So as usual, life is getting in the way of my blogging, and it’s not going to stop. Astrologically, Pluto is going retrograde again on Tuesday (nooooooo) and Saturn regressing back into Virgo on Wednesday (yessssss). In life, I have a shit ton of work to do (I’m doing even more intensive work in the lab now, I’m starting GRE prep and sooner than I am probably ready to admit it’ll be time to write to schools with, “Dear Sir or Madam, Please send me the appropriate application materials for your PhD program…”), and also I have been doing a lot of hanging out, like with friends, crazily enough. (At this time last year I was in Los Angeles working. I didn’t even know when my next bathroom break would be, let alone remember that I had friends I could hang out with.) But I realized I’d better hurry up and blog again because, you know, I don’t think I’ve written about the imminent giant T-square yet, and I DO have thoughts on it. (SHOCKER.) To help illustrate my giant read on it in a way that is a little more manageable, let me treat you to a slice of my life.
As is probably the case at most schools, the one I am attending right now is woefully understocked when it comes to computer labs. When you go into the library to wait for a computer, you had better have something else to do while you wait, because you will be waiting a LONG time. You’ll sit there and read for another class, delete some text messages, eat your package of Oreo Cakesters- and of course, glance around at the students who were lucky enough to have found computers before you. Two people, at most three, are actually doing work. The girl who is always watching episodes of Chuck and screaming laughing, oblivious to the fact that she’s in a library, is there doing her thing. Everyone else is playing Farmville. Minutes go by. More people show up, waiting. Half an hour goes by. Still more people join the line. You close your eyes. You open your eyes, and you find you are covered with a thin film of cobwebs. You look around. It appears that everyone has been waiting for about five decades, and there are still no available computers. You stretch a little, retouch your lipstick. Finally, one of the Farmville addicts gets up, leaving a computer free- but does the next person on line actually take it? Of course not. Even though it has been nearly half a century and you have all considerably aged and atrophied, instead of jumping up and running to the next available computer like it’s a mirage in the desert, the next person and the one directly after her (because it is always inevitably girls who do this, but that’s a whole other blog post) look at each other and have the following exchange: “You take it.” “Oh no, you take it.” “No, no, you were here before me.” “No, I think you were here before me, go ahead.” “Are you sure? You should go.” “No, no, you look like you have a lot to do.” “Well- oh, but I couldn’t, you take it.” This is usually the point at which, if you’re me, you scream, “OH MY GOD FOR FUCK’S SAKE” and I get up and I take the computer that they’re hemming and hawing over, even if it’s not actually my turn for about four more people. Not because I’m selfish or inconsiderate, just because I want them to stop. And so does everyone else, because never once have I gotten into a full-on confrontation with anyone when I’ve done this. The computer is occupied. They snoozed, they lost. Order is restored.
Sort of like the imminent T-square, no?
Everyone seems to like Saturn in Libra, but I have misgivings about Saturn in Libra, especially since it’s been retrograde. On the upside, by itself, Saturn in Libra is exalted: it’s all about fairness, balance in relationships, everyone getting exactly what is coming to them- and when Saturn is retrograde, in order to get all the fruits of being exalted in Libra, you’ve really got to take apart the whole thing and rebuild, which is sometimes the only way to fix something for good. BY ITSELF. Saturn in Libra right now is not by itself, though. Saturn in Libra is squared by Pluto in Capricorn, which carries more serious and fated implications. With Pluto as the backdrop, Saturn in Libra to me feels… trivialized somehow, more like two girls going back and forth over a computer they’re both waiting for. “You take it.” “Oh no, you take it.” When Saturn was in Virgo, I feel like even when people I spoke to were unsure about what to do next, they thought things through in a practical way and took small steps that ultimately ended with a concrete plan for the future, if not an actual materialized outcome. But with Saturn in Libra, the same vacillating over the computer happens, except in a much more dangerous way. Pluto in Capricorn relates to enormous shifts in authority and in power struggles; squaring Saturn in Libra, in people’s personal lives and in the news alike, you see a lot of, “You decide what to do.” “No, you.” “No, you, I don’t know what to do.” “I don’t know what to do either.” “So let’s ask someone else.” “But we’d be bothering them.” “So what do we do?” “I don’t know.”
