By Jove

Eight twenty.

I’m beginning to believe in the influence of Jupiter and Saturn on the events of my life. Whenever something good happens, I can attribute it to Jupiter, and the bad things to Saturn. It seems that I get more ill fortune, or just neutral stuff, than actual positive in my life… Last night, something potentially very good happened to me and got set in motion; but when I was sleeping, I had some catastrophic nightmares as a sort of compensation. Every twelve years I get a stroke of incredible luck, which coincides with one Jovian year, or orbit around the sun. Otherwise, Saturn usually dominates for me. I don’t think any individual’s life can be totally cursed. Every dog has its day. Everybody gets a chance to be a hero. Or a famous star.

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An Insight

Quarter of eleven at night.

Saturday’s Child

Through a process of desultory reading and writing I’ve arrived at a few insights about astrology mostly lost to people today. It started with an end note to Verlaine’s Saturnian Poems, saying he chose the title because of the work he had to put into them, as if ordained by Saturn. Then a week or so later, I rifled through Baudelaire and chanced on his poem addressing Sisyphus, whose punishment in hell was the pointless labor of pushing a round boulder up a hill eternally. Baudelaire also prayed for the term of his suffering to be short. I gathered from this the idea that for him, life is pain and suffering. The image of Sisyphus was taken up by Camus in one of his essays. The last thing came to me like an inspiration. Stephen Stills wrote a song, “Everydays,” he gave to Yes to record in 1970. The first verse goes,

Look at the sad goodbyes

Every day’s a killing time

Sun coming up outside

No men are born this time

Saturday’s Child stays home

Nothing to say, so long

In turn, the meaning of Saturday’s Child is revealed by an old nursery rhyme.

Monday’s Child is fair of face,

Tuesday’s Child is full of grace,

Wednesday’s Child is full of woe,

Thursday’s Child has far to go,

Friday’s Child is loving and giving,

Saturday’s Child works hard for his living…

Finally, you only need to make the connection between Saturday and Saturn to make complete sense of the role of hard work in the essence of Saturday’s Child. Saturn in astrological tradition is the tester and taskmaster for those it rules.

“Reality”

Seven o’clock morning.

Lisa’s birthday is this Sunday, she just told me. I took my chances and walked to market in the black darkness, feeling my way, stepping carefully on the glistening street. These winter birthdays remind me of a line from Thomas Dolby, maybe irrelevantly. “The winter boys, drinking heavy water from a stone…” My imagination can do lots of things with Capricorn. The sure footed climber with a fishtail in the sea. Ruled by Saturn and Father Time. Concerned with old age. Bones, teeth, and skeleton. Alas poor Yorik… The day may be long because I got up at four thirty. No daylight until nearly eight. I didn’t see much on my little pilgrimage— literally, due to the dark. Just now there’s a growing light that reveals thick fog on the trees across the way east. I tell Aesop to look out the window and he gives a small bark and a growl. There’s no threat, I say; no menace. He puts his head down and pouts for his breakfast, fortunately not far away.

Eight ten.

Already I feel tired and somewhat sad and lonely. It’d be nice if I had control over my thoughts and feelings. Aristotle’s approach is passivity. The other is creative and subjective, like Sartre’s model of perception. When I was in college, the faculty was divided into the Freudian team against the New School of modern theory. I was caught right in the middle of it. For the first half of my schooling I was more Continental and for the rest of it, psychodynamic. I guess now I can pick the identity I like better. It’s also doable to choose neither one.

If my life depended on it, I’d trust Aristotle to be accurate on reality.

Ten twenty.

The rain has begun…

Cosmickall Historie of the Wurld, by Robert Fludd

Seven o’clock.

I awoke to a view of the harvest moon shining redly in my bedroom window at four in the morning. Earlier last night, I’d felt compelled to pull out books of astrology and numerology, seeking what I could find on Aries and the number 1. Then I made the connection with the full moon when I saw it outside. Right now, it’s like I’m shaking off a dream of the cosmos while the haze to the east is illuminated orange by the rising sun. I ran to the store when there was hardly any daylight and got foodstuffs for the day. The switch to this month feels rather odd to me, though my brain seems to function better since the change. Still it’s going to be a very hot day this afternoon. Lisa said she wasn’t looking forward to it. I’ve got Gloria tomorrow morning and we’ll probably go to Bi Mart for a few things. But church this Sunday I think is out. I don’t know. I’ve thought about it so much; really overthought it, like Miniver Cheevy in the Robinson poem.

