Getting Above It

1.28.06


Sometimes it's hard to know exactly where you are when you're looking at it from, uh, exactly where you are.

Especially when the person right next to you has a diametrically opposed description of your shared surroundings… and maybe he or she can't see the forest for the trees any better than you. (That sure doesn't keep each of you from insisting you know better than the other, eh?)

Just try explaining your global position without any external index points, and you'll find yourself caught in a circular logic of self-referentiality. I feel what I feel because it makes me feel like this. Or: I'm angry at you for not being sensitive to my anger. There's no possible hope of producing an answer, when you can't keep the terms of the question straight. I refer to this phenomenon as being 'too in it'.

Tomorrow's (Sun Jan 29) New Moon in Aquarius creates an opening from which we can take off into flight, leaving behind the nit-and-grit of whatever's consumed our attention to the point of mega-myopia… and soar up to the clouds overhead, on a wing and a prayer. From up there, everything's visible. The rolling landscape looks like a rolled-out bolt of fabric, its landmarks abstracted into patchwork designs to jazz up the view. Cars become tiny insects. And we people, mere microscopic amoeba riding in the insects' bodies.

Recent weeks have capped the final crescendo of the grand cross, with stressfully squaring planets doing their swan-song part to force all tension into the open. Specifically, one aspect of the grand-cross—the opposition between Mars (yes, still in friggin' Taurus!) and Jupiter, which hit exact in mid-January—is infamous for magnifying our individual sense of personal will. It's a wonderful influence for instilling confidence, courage and conviction in us… and just as tremendous at exacerbating interpersonal conflict.

The basic formula: 1 Person with Expanded Determination + 1 Person with Expanded Determination = 2 People, Each Determined to Be Right. The terms don't always add up quite like this, but more often than not lately, they do… especially when Taureans, Leos, Scorpios and/or Aquarians are participating.

Once any disagreement gets to this spot, it usually devolves from genuine topical relevance to pure ego standoff. Maybe we've even forgotten where the bad feelings originated. Surely, it takes every ounce of strength we can muster to simply listen—no defenses, no retorts, no minds made up.

And furthermore, with Venus still retrograde (but only through next Fri Feb 3!), our typical mode of connecting is a bit 'off'—more internal in focus, potentially skewed in first judgments, and not entirely reliable. It's not that Venus retrograde necessarily makes it harder to get along with others. Rather, we might not be in the right mood to deal with others' shit… particularly when we feel we have more meaningful items to attend to.

Aquarius bestows the aerial view upon us, with enough remove from the messy earthly events to promise distance. When we take a couple steps back (or a jet-plane 30,000 miles up), it's no longer about us and them, you and me. We can depersonalize the scene, so it becomes just another example of this type of discord between any two people.

It happens all the time, we can tell ourselves, to everybody at some point. And they all get through it just fine. If it were somebody else in my position, what would I advise her to do? How would I calm him down?

Sunday's Aquarian New Moon sits in direct opposition to Saturn in Leo, framing a perfect opportunity to pledge an upcoming month of cool-headed distance and fairness in all our relationships. Saturn in Leo wants us to refine and elevate our methods for self-expression—no coming on so strong that we swell past the stitches of our britches, and no holding back the truth in order to garner attention or approval. What better reminder than the New Moon in Aquarius to get outside our near-sighted wonderland, to look at our situation as strangers would?

I know you know when one of those 'too in it' moments arises—it's as if the walls are closing in, and conversation is going nowhere fast. To get out, go up… then look down at yourself, and take stock. The view from above is beautiful, but unforgiving. Soon enough, you'll see your part in it, and how it relates to everybody else's.