Mercury Retrograde Reminders

Frankly, dear readers, I have been far too blue this month to wish you a happy new year. The world continues to wobble on its Uranus-Pluto square of an axis, with satirical cartooonists being murdered by homegrown terrorists in Paris and more exercises in bloody futility. Ah, but never mind the rest of the world: at home, the U.S. economy is well out of the valley of the shadow of recession. Wall Street is humming. Congress canceled a vote restricting abortion -- for now -- because it managed to piss off their distaff RepubliCON counterparts. Your daddy is rich, your momma's good-looking, they just seem a little weird, surrender, but don't give yourself away. If you aren't recognizing my mashup lyrics, turn to Google and all will become clear as a river whose crystalline quality is due to its complete lack of marine life.

And life seems more fragile than ever. Earlier this month, an acquaintance of mine whom I knew from various parties straight out of a Fellini film failed to regain consciousness from the coma he'd slipped into due to a fall down a flight of stairs prior to the new year. He couldn't have been any older than yours truly -- perhaps even a bit younger. My best friend's friend is dying. Another friend's best friend just had a serious stroke and is in a medically induced coma. All making my first-ever pinched nerve and julienned sanity look like a small order of fries.

Mercury turned Retrograde at 17 degrees of Aquarius on Wednesday 1/21 at 10:54 a.m. BST (Brooklyn Standard Time). It turns Direct at 1 degree of Aquarius three Wednesdays later, 2/11, at 9:57 a.m. Now repeat after me:

Nothing important -- or even not so important -- will be resolved during these three weeks.

If you're worrying even more than usual, or obsessing endlessly over what might've been ("I coulda been a bartendah!"), you're right on schedule. Don't even bother trying to relax. It'll just make you more tense.

Those bad habits you swore off for good on January 1? They've really missed you. They're back for a visit. Depending on the degree of harm these badass visitors bring back into your life, either fall off the wagon with a chocolate-stained smile or check yourself into a rehab clinic immediately.

Nothing will be resolved during these three weeks.

That extremely important binding contract you just signed? Whether it's related to marriage, a job, or a home, it may wind up being not as binding as you had every good reason to think. Oh well, sucks to be you. At least you'll have plenty of company.

If your doctor calls you in to discuss some rather alarming lab results, and you had the bloodwork or whatever done after last Tuesday (1/20), before you panic, demand a retest...preferably after 2/10 if you can wait that long. If you can't, get a second opinion after 2/10. That does not mean that you won't have to go coffin shopping -- just that it shouldn't be your first response.

Has your sibling, neighborhood pal, BFF-who's-like-the-sibling-you-never-had fallen off the planet or something? What will it take for them to respond to your texts/phone calls/emails/smoke signals? What makes this even more annoying is that the shitheel whom you thought you'd gotten rid of for good is now texting or sending bat signals to you. Gross.

If you have a pet, he or she may be regressing or withdrawing without warning or reason, and guess what? You can't reason with Rex or Tigger-Boo, and unless you are a pet whisperer, you won't know what is causing this strange behavior. You can certainly consult a vet, but remember: repeat lab tests apply as much to your fur-babies as they do to yourself.

Chances are good that at least one electronic device you own will spaz out, become infected with malware, or simply break. And the new smartphone/laptop/iWhatever you purchase will have something wrong with it. Even your blender or toaster may start speaking in tongues.

So, you really think you know where you're going, either literally or metaphorically? You don't need a map 'cause you got mad GPS? Call me when you get hopelessly lost in the wrong part of town or forget your own name so that I can laugh my ass off.

You may lose things other than yourself, especially keys, important documents, rings, gloves, and friends. With the exception of that last example, consider duct taping them to your person, or just lock them in a vault till 2/11.

Have I mentioned yet that nothing will be resolved during these three weeks?

On the plus side, this is an excellent time to catch up (aka binge-view) a TV/cable/Netflix show or three...especially if the weather sucks (as it probably will in a good chunk of the U.S. -- after all, it's mid-winter and we've officially wrecked the weather), you come down with a nasty bug or flu (as you might even if you got the flu shot), or you twist your ankle or pinch a nerve to the extent that you're couch-ridden.

Now pour into a cocktail shaker this kooky elixir known as Mercury Retrograde, shake, pour into a tall frosty glass, add a cherry and a little umbrella, and spill it all over your charmingly eccentric outfit before you get to take even one sip.

