musings of a braided stream

I've been staring at the screen here for a few minutes now. What to write about?

One of the books I'm reading right now is The New Larousse Encyclopedia of the Earth. I've finished the chapter on "Running Water" and have started the chapter on "Oceans and Lakes". In his discussion of running water, Bertin describes the different kinds of streams--for there is a great variety of types of river. In Buddhism, the mind is sometimes likened to a river, the stream of which shows many different manifestations, from rushing gorge to placid pool, without changing its essential nature.

Right now I feel that my own mind is like a "braided stream": a river that, having dropped a great deal of sediment on a comparatively flat ground, has broken into multiple intersecting channels, weaving across the landscape. There doesn't seem to be a "mainstream", just lots of parallel channels moving along together. My mind lacks its usual focus; it feels dispersed and unenergetic.

Astrologically this corresponds with a major transit of the planet Neptune, which is running over my natal Venus and square to my natal Mars. Neptune is a boundary-dissolver; it represents the yearning for perfection and bliss, which cannot usually be attained in the limited frame of an individual body and mind. Therefore Neptune symbolizes the desire to merge with something greater, to lose one's burdensome identity, to recover the lost bliss of the womb, before separation was discovered.

The transit of Neptune to Mars is always difficult, since Neptune represents the urge to give up and transcend ego, while Mars represents our selfish side: how we seek to assert our individuality and satisfy our personal wants. A common Neptune theme is sacrifice, giving up something we value without getting any obvious personal benefit in return. Our Mars nature generally finds this idea most unsatisfactory.

To a great extent, life is about giving things up. For one thing, being born means that death inevitably awaits us; we will all have to surrender our lives at some point. But along the way, other things have to be surrendered. Scott Peck talks about this process in his famous book, The Road Less Traveled. What we surrender in the process of maturing are the beliefs and goals of our youth. He provides a list of six or eight typical ones. One is the adolescent belief in omnipotentiality--the idea that I can do or be anything I want. As time goes on, we make decisions and close off avenues. When I was 10 years old, for instance, it may have been possible to aspire to be a professional athlete or a chess champion. Now, even if I wanted those things, I couldn't have them.

Omnipotentiality is not a reality in any case, I don't think. It was probably never an option for me to be either an athlete or a chess champion, not just because of lack of native talent, but even more importantly because of lack of desire. I didn't want those things. Fantasizing about them is like a giraffe fantasizing about being a cheetah. If you're a giraffe, you've got to go with that--there's no choice.

Surrendering such beliefs or fantasies is, I suppose, technically, disillusionment. We use the term in a negative way, usually--but what's so bad about losing your illusions? What do we have against reality? Isn't that just a drug-addict's view of life?

In Buddhism, disillusionment is seen as a good thing. Chogyan Trungpa Rinpoche, in teaching the practice of meditation, never made any promises to his students, except perhaps two: boredom and disappointment. Every student could look forward to those. We generally avoid those experiences like the plague, but Trungpa Rinpoche was enthusiastic about them both. Why? Because they're anti-ego. They're exactly what ego is continually seeking to evade and prevent.

But this is also the message of Neptune. If you identify with your ego and its desires, you're going to suffer anyway. If you can see your ego and its wants as not a big deal, then you suffer much less.

Easier said than done. Like many people, I tend to take my desires and hopes seriously, and feel about surrendering them the way Charlton Heston felt about surrendering his gun: you'll have to pry them from my cold, dead hands...

the interior battleground

Now in all of us, however constituted, but to a degree the greater in proportion as we are intense and sensitive and subject to diversified temptations, and to the greatest possible degree if we are decidedly psychopathic, does the normal evolution of character chiefly consist in the straightening out and unifying of the inner self. The higher and the lower feelings, the useful and the erring impulses, begin by being a comparative chaos within us--they must end by forming a stable system of functions in right subordination. Unhappiness is apt to characterize the period of order-making and struggle. If the individual be of tender conscience and religiously quickened, the unhappiness will take the form of moral remorse and compunction, of feeling inwardly vile and wrong, and of standing in false relations to the author of one's being and appointer of one's spiritual fate. This is the religious melancholy and "conviction of sin" that have played so large a part in the history of Protestant Christianity. The man's interior is a battleground for what he feels to be two deadly hostile selves, one actual, the other ideal.

I typed those words, first spoken in 1901, yesterday from William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience. I was struck yet again with his powers of perception and his ability to summarize complex and profound aspects of life, and dish it all up in a single paragraph.

As I typed, I remembered my feeling when I highlighted the passage while reading it last spring: I recognized myself in his words. And I cannot but feel that he must have been describing himself as well, having survived the soul-conflicts of youth to look back on them as a unified soul of age 59 or 60 (he will have had his birthday in the course of the lecture series).

As an astrologer, my first thought is that it's simple to distinguish these psychological or spiritual types by looking at the birth chart. The conflicted soul James describes is one whose chart is dominated by squares and oppositions: planets in stressful aspect, indicating psychological or instinctual drives in conflict--people for whom, as he says moments later:

spirit wars with their flesh, they wish for incompatibles, wayward impulses interrupt their most deliberate plans, and their lives are one long drama of repentance and of effort to repair misdemeanors and mistakes.

At least, that's the most visible case. Astrologically, this would be the person with squares in the so-called cardinal signs--Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn--which express themselves more impulsively and spontaneously than the other signs. For them the "war between spirit and flesh" will be acted out physically and dynamically, with real and obvious casualties--more like World War 2 than, say, the Cold War, which might be how the "war" manifests in the life of one, like myself, dominated by the "fixed" signs: Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius. The conflict here is relatively hidden and quiet, but nonetheless real and still behavior-determining. More like arm-wrestling than like ice hockey.

I'm glad that I've not had a life of outward chaos, like, say, Britney Spears, famous now for for a life of wayward impulses, misdemeanors, and mistakes. But those conflicting, tectonic forces of the soul have always been at work in me, and still are.

If unhappiness characterizes the period of order-making and struggle, and much of one's life is given over to order-making and struggle, then--well, you fill in the blank.

Not that my life has been unhappy--far from it. I would say that I've led a happier life than most people (no way of measuring this, of course), even if I have spent much or all of it wrestling with contraries in the soul. It has led to a feeling that life is, in some deep way, a problem--but I always liked problem-solving.

I haven't solved this one, and at this stage I don't really expect to. It's enough to be engaged in the task of "forming a stable system of functions in right subordination." Once you start cleaning out that storage room, it doesn't really matter anymore how much of a mess it's in: you're working on it. The work itself is healthy, the right thing at the right time. At first you don't know where to put stuff, but gradually order emerges; you discover what you value.

What do I value? I've got to take the car in for regular maintenance--then some breakfast.

megaphobia

I'm an insomniac.

In truth, I'm not sure when one becomes entitled to use that label--how many wakeful nights qualify you?

Certainly this last one was wakeful. I woke around 1:30 and felt my mind drawn into the vortex of concern. By 2:30 I knew it was hopeless. I donned the sweats I'd left on the chair against this likelihood, and took myself downstairs to read. I cranked on the heat in the living-room, poured myself a scotch, opened up Asimov's Guide to the Old Testament, and got highlighting.

