No lies detected.

Standing proudly on a grumpy old man’s soapbox, screaming wildly for the children of the world to keep off our lawn.

It was a Saturday night, I guess that makes it all right…

Climbing out of a warm and cozy bed at 5:30 on a Tuesday morning in March should not be anyone’s idea of a good time, but there I was pulling on a pair of sweatpants and some fuzzy slippers to make a quick journey outside to see the moon. A lunar eclipse was happening, and at that time it was still supposed to be visible, which is what had me setting the alarm and rising so very early in the morning.
I pulled on a coat in the quiet. The house was still dark.
Hushed reverence.
Solemnity.

My steps were lighter in deference to the full moon. I’ve learned that even if it’s just superstition, better to err on the side of caution and not rile any potential problems, especially when so much of life is already stacked against us. Carefully opening the front door, I stepped outside and turned around, seeing nothing but dim gray sky and obscuring cloud cover. I’d forgotten the warnings that clouds might get in the way, and now I was standing outside at 5:34 spinning in blind circles, unable to locate the moon. A faint light glowed around the place where I thought it would be, but I couldn’t be sure if it was the moon or just another dawn lighting that section of sky.

During this specific full moon, I’d read that it was best to let things happen as they happen, not to force circumstances or try to push them a certain way, even if you feel it’s the right way. That’s difficult for a Virgo to do, particularly challenging for my own misguided mode of living. I am, however, taking it into account and doing better when it comes to letting things go.
Like the past.

“The past promises us nothing but this: it will abandon us. Leave us orphaned. Unless we abandon it first.” – Gregory Maguire, ‘Elphie’

I could not see the moon on this morning, only sense it, the way certain animals sensed blood.

Standing alone in the sunlight of a downtown Albany afternoon, the snowman stared without eyes or expression – an expression in innocence and terror at once. Bereft of company, forlorn of animated spirit, the snowman stands still, stoically unmoved by the shifting wind or diminishing light. We do not know if it will last the night – people tend to destroy that which brings others joy – one of our more miserable failings as a species.

Stuff of childhood imagination, stiff of nightmarish winter-scapes – the snowman offers no explanation to its existence. He wasn’t there one moment, and the next he was. He will be gone again in much the same infuriating fashion. There one moment, not there the next, and absence erasing all, better than any melting thaw might do, and more complete than any destructive marauders who would fell a snow crystal creature.

The snowman saves his secrets, pocketing them in invisible pockets, sublimating their worth from ice directly to air, not bothering to wade through its watery, melting bloodline. Ancestry of a snowman is quintessentially tricky to determine, so scattered does the lineage break and branch. Molecularly, all must be related – anything beyond that, anything deeper, is too difficult to determine; the cloudy obscurity of winter, this winter in debilitating particular, refuses to clear up its mystery. All that I’ve tried to bring into relief and focus falling apart like the flimsiest emotional constructs.

Still the snowman stands in silence.

Still the snowman stays in secret.

Still the snowman…

Still the snowman.

The gray grid of winter streets attempts to put order to madness. Even with such structure, winter defies borders and containment. New York in January can be brutal, and because of that there are usually decent tickets available for Broadway shows. I remember a particularly frigid night when we saw ‘Grey Gardens’ – Andy and I hunkered down at Gallagher’s for a classic steak dinner before rushing along in scarves and coats to the theater. Thankfully our hotel was nearby as the walk back was horrendous.

Suzie and I also saw a show in the wilds of winter – the revival of ‘Follies’ with Bernadette Peters – and I was staying at what was then a Kimpton hotel on Columbus Circle. Another freezing night that ended when the show ended, and I indulged in a very hot shower with some L’Occitane Lemon Verbena bath products – a temporary but gratifying experience of heat and steam and pleasurable fragrance – before diving under the bed covers again. Winter is all about quick and furtive movements in service of comfort and survival, navigating how to get from a towel-clad state of post-shower bliss to the cool environs of a bed waiting to be warmed without losing all the heat in the process. 

Photos from a former winter, because I’m too lazy to take new ones from the current winter. The past and present bump up against each other, and it’s not altogether unpleasant. Still, echoes are by their nature less; the more there are, the less impressive they become.

Once my hair turned more gray than black, say in the last few years or so, I began to detect a discernible difference in how I was being perceived. There was a slight deference in basic one-on-one interactions with strangers, a little more respect and used of ‘sir’ from servers and waitstaff, and the slimmest shift in meetings with people who had previously dismissed or discounted me. It wasn’t anything huge or dramatic, just a gentle, sloping tilt in what I felt from other people. It’s possible this is all in my head – that’s always possible – but I’m usually pretty perceptive when it comes to reading a room and its reactions, and it felt like my gray hair was giving me some sort of ancient authority that wasn’t there when I speared much younger.

At the same time, it also relegated me to near invisibility in certain social scenes where youth and beauty still reigned supreme. A strange sort of trade-off, another confounding paradox. Respect and invisibility, deference and dismissal – and somewhere in the middle of it all a head of wavy wolf’s hair trying valiantly, desperately, to embrace the autumn of life. 

Today marks a full Blood Moon – the Worm Moon – along with a lunar eclipse and Mercury still in retrograde motion. Astrologically speaking, particularly for Virgos, this is said to be a combustible combination, and I am taking all necessary precautions, mostly just to keep my cool and not lose every last bit of shit that’s barely holding me together. Is it working? Somewhat.

I’m still hitting all the red lights, still tripping over all the computer and phone cords, still wrestling with malfunctioning lights and humidifiers, still dealing with infuriating texts from friends and family who are suddenly unable to read or remember anything – but taking it all in stride, and, more importantly, not lashing out or forcing my well-intentioned (and often-proven-correct) ideas for improvement upon all the people who never wanted them. Getting slightly better at that, better at letting people pick up their own messes, and allowing them to make their mess in the first place because they were never going to listen to me anyway. I was just about to remark about how annoying it was to see people ignore a Virgo’s advice, but that’s very Virgo of me, and at odds with the meaning of this post, and the grace I’m trying to achieve or at least work toward.

Instead, I will focus on clarity and clear communication, sans judgment and ridicule and condemnation. I will endeavor to let others make their own choices, to go along with their suggestions, to be amenable and genuinely peaceable to another way of doing things. This full moon is said to be an opportunity for growth and transformation, and letting go of things that no longer serve you. My critical mind, while helpful for myriad moments in my life, is of no help to others who need to learn their lessons in their own way. I’m also painfully aware there are myriad lessons for me still to learn, not in the quest of a perfection that doesn’t exist, but in the journey to improvement. Shedding control, letting the universe nudge me and heeding those nudges, are my methods for making it through this full Blood Moon moment. I am trying.

As a wise woman once sang, “Go with the flow!“

You know

you

can do it.