A Missive to Saturn in Scorpio

Dear Saturn in Scorpio,

This is not an epigraph to you, as much as I wish it were. I realize that your departure is more of a sabbatical than a death, and that we'll all be seeing you again next summer. Yes, between mid-June and mid-September 2015 you will once again remind us that we have some unfinished Scorpionic business to deal with.

Saturn in Scorpio, you are an impressive mo'fo. You are an ancient museum housing top-secret treasures. You have tantric and shamanic abilities. Your structure manifests as the three certainties of life: sex, death, and taxes. You live to control, and are the power behind the throne. You are the shadow government and the underworld. You are capable of unspeakable brutality. And you can be one rabid pitbull when it comes to protecting your fears, your hopes, and, y'know, your feelings. You think vulnerability is for suckahs. For you, no matter what side you're on -- sunny-side up or sunny-side down -- it's easy to be hard. You are certainly not over easy.

I can't say that I'll pine for you for the next six months, since I got pretty damned depressed when you passed over my Moon in the fall of 2013, when you also manifested in my body as recurring UTIs, which made me even more depressed. I have also felt old, fat, and unattractive, and have been gradually losing money -- and I don't mean dropping small change on the floor of my corner bodega at two a.m.

That said, I have to admit that when you passed over my Neptune earlier this month and trined my Mercury, I regained my creative discipline. It had been a pretty dry autumn. So sincerest thanks for that. Your dismount, as it were, has been a beautiful one. And I guess it's not how you start -- it's how you finish.

About that unfinished business next summer -- if I try my hardest to face it with dignity and respect, with an open mind and an open heart, will you consider playing fair?

In the meantime, I look forward to getting into Saturn in an entirely different sign, Sagittarius. The lessons of Saturn in Sagittarius will be very different, involving abstract stuff like philosophy, higher education, the higher mind. I am sure there will be long-distance travel for business, not pleasure. I am sure there will be sibling shit to work through. Saturn in any sign can be a pain in the ass, but in Sagittarius it simply won't wrench my heart, guts, and private parts the way you have, Saturn in Scorpio.

Goodnight and good luck. I'd say "See you next June," but you'll undoubtedly see me first and not play hard to get.

Love and kisses,

T.C.

Mars Finally Turns Direct

Mars is all about action, so it seems apropos that with Mars finally turning direct after over three months of being retrograde in the sign of its detriment (Libra, in case you haven't been reading my blog lately), I would finally be moved to update my astrology site.

Not that I'm feeling all that energetic. Indeed, I am so tired I can barely keep my head up. It's been a hard day's night for the past few months. The hardest thing to deal with has not been my business-as-usual problems, but losing Miss Meowsers, my sweetie's darling gray tabby whom I was lucky enough to know and love for the past two years, to chronic kidney failure (diagnosed in late March, Miss M. declined considerably after the Grand Cross passed in late April; we put her to sleep at home, a few days before the Full Moon, at the tail end of last weekend, just past Mother's Day). I feel that I've lost a dear friend, guru, and child. Miss Meowsers was a true inspiration and proof that miracles exist in this world -- just for starters, when I met her, I was allergic to, and did not especially care for, cats. I have a great imagination, yet could never have imagined the bond that would begin developing between us in six months' time and deepen up till the very last moment she looked into my eyes.

Mars turned retrograde in my 2nd house and although I was lucky enough not to go broke, my finances did not remain stable, as my job situation ended soon after Mars backed over my critical-degree Jupiter (interestingly, the job began soon before Mars, still direct, passed over my Jupiter; it was good and unexpected fortune, as I'd been found for it instead of applying to it). In early April, Mars retrograded into my 1st house and I became increasingly dissatisfied with my appearance (a 1st-house concern), lack of creative motivation, and listlessness. I can only hope that as Mars moves beyond its stationary direct phase and begins to pick up speed and purpose, so will I.

Natually, we've all been in some holding pattern or other these past few months, but depending on the house or houses in which Mars turned retrograde in your own chart, its effects have been felt in strikingly different ways. For example, if Mars turned retrograde in your 3rd house, you might have found it increasingly frustrating to communicate, particularly with neighbors or siblings; if Mars turned retrograde in your 12th house, you might have been plagued with nightmares, developed hard-to-diagnose health problems that might have landed you in the hospital, or even been unjustly incarcerated.

Although Mars direct is generally worlds better than Mars retrograde, Mars is still in indecisive Libra and will be until late July; it will also need to repeat the square to Pluto and opposition to Uranus (though interestingly, Jupiter leaves Cancer before Mars can square it again). In other words, we are not in smooth sailing by a long shot -- but at least we won't be in the hellish, boxed-in limbo known as Mars retrograde.

