or skill that makes us feel that the hardships of life are worth enduring and that just like interest in the banks of yore – that our efforts and skills compound and amount to something in the end. Something of value needs ultimately to win out after living out a life.

Unfortunately, the depression that I often suffer from feels that this is just not so for most of us ... most of the time. It feels that for only a few of us our efforts seem to compound and triplicate resulting in something fantastic that may endure the test of time for awhile. Juha seemed to have to battle through private war after private war in order to just stay on the map of life. His efforts never blossomed into some lasting legacy, and finally, even in his last years of mental competency, he was not allowed to arrive at some supreme level of something. Instead, there was only the decline. He ended up in a perpetual down swing.

So who exactly is the person today with the receded hairline, pale white skin, skinny legs and vacant eyes in the pictures that I continue to get from my mother? Is this being still a human in all senses of the word? I wonder if his soul is present or is it imprisoned in a horrific chamber of doom screaming: “Let me out! Let me out!” I wonder if there is a relentless restlessness in that soul to escape the decaying body and mind that is its failing compartment at present. Do I wish for his death? I guess I kind of have to.

If I begin to dig more deeply into who I am (or from who I came), I arrive at my father’s father. He was a military man and in my now mother’s residence – there hangs a display case of his awarded war-time medals. He surely must have killed tens or maybe even hundreds of invading Russians in order to have been awarded all of those medals. How many of them were but politicized young boys I dare not even conjecture, but the fact remains that he did some killing and received a military funeral after my father found him lying in the street dead from a heart attack during a Christmas season sandwiched in between the war years. My father’s father was literally fighting for his home and backyard, but I believe that all that killing still carries some karmic weight and I believe that much of it is in my own body and soul.

Even though I would count my own pre-forty years as difficult and not exactly uplifting, I do remember a few times when my father was able to experience that I had, in fact, achieved a few things when I was in my mid twenties – he would have been in his early fifties then. I remember when he visited me in 1993 and I was living in Everett, Massachusetts. This time he again visited me alone without my mother. In preparation for his arrival, I had to paint “the guestroom” as it were.

At the time I was working as a telemarketer by day and playing in the band “Junction 69” by night. Right – the band name had plenty of sexual euphemism. I was platonically living with our stripper drummer/vocalist Louise and a would-be actress by the name of Ruth. Louise also had a two-hundred pound Mastiff by the name of Oscar who followed her around wherever she went. The three of us lived on the second floor of an ugly and ancient three-decker in Everett, Massachusetts. Some Vietnamese folks lived on the first floor. They were timid and spoke no English. On the third floor were probably some kinds of drug dealers who were never home.

In preparation for my father’s arrival, I took it upon myself to paint the extra room that led to a small rickety terrace. I remember having to put layer upon layer of white paint down in order for the room to at least feel clean. This was no easy feat because the floors were greasy and had dog drool and hair stuck to the grime; it was awful, but I endured applying layer upon layer of latex white paint. Eventually, that room got CLEAN and I bought a cheap futon for my father to use as a bed. I remember feeling proud when he visited me because even though rock ‘n’ roll was being played at night and I wore a ponytail, I had a clean-cut day job and at least resided in a livable apartment. He seemed to have enjoyed the visit.

Another especially vivid moment I can remember from my late teen years happened when my father really began to push me towards “proper behavior and life direction.” I believe that I was thirteen or fourteen when my father first laid into me with a particular phrase that I will always remember. He essentially chastised me with: “You are a pleasure seeking hedonist. If I were you I would grab onto work projects with vigor and a do or die attitude.” With this phrase my father virtually set into motion the idea in me that I was no good and a bad human being. Until this day I am paranoid about being lazy or of not being functional at the highest level in whatever I am doing. I attribute this exhortation to the fact that my father had a difficult life and that he was probably slightly jealous of my having a better shot “at this thing called life” – to quote the artist once again known as Prince. In comparison to my father, I truly had a good beginning in life.

When my fiancée succumbed to cancer, I feel that her marvelous brain had checked out maybe a month before her actual death. I could tell that she was truly gone then and cried and cried to a best friend over the telephone. That is when her loss hit me like an ice pick to the chest. After that, there was no going back. Even as she was conscious and even still speaking, my soul cried out for her essence because it had exited the room forever. And I do so believe that most of our essence is in the brain. It was obvious; you could feel it. The body’s death was slow and painful, but not as scary.

