Gemini III: Games of Light and Shadow (Re-Post)
The summer solstice approaches, and with it all that we’ve come to expect from the season marked by the Sun’s preeminence in the skies of the northern hemisphere. That is to say, everything that comes from it being warm.
I like summer—most people I know do. I like being warm. I like being able to do things in the world with my kids while they’re off school and it no longer causes physical pain to be outdoors. The world swells with activity: festivals, fairs, vacations… options. So many options. Stands to reason, then, that this time of year—the lead-up to summer marked by the Sun’s entrance into the 3rd Decan of Gemini—I am regularly presented with multiple requests to lock my summer plans down. People want to know my plans so they can make their plans. And so, the great culling begins. Several dozen conversations later, before me is no longer a wild, open field of endless summer fun—we have a schedule.
Some people love schedules. I… have a growing appreciation for their necessity, and the “comfort” their structure can bring. The same comfort, I imagine, prison walls come to represent after serving two or three decades of a life sentence.
I’ve struggled to make peace with schedules because, for me, I see not just a towering monument to what will be in the days and weeks to come, but its shadow as well. In the shadow dwell the ghosts of all the things that might have been.
Last year, I had the pleasure of contributing a piece on Gemini III for Astrologers' Co-Op. As someone with Venus in this decan, I won’t pretend I’m an objective observer. My creative life is basically a living meditation on its central principle: the ruthless, restless art of choosing. What idea gets shaped into form, and what gets lovingly (or not-so-lovingly) abandoned on the workshop floor? That’s the question I ask every time I open a new draft or leave one to rot for six months.
So, while my work at this time means that my mausoleum of unwritten articles will continue to grow with fresh spirits for the foreseeable future, for now I can at least put a spotlight on one of their immortal twins. That is to say, the article I wrote last year.
