Meditations on Grand Water Trine Queasiness

11.19.07


Some of the most fruitful snap-decisions we make riddle us with near-unbearable uneasiness. (You know… the feeling that, if you dare try to proceed, you'll vomit all over your shoes?)

Yet, somehow, we manage to switch our yappy minds off long enough to enact what, in a flash, we've decided upon. We soldier through the transitory distress. We don't puke. And sooner or later (hopefully sooner), this one horribly uncomfortable step changes everything. The circumstance turns on a dime.

The shock of stepping outside our perfunctory role—of baldly embodying the freshness of every single moment we breathe in—is undoubtedly enough to ruffle some feathers. To alienate those who cannot bear to interact with us when we refuse to follow the years of established rules. To leave them literally speechless, or else full of things to say, jaws hanging open in response to the gall we displayed by doing something different.

Face it: They may get angry at us for refusing to play along. We may wish them to embrace us for 'evolving', but they think the very notion is uppity. After all, they didn't necessarily choose to have our relationship with them develop in new directions. They, perhaps, aren't attempting to grow beyond their previous selves. They could be perfectly content (though 'contentment' can be misleading) to drink the same brand of diet soda with every meal, hold the same unaired attitude toward the neighbor-to-the-left (the one with the unkempt lawn and the menacing teenaged children), and sustain the same cloying monotone of polite insincerity with whatever topic is being discussed.

But just because you are not quite so content, you have to 'go and ruin everything' by (gasp)… improvising!

Newsflash: You are not here, on this planet at this moment in history, to keep other people safe and contained inside their climate-controlled boxes. You are here to follow your heart, into lessons that stretch you past what you already know (sometimes painfully so), in order to walk away having progressed from one point to another. This 'progression' is not a one-size-fits-all path, either—otherwise, we'd all have the same astrology charts (and I'd be out of a job).

This week is not just Thanksgiving (at least here in the US), a holiday that, despite its delicious food traditions, often forces us back into the same decades-repeated slot carved out for us by family and longtime friends… though, for most of the rest of the year, we might be completely different people than they imagine we are. On the astrological level, this week also brings a grand water trine (a shapely triangle comprised of three planets flowing in synergy) between Mercury, Mars and Uranus. And thanks to it, we're powerfully pushed to obey the eddies of our emotions, as they suck us out from quiet rationality and into the raucous sea, where the waves adhere to no proper guidelines but we'd better ride 'em anyway or we just might end up sunken like forgotten pirate treasure.

That is: The swirling disquiet we experience in our nervous stomachs, from the in-and-out and back-and-forth of operating on feeling, is part of the process. That's how we know we're feeling at all. And along with every feeling known to humankind, it too will pass—as long as we continue to move with it.

Mercury just emerged from the shadow of his recent retrograde this past Saturday (Nov 17)… and, still in Scorpio but now treading new ground, he drives our minds and mouths to drill beneath the glossy veneers, to get to the savage psychological reality beneath. He will not settle for superficial answers.

Mars, as should be well apparent by now, is currently retrograde himself in Cancer, driving our methods of self-assertion under the water so we must feel our way around, advance indirectly… and accept that our usual mechanisms for putting forth our bottom-line designs are functioning differently. But perhaps this is an excuse to let the ordinary protocols slip away? To speak unguarded from the heart? To protect one's own tender innards (finally, for once!), rather than the sanctity of social fluidity? Mars adds a pointier edge to Mercury's concepts and statements.

And then there's Uranus, the mighty outer-planet influence of 'expect the unexpected', who spends the week creeping to a standstill, in advance of stationing direct on Saturday (Nov 24). Uranus is astrology's quintessential wild-card… and when he slows like this, his effects become amplified. Though our trine is in the emotional element of water, Uranus assumes little responsibility for emotional upset—his job is simply to break the monotony, bust tradition, and foment radicalism in its many forms, regardless of the fallout. Throwing him in this mix only ups our desire to do the rebellious thing. And considering the symbiotic influence of double trines to Mercury and Mars, it's easier than ever to rebel: One push of the boulder, and it'll sweep down the plain at record speeds.

But the nervous nausea of pre-push anticipation is still ever-present—until that fateful moment…

…we tell our mother, like never before to get out of the kitchen. We are cooking the turkey this year.

…we refuse to pour our father another scotch. He's had plenty, and one more will only exacerbate the poking and ribbing.

…we come out to our entire extended family—guess what? I'm a flaming homosexual!—right as the cranberries are being passed around. Aunt Lillian starts choking on her dinner roll.

…we bring our half-Brazilian, half-Filipino girlfriend to the O'Sullivans' house for dessert, unannounced. Though our girlfriend was raised in L.A. and talks like a valley girl, Mrs. O'Sullivan speaks at her loudly, insultingly, in oversimplified English. So we tell Mrs. O'Sullivan what we think of her presumptions.

…or we decide not to go home at the last minute, at last listening to the horrific migraine that erupts early Tuesday morning, warning us not to subject ourselves to the same damn torture one more year.

Sure, there's distress… fallout… maybe even vomit. However, things will never be the same. And isn't that delightful?