I have many feelings about my father, but I feel that much of him left the building a long time ago and really, “the son” in me left the building a long time ago as well. At 43 I am still not a father and I often wonder why this is. For me it seems that I am just as lost as when my father was around and I question what is the meaning of this earthly existence. Since I tend to believe in astrological ideas more than religious ones, I only wish that my father could have gone out more like a Leo for it would have suited his surviving so many hardships and losses much better than the slow withering away into nothingness while my mother changes his diapers.

The Male Cancer

It has been said by many accomplished astrologers that the most difficult sun sign for a human male to be is that of the crab or Cancer. Why? Well, it is rumored that Cancer is, in fact, the most feminine of all the astrological signs and really, if you think about it, this statement seems to hold a great deal of truth to it. In this month’s blog entry I am not seeking to vilify the Cancerian male, but it is with deep sadness and disgust that I researched a bit about the now convicted and proven killer of the UVM student Michelle Gardner-Quinn and found him to be a male Cancer. Here is a gentleman who would chloroform or etherize in some fashion his victims -- women of his choosing -- and then have sex with their near lifeless bodies. The horror of horrors is that Rooney has three children of his own! So much for the one-sided view of the sweetly nurturing and protective Cancerian. Here, instead, is literally a smothering quality within the male crab. Clearly, Rooney is a Cancer, but in a most distorted fashion.

This month’s blog entry is dedicated to the memory of Michelle (you are not forgotten!) and in it I will be taking a look at just what makes the male Cancer tick. Obviously there are plenty of solid male Cancers out there (the Dalai Lama included), but there are some also deeply flawed guys out there. Perhaps the way that this all could be examined through a question would be: Can (or how) is the father a mother?

Cancer is ruled by the cycles of the moon. The moon controls the tides of the seas and the oceans (and menstrual cycles!) and if you have ever experienced a full moon by the ocean, it is impossible not to feel the power of the cosmic energy at work here as the moon and the water are interacting in a strange night ballet. It is almost like being back in the womb. The power of the moon plus water is illusive and it is difficult to pin their exact natures.

Cancer rules the stomach and the breasts – both of these body parts are brilliantly related as well since the breasts supply our first nutrition and set the stage for all future digestive adventures. The beauty of the female stomach either pregnant or flat can’t be denied, nor can the appeal of breasts (especially with the technologically advanced Victoria Secret apparatus!). All of this information most of us know and it is easy enough to Google Pam Anderson when beginning the study of the female Cancer and to pretty much get a kind of large-chested template together, but what of the study of the male Cancer?

Here we need to embark on a completely different form of study and whether or not one is straight or gay the main point is that envisioning the male Cancer through the lens of hairy stomach and hairy flat breasts doesn’t yield the same insights as when we are studying Ms. Anderson. Instead we need to examine the male Cancer through an entirely different lens. There is a particular focus that I tend to reach for when proceeding on this journey.

I propose that all male Cancers are deeply wounded. They have to be because they contain so much of the female pain in them. I will also say that all males and females of all signs are wounded, but let’s not go there for now – that is a different story altogether.

The male Cancer is sensitive and is easily hurt -- in order to combat this he usually has to do some uber masculine stuff. A great example of the male Cancer is Sylvester Stallone. Look at his hyper-masculine body and the enormous success of the Rocky series. No one would dare question the masculinity of Sly. It is also helpful to think about his Rambo roles. The Rambo character is alienated because he feels too much and he must save his brothers still in POW camps. Someone needs to be saved! The Cancerian will be the saver. Strangely, Harrison Ford is also a Cancer and he, too, seems to be a character that often runs out to save someone or something as in the Indiana Jones series.

The Cancerian male as a warrior is a much different image from the Aries male as warrior (think Russell Crow). I think that an Aries hero will take a thrashing and be angry that his body is getting banged about and cut; he will fight harder now because he is being attacked. The Cancerian male hero will take the beatings more coolly because he is saving someone or something for a reason. This is of course the goal. The he will cuddle those that he has saved.

There can be a strange arrogance to the Cancerian male and this isn’t the arrogance of the Aries male. Now you can say pretty much anything that you want to even a Leo or an Aries male – they may yell or take a swing at you, but then the whole thing will blow over; not so for the Cancer male. He may brood at first and then begin a lengthy lecture about the wrong. The Cancerian claw will come out and grip onto you and the issue at hand and not let go and you will most certainly be lectured into the ground over and over again with the steady drip, drip of this water sign until you feel utterly disemboweled and decayed. Lesson number one when dealing with a Cancer of any gender: don’t give advice for it will not be taken well.