Your Karma Ran over My Dogma: Meditations on Saturn

Saturn entered Libra on October 29, 2009, then retrograded back into Virgo on April 7, 2010, before finally reentering Libra on July 21, 2010, where it has remained ever since. Today, however, at 4:33 p.m. ET, Saturn will pass its torch to the next sign in line: Scorpio. Interestingly, earlier today another planet went into Scorpio: Mercury. So the final aspect involving Saturn in the final astrological minutes (29'57") of Libra was a conjunction with Mercury -- perhaps a final bid on Saturn's part for us to think about the past three years.

Makes an astrologer think, anyway. Though at the time of the Mercury-Saturn conjunction, I must admit to being fast asleep.

Saturn is undoubtedly the "heavy" of our solar system. Traditional Western astrology (i.e., pre-1930, when Pluto was discovered, and lingering till the explosive Uranus-Pluto conjunction of the mid-1960s), placed far more emphasis on Saturn's negative manifestations: loss, limitation, loneliness, misery, depression, greed, harshness, fear. It seemed that wherever you had the ringed planet placed in your birth chart, it indicated the area of life where you were utterly screwed, and there was really nothing you could do about it other than passively accept it as your burden.

I believe that part of the reason for this baleful attitude toward Saturn had to do with a more rigid way of life in general, a time when it was far less likely that you could break out of the mold and veer away from the path on which you was born. In the pre-automobile age, there was far less literal as well as social mobility; true, in the United States were Little House on the Prairie-type pioneers, Wild West cowboys, and Gold Rush junkies who moved far from their families, as well as a great wave of immigration from Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Yet the majority of Americans (and those Europeans who were not kicked out of their birth countries for the crime of being, say, Jewish) lived and died within a handful of miles of their place of birth. Vacations were pretty much unheard of, except of course for the rich, as was the concept of retirement: you worked either until you dropped dead or were fired for loss of mental or physical strength, and your safety net consisted of merciful relatives who allowed you to you live in their back room.

I realize very well that these days, the "American Dream" seems to have stalled, and is a cruel joke for many more people than in the past few generations. That several other countries' austerity measures and/and constant wars are also grinding down the hopes of millions, even billions of people. That during this topsy-turvy, crisis-laden era of the Uranus-Pluto square, giving stodgy ol' grumpy-boots Saturn the time of day might seem a ridiculous waste of time.

Which is exactly why we all need to get back to the basics and reconsider the power and weight of Saturn. If it wasn't so heavy, we might not have any sense of grounding at all. Saturn operates on the material plane. It is very telling indeed that Saturn rules Capricorn -- an earth sign. Saturn is our touchstone, and our backbone.

Even in touchy-feely contemporary astrology, Saturn certainly will never win any popularity contests, but just like Bartelby the Scrivener, it "would prefer not to." Saturn feels far more comfortable alone on the top of a mountain, or in a penthouse apartment, or in a corner office in a high-rise landmark-status building that it designed and built itself. (It is also no surprise that the charts of CEOs, bankers, architects, and construction workers are dominated by Saturn and/or Capricorn).

The terms karma and dharma are complex, comprising several tomes' worth of Eastern philosophy, and like the word love, are far too easily tossed around. In the context of astrology, however, they mesh perfectly with what Saturn symbolizes: your individualized trials and tribulations; your path; your duties; your earthly, character-building lessons to be learned in this lifetime, not turned away from out of denial or shame. To achieve what Buddha called the "diamond Soul," you must listen and learn from Saturn -- not coincidentally, all minerals, but especially the rarest, most precious ones like diamonds, are ruled by the ringed planet.

The Saturn Return at age 29-30 is the most important astrological event in anyone's lifetime, even trumping the Uranus opposition (aka "midlife crisis") at age 40-42. It is not a time for dreaming or escapism, but for looking unflinchingly into hard, cold facts, incorporating structure into your life, making peace with your father (or an equivalent "old man" authority figure), as you finally pass through the gates of true adulthood with a more defined sense of your life's mission. Saturn rules the concept of truth, as well as time; and like it or not, your time on earth is limited. Even if you believe in reincarnation, that you will return as the same (hopefully more evolved) soul in a different shell, you cannot take your shell or material booty with you.

Saturn's transit through a sign indicates the hard lessons we are all most likely to be faced with during a 2.5-year period, especially as it forms challenging aspects (conjunctions, squares, and oppositions) to other transiting planets, and to planets or other important points within our own birth charts.

