I am an astrolabe

I am made of sym­bols. The sun at the moment of my birth, in win­ter, announced, the magi­cians would say, that I would sail along the cliffs, lit­tle chal­lenged by the sirens, rather soli­tary and chained to a rocky mast on a makeshift boat like an old poet not know­ing how to steer.

Venus, perched high in the sky, bent over my cra­dle and gave me a voice, a fiery sweet­ness, a desire to know every­thing through the sens­es. Asleep in his waters, Mer­cury has usurped the solar throne, pulling the strings. I pos­sess the images, the cere­bral drugs of a daf­fodil monk. Sat­urn in Capri­corn, it is seri­ous. Jupiter in Sagit­tar­ius, accom­pa­nied by the Moon, is swelling, explorato­ry tides. Mars in Gem­i­ni makes me a pup­pet, a jack-of-all-trades, and Plu­to, oh the Mys­te­ri­ous, makes me vol­cani­cal­ly attract­ed to the deep eyes of cer­tain humans. I can lis­ten, heal, be sad, and some­times be happy.

I am made of the move­ment of the plan­ets. We are all made of it, each one pos­sess­ing, despite what the sci­en­tists laugh at, a melody that we are free to sing or not. We gov­ern our des­tiny as we nav­i­gate on an ocean of pos­si­bil­i­ties and ran­dom­ness. We can’t do it with this free will that lets us believe that the small, enor­mous forces of the uni­verse do not affect us. We must lis­ten to the geom­e­try of the past, the shape of the stars and the sky. The real­i­ty, emp­ty and full, is vast both inside and out­side of us. Our atoms and quarks would have trav­elled in the heart of some stars and plas­mas. Our soul, our inner voice, would dive tire­less­ly into the soup of the ances­tral fields. Who knows ?

The clos­er we get to knowl­edge, the thin­ner our wings become and the more they melt. The more we dis­cov­er, the more we are lost and amazed. The old­er I get, the less I fight, and I leave the flood­gates of my exis­tence wide open. I am both afraid and brave, sad and serene.

Per­haps some­one is call­ing me ; per­haps des­tiny is hold­ing out its arms to me. But my body always seems to be blind­ed by promis­es that are too young. I am woven with the unshake­able arche­types that sculpt Sat­urn, Nep­tune, Plu­to, as well as my father and my mother.

It’s snow­ing right now. A new age air fills the room with its uncer­tain mois­ture. Our sym­bols are our orches­tra ; they keep tran­sit­ing around us. I am the song of my birth. My duty is to learn it by heart, sing it in all pos­si­ble tones and modal­i­ties until the end, and then leave the com­po­si­tion to anoth­er sailor. The great sleep will be upon me one day. Is it anguish or peace ?