If we examine the current US president, we can see that he doesn’t take advice easily – yeah, he is a Cancer. Sure, he can smile sweetly when talking about Karl Rove, but don’t give him any advice about dealing with Karl Rove. Male Cancers also tend to enjoy the body in exercise and GB is supposedly an exercise freak. Also, it may be observed that the Cancerian may be able to deal with life quite well if his body is in a good place. I am not saying the male Cancerian can’t be intellectual, but generally he has to be taking care of his body first in order to have a good day. In examining this propensity, let’s examine one of my favorite authors who was both physical and heady and DARK. Can we talk about Ernest Hemingway?

A brilliant professor friend of mine said: “Hemingway was a fantastic Nobel Prize receiving novelist, but he had the ethical nature of a two year old.” I hear that. Hemingway’s eldest son seemed to claim this same fact in the documentary on Ernest produced by A&E. “When my father was with you, he would make you feel as though you were the center of the world. If he lost interest in you, then it was like you didn’t even exist.” This is another classic Cancerian quality. Since above all else Cancers feel, then it goes without saying that if they are feeling good about you then there will be much enjoyment and merriment going on. If suddenly their attention and feeling shifts to something else, well, you may find yourself out in the cold and the Cancerian doesn’t even acknowledge this! Isn’t that incredible? How can this quality go along with the idea of the Cancer wanting to nurture and to help people?

My hypothesis on this behavior comes literally from watching crabs on the beaches of Maine. They scuttle back and forth and then bury themselves in the sand. Soon they are out of the sand and searching for food and grabbing at things with their claws; perhaps they will fight with another crab while their pincers are interlocked. Soon they have buried themselves in the sand again. Can we see how this behavior has a certain pattern to it? Cancers are moody and their moods are not the light changes in temperament known to the rest of the signs. The moods of the Cancer go deep and they must be allowed to dissipate on their own. Any forcing on the part of an outside individual will result in a massive blow up of egos.

In examining a male Cancer, then, a heavy mood needs to be interpreted as a really heavy mood. What if the mood that the male is locked into at the time is that of insecurity and possessiveness? Well, the results could be disastrous for just about any female, especially if your name is Nicole Brown and the male Cancer is OJ Simpson.

The OJ trials are not much remembered anymore, but information has come out over the years that OJ the former football star was possessive, dark, and brooding within that relationship with Nicole and say what you will about the trial verdict – OJ was disturbed. The media character of OJ Simpson before the murder just seemed as sweet as apple pie. Indeed, he seemed to always be smiling and full of love. It is my opinion that under that persona was a deeply controlling man who was plagued by a myriad of insecurities and the FEELING of these insecurities ran deep indeed. It is almost easy imagining him wanting to smother a loved one to death while clinging to them with a set of heavy pincers. Overbearing nurturing seems closer to torture and murder than do many other more negative behaviors. It is unfortunate that the male Cancer is so adept at going over the top with their nurturing efforts.

Men are perhaps very unbalanced when they feel feminine care giving emotions and this goes double for the male Cancer. He can indeed feel so much that he becomes disoriented and squeezes the puppy to death.

In any event – this is all just my theorizing, but perhaps it is important to remember that America is a country that vibrates to the Cancerian pulse. Ask yourselves these two questions: How does England feel about the United States? How does France feel about the United States? Which is the correct answer? What is the real nature of the Cancerian? And how can the male Cancerian learn to avoid any and all dark flowing waters?

We all miss you Michelle! RIP

We Got Twins!

June will soon be busting out all over and for my money it will be the summer’s summer. Here in the northeast of the United States it is the seasonal cycle during which the greens are at their verdant best. The air is warm, clear, light and sensual. Flowers and trees and even lawns are redolent with color and vibrancy. There is an eternal beautiful youth to the earth during this seasonal cycle and just as it is said that Taureans and Geminis are the most beautiful people of the zodiac, it is easy to see why this is true from simply observing the months of May and June during every blessed year we are allowed to experience them. True beauty seems to have an ageless freshness to it and though the human object of beauty may be seventy years old – if the septuagenarian is a Gemini then that sense of adolescent vitality will still flow from every pore of this human. My grandfather looked poised and kind throughout his golden years and I think as a Gemini he exemplified this sense of graceful aging perfectly. My new grandma through marriage is also a well-preserved Gemini and she works hard at remaining youthful.