With my mind drawn to issues other than my own life, fatigue and befuddlement set in. But I could tell there was still a sharp edge in it. I returned to bed at around 4:00 to wait out the time till the 5:30 alarm. Then: up and at 'em!

It's not unrelated to my post yesterday about Pluto and Saturn. One of the points that caught my attention while I was typing notes from Howard Sasportas's The Gods of Change was a reference to Abraham Maslow's concept of "the Jonah complex". This was the term he gave to the fear of one's own destiny or calling--the principal obstacle to self-actualization. Sasportas continues:

Why should we fear our own greatness? One reason is a fear of responsibility. If we fully acknowledged our potential talents, we would have to shoulder the burden of doing something to develop them. Another reason for denying our full potentiality might be the fear of the power it would give us. We wouldn't be able to be "little" anymore. Would we use our power wisely, or would we mishandle it? Or maybe we are afraid that if we were truly in touch with living our greatness, other people would be envious and resentful of our achievements. Transiting Pluto, in making us more aware of what is buried in us, may ask that we confront these fears in order to grow into the self that we truly are.

Jonah (whose name means "dove"), ordered by Yahweh to prophesy to Nineveh (capital of Assyria), tries to dodge the task, catching a boat to Tarshish. A violent storm comes up, and the sailors, casting lots to discover the cause, find out that it is Jonah. Jonah confesses that this is the case, and that the sea will calm if he is thrown overboard. Jonah would rather die than face his mission. The sailors, in desperation, take his advice and chuck him over. He is swallowed by a "great fish" and remains in its belly for three days before being vomited ashore, safe and sound.

I'm not sure what I think of the Jonah complex, but I know it relates to me, because I felt a cold finger move into my core when I read about it.

One decision I came to was to read some Maslow. I ordered a book by him yesterday.

Fear of one's own greatness. Hmm...how about megaphobia? Yes: I offer that term to psychology--as well as a basket of symptoms.

Pluto and Saturn

After a fast cold snap over the weekend, which saw snow burying our city, warm rain now drums relentlessly outside. Only a white dot of snow remains here and there, and they will be gone by the time the sun is fully up. Wind speeds of 70 kmh are forecast for today--just like this time last year, when many trees in Stanley Park were blown down, shutting down a section of the seawall until just a few weeks ago.

I feel storm warnings within me as well: clouds darken over the scene of peace and composure built with such diligent effort over the years. Dark feelings swirl like whirlpools in the apparently calm water of my soul.

As an astrologer, I link this feeling to the impending (indeed already underway) transit of Pluto over Saturn. Those of us born in 1959 are collectively feeling the effects of this transit, for we all have Saturn placed between 0 and 8° of Capricorn in our birth-charts--the place in the sky that Pluto is now approaching. As I type these words, Pluto is crawling through the end of Sagittarius, and will enter Capricorn by the end of January 2008. After that, it will soon retreat again as it turns retrograde and moves backward in the sky, shifting forward again in September, and reentering Capricorn in late November 2008, where it will then stay for some years.

Pluto, god of the underworld, was lord of the dead. He only ever came to the surface of Earth on two occasions: once to have a wound healed, and once to abduct Persephone, the virgin daughter of Demeter, goddess of grain, to force her to become queen of the dead. The themes of death, wounding, and the compulsive aspect of relationships are all germane to Pluto's activities.

An excellent guide to the psychological aspects of transits of Pluto (and the other outer planets, Uranus and Neptune) is The Gods of Change by Howard Sasportas. Among other things ruled by Pluto are what Sasportas calls the "belly emotions". He gives a great illustration of what these are.

Imagine that you have a date to meet someone you really want to see. The appointed time comes, and the person does not show up. Minutes go by, half an hour, an hour. How do you respond?

For many of us, the first response is at the "head" level. We rationalize to ourselves why our date has not yet shown: stuck in traffic perhaps; or unavoidably detained in a previous meeting.

As time passes, we may move to the "heart" level: concern for our missing date. Has something happened to him or her? An accident? A family emergency? Gee, I hope she's okay...

But beneath these are the "belly" emotions: primitive, instinctive feelings linked to self-preservation--feelings that civilized, cultured people seldom exhibit or even acknowledge. Anger, resentment, and yes vindictiveness: "She can't do this to me. I'll show her--she'll pay for this..."

Sasportas, trained in psychology, describes how such moments connect us to our earliest life, when survival was not something we could take for granted, utterly dependent as we all are on someone else's care at that time. When you're helpless, a "no show" of food or attention can mean death, or at least severe suffering. The emotions connected with that type of experience are, let's face it, rage and hatred. "If I get out of this alive, I'm going to make those bastards hurt. Let's see how they handle being starved and abused. They'll think twice next time..."

These sentiments aren't polite. But they are real, and they form a system of subterranean rivers underlying our interactions. And the less in touch we are with our "belly" emotions, the more likely that their eruption will cause us severe distress, and the more likely that they will run our lives covertly, shaping our destinies without our real knowledge or consent.

All Pluto transits are stressful, since they tend to represent situations in which the belly emotions are aroused: the fight for life. A transit to Saturn is especially stress-prone, since Saturn represents the structure in our lives. In particular, it shows where we feel insecure, and how we adapt to feelings of weakness and inadequacy. Threats made to these spots provoke the strongest reactions of fear and resistance.

I think about chess, a game I used to play a lot as a teenager. In chess, all the pieces can move anywhere on the board, except the pawns: these foot-soldiers, once advanced, can never go back. A pawn only ever has three options: advance, hold, or die. As a player, when you move a pawn, you're irreversibly committed. As a game progresses, the pawns, through movement and casualties, form into more or less rugged patterns, often referred to as your "pawn structure". They form living shields, protecting each other and the more important pieces behind them. One chess strategy is to "attack the base"--going after the pawn that anchors a pawn formation. Having your pawn structure attacked and liquidated is generally catastrophic: an agonizing stripping of your defenses.

I think of another image: the cruel way in which conches are removed from their shells. A hook is passed into a part of the animal that cannot retreat far enough into the shell, and then the conch is hung by this hook, so that its shell is slowly pulled from its grip by the force of gravity. The home and protective covering of the conch is inexorably ripped from its grasp, leaving it naked on the hook.

This focused and inexorable attack on one's defensive base is, I think, the pattern I would associate with the transit of Pluto over Saturn. Emotionally it will be the feeling that comes from seeing someone raise a hatchet over your fingers where they cling to the edge of the cliff from which you're dangling.

Where we build these defenses is different for each of us. Astrologically it's shown by house placement. I was born with Saturn in the 3rd house of siblings, neighbors, thinking, speaking, and writing. Saturn is our career planet: I'm a thinker and writer. I can hear the Jaws theme come up as Pluto makes its way to my Saturn, dug in and entrenched from long years of effort and consolidation. Who will win the confrontation?

