Paris by night - Nice view. Alessandra Sironi, Eiffel tower
Sometime between middle and high school, I had a dream. I was using Tumblr, logging on, and seeing what other people were saying. There had been some catastrophe, and not everyone had the internet. It wasn't guaranteed. But I somehow had access to the internet, and I logged onto Tumblr through my TV. People hadn't posted in weeks, months.
I thought it was weird that I was scrolling through Tumblr on my TV. This was 2010. It wasn't a flat screen. It was big and chunky and a box. These days, you can check Tumblr on a TV. Technology has come a long way. Airplay. Screensharing. Smartphones.
Could that dream have been a premonition? Of the decline in use of Tumblr over the years. I had just discovered Tumblr in the 8th grade. I was one of the first users, back when hipsters and mustache and converse pictures were just about to become the rage. Myspace was still around, though becoming a graveyard more and more by the month. Scene kids never die though. Rawr :]
~
What could the dream have meant? Perhaps that TV would be my own demise? My armageddon?
When I first read about the 12th house, I was a first-year at Centre College. The 'best' college in Kentucky. Private, small, liberal arts college with a hefty endowment. Most people have never heard of it. So much for the prestige and recognition.
I read Liz Green's article about the 12th house. I had just started getting into astrology. I'm smart. Was an IB / International Baccalaureate student at one of the best high school's in the city. But astrology gave my little 18 year old mind & heart some peace of mind. Homework and ambition can only do so much.
Harvard. Thanks to Gossip Girl, Brown University became my dream school. I applied Early Admission, seeing as the acceptance rate was slightly higher, and I thought my desire and longing to be upper class would carry the weight for my acceptance. AAAANNNHHHH!!!! Nope. Try again. You were just an above average student, thought not straight As or rich and well connected. Of course, this got my admittance to other good schools. Just not an Ivy. You probably would have hated it anyway, seeing as you had a nervous breakdown your second semester into college. And that was only two hours away from home! :) Rhode Island? not a chance.
My intuition told me not to go to Centre. But my ego persisted. I wanted to go to the best school in Kentucky, and I wouldn't settle for less.
I got so drunk the weekend I visited campus my senior year. The guy blamed himself for letting me get carried away. But I knew what I was doing. Granted I didn't mean to get that fucked up. But I wanted to get drunk. My bad homes.
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So, I wanted the conventionally successful life. I did. Graduate college in four years, maybe be a banker or something. Make money. It really seemed so simple to me. Then my life became a living hell. Torture. I became so reclusive. Would walk around in the night, and miss my classes in the morning. I had no money. No car. Surrounded by strangers, rich strangers, in a small town two hours from home.
I fell apart.
I ended up in the Psych ward for a week. Took the rest of the semester off to join a new religion, the Mormons. Came back the next Fall only to be completely miserable again in a couple weeks time.
I guess I just thought I could handle it. I wasn't disciplined enough to stick it out. I was crazy enough that it became too difficult.
I was in fact crazy. I didn't realize it at the time. I do now. It's why I blacked out all those years.
Thanks, 12th house.
The 12th house in Astrology. The house of Psych wards, Prisons, Monestaries, Rehabs. A single drop of water in the vast vast ocean.
The unconscious. Spirituality. Bipolar disorder. Photography. Drugs. Weird religion. Gay.
Boy, I had it in for me. All things considered.
I realized though, my dad's Sun was also in the 12th house. Mine and his. So I guess we asked for this. We're in this together. Two wackos.
Great.... :(
I guess what they say is true.
The 12th house makes you crazy. I'm living proof. But it also gave me psychic powers. Gifts. The days you feel like you are completely drowning, though, are the worst.
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♇ pluto in 5th house can mean that you become obsessive over romance or love
♇ pluto in 2nd house can show that your the one who’s often in charge in work environments
♇ pluto-moon can mean that your emotional changes are intense
♇ pluto-venus can mean you confuse love with lust
♇ pluto in 1st house can your look changes quite often. your body weight can also change a lot (1st house = the body)
♇ pluto in the 10th house can mean you will be well known after death
♇ pluto in aquarius can intensify the rebellious atmosphere these next few years
♇ pluto-rising can make you have an intimidating or fierce energy
♏︎ scorpio moon can have a mother who is very secretive or you just don’t know much about her. your mom can also have an obsession with you
♏︎ scorpio in 11th house can mean your friends can be shady people. not necessarily shady to you, but their job or other “side” of them is someone different
♏︎ scorpio mars can make you a pretty big hot head, and someone who gets sexual to release hostile energy, feelings, etc
♏︎ scorpio mars can mean you like or attract men who are possessive, hostile, or want some form of power over you
♏︎ scorpio in 5th house can mean you have an interest in animal bones, and maybe other forms of witchcraft
♏︎ scorpio in 12th house can show you’re very connected to the afterlife
♏︎ scorpio stelliums can have an elusive and dark feminine energy to them.
♏︎ scorpio venus can like dark clothing, mainly black. they may also enjoy black, goth, or emo make up
Sanja Milenkovic (Serbian, b. 1983)
The first element, 2020
Acrylic on canvas
i don’t want to be sober but i feel morally obligated to be. ethically.
