This July’s full moon falls on the 6/7th and in the sign of the sea goat, Capricorn. There is a lunar eclipse, the shadow of the moon falling on the earth. Making a space for the negative, the non-being in each of us.
I long for the full-bellied reassurance of the moon, I feel very strongly this week that I am a daughter bereft of both parents. Do we ever get used to finding ourselves orphans?
And at the same time I don’t know that many of us have known ourselves ‘parented’ within our families of origin, so I just wait for the moon rising over the mountains, that symbol of compassion and connectedness, with something of the wayward quirky nature of the sea goat. A bearded horned sure-footed rambunctious creature.
I like the cold lunar clarity of the moon on my winter garden; a time for looking squarely at reality and ‘what is’ in my life and in the world right now. Retrograde planets all around: Jupiter, Uranus, Pluto, Neptune and Chiron, so nobody’s gong anywhere in a hurry. What is there has to be accepted. And in Capricorn’s goat I glimpse what is stubborn and intransigeant, resisting change.
The sea goat swimming against the tides, scrambling ashore, leaping from rock to rock, strange-eyed and knowing. But elusive, restless, taking leap after leap with sure-footed precision — but following its own eccentric path up the mountainside, over boulders, into the eye of the storm. The goat as survivor, with its reckless gaiety and stubbornness. Very much a creature after my own heart, albeit maddening. The goat butting at my preconceptions, a pain in the arse.
John Updike once remarked of the wonderful witchy writer Sylvia Townsend Warner that she had ‘the spiritual digestion of a goat’. Nothing bored her, nothing repelled. She was always receptive and processing the oddest and most unlikely of topics. Amused, infuriated, admiring, quizzical. That too I like.
The sea goat has escaped from the ocean and is in the garden eating the dirty laundry! Greedy horn-twisted green-eyed bleating goat — I stand and admire the energy and zest, the wilful if random leaps, the jauntiness. I too am a survivor of sorts. And have the occasional goatish appetite and zest for uncommon places.
I googled “Zimbabwe” (every month I break up the monotony of my desktop screen by setting the background display with pictures of place’s I would love to visit one day) and I came across this beautiful picture of two mountain plateaus with a water fall and mystical orange sunset. Nevertheless, I wanted to claim that picture for my background. When I clicked to view, I came across an entry of your blog, “Does joy like fear make no sound?” I thought I was reading something from Alice Walker. Poignant and undoubtedly well-written but, I’m sure this was effortless because that is how it was read. Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it; as if, I’m not sure how this will sound…i had found a twin spirit, if such a thing exists. I will check back in from time to time.