That answer is easy: Pluto always wins. Pluto wins because whatever (and whoever) is born necessarily dies, and no force in the universe can stop that. Even mountain ranges, high and jagged, eventually are worn away to flat desert. Stars are formed, only to become, eventually, cold cinders. Death and life feed on each other.

One prediction I can make: for those of us born in 1959, the coming few years are going to concentrate our minds on issues we find to be grave and important. Pluto and Saturn share one quality: that of being serious.

Can we let go of things that, without our realizing it, have outlived their usefulness? When a wrecking crew suddenly shows up to tear down the house where you've lived for decades, how do you take it? How does it affect you? How fast do you recover--if you do recover?

In the end it all depends on your attitude. The more you identify with your house, the more painful the demolition will be. The more you can let go, the sooner you can breathe the air of a free man or woman.

the tree of ideas

This morning, as we lay in bed in the dark in post-alarm recovery, we heard this weather forecast: "Heavy rain today, tomorrow, all through the weekend, and for the rest of our lives." That put a smile on my face and energized me to get up and meet my day.

I want to say more about ideas--my favorite subject. I've been toying with the notion of what it would be like to develop a cladogram of the history of ideas. If you're not familiar with the word cladogram, I'm sure you're not alone. You can click the preceding link, or accept my quick definition: an organizational chart of living organisms arranged by their order of appearance in evolutionary history. When all organisms are included in such a chart, it is sometimes called a "tree of life"--a powerful mythological image. The word itself comes from the Greek klados, "branch". The discipline called cladistics is the taxonomic philosophy of classifying organisms in this way, by genetic propinquity, rather than by the more traditional method of grouping them by morphological similarity.

I first heard the term, and had it explained to me, in about 1985 at La Bodega, the West End tapas bar where I used to meet my friends once a week. At that time it was a new idea, dating back only to 1979. My biologist friend Brad and an associate of his, Andrew, sketched out a basic cladogram on a paper napkin. (Brad was headed for a career in tropical ecology; Andrew was branching into herpetology.) I didn't really grasp what was supposed to be special about a cladogram, since to me it just seemed to be a basic org chart. The key point, as I now understand it, is that two dissimilar-looking organisms might might be more closely related genetically than two similar-looking organisms, and would therefore appear closer together in a cladogram than they would in the old-time Linnaean classification system. A detailed knowledge of genetics, and of the genomes of organisms, makes a full, precise cladogram possible.

No such scientific precision could ever be achieved with a cladogram of ideas, but nonetheless I find the concept exciting. What are the most basic ideas we have, and how have they branched out, differentiated, combined, in human history?

Last year I couldn't resist buying the book Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud by Peter Watson. This 822-page tome (very good too--I'm 262 pages though it so far) is a step in the direction I'm thinking of. Watson recognizes technological innovations as the manifestation of new ideas--although these are not the only manifestations of new ideas. But all new ideas are inventions: they are intended to solve a problem. ("Necessity is the mother of invention"--this phrase, I've just learned, is from Plato's Republic.) An innovation is a response to a perceived problem.

Sometimes I've seen puzzlement expressed that so many tens or hundreds of thousands of years went by in human prehistory with no significant changes to our primitive stone toolkit of flaked hand-choppers. I have to believe that no necessity for a change was perceived. There was no culture of innovation. It did not occur to people to respond to problems by inventing new tools. This itself is an idea: that problems can be met with a deliberate effort to try something new. (By the way, in astrological terms, I would say this is one of the core ideas of the sign Aquarius.) That idea had to be discovered, and also added to the culture--the heritage of ideas that is passed down to succeeding generations. (My thought is that ideas are what a culture is made of. Our culture is exactly the collection or set of ideas that we collectively hold.)

These are just a few semi-random thoughts. I wanted to give a glimpse into the world of my thinking: what kinds of things I've been thinking about. If I were an academic, I think this might be the area of study I would be drawn to.

Now: on with my day of heavy rain (the weatherman is right so far).

ideas: keep 'em coming

A steady cold rain falls through the gray air. Kimmie phoned to say she wanted to beg off our power-walk for this afternoon--fine, suits me! We'll take a break, and I have a chance to get down here and write a blog-post.

I'm an idea guy. I like ideas. This has to do with my Aquarian nature, for Aquarius is the "idea" sign. More and more I'm seeing my mission in life as boiling things down to their basic idea-content, and working with that, studying it, understanding it.

I understand Gregory Chaitin perfectly when he says in the preface to his Meta Math!:

I'm not really interested in complicated ideas, I'm only interested in fundamental ideas.

He's a mathematician--a great one--but more than that he's a philosopher. Here's another quote, from chapter 2:

I think that the history of ideas is the best way to learn mathematics. The best way to learn a new idea is to see its history, to see why someone was forced to go through the painful and wonderful process of giving birth to a new idea!

Yes! Giving birth to a new idea. Why is this so important?

Everything that could be called an advance or an improvement in human life or society is the product of an idea. The word itself comes from the Greek idein "to see". Someone sees something new in the mind--has a new conception, and with that new conception novelty enters the life of humanity.

Novelty. Newness. Freshness. New ideas tend to arise under pressure, when they're needed. All technological innovation depends on them. Without new ideas, we would all still be digging roots out of the ground with a piece of antler and eating them raw. We'd be huddled in the cold and wet below a rock overhang, hoping not to die. Hoping--not doing something about it.

It's easy to take ideas for granted. I was just keying notes yesterday from an excellent book I read last year, The Long Summer by Brian Fagan. In it he mentions a crucial invention from the Ice Age, about 18,000 years ago: the needle-drawn thread. This invention enabled people to make fitted clothes, which were much warmer than what had been available until then. This in turn allowed people to live in colder climates, exploiting the game of the tundra in a way that others without that technology, such as the Neanderthals, could not.

Maybe, in the big picture, it doesn't matter. Maybe it would make no objective difference if humans, like other social animals, simply lived and died in a changeless cycle of nature, eating, procreating, dying.

But I don't feel that way. I feel that humanity has a special relationship with novelty, an ability to conceive and create new things: new tools, new institutions. The universe permits this ceaseless creativity, indeed in its richness seems to encourage it, invite it. And personally, I'm all for it.

p & a

I'm not a depressive person, I'm happy (even elated) to say. To the best of my knowledge, I've never experienced a sustained depression. My depressions have all been within the bounds of the normal: the lowering of one's mood due to unpleasant events or circumstances. I've been more of an anxiety-prone person--one given to feelings of panic. In my opinion, anyway, a panicking person is not depressed. Indeed, a panicking person would welcome a bit of depression.

All of that being said, I'm undergoing a relatively depressed phase of my life right now, and have been since at least the summer. It corresponds with a major transit of the planet Saturn through a large structure of my astrological chart, and Saturn tends to have a depressing effect (I've listed Donna Cunningham's stages of a Saturn transit in an earlier post). The first of the stages, "confronting lack or loss", is certainly a depressing rather than an uplifting experience (don't worry--I'm smiling as I write this).