Miniver Cheevy thought and thought and thought and thought about it.

To decide whether to go or not, I could just flip a coin— if I had a coin. Somewhere around the house I must have a coin to decide my fate. It’s a fifty fifty toss, yes or no. And somewhere on the other side of the earth the harvest moon still shines red. 

Uranus

Now Gloria has left for the day. It’s a beautiful day of azure skies, which evokes the poem by Mallarme. I should see if his French clicks for me when I pick it up. I’m not very good with it anymore. Is it really possible to imagine heaven on the other side of the sky? Not after we’ve put a man on the moon and seen the shape of the earth from there.

Philosophy is indeed very old and obsolete for some people. We’re going with a quantitative approach to knowledge overall, so that people like me have nothing to say. What can qualitative people do today, where we don’t need poetry or music, or even just a human touch as when I grew up? Suddenly a CD by Stanley Clarke comes up: If this Bass Could Only Talk. Jazz is even less alive than rock music now. The same summer my friends and I heard that disc, I bought a Steinberger bass and was so excited. The strange thing was that other musicians in Eugene were so conservative that they hated anything modern and progressive, thus it was an uphill battle that I eventually lost. A Steinberger would’ve been fine in a big city like New York or Los Angeles but it roused mistrust in Oregon. Eugene and Springfield were blues towns with a little bit of jazz: very traditional and not very imaginative, as I saw it. But it was my mother who had the taste for originality and innovation. She believed these things were real and possible in human life. She thought that new things exist under the sun, like Milton’s Lucifer inventing cannon for the war in heaven, or raising the city of Pandemonium in hell in a matter of seconds. In other words, unlike with Ecclesiastes, all was not vanity to my mother’s mind. It’s more like Poe and The Beatles: pushing the envelope for progress in everything, but especially anything creative. But I ended up selling the Steinberger bass because if you can’t beat them you must join them. And yet there’s a big part of me that doesn’t buy that at all.

Fate and Fame

After midnight.

A while ago in my journal I wrote about the incongruity of finding myself in church. It would be like my dad showing up for worship the morning after a night at the Elk’s Lodge. He was a confirmed skeptic on the issue of Jesus Christ. You either believe in him or you don’t, as even Jesus said himself, though it seems rather Calvinistic and unfair. But ultimately I have to just accept the fact. If I’m a goat and not a sheep of the fold, then it’s better to live with this knowledge in peace. A goat must be good for something after all. By the way, the other day I met a woman with the same birthday as me: January 4. What are the odds of something like that? One in 365? And her colleague was named Destiny, with the letters transposed… For some reason my mind has been turning towards mysticism in the past week or so. I suppose it’s a function of getting older, but not necessarily more feeble witted. There’s some truth to “seek and you shall find.” What you look for determines what you see… Aesop is sleeping the sleep of sheer exhaustion, but it’s good to see him so relaxed. His breathing is slow and regular. The music in my head is a recording I made during the summer of 1986, back when my dream was to be a pop star. Yet in their own way, every individual is a rockstar by virtue of their very existence. Trust yourself. 

The Jovian Year

Quarter after eight.

My dental appointment is this morning, but for some reason it doesn’t worry me. During the small hours I did some speculation on how my life’s peaks go in cycles of 12 years. After some fumbling around with my search engine I discovered that Jupiter takes 12 Earth years to complete its orbit of the sun. It is also known that Jupiter brings happiness and prosperity, hence the word “jovial.” Is this information just a coincidence with my experience?… Aesop is staring me down regarding his breakfast at eight thirty… If my insight is right, then next year should be the next peak for me.

Or perhaps the time of jollity has already begun?

A Little Plan

Ten thirty.