I find this aspect of Libran thinking dangerous. It’s dangerous in this context because Pluto just does not have time for that kind of diplomacy. That’s part of why, I believe, the Saturn-Pluto square feels so incredibly heavy, and why for my part I’m a little relieved that Saturn will make one last dip into Virgo for a bit. Our attempts to structure and restructure elements of our lives (Saturn) through sweetness and light and niceness and fairness (Libra) can be ripped apart at any second by things that are completely out of our control (Pluto). If we waited too long to make a decision for fear of hurting someone else’s feelings, we’ll all be left particularly vulnerable in the wake of Pluto because we will literally have nothing to work with. We were too busy making sure that everyone else was okay.
I was initially very nervous about the imminent T-square, as I’m sure a lot of people are. On the downside, explosive shit could happen. Literally explosive. But thinking about it again, I actually feel somewhat more excited about Uranus entering Aries and locking in the T-square, because it is such a different energy than the Saturn-Pluto square on its own. If Pluto is inevitable transformation, Uranus in Aries is a swift, original, dynamic change. It’s someone deciding that it doesn’t matter whose turn it is- someone is going to have their needs met, and the computer is going to get used. (Or deciding that it would be far less frustrating to bring one’s own computer from now on, which is what I’ve ended up doing for the past several weeks.) Either way, something actually happens- even if choices people make as a result of Uranus in Aries are not necessarily the smartest choices, at least they’ll be pushed out of the impasse of the Saturn-Pluto square and on their way to something else.
There are a million astrological things I could chalk this up to, but in the last few years I’ve found myself getting increasingly impatient, and not just over things like kids being stupid in the computer lab or my colleagues in the neuropsych lab trying to decide what to have for lunch (oh my God, do not even get me started on trying to decide what to have for lunch). If life were the imminent giant T-square all the time (and thank Christ it is not), more often than not I would be the Uranus in Aries factor. I often end up claiming the final say in what’s supposed to be a mutual or group decision if we can’t arrive at it fast enough. I push and shove. I frequently find myself chanting, “DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!” when someone asks my advice on a decision they’re ambivalent about. But although I may come across as a little brusque, I’m not impulsive or reckless, or even (believe it or not) rude or inconsiderate. I’m expedient.
And I like being expedient, for myself and in situations that require a consensus, because if I wasn’t just deciding flat-out what we were having for lunch or pushing and shoving or chanting, “DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!” do you know what I’d be doing instead? I’d be chronically worrying about being indecisive and whether I’m really doing the right thing. And lest we forget, I have a Moon on my Ascendant opposing Uranus, both of which make a T-square to the Sun. When I say chronically worrying, I mean chronically worrying. Like I could give both Morrissey and Woody Allen lessons. I have worried over whether I should have ordered something else at a restaurant two days prior. I have worried over whether a point I was trying to make in an essay came across just right even after it’s already been graded. I’m using all kinds of stupid little examples to illustrate a pretty gigantic planetary interaction, but really, they’re not so stupid. When people get used to chronically worrying and hemming and hawing in this Saturn in Libra way over stupid little things, the big things that Pluto brings feel that much worse. (Little hassles add up to major stress. Richard Lazarus. Google it.) In this way, when they realize how destructive that can be, they welcome the Uranus in Aries energy, the ability to just make a decision without having to second-guess themselves for the sake of others around them. At least when Pluto hits, they’ll know very clearly where they stand in all of it.
I think what scares people the most about having to act Uranian instead of Saturnian, but especially when Aries-Libra is involved, is the idea of upsetting things or breaking things. It’s more than just hurting peoples’ feelings, as I described above. It’s this idea that everyone else is secretly so fragile that making a proactive decision for oneself will really psychically annihilate them somehow. For God’s sake, no. If you want to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs. If you need a computer and no one else is getting up to take their turn, then you are totally within your right to cut ahead of them. And better you do it and get what you need done before something Plutonian happens, like a power outage, and all of you are shit out of luck. If this doesn’t happen, the worst thing is that the people on line with you will just have to wait a little bit longer. They will get over it. (Unless you are actually logging on to play Farmville.)
I think proactivity and accountability are going to become much larger issues to be contended with in the coming months than maybe they’ve been in a long time. But I think there is potential to find balance among all the forces involved in the T-square- if not collectively right away, then definitely personally, to figure out where we are conceding too much not only to other people, but to forces beyond our control, at the expense of the expression of our own needs.
I know where it’s affecting me, and I’m sure I’ll be writing about it a lot more upcoming, especially while Saturn goes back into Virgo, for extra analytic power. Where is it affecting you, and what do you plan to do about it? Specifically, how will you mitigate your apologist tendencies with making sure you’re doing right by yourself?