I think a key word here is confronting. It suggests that the lack or loss is being pushed in one's face, or up one's nose--that if we've been trying to hide from something, now we can't. Something forces our attention on an area of lack in our life.

I have more than one. But for the purposes of this blog, it is the "career" side of my life--and of course most particularly this very project, this very book, are key here. It's slowly and unpleasantly dawning on me that I'm spooked. Somehow, my project has thrown me off, and, like a thrown rider, I'm scared to get back on. I've been making all kinds of excuses--more research to do, rethinking the viewpoint of the whole thing, other work on the side--but they are only excuses.

Procrastination and avoidance are universal aspects of the writer's experience. They're so well-known that they make their way into almost any comic depiction of writing life. One of my favorites, partly because I've been a TV writer, was the set of episodes of Seinfeld in which Jerry and George are trying to sell a sitcom to a TV network. (They're selling, in effect, The Jerry Seinfeld Show.) The scenes of Jerry and George sitting down to write an episode I found hilarious--completely unlike actual writing, even team writing, but accurate in its portrayal of the writers' doggedness in avoiding the task at hand.

So, yeah, procrastination and avoidance are funny--up to a point. Maybe they're funny in the same way that those scenes on America's Funniest Videos are funny in which folks get hit in the groin with baseballs/piñata sticks/gymnasts' feet: they're funny when they're happening to someone else.

So: psychological resistance (procrastination and avoidance) forms one tine of a multipronged incursion of depression in my life. No easy way out.

the writer tangles with Mercury retrograde

I'm finding it to be a frustrating day. I'm suffering some of the symptoms of Mercury retrograde: a period of three weeks when Mercury appears to move backward in the sky. Astrologically it coincides with communication and travel delays and mixups, lost mail, telephone tag, and malfunctioning office equipment. (Have you found any of this happening since the end of October?)

I'm suffering from the latter. I discovered today that my antivirus and Internet security software, Kaspersky Antivirus, expired on October 11. Yikes! I set about trying to renew it. While Kaspersky, a Russian firm, is not as customer-hostile as Norton/Symantec (who are very customer-hostile indeed, in my experience), they nonetheless make it difficult to get things done. For hotshot programmers, their Web interface is pretty confusing and mysterious. Buying stuff online should be simple and straightforward, and the user interface well tested. Strangely, this is an area that most online businesses seem to put little effort into.

I managed to buy version 6.0, but then, upon trying to install it, I hit a wall: I would reach a point where the Install program would tell me I had to restart my computer. I did so. I hit the same point again, and restarted again. And again. And again.

At that point I sent an e-mail to the Kaspersky American support people who sent me my discount code for buying the product, but I haven't heard back from them. They probably work a regular day till 5:00 or so on the East Coast, then went home. Meanwhile, version 6.0 appears to have deleted version 5 that was resident on my PC, leaving me with nada. Luckily, they did get my money for the purchase.

I hesitated about updating my security software while Mercury is still retrograde, since this is exactly the kind of transaction that can go haywire. But I felt nervous about continuing to run on a virus database that was last updated on October 10. Well, now I have no virus database. Presumably I'm a sitting duck for malware, spam, phishing, and who knows what else.

I could try contacting Kaspersky at their Russian headquarters. From the "support" page of their website, it appears that I would have to fill out a form, a process that they advise takes about 15 minutes. That should keep those pesky inquiries away!

Maybe more businesses should have a flash page that says: "Just give us your Visa number, stop whining, and go away." As long as it were simple to enter the credit-card number, they might get some business with that, just because it appears to work.

There: some good old, down-home complaining.

lunch in town

The sun is back, streaming at a 45-degree angle, barring my blue office wall through the venetian blinds.

I had lunch downtown with my sisters--all three of them: Mara, Lisa, Shannon. We seldom get together as a group (the last time was about three years ago, at Lisa's instigation as always, to have a photo taken to give to Dad), but I really enjoy it.

We met at the Steamworks Brewing Company in Gastown, right by Granville Waterfront Station where I get off the SeaBus. It's a busy, popular place with dark wooden tables and bars in a remodeled 19th-century building. The little table was barely large enough to hold our four large plates. Without intending it, the three women all ordered the same salad--some kind of Indian-influenced thing that came with papadum. I had the special chicken and blue cheese on a baguette.

"I'm not ready to be one of the girls yet," I said.

The talk first of all was of Mara's elder daughter Chella, who had just found an apartment downtown after weeks of searching--apparently a real find in a newish building at Howe and Davie, a ninth-floor suite with full utilities, hardwood floors, and granite counters. Not bad for a 22-year-old and her roommate. Interestingly, Mara's younger daughter Clare had also found digs in Vancouver just days before--a suite in a house in Kitsilano, shared with three friends.

Shannon, the youngest, also has two daughters, aged three and one, and I got to talking about one of my favorite subjects, astrology, answering questions about their charts (I have these loaded on my Palm). It was all very animated, with much back and forth--a lot of fun. I'm an Aquarius, Mara and Shannon are both Libras, and Lisa's a Leo. But I was getting into the intricacies of reading the Moon sign and rising sign, and how these reflect our emotional nature and our coping skills respectively. Shannon seemed delighted to hear about how her girls reflect their astrological signs: her moody and emotional eldest, Emily, the Cancer; and her impulsive go-getter one-year-old Chloe, the Aries (right on the cusp of Pisces, so also compassionate and caring, tenderly tucking in her little plush toys).

Lisa had a meeting to get to back at Environment Canada, and Shannon had to return to her mites, whom she'd left with a neighbor and her daughters. Lisa had a busboy take a photo of the four of us, and we headed into the cool sunshine of October.

Lisa and I walked together as far as Waterfront Station, where we were surprised to see a chase: a short, rumpled, long-bearded homunculus of a man sprinted across Cordova Street with first one, then two more, security guards in hot pursuit. The thief (I'm assuming it was a thief) was running as though for his life on his short little legs. The lead guard, a short, stocky man himself, in black, was also running as fast as he could, with adrenaline-charged energy. The thief dashed in front of cars on Seymour Street, right across the flow of traffic. I thought that would give the guards pause, but not so--they dashed right after him. The fleeing man then cut onto Cordova, again plunging right out into traffic, and out there, at the yellow center-line, the little black-clad guy caught him and hauled him down. The other guards ran up to pin him to the pavement while cars crept around them. I admired the lead guard, because the grizzled little thief had done his best to escape. It was a raw physical contest, and he lost fair and square.

Lisa and I embraced, and I went in to catch the SeaBus back to North Van.

books as counselors

What are my most important thoughts these days? My mood is relatively dark, relatively low--though not too bad--as I examine my life and my achievements critically. This is behavior characteristic of the astrological transit of Saturn through the 10th house of my chart. Wherever Saturn transits, whatever it touches, those aspects of one's life become the focus of serious attention.