As a double Libran, it is said that I am attracted to Gems and I would have to say that in my former musical projects I have worked well with male Gems and in my past romantic life there have been some female Gems. Ironically, my Cancerian wife is attracted to Gems as well, but from what I understand of astrology, Geminis slice and dice Cancerians with their sharp words and deeds, so I am not sure if this is a good thing for her. I think that the Libra-Gemini pull is very much about talking incessantly about all kinds of nonsense with the end result being a lot of nothing, in fact, I did this for an entire relationship some years ago. Nonetheless, I love to talk, so it is easy for me to hang out with a Gemini and to shoot the breeze endlessly in the early summer sun.

On the flipside of the ebullient and chirpy Gemini is their depressive alter ego that surfaces again and again and it is deep and penetrating and it will darken the world around them. How is it possible for a person to be able to fall from that energetic adolescence into a kind of blackness of late adulthood? Well, it is possible. The Geminian will become depressed like no other sign (OK – today we may call this bipolar disorder) and much mud must be swum through before the cheery and bright Gemini may emerge again into the sunlight. Sometimes this process may take a very long time indeed and I pity da fool who has to be supportive to the Gemini native during this process.

Much has been said about the Gemini being the sign of the twins and I would have to agree that this is so. I would add to the mix that one of the twins is always the darker half. When this figure emerges all other folks should run for cover for the Geminian black spector is no easy quick fix, and frankly, only the Gem can fix it if he or she cares to.

It seems necessary to mention Elliot Spitzer now, the former governor of New York. Yeah, he is a Gem. Without understanding anything about astrology the duality within his life is easily recognizable. Upstanding politician and family man by day; by night his alter ego took over and only expensive prostitution could relax his existential unease and the nervousness that is the Geminian experience. While this behavior has a Scorpio vibe to it … I get mostly that duplicitous Gem scent from it all. Though I feel sorry for his family, I am not a hundred percent sure that even a team of therapists could have healed his darker twin. Gemini is all about the duality – it can’t just be fixed – it is the very nature of the sign. Eliot Spitzer is more than one persona … probably he is more than four personas; maybe he is eight personas. To separate all of these identities is just not possible, nor is it desirable. Geminis make great politicians because of all those personas. Where was the astrologist when the Spitzer’s needed one?

Gemini rules things like butterflies, monkeys, the metal mercury and the nervous system. These kinds of phenomena are forever in panicky movement going to and fro and are not meant to keep still. Bob Dylan is a Gemini – has he ever stopped touring? Has he ever stopped exposing different selves to the record buying public? Miles Davis was a Gemini – again, showing side after different side to the public and never running out of sides to expose and explore.

This is a Gemini at their finest creating any number of connections at a frenetic pace. In this they excel far more than any other sign. Gemini is the ultimate tour guide.

Some beautiful female Gems come to mind and first on the list we should put Marilyn Monroe. So much has been written about her. Hers was the nervous and comical sexuality – she was the smart flirt. Three marriage partners were had by her until her untimely death at 36. Hers was a young spirit, though. Should she have reached seventy or eighty or ninety? My sense is that her freshness was great indeed and Hollywood exacted its toll – perhaps 36 years was just the right amount for her. It is worth watching her films – there is a wit and wisdom about her if not a true warmth. Air signs don’t really do the warmth thing that well anyway -- it takes one to know one.
Finally, if you have a friend or relative who moves around a lot … please inquire as to whether or not they are a Gemini for it is the Gemini who really enjoys a change in scenery, partners, jobs and religions. Just because so-and-so isn’t Siamese doesn’t mean that there isn’t a whole other brother or sister right underneath their raincoat.

Additional Taurus Entry

When I think of a single recording that I have played over and over again, I think of the Robert Johnson collection. I tried to learn several of his songs over the years, but of course I could never learn to really play them. At the time I was living for playing the guitar and I was a young man still thinking that I was going to be something on the instrument. Strangely, I didn't really know anything about astrology at the time and I was intrigued to learn just today that Johnson was a Taurean. With those spidery fingers and wolfish throat shoutin' and moanin' the blues, I can't think of anyone who created more of a path to follow in blues, rock and folk styles than did Johnson. In a prior post I discussed Aries men as seemingly yielding a tremendous crop of famous lead guitarists. I am not sure how Johnson fits into this, then, as a Taurus. Perhaps it was his connection with the land and dirt of the Mississippi delta that was his fuel for creating his musical fire. Time spent walking down dusty roads at the crossroads is a basic physically grounding act that no doubt resonated in his short 27 years engaged in the creative process. He did really create an encyclopedia of emotional "country" music and it would be a crime not to have him stand as one of the most notable Taureans ... ever. RIP Restin' in the blues.

