Words That Come Up Short

6.22.16


Words that accurately, authentically, and effectively construe my experience of these past few weeks have been in rather scarce supply.

It seems almost as if my entire year so far has crept sluggishly by, with almost nothing I'd aimed to accomplish having been satisfying plopped into the 'DONE' pile…

… yet, just since Mars retrograded back into Scorpio nearly a month ago, I've felt abruptly confronted with unmistakable, deep-reaching evidence that a lot has been actively (though perhaps inexpressibly) advancing. And still, it's not 'done'.

Astrologically speaking, we haven't seen any major new aspects forming, as the slower-moving planets continue to echo the same tunes they've played for months now: a mutable T-square, including a disillusionment-fostering clash between Saturn and Neptune, and a small-moves-enact-big-strategies Jupiter-Pluto trine. (Review this outer-planet backdrop here.) Mars is presently treading the same zodiac-steps it took back in February. We haven't gotten anywhere else. Rather than a bevy of fresh astrological developments to describe, I'm instead met with the challenge of readdressing these now-familiar configurations from unexamined angles… hopefully to offer something else insightful, if possible.

This loitering on familiar ground far longer than is comfortable—excavating ever further into that cave where the hidden treasure of primal motives, stinging truths, and unshakable desires lurks, until it's impossible to disavow what's really going on here—is what a retrograde Mars in Scorpio intends for us to endure.

In recent weeks, the Gemini influence kicked up a lot of surface-level activity, blowing in a gust of fresh interpersonal inputs, heightening the pace and volume of our information-exchanges, keeping our days novel and interactive. Underneath, the fundamental conditions and root-issues which have consumed us so far in '16 stubbornly remain. Only, with this amplified movement of social energies and its varying viewpoints, we've been able to catch whiffs of additional awareness, connections between dots we hadn't yet made, missing-piece tidbits which help us paint a fuller picture.

When I consciously pause to contemplate what has happened since the year began, I'm struck by how much attentive effort I have invested in reshaping those fundamental conditions and root-issues… even if, when I seek to articulate a catalog of the feats I'm pulling off, I feel I come up short. Some are still too rough and unfinished to discuss, and I'll wait for a more fitting time to share. Some are intensely personal, never for public consumption. Some continue to seem 'beyond words', only to be experienced non-verbally, in the body, by feel. Despite their present inexpressibility, I know they are profoundly reshaping who I am, from my core outward. I'm telling you what I can, though perhaps it doesn't sound like much.

The incoming wave of Cancerian energy—first Venus (Jun 17), then the Sun (Jun 20), and soon Mercury (Jun 29)—invites us to dwell in this untranslatable emotion, to allow for our responsive feelings to exist on their own terms, no pressure to force them into contracted articulation. As we discover a distinct emotional clarity coming into view, we can better understand just what (and/or who) we care about the most. We realize which loves to emphasize, embrace, and expand upon… and which hurts to grieve, alleviate, or leave behind. We might not have much to say about it yet, but our silence mustn't be read into.

Mars return to direct motion next Wednesday (Jun 29).