Donna Cunningham, in her very good little book How to Read Your Astrological Chart, provides a short list of the typical phases of a transit of Saturn:

• Confronting lack or loss
• Taking responsibility
• Eliminating deadwood
• Getting your act together
• Raising the bar
• Performing at peak
• Waiting for the right time
• Reaping what you have sown

The massive pattern of aspects in my 10th house of career and worldly fame shows that I was born to experience conflicts in this department of life. To paraphrase astrologer Robert Hand, difficult aspects to a house (such as mine) show that we are not well adjusted to the affairs of that house. Hence, for me, Saturn as the "report-card planet" is giving me the feeling of a flunking grade--or anyway an underachieving one.

A report card, of course, is not there to harm us. It is simply a message regarding our own performance, generally how hard and well we have worked. It confirms something that is already the case. It's only the messenger. It's feedback, and of course, with any feedback we have a choice of whether and how to use it.

I relate this to the second bullet in Donna Cunningham's list: "taking responsibility". This is one of the main functions of Saturn, the responsibility planet. And this is what I'm currently trying to do: take responsibility for my career, for my life.

I have always been a responsible, firstborn type--almost too much so, in some ways. But my feelings of career stalling and underachievement have had me wondering how my upbringing may have affected me in this respect. Not consciously: for conscious things, I believe, have little power over us. We are controlled by what is outside our awareness. In the past few months I have had some insights into some of these things which have been operating outside my awareness. The insights have come to me by reading books (specifically Neptune by Liz Greene and The Origins and History of Consciousness by Erich Neumann)--which tells me, incidentally, that a book can function as a kind of counselor, if you are open to it. Like a live counselor, a book can help you see around the corner to your own unconscious.

Reading these things has sent my mind spiraling down into the darkness where my personality was shaped. I have had dark, troubled feelings about entrapment in a kind of emotional setup not of my choosing--which I never had the option of avoiding, simply due to the circumstances of my birth.

On Thursday my mother called me up to invite me over for lunch. I accepted, and she made us one of our old-time favorites: bacon-and-egg sandwiches. While Mom fried the eggs in the kitchen, I saw that one of the books on the dining-table was one I was familiar with: You Can Heal Your Life by Louise L. Hay. It's a book I've read: the first that put me definitely on to the idea of the mental and emotional causation of illness. I flipped it open and found myself at page 35. Here are the first couple of paragraphs I found there:

Blame is one of the surest ways to stay in a problem. In blaming another, we give away our power. Understanding enables us to rise above the issue and take control of our future.

The past cannot be changed. The future is shaped by our current thinking. It is imperative for our freedom to understand that our parents were doing the best they could with the understanding, awareness, and knowledge they had. Whenever we blame someone else, we are not taking responsibility for ourselves.

Louise Hay was talking to me: she was acting as my counselor. I felt a fluttering of freedom within my breast--a most welcome feeling. Mom came out with the sandwiches and I put the book away.

Later I made the connection to Donna Cunningham and the transit of Saturn, bullet 2: taking responsibility, the very words used by Louise Hay.

The world is a big place; messages keep arriving. The report card is your friend, no matter what it's telling you. Now I look forward to some of the next steps--like getting my act together.

why am I doing this, again?

I wanted to get back to talking about my novel--the thing that this blog is supposed to be about. What do I want to say about it? In these dark times, when I myself question what the heck I'm doing, and why, it might be good to review those questions. Why am I doing this? What is the value?

One avenue of inquiry is: What makes my project different? The log-line for The Mission--the one-sentence description of the story that appears at the top-right corner of the blog's main page--generates a certain frisson of excitement because it suggests that my story is about the (true, secret, unexpected) origin of Christianity. Which it is. But my focus is not on Christianity, particularly, as such. I am not a Christian, nor have I ever been one, and nor will I ever become one. Christianity, to me, is an important world religion, and one of the main tributaries of our modern Western culture--the culture I was raised in. But its claim on exclusive truth is no greater than that of any other off-the-shelf spiritual system.

The reason I became excited about doing this story was that Christianity, I believe, is connected closely with the symbolism of the precession of the equinoxes--the almost imperceptible shifting of the Earth's axis in time which causes the north pole to describe a wide circle in the sky every 25,920 years. It is this gradual shift that causes the zodiac--the band of stars through which the sun and planets appear to travel in their orbits--to creep backwards, so that, little by little, the sun, on the spring equinox, comes to rise in a different zodiacal constellation. The sun rises, each year on March 21, in each constellation for 25,920 ÷ 12 = 2,160 years, on average. Each of these periods of 2,160 years, when the sun rises in one zodiacal constellation, is known as an astrological age. Right now the sun rises each March 21 in the constellation of Pisces, which means that we live in the Age of Pisces.

But we're near the end of the Age of Pisces. Soon (and exactly when depends on how you draw your map of the constellations) we will enter the Age of Aquarius. So the Age of Pisces began something just over 2,000 years ago--close to the time that Christianity had its origin. Jung, in his book Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, makes a detailed case that the unfolding of Christianity over the past 2,000 years, and especially of the attitude of Western people to the figure of Christ himself, correlates closely with the movement of the vernal equinox (which is technically a geometrical point in the sky--the point of intersection of the equator and the ecliptic) through the sign of the fishes. (The fish, of course, is a key symbol of Christianity.) Jung believed that the figure of Christ evolved in tandem with his dark twin, the Antichrist or Satan, who became the repository of the evil that could not form any part of Christ's nature. Christian eschatology refers to a final confrontation between the two at the end of time.

I'm fascinated by Jung's interpretation, and it is an important inspiration for my work. Jung was a Christian, but he wasn't writing as one. He was writing as a psychologist and as a philosopher, an interpreter of the symbols that have appeared in our civilization. He defined symbol as a representation of something that cannot be completely known. It expresses something that is too vast, too vague, or too paradoxical to be presented directly to consciousness. Symbol, of course, is the language of dream and of myth.

So I'm interested in the Age of Pisces, and its key signifier in the world, Christianity. They are symbolic of things deeper and beyond themselves. This emphasis makes my work much different from most historical fiction, especially that dealing with Christ and his period. I'm thinking of things like The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson or Christ the Lord by Anne Rice, which essentially accept the biblical narrative(s) at face value and retell them, or things like Testament by Nino Ricci, which is a euhemerist retelling of the Christian myth. The first category is essentially pious. The second is an attempt to account for the mythologization of historical events by showing how extraordinary but nonetheless natural people give rise to legends about themselves.

Mine is in neither of those classes of work. I'm not a pious Christian (or any other kind), and I don't believe we have Christian mythology, and the Christian religion, because a few extraordinary people did some unusual things 2,000 years ago. No: other, deeper things are at work.

But I've written enough for today.

sitting life exams

Project headwinds were strong again today.

In the early morning I made a short journal entry, then devoted some time to astrology, reviewing my own chart and keying some notes from Robert Hand's Planets in Transit. It is quite a cluster of transits. Each one is difficult on its own; I've got several happening all at once.

