Two and a half weeks ago, the hard drive on my laptop crashed. Now, before you go scolding and advising, let me say that I had backed up the truly important things — photos of my son from his 2005 birth through September of this year — but I lost pretty much everything else in the meltdown: passwords and budgets and plans and rough drafts of several articles and posts and resources I was juggling all at the same time.
My parents were visiting from out of town when it happened, and Barack Obama was about to be elected President, and my son was amped up on Halloween sugar, and my husband’s employer let 75% of its workforce go — the day after he had given notice himself — and the hard drive crash just seemed like the crazy, unpredictable culmination of the whole wild frenzy.
It was as if the election excitement and the fun of a family visit and dressing up like cats and begging strangers for candy with a pit in my stomach about our family’s future just spun out of control — and years upon years of insights, ideas and musings just couldn’t take the tornado anymore, and finally crashed and burned.
It seemed like a nightmare at the time.
It’s always in retrospect that I notice these things, though. When it was happening, it just seemed like a disconnected jumble of one crazy-intense event after another. Now, I look at my horoscope chart and see the protracted themes pulling up like three long trains, crashing together in that one wild week, and I know, now, that that week was a corner-turning, of sorts, a slamming of brakes, with lots of warning lights and bells and shouting and running.
See, that was the week that the current Saturn-Uranus opposition was tightest, and sitting directly on my nodal axis on the 2/8 cusps. As well, that week, Neptune turned direct on my Descendant and Pluto remains lollygagging in square to my natal Moon. You don’t have to be an astrologer to understand when I say to you: This is a powerful little cabal of major change-makers all set on working me over at exactly the same time.
No — that’s not completely fair. The great astrologer Dane Rudhyar said:
It is not the event which happens to the person, but the person which happens to the event. An individual meets particular events because he needs them in order to become more fully what he is only potentially. (Source)
So if I reframe it instead to say that I brought myself to the events I needed in order to grow into a greater version of myself, then I have to understand what karmic reckoning I have with a Saturn-Uranus opposition.
These two planets together are catalysts for cleaning out: releasing what no longer works to make way for whatever is to come, creating a vacuum for nature to abhor and then fill with shiny fresh berries. I could respond to that knowledge through my usual M.O. — what room should I clean next? what bad habit must I tackle? what else can I cross off my list? — but that list-making would trap me in the same anxious, harried, time-poor rut I’ve been in for years, and I know that’s not what the present reality requires.
I’ve been on the rollercoaster for a long time, trying desperately to catch up with all the work I think needs doing, watching my to-do list get longer and feeling constantly frustrated at the limited hours in each day, the limited energy I have for the tasks.
I feel a little sick and I’d like to get off now, please.
In true astrology form, this week a little semi-sextile nudged me — one I didn’t even realize was there — and showed me a different way of being, a way that could preserve what is good in the Saturnine South Node and make way for the newness of the Uranian North Node. I’m excited and relieved to finally have some insight into taking myself out of the race with myself. I’ll talk more about that insight tomorrow.
For now, though, I’ve written enough.
P.S. Sorry about the multi-metaphor mash-up. Jeesh!
Photo credits: Carnival ride, fireplace
[...] Where I’ve Been Lately: The Astrology of Change [...]