No one would call Uma's neck thick and heavy!

If we are to believe in modern psychology and ascribe to the idea of object relations, then truly we can never fully escape our childhoods nor our parents. In essence, our parents taught us how to view the world and they installed “the default drive” of how we were to understand the universe and the game of life. I credit my former therapist with this most excellent concept of a default drive existing inside each of us and essentially directing our actions, emotions, desires, etc. on a kind of autopilot. It is how we know about life. Perhaps after decades of analysis, we can transcend in part our humble beginnings, but we can never have a different default drive put into us. All we can do is learn more about this internal default drive along with its strengths and limitations. Just as the last line of the movie in “Citizen Cane” points directly back to the tycoon’s childhood with the dying utterance of “Rosebud” – so, too, do we all gauge today through some kind of a lens that harkens back to early childhood.

I raise this issue because this month’s column is about the sign of Taurus. My mother is a Taurus and my first long-term partner was a Taurus. Please allow me to skip the Freudian idea here and instead get into discussing the bull, or the second sign of the astrological series arriving after explosive Aries ushers in the spring.

Many of us astrology fanciers probably realize that Taurus is the earth sign’s earth sign. The fixed sign Taurean is heavy, steady and traditional. It is a sign that is rooted in nature and the image of a crazing cow or bull in the month of May as the earth is returning to life is an apt mental picture for the sign. The grazing cow or bull moves exceedingly slowly, which seems weird because there is so much eating of grass to do -- not to mention all that mastication in order to get the required nutritional hit. It would seem logical that any bovine should move extremely fast and get on with eating and digesting. Strangely, though, this is not the case. Instead, the cow or bull will do its slow methodical work and move little in the field while chewing. Slowly it will walk and slowly it will chew ad infinitum.

As far as acting and reacting go, bulls aren’t necessarily that aggressive, but watch out after you have annoyed one because then they can and will charge ahead and with full force. There will be no holding back that solid and massive girth as it lunges forward in order to head butt you via impaling out of their serene pastoral picture frame forever.

I would not be surprised if I was the taunting farmhand falling victim to the above dynamic with my Taurean mother. She had and has a habit of talking at people instead of listening and responding. She will also read whole sections of books or newspapers to you regardless of your interest in the topic. She will lead into this with a Victorian-age tone: “One should know and study these things.” This does not make for fun conversation; much of the discussion time is spent waiting for a pause from the Taurus. And this drives me, the double Libran son absolutely crazy. To me this habit seems akin to the bull’s charge. Action has been initiated and it is a one-sided action that must move into completion and the lancing of the enemy. The bull begins its merciless charge and it will not change direction until its mission is complete. When my mother goes off on one of her morality or societal dysfunction criticisms, no one will deter her from delivering the entire speech. Do you think that anyone could have stopped Taurean Hitler in the middle of his master race and eugenics oratories? I think not. And as we know, Hitler was an Aries / Taurus cusp – truly a driven boorish archetype with the square moustache and all. As the world knows, Hitler was not silenced until he was cornered in his bunker and he supposedly destroyed himself. This is the point at which his Taurean charge was silenced hopefully forever.

I think of a Gemini as having improved on this sort of behavior. The Gemini changes direction a hundredfold within the course of any action or reaction and is rarely goaded into any kind of a charge. There is movement within micro movement all with any number of changes in direction of the Geminian side stepper.

What to make of this? Well, though there is that difficult obstinacy to the Taurean, there is also an enjoyable steadiness to the bull. Just as May flowers begin to emerge from the ground, so too, can the Taurus be counted on to slowly bloom to action or to thought process completion. The keyword here is slowly bloom. The one clear astrological rule in my eyes is that you can never rush a Taurus – it is just not done. Eventually there will be a noisy and toxic outburst that will measure high on the Richter scale, which may result in that full out emotional charge.

The companion of the Taurus needs to be able not to race ahead, but to simply hang along with Taurus and to notice the beautiful scenery.

Taureans have natural beauty that helps them with the above because the rest of us can sometimes simply gaze into the earthy beauty of an Uma Thurman or a George Clooney and forget about having them take some course of action that we wanted them to take. This doesn’t work all the time, but much of the time it does work quite well. And what does it matter anyway? You can’t get a Taurean to move if they don’t want to, so it is best policy to just give up on the whole venture. It makes no sense pushing forward when a Taurus is standing in the way of a particular action’s completion. If they are allowed to think about it some, maybe some movement will then be possible.

