Monday, November 8, 2010

A Wanderer Goes Home

I've been wandering for two months. I've covered the eastern U.S., up and down the coast from Vermont to Florida. I've been driving a lot. And tomorrow I go home.

And so I feel like I'm standing at a portal, poised to enter a different world. The flight home will be long and complex, a sometimes senseless series of rituals. Women in uniforms will draw wands over my body, signs will be enigmatic, spaces will shrink, and the sky will be contained in a square window. At the end of it all, I'll unhitch my body from its tight ride, walk into a throng of people, and be embraced by the woman I love. I'll breathe a long, long sigh.

And I'll miss the people I left behind here.

This is the season of longing, as Jupiter and Uranus have returned to the soft, dreamy sign Pisces. They are traveling together, and they are both high-energy, boisterous planets. They usually feed off each other's enthusiasms, but in Pisces, they drown in each other's fantasies. Pisces represents the gentle and open state in which there are no boundaries, no labels, no limits. It's the universe, it's the womb, it's the perfect place for creative fecundity. Imagination makes everything happen.

And here in Washington DC, in this post-election moment, you can definitely hear the wistful fantasies of Pisces in the words of the newly elected officials. They come on TV, itself a very Piscean medium (since it is all about creative illusion), and talk vaguely about balancing the budget. They assume they can do this while retaining tax cuts, keeping two wars going, and funding the programs that are most popular in their states.

They have the hero fantasy. Jupiter is the planet of expansion, Uranus the planet of change, and so there is an ongoing need to grapple heroically with the community's problems. But with Jupiter and Uranus retrograde, there's a return to the solutions of the past, and in Pisces, these solutions are based on formless desires rather than a pragmatic acknowledgement of the problems. Heroes don't need to compromise, and fantasies expand endlessly in any direction you choose.

Traveling in the U.S., I feel that hero mystique that grips everyone here. The endless highway, the power of the engine, the solitary traveler going from place to place. It's a Lone Ranger kind of reality. And yet I haven't fixed anything, or saved the day, anywhere I've been. Rather, I've immersed myself in all these different lives, felt them from the inside, tasted the flavor of the tears shed, rocked with the laughter. It's been very Piscean for me too.

And now I go back home. Who will I be, once I'm there? I'll find that out tomorrow.