I feel much better now than I did before four o’clock today. I knew I felt well enough to play my G&L bass, so I did that for an hour or more, and then I sat down and analyzed my feelings in writing, concluding that therapy is not for me. It was like throwing a millstone off my shoulders, and immediately I felt better. I think I’m capable of navigating my own ship. Sometime this month I want to take my other bass guitar to a technician for modification. I have the part I want to install already: a Di Marzio Model P hum bucking pickup with ceramic magnets. I love these pickups for their milky tone and high output. I hope the weather cooperates next week so I can walk over to the bank to cash my check. This will be my transportation money. I think everything will work out just fine.

Until now I’d forgotten how I love January, and you know, it doesn’t matter if I get mystical with the zodiac; I might take a peek at my new astrology book, indulge my curiosity and contemplate the thing called fate, even like Thomas Hardy, once my favorite novelist.

Rejection of the Stars

Five thirty five.

I had an unexpected dream just now: I was a “jumper,” just like the ones in Hollywood cop movies. I got myself into an elevator shaft and climbed it to the top, where I was just about to throw myself down when a rescue team cut through from the outside with a saw or blaster. After I got out, my parents took me and my nephew to dinner in a convertible. The nephew let my dad know how much he hated him, and he just smiled and drove on. He was probably stinking drunk.

Nine twenty.

By now the snow on the ground has melted nearly away, with little shreds of it left on people’s yards and roofs. I donned slip on shoes rather than the lace up running shoes with better treads and made my daily trip to the market. There’s not very much to report about my experience this time. In general I’ve been speculating on whether I can discard my superstition about astrology, and what will be the outcome of doing this. It’s like the choice between fate and free will— even like the old song by Rush. I think the zodiac is just a human fiction, something for us to wrap our lives around to give them sense and meaning. But when it is ruled out, the meaning is up to you to provide. The character of Edmund in King Lear is right about the “excellent foppery of the world,” even though you’re not supposed to like him. Shakespeare and Milton both subscribed to astrology, but this doesn’t mean that we should. They lived four hundred years ago, so what did they know? This year I will think differently about my birthday, and try not to refer to my horoscope and wax mystical on my destiny. I’m not a teleological thinker; life has no predetermined goal for every person to fulfill. Is this heresy or is it good rational sense? The power to make decisions resides with us. This is where it belongs, and not in the lap of the gods or the influence of the planets, moon, and sun. This sets the tone for my 55th birthday and the whole subsequent year. 

Zodiac My Weakness

Nine ten at night.

I think maybe I missed my calling in life: I should have been a clinical psychologist and helped people with their problems. But first I had to surmount my own stuff, like the schizophrenia and alcoholism. By far the alcoholism was the deadlier disease. And it’s possibly the kind of thing that runs its course until you come to an impasse of choosing life or death. The spirit of intoxication is really the devil in a bottle, or perhaps it’s the Grim Reaper with scythe poised over your head. Who else carried a sickle in mythological tradition? It was Saturn, the Roman agricultural god, known to the Greeks as Cronus, father of Zeus. According to the tradition, Saturn showed the Romans how to make wine. The name of Saturn was probably related to the name of the devil for Hebrews, but the only evidence I have for that is in a book of astrology by Ronald Davison, and he gives no sources for his claim… So much for impressionistic thinking on alcoholism. Now I’ve lost my train of thought.

I was just on Amazon and ordered Parkers’ Astrology, a book that was recommended to me by a bookseller friend about twenty years ago. The copy I bought from her I ultimately threw away because of the superstition that was prevalent in 2009 or so. But today I feel free to come and go on the topic of the zodiac. It’s a fascinating thing, the way it puts mythology into practice, assigning meanings to the planets, which in turn exert an influence on human fates; unless it’s all a self delusion. Still, astrology is an art that has been around for a few thousand years. In a nonspecific way, even Thomas Hardy subscribed to the fatalism of the stars, whether provident or improvident, and he wrote his novels so persuasively, compelling you to believe his worldview. But the greatest confrontation with fate is to read Ancient Greek tragedies by such playwrights as Aeschylus…