How to recognize the Taurean? Well, there is solidness in the neck to be sure. This doesn’t mean that the Taurus neck can’t be thin, graceful, etc. but there is sturdiness there. A Taurean also feels somehow grounded and generally there is a lack of any frenetic activity in their demeanor. Generally Taurus people enjoy nature in some capacity and it is not impossible to see the bull alone in its pasture taking its sweet time gazing at the flowering meadow. This very act can be an apt metaphor for beauty itself – the beauty of settled inaction.

Spring has arrived!

For this month’s astrology blog entry, I believe that I will have to go extremely subjective in my writing because now it is time to discuss this double Libra’s opposite sign, none other than the fiery Aries – the beginner of all things and a sign made out of highly combustible rocket fuel. This is one sign that I have to discuss with feeling! And plenty of it…

As I look back at my life, I can see the most dynamic male friendships of mine being with Aries. Going back to around 1979 as I began my interest in playing in bands as an early teen, I always found a coconspirator in another Aries male. He would initiate and then I would reflect and some kind of music would inevitably be born. Sometimes it would be painful for me – I’m not sure if it is ever painful for the Aries! I can still remember my friend Pat, a bass player, from New Jersey who yelled at me “to play it right!” as I was messing up the riff to Rock’n’Roll by Led Zeppelin in an early high school band. He said it with such force and anger (and I was just a kid) that I nearly jumped out of my skin. After finishing the song correctly he grinned from ear to ear and said something extremely funny, which I can’t remember today and all was fine again between us once more. Pat was great like that. There is no doubt that he inspired me way into the future in my songwriting and guitar and bass playing.

Across the Atlantic Ocean in Helsinki, Finland I found another male Aries who created another band with me in the mid eighties. We also wrote some plays with an emphasis on humor. In the “orchestra pit” we played Stones covers for the “score” of our play and we smoked many cigarettes. This particular Aries played saxophone, bass, and drums and could sing like a demon on acid with all the musicality delivered up with power and finesse. Carefully Petri and I would plan whatever musical project we were doing and then joyfully rehearse it in his room that boasted its own terrace. And his parents were cool.

Jumping ahead again by a decade and into Massachusetts and Vermont, I met another male Aries who has been the big brother that I never had. Together we play music, explore topics in anthropology and psychology and religion. On a good day together we burn through hundreds of ideas and activities. Air and Fire make a great big bonfire … and afterwards I believe we are both kind of tired and wondering about the state of the universe.

After a lifetime of experiencing this dynamic between a Libran and an Aries, I would chalk it all up to acting versus reacting. The Aries is the ultimate initiator whereas the Libran is the most versatile reactor. There is no doubt that we compliment each other. And there is no doubt that our energies are very different.

It is said that Aries is the baby of the zodiac and who but a baby would leave the house and run and jump and touch and butt heads with the entire world stopping only to sleep, eat, and go to the bathroom? The Aries will enjoy this whole process and all with a big burning grin that lights up everything in his or her path. If he or she stubs her toe – there will also be plenty of howling! But look, there comes the smile again and a fierce determination to explore and conquer the world once again! Aries is the ultimate Energizer Bunny. Look out!

Where do I stand in all of this? As the Libran, I believe that my archetype is to quietly wait, observe, be unsure and then finally react at the last possible second. Just as the autumnal equinox balances day and night, so does Libra wrestle with taking any action whatsoever. Librans are not very ambitious; an object at rest tends to stay at rest, right? I believe that Librans can be somewhat intellectually depressed and have this thought lodged into their brains: why take action? See how it all plays out … Wait and see.

Not so with the character of the vernal equinox – the heralding of the sign of Aries. Spring is going to bang out and there will be no stopping of the process once the sun begins to burn like a super nova. The plants will sprout out of the snow if necessary and their buds will “greenify” no matter what through the effects of the Arian sun’s beams of light. The noon sun will be hot even if there is frost on the ground in the morning. Though the whole Christian thing seems to be Piscean in nature… I tend to view it as an Aries event … especially when you investigate the western calendar. For it is Aries that is the sign of the forever regeneration.

