Eris is the Goddess of Chaos, Strife and Discord. She moves extremely slowly through our skies. She has been in Aries for all of our lives. She's the one we often don't want to invite to the party, because she cannot speak without raising excitement, and not all excitement is "positive". In relationship to Pluto trine Mercury, we are plunging the depths of past structural dynamics from a singular chaotic perspective, not yet heard, but not the only one. In the myths, Eris drops a golden apple, into a fray, and war breaks loose among the Gods. It's a good time to reflect upon, what is relevant for you, beyond Good and Evil, and how it has become so.
Mercury plays operator
M: Hello, this is the Operator, how can I help you?" E: Patch me through to Pluto, I've got some words for him. M: Sorry Eris, he won't take calls from you, but you can leave a message..."
Eris leaves a message…
I didn't know I was abused until I was crying, and shaking at my brother's house, because I didn't want to speak to my father on the phone, "I can't face him alone, he'll just twist my words, and bully me, and then I'll cry and I always lose, when I'm crying." My brother said he'd be on the call with me, but my father said no. He wanted me cornered, in a room with a therapist he trusted. "You need help. You have been sick for a long time. It has always been something wrong with you. We tip-toe around it. Come home. And let us get you the help you need," said the man, who has never introspected in his life. And to that, I still say, respectfully, "Fuck you, Daddy." To the man who programmed insecure attachment, into me. To a mother who never really liked having to compete with me. You have created a theme on repeat. My whole life long, shall we review the damage done? Drawing older men, to me, one by one. Because they think I'm "magick". Because they think I'm a "mystery". Because unreal is the only thing you let me be. I don't need your fucking therapist to know that, but maybe you should read my poems with one, and unpack your own shit. Let me tell you, about the first time it happened...
I learned I wasn't free to write, when my favorite teacher, asked me to report to him, if I ever saw my best friend, write in her own format, again. They decided she had OCD. All my girlfriends were always playing, with their handwriting. He held me after class, in the 6th grade, "Why didn't you tell me?" I said I didn't see anything wrong with it, and that was the Truth. I promised her I'd never say a thing, but, I shook my head, "yes," to protect us. We are safer, if he thinks he has an informant he can trust. I just wanted to make it through middle school absurdity, and make it home, and get through that. My mother was receiving chemotherapy treatments, and our house was a tense ball of stress, and unspoken phantoms of Death. I liked his class: Reading, Writing, Workshop. I liked his attention. A man who looked like my father, with a strong New York accent. Name a Connecticut darling who didn't want to please him. It was something I could do, since I was never good enough, for Daddy. I hadn't held a boy's hand yet, and I wouldn't get my period for another 3 years. He was around 30. He would call me out, if I experimented, wearing make-up, to school. I'd wipe the shadow from my lids, as I denied it, and he let me. "See? Nothing." He had a daughter, just born, named Allie. He met my father at a game of poker, at another little girl's house. Neither of them told me much about it, but I asked questions. I thought my mother was dying, and my parents didn't really like me, because I wasn't good at pretending everything was OK, at home. But at school, I became good, at spacing out, and coming back with the perfect answer. My teacher tried, more than once, to catch me at it. A thin grin spread across his lips, each time he realized, he couldn't. I was reading all the books. I could recite their dialogues, just drop me in at the right cue. He held me after class. "Eris, what's wrong?" We both knew I was lying, when I smiled sadly, and said, "Nothing," but how else were we supposed to move through it? What was he going to do? Give me a hug? That was not appropriate. If the tears started falling, they'd never stop, and nobody else asked me, but him. At 11, I wrote a coming -of-age story, for his class, about a daughter who wanted to cut down a dead tree, a father who doesn't, and a moonlit night, where they individually stay awake, watching it dance, sharing the rite of coffee in the morning, but never speaking about it. I wrote it on a bus-ride home. It was the first time, I experienced a "download." I didn't know where it came from or how to make something like it again. Call it my Golden Apple. We all had to write coming-of-age stories, but I hadn't come of age yet, I was just familiar with Death. I had not revealed my own mystery, to myself. At the end of the year, he gave me his email and a plastic spiral, dangling from his ceiling. Just me. "Choose one," he told me, "You have taught me, more than you can ever know." "But what have I taught you?" I asked him. "That's for me to know, and you to think about," he replied. So I took the pearly white one. And went home, feeling like Harry Potter, trapped at the Dursley's, for the Summer. He asked me to keep him up to date, on what I was reading. I was always reading. It was my greatest relief. I think it's safe to say I thought about it, long enough. I think it's safe, to say we know Now, what you meant, "Daddy".
Planetary Signatures 