Lunar Fish

The sun moved into Pisces one day this week, I don't know exactly when. I also don't know why I'm always aware when the sun changes signs, because I don't believe in astrology. I do, however, believe deeply in metaphor and therefore am drawn to systems like astrology, impulses like myth, the human mind trying to create order out of its surroundings and in the process, creating something like poetry. I also believe that certain times of the year affect certain parts of me in different ways, and so it is with the Sun-In-Pisces, time of the rule of water and the dreaminess that comes with that. Pisces is governed by the planet Neptune; the influence is toward illusion, poetry, fluidity. For someone who doesn't believe in astrology, I do know a thing or two about it. I like Pisceans, how I see them move through life sometimes an inch or two above the actual ground. They are a water sign, like me, only unlike me they are mutable, where I am fixed. I imagine that's why they're easier to get along with. Two of my close friends have their moons in Pisces, which means that emotionally, they'd be quite content to be mermaids. If they can't see the ocean from where they're living, they have to be able to at least drive there every day. If they had thick, glittery tails and the ability to breath underwater, that would probably be even better.

I have to live close to at least the image of wateriness, especially at this time of year when things have been frozen for so long. I know March is a cold month, but I never think of it that way, largely because where I live, come March, you start to see rivers coming back into being, creeks melting and pouring along through their icy lanes. The icicles that have hung from the roof for the past several weeks turn into pools of water on the sidewalks below. I like it, this grand thaw. Flower and leaf get all the buzz when it comes to anticipating spring but for me, there's nothing like this earliest sign of its earliest onset.

I had my first serious boyfriend during my junior year of high school, and I remember that year, right in the first part of March, I was seized by what I later learned is known as "fire in the head." It's the kind of inspiration that takes hold of you from no place you can describe, but you're alive with it, suddenly--every thought is a line of poetry, every line of poetry seems divinely inspired, that divine influence becomes what you live on instead of sleep and food. Although I had already been writing seriously for a couple of years by then, that particular March I spent in the grip of something intensified and alien, ideas pouring into me and through me nonstop. I thought maybe it was early love that was inducing this state in me, but over time I came to understand that it's not an inner state, but something outer--the time of year--that brings it on. I don't know if it's the influence of those dreamy fish that rule the month, but, in the spirit of understanding metaphor as my personal household god, I'll accept that it likely is. That slow transition from ice to water more accurately reflects, I think, what happens inside when the creative process reemerges after sleep. My truest metaphor for spring is not a pastel bloom, no matter how deliciously scented, but a pool of water, with the memory of its recent ice still chilling it.

That would be my writer's horoscope for these weeks of Piscean rule--write a poem about water every day. Also be the boat that maneuvers through it, and also become the fish that inhabits it. Or be a mermaid in it, if that is what you like. When I was young a group of us had mermaid alter egos--this game went on for many years--and the rule was, your mermaid name had to begin with the same letter as your regular first name. This was so that we remembered who we were, and knew how to get back home again. But I think that this is the one time of year to ignore that caution, and so my writer's horoscope adds this advice: write, forget your name, submerge and try not to drown. Soon, the sun will move back out of this underwater cave and re-illuminate a new corridor, another way of being. While we are in these weeks, meanwhile, I hope to discvoer that I am able to hold my breath that long.