Let me say that Aries and its connection with spring hurts, too. If nothing else the beginning of the Aries cycle is quite abrupt. After all, you can’t return to the cocoon of winter. Now is the time where brisk and painful new modes of thought and action must be undertaken. There can be no turning back. Change and new initiation is inevitable.

As an educator at several local colleges, I have had the pleasure of having 2 young confirmed female Aries students in my classes this past semester (Don’t worry – they discussed their birthdays suddenly in class – it wasn’t like I was asking). As I monitor my teaching in class with that unattached part of me, I love what these Aries students do. They challenge me in front of the class and sometimes almost to the point of embarrassment on my part, but there it is again. These “kids” are making me grow because they do have that Aries fire even at their young ages and they know it too. Both of these students are the alphas in the class and the rest of the class seems to know this as well. The Libran in me feels badly about this unbalanced situation, but what can I do? Aries is the warm blooded baby discovering the world with an honesty that is truly sincere – it is one of the only beliefs that I still have in this difficult world.

As a guitarist and bassist I love music and this month’s column picture will feature 2 guitar players: Eric Clapton and Ritchie Blackmore. Yup – both are Aries. There has to be something to this duo. Is it about ego? Sure it is! But it is also about tremendous drive, fire, talent and emotional catharsis burning into the hearts of guitar lovers everywhere. Each of them plays licks that are double dipped in pain and passion; in discovery, fire, and catharsis. I challenge anyone to NOT HEAR some similarities between the souls and playing of Eric Clapton and Ritchie Blackmore. Yeah, OK – they all have done many drugs and survived, but that is not the point! Happy Spring!

A Tale of Two Fishes

Finally, soooo finally (!) we have arrived at the end of the 11-sign zodiacal cycle of the seasons / months and now to some degree we in the northern climates will become surrounded by water in all of its incarnations as we arrive at the 12th and final sign of the zodiac. There will be ice, snow, rain, runoffs, hail, sleet, flooding and cute little trickles. March certainly heralds in the time of Pisces in Vermont! During this mystical, mutable and emotional time winter will come and go and so will spring-like days often in the span of only hours. The weather will be shifting from one wet and wild extreme to the next in the blink of an eye. There will be a sense of lovely rejuvenation only to be bogged down again by powerful rains and mildew washing over the streets with a steady clanging. Sidewalks will reappear and then there will be lots of mud dripping everywhere. The sun will shine and then disappear again behind explosive clouds. The flow of Pisces is no light day at a water theme park – at times it will be like the monsoon season in Vietnam. To quote Bob Dylan: “A hard rain is gonna fall.” He may well have been singing about the feelings associated with the sign of Pisces.

To begin from my personal experiences with Pisceans, it is interesting to note that I have had two Piscean mother-in-laws and one Piscean father-in-law. One could argue that this is coincidence, but I like to think that it is to teach me something. The first father-in-law of sorts was an older Finnish guy and he and I did plenty of fishing together. Clichéd as this may be – the man loved the water and fishing. We labored many years together to catch that perfect bass and after it was finally caught, his health began to fail and he soon passed away.

Unfortunately, I never got a chance to meet my other father-in-law because he passed before my time, although I have seen video footage of him.

OK, so these moms-in-law both have dead husbands, yet they go on in life with happy vitality albeit their lonely moments. Women usually outlive men, which should render the whole grieving thing about the inevitable nonsensical (or “illogical” as Mr. Spock would say), but alas wives will of course grieve for that which has passed away. My sense of these Piscean widows is that they are able to grieve heavily and then to move on. Deaths of loved ones to them are painful, but I am inclined to think that in their final Piscean incarnation of the zodiacal cycle it is less of a big deal. Pisces instinctively knows that this earthly realm is very, very unstable and over in the blink of an eye.

Out of all the zodiacal signs, it is generally believed that Pisceans are the most psychic. In their watery psyches, I believe that they can sense the endless tentacle of beginnings and ends and perhaps the next reincarnation or galaxy or underworld is right around the corner. Often they believe in parallel universes, strange religious orthodoxies, magic and the like.

Pisces is intuitive, no doubt just like Cancer and Scorpio, and these signs can be healers because somehow they can feel things that the rest of the signs simply can’t. I might say that the mutable Piscean, though, really tends to rely on other worldly associations in order to understand the here and the now of this earthly existence. They are compassion personified. As a double Libra myself, I always try to figure things out logically without the use of messy emotions; I am reluctant not only to have feelings, but also to trust them! Not so with a Piscean. They simply ooze feelings and fancies building faerie castles in the air or future retirement cottages on Floridian beaches. The scenarios depend a bit on gender and family background, but nevertheless, both genders dream and dream and dream! And then they have those emotions rushing through their systems. Some of them can manage to make quite a living through this skill of dreaming. Here is the juncture at which I will name drop.