I don't believe that planets "do" anything to us, or that a cluster of difficult transits is simply bad luck. The modern astrological view is to see the movements and relationships of the planets as a mirror or gauge of what is happening at the present time. From this point of view, the birthchart is like a map of our genome: the experiment in life that was our birth. Its nature and its intentionality is built into its structure from the start, like a seed. To me, this does not restrict our freedom--or at least, no more than anything else does; for our freedom is always relative. If we're told that we'll lose our milk teeth by age ten, or that we'll go through puberty at twelve, does that limit our freedom? No: puberty and its timing are givens; how we respond to that event in our development is within our control.

The important planets for tracking transits are the outer ones, especially Saturn and beyond. Their slow movements and largely unconscious manifestations make them the "gods of change" in our lives, as Howard Sasportas termed them in his book of that title. Their passages over key points in our charts signal the crises of our lives--the periods when are faced with deep conflicts of values, and must choose which ones we will express in our lives. Each planet carries its own set of themes, and these themes raise themselves as the crucial issues as the planet travels through each house of the chart, and aspects each planet in turn.

One way of expressing the theme of Saturn, for example, is as the reality principle. Saturn represents the hard edges of life, where we meet our limits and insecurities--where the world, as it were, forces us to adapt to it by showing us how much stronger it is than we are. Thus, Saturn represents authority figures such as parents, bosses, and police; it represents "testing" situations when we must prove ourselves and accept the result. Zipporah Dobyns called it the "report card planet". When Saturn aspects planets in our chart, we get an exam in the subject represented by the planet--and a report card.

I'm undergoing multiple exams at the moment. I'll mention just one: Saturn is transiting in opposition to my Sun--that is, opposite the point the Sun occupied when I was born. In general, this represents a 29-year low point in one's life, when one's energies and morale are at a minimum. The Sun represents one's vital energies and one's core personality; in a sense it is one's inmost self and what one really stands for. With Saturn in opposition, these core things are put directly to the test, as though to say, "How realistic have you been in becoming your true self? How hard have you worked at it? Have you slacked off? Taken shortcuts? Made mistakes?" When Saturn is in opposition, these questions tend to bring out the negative answers, even for people who have in fact been keeping their noses to the grindstone relatively well.

What can happen is that you try to show Saturn--the taskmaster--all that you've done with the past 15 (or maybe 30) years, only to hear the response: "Those are not your core activities--not what you were really born to do. Show me something relevant." Now you get butterflies and a feeling of fright and foreboding, the kind of feeling you might have had in school when you showed up and realized that you had studied for the wrong test. A sense of inadequacy, doom, and even stupidity might envelop you.

So inwardly I've heard the question "what the hell have you been doing with your life?" a lot, sometimes ended with "you idiot" for good measure. When that question is put to one, it's not easy to come up with a really satisfying reply.

I'm not alone. Everyone born at around the same date each year is having this transit right now. My birthday is January 24. One person who is clearly feeling the effects of this transit is Wayne Gretzky (birthday January 26). Even being called the Great One here on earth is no refuge from Saturn, and Wayne is getting a snootful of authority figures and also negative publicity (another Saturnian effect). For these astrological reasons I think that the Canadian men will underperform at the Olympics, for I don't think Saturn is finished with Wayne yet. Saturn is saying to him right now, "Sure, you're a sports star--who cares? Show me what you're really made of."

Wayne Gretzky is dealing with his Saturn opposition in the full glare of publicity--ouch. I'm relatively lucky to be nursing my problems in the privacy of my own home, far (far, far) from the public eye. But take heart, Wayne: I'm with you.

ocean through a pinhole

More rain: all day today. Again I rose and straightaway plunged into chapter-drafting. Again I was quite productive: I plowed all the way to page 19 before lunch. My goal has long been to write my book the way I write, say, my dreams--just to type quickly and not worry about how I express myself. This I have not really achieved, partly due to the fact that I just don't know what I'm going to write (unlike the dream, which is a personal event that has already happened), and much of it depends on accurate research; and partly due to good old personal writing inhibition, the fear of writing badly.

But with a work of this size, I feel I need to zip ahead whenever I get a tailwind. The chapters are getting easier. I have written enough of them (although this one is numbered 20, it is actually my 22nd chapter, due to the splitting and merging of chapters earlier on) that they do not seem such a big deal. Just as, on my project spreadsheet, the numeric averages are settling in (average chapter length: 31 pages; average number of words per page: 222; average number of words per chapter: 6,806), so in the writing itself: I know the material will probably fall in a range of type and quality between poles that have already been established. Not unlike the dictum of Jonathan Goodwill, line producer for season 1 of The Odyssey, that "with twelve episodes you get four that are great, four that are okay, and four that are not so hot." In the same way, there is a minimum quality below which I won't write (I'll revise the material, even though it's first draft), and there is no doubt a kind of maximum that I can't get above, due to my inherent limitations as a writer and as a human being.

My problem in writing, generally, I think, has been one of trying to play it safe. A lot of native talent is trying to come out through a risk-averse expressive mechanism. I have tried to open this up over the years, tried to let it flow more. Astrologically, it is signified by my having Saturn in Capricorn in the 3rd house of communication, as well as Mercury in Capricorn in the same house. Where Saturn is, we feel restricted, inhibited, insecure, inadequate. Saturn shows where we're always afraid of messing up, and where, partly in consequence, we do mess up. Saturn in this position, if afflicted by other planets, can signify speech impediments and learning disabilities. Luckily, I had none of these, but I have had a lifelong feeling of verbal insecurity, which has driven me to overcome the perceived deficit. This too is Saturn in action: where we put in long, determined effort to overcome a problem, usually with the result that we eventually master it and even become an expert. Your Saturn placement shows where irritants, over time, become pearls.

Anyway, in my case native fluency and psychological inhibition have combined to produce my style. I have always been quite well pleased with what I write, and how. I have never suffered the terrible trouble at getting words on paper (or screen) that so many writers do; I have never had a serious case of writer's block. My problem is almost the opposite: I have so many ideas, and only a limited capacity for writing them. I feel like a pinhole through which the ocean is trying to pour. My writing is I suppose a high-pressure jet, needle-thin, but sharp and penetrating.

new books and personal identity

Snow fell through the night. There is still a wet layer of white, turning to translucent slush, outside. Snowmelt drips from deck and rhododendron.

A book arrived yesterday in the post, and two today. Yesterday's was Beyond the Essene Hypothesis by Gabriele Boccaccini; today's are Identity: Youth and Crisis by Erik H. Erikson and The Challenge of Youth, edited by Erikson. I have wiped down the covers of these used books with a damp cloth, entered them in my Excel book inventory, and inscribed my name, along with the month and year, in them. (The Erikson books, paperbacks from the 1960s, had their previous owners' names inscribed in them still: Roger King and Jane Boyle, respectively.) My library is augmented.

Boccaccini's book was mentioned in Uriel's Machine by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, which I've got about half read. Knight and Lomas's book is about the astronomy of the Book of Enoch, which in turn was a core text for the Qumran community. Boccaccini's book is subtitled The Parting of the Ways between Qumran and Enochic Judaism, and apparently argues that the Essene community at Qumran was in fact the offspring of something he calls the Enochic party, which, he claims, contributed to the birth of the parties led by John the Baptist and Jesus. I felt I could not afford to overlook this book.

