How do you build momentum from numbness?
Over the past couple months, I’ve had to act without feeling alive. Almost every planet has made its way through Aries, but it wasn’t invigorating. Anything that was permitted to start felt like a compromise. Saturn contaminated Aries like an infected flower bud.
Each planet in Aries has contended with Jupiter in Cancer, forcing the annoying truth that all of this does serve something larger. It’s like being at the end of your rope and having someone calmly proclaim, “Everything happens for a reason.” They aren’t wrong. But I already know. And right now, knowing does not make me any less exhausted.
Stopping hasn’t been an option, which means a lot has been swallowed. I’ve had to override the part of me that wanted to pause, react, grieve, or spit something back out. I forced things down just to keep functioning. Eventually, it built up.
Now, the Moon is full in Scorpio, and there is something trying to claw its way out of me, and I was hoping the Moon could tell me what it is.
I could sit here and say that this full Moon is meant for bawling your eyes out and reaching that sweet catharsis, but it’s more than that.
Brigit Pegeen Kelly was born as the full Moon in Scorpio rose upon the horizon. In her poem, “Song”, a little girl has a pet goat. She loves this goat. She brushes him and sings to him and gives him a pail of warm milk every day. One night, some young boys steal the goat, decapitate it, and hang his head in a tree. The hanging goat’s head sings all night long.
The next day, the little girl wakes up, discovers her goat is missing and calls for him all day. People find the goats remains and quickly hide them so the girl doesn’t see. They raise money to buy her a new goat. They find the boys who did it, and the boys say it was just a joke.
Despite his physical remains being gone, the goat’s head continues singing, but only the boys can hear it. It is a sweet song, so sweet that “the heart dies of this sweetness”.
The Moon in Scorpio knows that everything has remains. Something can be over but still not gone. Everyone tried to move the ugliness out of sight. The adults hid the remains from the girl. The boys try to laugh it off as a joke. But the truth persists, the goat’s head still sings; the boys cannot escape it.
What am I still carrying because no one saw it? What would my body release if it trusted that the truth would not vanish with it? How can I trust that this residue of what I went through has a body outside of my own?
I want to scream. It wasn’t fair. Crying isn’t enough. I want revenge. I want people to feel the pain they caused me. But it will never be enough. The stuff we go through takes on an afterlife of its own, and we’re not always meant to witness it. The goat’s head is not left to rot in silence. As frustrating as it is, it kills its attackers with sweetness.
The Moon is trine Jupiter. I innately know that God will even everything out. But I am like a child tugging at the hem of God’s robe, asking what I can do to help.
The heavens provide an answer. Venus is in Gemini, sextile Saturn. My hands are restless, searching for distractions from inner deadness. That isn’t the answer. It’s a cheap choice. My hands need to give the lifeless thing a form through which it can briefly live again, let it sing and take on a life of its own.
“…a poem is only finished when the last reader has read it or listened to it.”
― Cees Nooteboom (Moon in Scorpio rising), All Souls’ Day
Our creations live on beyond us. But we are not responsible for carrying something until its meaning is exhausted.
After all of this, I’m still angry. I trust God. I provide outlets for things to live outside of my body. I write, I sing, I create. I’m still angry.
I stay up with the Moon all night, watching her set in the west as Mars garnishes the dawn sky. Jupiter is asking all the hard questions.
I told him that I want to fight. He asks if it’s truly defence, or if I just need an enemy to feel alive.