One of my wife’s friends is dating the artist and cartoonist Harry Bliss of, among other, New Yorker fame. I have had the opportunity on numerous occasions to observe his sketch pads that are left around. There is no doubt that this Pisces man is brilliant. He is able to dream up incredibly original humor ideas and his sketches support his work wonderfully. The beauty or curse perhaps is that I have heard from my wife’s friend that he is always working, yet his work involves plenty of time spent on thinking and dreaming, channeling, imagining …you name it. Here we have an incredibly talented and successful male Piscean who seems to be the work ethic personified. His actual work, though, consists of dreaming and conjuring things up!

My current mother-in-law is “into real estate” and the network marketing company “Market America”. She is a sales dynamo and is constantly pushing forward toward new ventures. In addition to being a compassionate person, what seems so Piscean about her is her belief in her belief. She continues to grow her business and in return continues to believe in growing her business and in return continues to believe in growing her business through growing her business ad infinitum. I am sure that you get the point. Pisceans generally believe in many things and focus upon going in the directions of these beliefs. Pisceans need to believe in something and to feel their beliefs taking form no matter how otherworldly these beliefs may be. Pisceans absolutely need to dream and to believe in these dreams. These imaginative pathways can take the form of religion, art, music, poetry, the occult – you name it!

Normally I hate to end on a somewhat tragic note, but two Pisceans who had difficult journeys come to mind immediately: Kurt Cobain and Elizabeth Taylor. As most of us know, Cobain single-handedly created a small encyclopedia of songs that would forever describe grunge and “the Seattle sound”. Nirvana’s first release “Bleach” was famously recorded on low-end recording gear – yet the sound was revolutionary enough to create an entire cycle of back to basics music making in the early nineties! Teens and 20-somethings around the world, regardless of age loved the raw emotionalism of Cobain’s dissonant guitar and screeching lyrical delivery. This was that ethereal pure Piscean emotionalism sung over David Grohl’s demonical drumming. This emotional avalanche crossed all cultural boundaries and provided Cobain with international stardom.

In one of the first astrology courses I ever took one of the mystery charts we examined was his and it was all full of water signs! There was hardly an earthly body to Cobain – he was simply flooded in emotions 24/7 365. If anyone has heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” – it is apparent how powerful and innovative were the soul springs of Kurt Cobain. His music simply oozed despair and rage … and obviously heroin made it easier for him to continue to exist with all that feeling – not so when the withdrawal pains were to be endured and as we all know, he ended up taking his own life.

Kurt Cobain goes down in history as, I think, a truly Piscean figure – there is creativity, fame, music, pain, and a steady stream of emotion that created the phenomenon that was Nirvana. As a strange poetic twist to the saga of this band – its existence in time is easily summed up in its name “Nirvana”. Certainly an ultimate transcendence was achieved through the band’s music, but there can be no doubt that a true nirvana might have contained some elements of peace and tranquility.

Liz Taylor seems another apt Piscean worthy of study. Her beauty and allure are perhaps not necessary to go into – those big liquid fish eyes are legendary as is her supple figure; the more interesting fact to go into might be the fact that she has been married seven times. This is perhaps typical Piscean behavior – the double fish wants to believe that a perfect thing is possible and desired even after all experience seems to show otherwise. I believe that Ms. Taylor married Richard Burton twice (at least), but always the marriage would end. Throughout these relationships always Liz wanted to believe in that undying love, yet, there was very little staying formed; instead, the marriages dissolved like road side puddles that eventually dry up in the light of the visible daytime sun that inevitably the coming of spring produces. Watery love affairs look very different in the clear light of a hot day.

I would be remiss not to mention that Mardi Gras will take place during the time of Pisces. And please consider the connections in New Orleans towards this sign: the flooding of New Orleans, the abundance of music, alcohol, sex, and religion in New Orleans. Though New York might boast these same things (with the exemption of the flooding), something as unique as voodoo culture surely is only typical of New Orleans and not so much part of any other American city.

So here I end with a challenge to all you Pisceans or Pisces aficionados. In this month’s picture we see my wife and two of her sexy friends – the three women are all water signs and represent the three signs of Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces, so here is my challenge to you – can you pick out the Piscean?