The Erikson books came out of my quest earlier this month into my own life and its development, its story. Erikson is the preeminent psychologist of personal identity and its development. In astrology, the identity is represented by the Sun in the birth chart. In my case this identity, and its realization, are conflicted by the situation of Neptune in what's known as a square aspect to the Sun. The tension is heightened by the Sun's placement in my 4th house of the inner world and domestic situation, suggesting a life focused on self-discovery and the arrangement of my own inner world, and by Neptune's placement in my 1st house of contact with my environment. The arrangement points to someone who, by life calling, is searching for his own identity (Sun in the 4th) while at the same time is inclined to mirror back other people's wants and wishes (Neptune in the 1st)--to be what others want him to be. Not hard to see the possible difficulties posed here.

So: Erik Erikson. Of the three books that have just arrived, I think I'll start with his major work Identity. It relates not only to my own life, but to my work, where I see the issue of identity as an important theme. Maybe I can see how it all fits together, and how the art is more intimately related to my life than I thought.

dialogue on the purpose of life

I rose with good intentions before 6:00 to get to work right away on continuing to draft chapter 19. Wet gray fog continued to swirl in the darkness outside. I opened my chapter documents, but couldn't resist also opening the file in which I'm investigating my own life: "The Hero with a Thousand Faces--annotated" file. In this I have been going through the turning-points of my own life, looking on it as a story: my myth.

Five years ago, under the influence of my mother who was embarking on writing a memoir, I bought a book called Your Life as Story by Tristine Rainer, a TV-writer-producer-turned-writing-teacher. This is a good book, and I was immediately excited by it. Rainer, like me, was a TV writer, but she specialized in made-for-TV movies, and particularly in those that told the life-stories of real people. She had learned to use her training as a scriptwriter to discover the dramatic structure of true stories, and when she branched out into teaching "lifewriting" to others, this was a large part of what she taught others--those who wanted to write about their own lives--to do.

I had a headstart, since I had already received similar training in creating dramatic structure, so I leaped in, doing the exercises in her book and inventorying the events of my life as dramatic turning-points. Excitedly I created Word files, listing events and arranging and rearranging them. I became passionate about learning more about my parents' lives, how their lives had led to mine and influenced it from before the time I was born. (I believe my enthusiasm for this infected my father and influenced him in a "roots" exploration of his own which eventually resulted in a memoir of his early life, from his birth in Riga, Latvia, in 1934, through his experiences in refugee camps with his mother in Germany during the war and in Red Cross "DP" camps afterward--a document which he shared with his children and which I treasure.)

I was excited by the idea of getting away from fiction-writing with its limitations (as I have written about before in this blog), and turning to nonfiction with its potentially greater inherent richness. The material was already there to be written; I just had to structure the events into a dramatic line.

I made several attempts. I wrote a number of vignettes of my earliest memories--looking for images, clues that might offer a ray of light into my story. I divided the events of my life into groups according to different storylines: the search for truth, my vocation as an artist, the search for love, and so on. But, as ever, I found the dramatic shaping of the events, even when the events were already given to me, as these were, difficult. If I were structuring a fictional work, I would be asking, "What is the main story? Which is the A-line?" Which was the A-line?

That question is tantamount to: what is your life about? What is the theme of your life? Or, starkly: Why were you born?

I thought I knew. Then I didn't know. Then I thought I knew again. Then I didn't again. I fiddled, I rearranged. I created new documents and rearranged the beads yet again, paring them down, relabeling them. I didn't feel I "had" it. My own story was eluding me.

I put it away. Or rather it drifted away from me, as things do: more days would stretch by without my working on it. I had made a few tries, written a number of pages about a couple of sections of my life (and my prelife), but these were only guesses. I didn't know what my story was, even though I knew all the events in it. A peculiar and in its way instructive experience.

Developing and sustaining the will to finish my current project, this book, is calling for all of my powers of concentration and commitment. The project itself is asking the question: What is your life about? Or: "You're burning up your life to write me, so I must be saying something that you very badly want to say."

This morning as I burrowed deeper into my investigative document I keyed some material from Liz Greene's excellent book The Astrological Neptune:

When Neptune aspects the Sun in the birth chart, the need for individual self-expression and the longing for the formlessness of prebirth are forced into dialogue. The subject of the conversation, conscious or unconscious, is the purpose of one's life.... Because the Sun symbolizes those values and goals which develop fully at midlife, forming the bedrock of the individual's sense of personal destiny, the Sun-Neptune individual needs to include the Neptunian world in his or her chosen path in life. Otherwise, nagging discontent, disillusionment, and apathy may undermine everything one tries to do.

Yes! For I am that Neptunian individual--in spades. Neptune in the 1st house, where it is inherently strong and dominant, and square my Sun: a strong, stressful aspect. There it is: the dialogue on the purpose of my life, and the advice that this purpose may clarify only at midlife--where I am now. The need to include "the Neptunian world" in my chosen path--the world of redemption.

Here's more:

Sun-Neptune may signify the musician, the actor, the composer, the playwright, the writer of poetry and fiction.... Neptune's empathy with human suffering and longing marks the Sun-Neptune individual's creative endeavors with a quality of universality. These forms of expression are solar as well as oceanic; they have body, although they are fluid; they necessitate conscious effort, dedication, individual choice, sensual contact and imagery. Neptune makes the Sun-ego porous, open to the waters of the unseen world.

And finally this:

Enormous imaginative and creative potential is reflected in Sun-Neptune contacts. But if one is to express that potential, one must build a strong vessel to contain the sacred wine.

As I reread this material, I started to feel better again about my project. It does indeed bear the theme of my life in some way, is the message I am bringing back from the mythological journey of my life so far.

the mission

Morning rain has given way to afternoon sun, shy and late, gently turning the drops in the neighbors' yew hedge into sparkles. The sky is pale, clean blue amid the litter of torn clouds.

This morning, back to the astrological analysis of my life. I pressed on with it, looking up passages in The Twelve Houses by Howard Sasportas and Planets in Transit by Robert Hand. Feeling threads of meaning draw together, I worked on intently. I have studied my chart many times over the years and decades; it's been my main research tool and example (as with any astrologer). Now I dug deeper, trying to find the hierarchy of importance of the various factors.

I was born with Neptune in the 1st house of immediate relationship with the world. Here is an extract I keyed from Sasportas:

With Neptune in the 1st house, something could have gone askew at either of these two important stages [of the infant's relationship with the mother] of symbiosis and separation. If there was not a secure enough tie with the mother, then they might be afraid to develop a strong, individual identity. But if they were forbidden by her to separate, they may never have had the chance to find out who they are in their own right.

I was also born with Sun in the 4th house of the home and inner world. More Sasportas:

Those with Sun in the 4th need to delve deep inside to find themselves. What is achieved in the outer world is perhaps less important than what is accomplished in terms of soul-growth and inner spiritual development.... Those with the Sun here might have experienced the father as so powerful and authoritative that they subsequently cannot surmount a crippling sense of their own smallness and inferiority. They may have to do battle with the father to sever the hold he has on them. In other cases, the father may have been physically or psychologically absent. For the boy-child this could mean there wasn't a clear sense of father upon which to model his own masculine qualities.

