Today on the phone with a client, right before we hang up, I tell her if I don’t adjust the blinds, I’ll have ten construction guys looking in my window, that’s how close they were.

She said to me, “Well, you can give them a show.” I laughed, making the joke that instead of “take it off” they would tell me “put it on!” And she added that her partner, whenever she sees my picture on my social media, says I’m beautiful. I think that was the word she used. It struck me. It made me smile. Even today on the train ride home, hours later, I thought of it. I thought to myself: I can’t remember the last time someone said I was beautiful, if ever. I tend to get more of the “sex” words. I mean, I remember some astrologer telling me I was sultry. There’s either a sexual connotation (and much more sexual words than “sultry”) or… nothing at all, absence. But beautiful? A rarity. And I though hmm there’s hope for me yet! It was a kindness.

I remembered my mother’s critiques of my appearance, childhood bullies, how even as a middle aged lady I get people telling me I wear too much black. Oh and people used to tell me SMILE all the time or that I’m “holding back.” My hair, my weight gain, weight loss, my skin, my mannerisms. There was no part of me not picked apart. Once cell phones came around and we started taking pictures of ourselves… it was the first time I saw a me I liked a better.

What does this have to do with Pisces Season? Well this is a Pisces Season story from my life and I think it illustrates the gentler, kinder landscape that we’re entering. Slower, kinder, gentler than the two previous seasons. And I feel it already, more calm. We might be content to float. Pisces is a water sign, but more diffuse than Cancer. Pisces isn’t about emotional depth. That’s not Pisces job. Pisces job is, well, to swim.

Today in analysis I felt sad when it was over. I hadn’t walked in there sad. When I walked out I felt: was that my sadness? I had felt calm. I was swimming. I wasn’t sinking to the depths. It wouldn’t surprise me if I was feeling his feelings. Or there might have been an exchange. A mutual projection. I told him the story about the construction workers and the compliment, but my thoughts were long and far apart. They seemed pointless to share, like sleep-thoughts, mumblings. Not pointless, but quotidian fragments that I could barely be moved to utter. Very Pisces Season. We might be content to float in the sea of no boundaries for it is Pisces Season.

I swear to god right now there is a poem I am trying to remember and I think it’s from Charles Wright. And what I hear in my head (and in my mind’s eye on the page) is the cadence, but I can’t recall the words. I’m gonna search for it now. Let’s see if I can find it. Be right back.

Ah I found it. I remembered the title. It’s a short poem called Snow (and it is from Charles Wright) which beings with these lines:

If we, as we are, are dust, and dust, as it will, rises
Then we will rise, and recongregate
In the wind, in the cloud, and be their issue

There’s only three more lines. Find it somewhere if you wish.

In other news, book proposal submitted. I hope to have a little meeting about it this week. Proposal good? Needs adjusting? Ya or nay? And a week off from school. Finally I can go grocery shopping. There will be household chores I’ll avoid or do, or both, and homework/reading and analysis and I’ll be content with even-handed amounts of stimulus, the Temperance card come to life. That’s how I like it. Moon Pluto grows up. Not that I don’t feel deeply anymore because I do but there’s a certain way I used to feel my feelings that’s receding into the distance.

But I left that session with my analyst and I was feeling more feelings than I went in there with and it’s possible it was all me but I kind of doubt it, a combination perhaps, but for half the walk to the train I was thinking: it’s his, it’s all his, it must be his and immediately I “heard” a voice (really I was thinking a thought) and the thought said: contain it. That’s all. That’s what you (should) do. Whatever is coming up. Just contain it. No big.

I had been reading Thomas Ogden writing about Melanie Klein (both psychoanalysts) and I had been thinking about the word CONTAIN and there it was, right on the surface of my moon-mind. So I contained it, instead of denying it or evacuating it or… any of the other options. And I transferred trains and that was that. Not bad for for the first full day of Pisces Season in the big city.

To be continued…
xo

To book a Reading look here and I’m bringing back the 30-minute same day sessions (phone or text, depending) but I haven’t put them back on the site yet. Just say that’s what you want when you email.