Casual reminder that you can choose to be sober regardless of if you have an addiction problem or not. Despite how prolific drinking is in many cultures, drinking is not necessary to be fun, to be sociable, to be vulnerable. You are not a downer for opting out of drug use (including alcohol). You are not on the side of weird, puritan drug programs and the cops for being sober, just like you're not a booster for alcohol company capitalists by enjoying a drink. Being sober should not be solely associated with purity and trauma.
Part 2
Danish.
I can’t really say what attiréd me to Dansk. Was it the movie, the Prince and Me, with the fabulous Julia Stiles? One could say that. If you look at life as purely materialistic, and nothing more. But to be quite frank, that movie didn’t make that big of an impression on me, other than the fact that it was my only real exposure to Denmark growing up. I didn’t know any Danes. In Kentucky, where I was raised, there’s not a sizeable scandinavian community. There really is nothing tangibly physical that I could say caused me to become so enamoured with Denmark, Danish, and the nordic region at large. I can’t even quite conceptualize when it began, either. I just recall thinking about all the languages I wanted to learn, and somehow Danish became a priority.
The spiritual side of me suspects I had a great past life there. Have you ever had a country (or person) you’ve met, and just kind of love or hated for no particular reason? Well, you probably have past life energy there, so the theory goes. So that must be it. Or maybe it’s just all of the aquarius in my natal chart. Scandinavia seems so aquarius. Technologically advanced, intelligent, prosperous. They weren’t always that way, but the region’s history is so rich and fascinating. I feel like I could live in Denmark, Norway, Finland, the Faroe Islands, for a thousand lifetimes. It’s a pity I don’t have any connection to them, yet.
On the subject of synchronicity, where things just kinda unexpectedly happen but all make sense. Like the fact that my friend’s dad brought up alchemy randomly (I rarely hear about alchemy) then a couple hours later someone else randomly brings it up. Two in one day. It’s kinda like that.
Well, I could go two paths here. Stay on synchronicity, or go back to middle school when my infatuation with Denmark arose. My routine, while living with grandma, was to wake up in the morning, go to the living room. She would make us cinnamon toast, and I would watch TV. When I was younger, I’d then go out and play with neighborhood friends. But this was middle school, and we had drifted apart. I habitually would just browse the computer, while I comfortably sat in the living room, feeling cozy and warm in juxtaposition to the cold, gloomy, winter weather outside. Reading about Danish culture, and specifically the alcoholism, made me feel so warm and /excited/. Just reading aout Denmark and how people would get hammered and throw up on the city streets, riding their bikes. Gee. I was like, this is amazing! I wanna live there. Maybe that’s where my alcoholism started?
Well I suppose maybe that was just it. I just saw a movie about a Danish prince, then stumbled upon random internet information and the rest is history. Well, not quite. After I had a deeply profound conversion to Mormonism, I ran away from home to Utah. I met a homeless man there in temple square, and I of course was heaily mormon and set on the church being true and not open to other spiritual thought, but obviously still exposed to it. Well this homeless man and I were talking, and he told me about some experience he had where he was speaking in tongues and the people he was with said that he was speaking Old Danish. Well what are the odds that I run away from home, strike up a conversation with this random homeless man, and he mentions having a spiritual experience where he spoke a language only a few million people know out of billions. Maybe it’s not that unique, maybe he was speaking gibberish, and some returned missionary with decent exposure to northern european germanic languages got the impression he was making Old Danish noises. I don’t quite recall the details, but I will entertain the skeptics.
Regardless, maybe we had a past life connection. I haven’t seen or talked to that homeless man since, but I always think about that when I think about Denmark now. And I have been able to study Danish. It’s one of my favorite things to do. I wish I had more time and more use for it. I could say rød grød med fløde for hours. I could die in Copenhagen a happy man. A happy, drunk, alcoholic man, with all of my hygge and the cosmopolitan amenities europe has to offer.
Alas, I really do have no use for the language. No one shares my passion, and I have other things to worry about. It will always pique my interest though when Denmark or scandinavia is mentioned. Maybe one day I’ll get to at least visit the country, maybe that will give me some kind of closure. I will end by reflecting on one of the happier nights of my most recent life. It was a chilly night, I was dating Craig, a man much older than I who I wasn’t particularly attracted to in the romantic sense (was I?), but he made me feel comfortable. So comfortable, and loved. He fell asleep on the couch like usual, and I stayed up watching the tele. This time I was down the rabit hole of watching youtube videos about scandinavian history. I pranced around the house while he slept, eating these oriental flavored pretzel things from costco that were quite good, and just felt so in awe and in love with life. Soaking up the atmosphere and that warm cozy feeling that comes with being under the same roof of someone you love and trust on a moonlit, frosty night. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that. And now I recall a similar feeling, with my high school boyfriend Andrew. It was a similar relationship. I had little romantic and sexual interest, but like Craig, Andrew was quite pushy and kind of coerced me into the relationship. And I got comfortable. We had spent the evening walking down Frankfort avenue, eating sushi at my favorite restaurant, Osaka, then stopped in a mom and pop catholic bookstore. They impressed me with their language selection, which is always the first section I go to in any library or bookstore. There was a book on Dutch and Finnish that I was torn between, but I ended up getting the some decades old Teach Yourself Finnish book. I ended the night up in his attic bedroom in his charming old home. I popped some hydrocodones, and as he slept I taught myself Finnish while the warmth of the opiates spread throughout my body. I was happy. Genuinely.
La Méthode. Paris, 1960
Photo: Christer Strömholm
workin on it