Sun in the 4th suggests that they come more into their own in the second half of life. A renewed sense of creative potency, vitality, and the joys of self-expression are potentially available in the later years.

And from my own notes:

Neptune in the 1st points to inherent difficulties in developing self-knowledge. It is square the Moon-Uranus conjunction, emphasizing the conflict.... Sun in the 4th repeats the theme of "finding myself" as a life-task. Indeed, it suggests that this is my supreme life-task.

The natal square of Neptune to the Sun again emphasizes the difficulty of the task: the profundity of confusion and not-knowing, and the transcendent depths from which the fog of unknowing originates. But, as in a good story, the achievement of the hero is only as great as the forces of antagonism. The antagonism here is indirect, subtle, and systemic. It is unconscious and transcendent. It may be infinite.

For if I believe in Hillman's "acorn" theory, then my life, my birth, is exactly the one needed for me to fulfill my life purpose. The neuroses and conflicts of my parents were necessary in order to grow the person I had to be--have to be. My obstacles have been large and deep--and mostly invisible. They have been within.

Whatever I may discover on this journey of self-knowledge can't be for myself alone. No doubt the Moon-Uranus combination in the 10th points to the social urge: the need to make my findings public, so to say. Uranus here suggests the ability to reach all of humanity. The Moon suggests the personal need to do so.

In short, my birth chart is of someone who has special problems in discovering who he is, whose own self, identity, is an abiding mystery even to himself. This reminded me of the powerful closing words of Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces:

Not the animal world, not the plant world, not the miracle of the spheres, but man himself is now the crucial mystery. Man is that alien presence with whom the forces of egoism must come to terms, through whom the ego is to be crucified and resurrected, and in whose image society is to be reformed. Man, understood however not as "I" but as "Thou": for the ideals and temporal institutions of no tribe, race, continent, social class, or century, can be the measure of the inexhaustible and multifariously wonderful divine existence that is the life in all of us.

The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal--carries the cross of the redeemer--not in the bright moments of his tribe's great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.

There it is: my problem is the world's problem. I believe it has been given to me, not to solve the world's problem(!), but to work on it. My background, attributes, and passions are just those of someone whose destiny is tied up with this monumental and difficult question. As I put it in my journal:

I may not have true self-knowledge--for the discovery of that is precisely the problem, the quest, not just of myself but of all mankind. But I may be arriving at the knowledge that that is my quest, my role, and my mission. And arriving at some idea of how to pursue it.

This is a truly exciting possibility, about which I feel good--even wonderful. Here is one more extract from today's long journal entry:

When I reread the Campbell extract I felt a sense of relaxation, even joy. The mission is bigger than just my personal happiness or petty ambitions.

If I can keep that in mind, I should be able to weather the storm of the coming months and years.

Saturn riding high

Steady, heavy, cold rain. Awoke just before 5:00 and lay awake with dark thoughts, dark feelings. They were more far-reaching and life-centered than just the usual thoughts about my project--although that made its appearance too. These dark thoughts and feelings have had me studying my astrological transits in the morning instead of pushing ahead with my writing, which I just don't feel like in this state of mind. What wise counsel would I give myself if I were my own astrological client?

The planet Saturn, which astrologer Zip Dobyns calls "the report card planet" and which represents the reality principle in general, as each of us conceives it to be. It's the "reality" being referred to when people talk about being "realistic" and having to deal with "reality"--hard-edged facts that don't bend to suit the dreams or hopes of individuals. Here is what astrologer Robert Hand says about Saturn (slightly compressed):

Saturn represents the way you experience the universe as you have structured it. The location of transiting Saturn in your chart indicates the part of your life that is being examined and tested, the areas of greatest tension in your life, to which you must direct your closest attention. The planets that Saturn transits in your natal chart represent energies in your life that are being challenged and behavior patterns that require examination.

In my chart Saturn is transiting through the 10th house at the top: the house of career, social prestige, and fame. Saturn visits this house for about two and a half years out of every 29 for all of us, and usually the transit coincides with times of greatest success and responsibility in our lives. If you are ever going to lead or direct others, it will generally be while Saturn is transiting your 10th. Saturn's last transit through my 10th was in 1976, when I was in grade 12. I was involved in filmmaking at the time, and did indeed direct others in the making of a short 16mm film called "Nine Minutes", which went on to compete at the Canadian Student Film Festival in Montreal in 1977. Also in 1976, I and my co-producers won the B.C. Student Film Festival for an earlier 8mm film called "The Device". These kinds of accolades are also characteristic of Saturn culminating in one's chart.

No such events are present in my life right now. I expected much of myself, knowing that at age 17 or 18 I was too young to really make a name for myself--that would have to wait until I had done more. I looked far ahead to the time in my mid-40s when the next Saturn culmination would come, and expected significant achievement of myself.

It hasn't quite gone according to plan. I am something more than half, maybe much more than half (including outlining), the way through the first draft of my historical epic, but "realistically" it is still a good year away from being even close to finished, and more than that before I will be seeking an audience for it. Saturn will be moving on to my 11th house of associations, ideals, and goals--a time typically in each of our lives when we are getting used to the success earned in the previous Saturn cycle and are including others in our limelight. Our minds are gradually moving on to new things: new horizons, new ideas. The things that brought us to the top of the cycle are starting to get old.

Of course, I'm different from most people, in that the Sun in my chart is placed in the 4th house of domestic life and one's inner world--opposite the 10th of career and fame. This means that just as Saturn is culminating at the top of the chart, in my 10th house, it is also opposing the Sun in my 4th. This opposition to the Sun is a low point in one's life, when one usually feels fatigued, blocked, and barely able to meet life's demands. This is a 29-year low point in life, when one is urged not to pursue projects too ambitiously. It is often a time of defeats as one recognizes that certain projects have not panned out.

The high point in the Saturn-Sun cycle is when Saturn conjoins the Sun. In my case, this happened 14 years ago in 1991, while Warren and I were working hard at writing the first episodes of The Odyssey in an effort to get the CBC to pick up the series for production. The network gave us the green light to make the first episodes in December 1991. It was indeed a career high, although Warren and I were far from famous, and had none of the power or influence that comes when transiting Saturn is high in one's chart.

There is much more at stake and in play than what I have outlined here. But in terms only of this project, The Mission, my concern is this: that after this grinding transit of Saturn through the 10th I will find that my novel no longer meets my expressive needs--it will have outlived its usefulness. In short: that it will be one of those stillborn projects that dies with Saturn-opposition-Sun, and after the smoke clears some other thing will be what carries me again to an invisible but busy personal peak in another 14 years.

However, now is not the time to be making any such decisions. The advice that goes with Saturn transiting the 10th house is always: keep going. Work hard at the responsibilities you've already got, it's no time to let up. I'll do my best, but there are individual factors at work in my chart that will make this difficult going indeed, I think.