Specifically, Saturn transiting Libra was about learning to structure and commit to important personal relationships in a mature, equitable way. Does that mean that all of us became more responsible in relationships, and better at cooperating with others? Of course not! Saturn cannot force you to learn any lessons at all -- but it does have the uncanny ability to take something pretty important away from you if you keep ignoring those lessons (i.e., your long-suffering spouse files for divorce). This does not, of course, mean that every time a person screws up and fails to rectify the mistake, Saturn immediately steps in to punish that person, ingeniously tailoring the punishment to the sign it is transiting. And of course shit also happens to those who do not "deserve" it. I live in the world, and I assume that you do, too. I am just speaking Saturnese right now.

Obviously, some will be in for a rockier road than others as Saturn leaves Libra (a position, by the way, that is traditionally considered "exalted") and enters Scorpio -- it depends on your own cosmic blueprint. Often what will happen is a mixture of flowing and challenging aspects, and when Saturn is involved, even trines and sextiles can have teeth. If you do not know your own chart, by all means contact me to schedule a private reading; if you know your chart well, take a close look to see what house Saturn will be in as it enters Scorpio; unless your chart features a house with 0 degrees of Scorpio on the cusp, it will be the same house as Saturn at 29 Libra, but the energy will feel very different as Saturn changes from cardinal air to fixed water.

So, Saturn is officially in Scorpio now. Please take a moment to welcome it (especially since Mercury just entered Scorpio, and Mars is still in Scorpio). If you were born with Saturn in Scorpio (i.e., are approaching your first, second, or even third Saturn Return), or have one or more planets or the Ascendant placed in Scorpio, you will undoubtedly be faced with some pretty serious lessons to learn (or not -- the choice is yours) over the next two and a half years. These lessons will specifically focus on the extreme, nitty-gritty aspects of life, including death (and sex, the occult, other people's money, and taxes). You may find yourself obsessing over one or more of these areas, and fearing any situation in which you do not have control. Scorpio types (not necessarily born with Sun in Scorpio, but with Scorpio planets or a strong Pluto) hate losing control as much as Capricorn (which is, you will remember, ruled by Saturn). But if you want to work with Saturn in Scorpio rather than against it, you must learn to let yourself ask for help sometimes. You must gradually accept the fact that you can be a vulnerable human being, and that needing a strong emotional connection with your sexual partner (or a strong sexual connection with your soul mate) does not make you needy.

The first aspect Saturn in Scorpio makes is an easy-peasy trine to the Moon in Cancer at 9:02 p.m. Saturday (Saturn's Day); the more collectively significant, longer-lasting trine to Neptune at 0 Pisces occurs next Wednesday evening, on the heels of the Sun-Jupiter trine. But more on the Saturn-Neptune trine next post -- my hands are about to fall off, and I also happen to be taking antibiotics.

Uranus at 29 Degrees of Pisces: Part II

Photo credit: T. C. Gardstein, 2007


With the situation in Japan worsening (as per the predictions of my last post), I thought I'd muse upon my own inner earthquake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown with Uranus in the final degree of Pisces. It is also more than worth mentioning that Neptune happens to be transiting the final degree of Aquarius, and that up until last weekend, in fact, there was a seven-year-long mutual reception between these two outer planets (i.e., Uranus was transiting the sign of Neptune's rulership, with Neptune transiting the sign of Uranus's rulership). Obviously the semi-sextile, a so-called minor aspect, between Uranus and Neptune pulled a powerful punch. And it did so on many levels.

A planet or planets in the last degree of a sign, either by transit or progression, is all about summing up the meaning of that sign, while preparing to bid it adieu. This may very well be why individuals who are born on the cusp (29 degrees) of a sign, or have a cusp Ascendant or other planets, are prone to identity crises and restlessness. It's more about waving good-bye than saying hello, and not yet meeting face-to-face what is right around the corner.

Three-quarters of my six-day R&R to the West Indies was magical, spent swimming, eating, reading, sketching, sleeping, and not sleeping on my favorite beach on my favorite island, in the company of my sweetie whose first visit to St. Martin it was. The last quarter of my trip, which coincided with the New Moon in Pisces, was marked by a haunting sadness and creeped-outed-ness that I have not yet shaken, after more than a week back at home.

My oldest friend, whom I met at a summer writers workshop twenty years ago this summer and who introduced me to astrology, is buried on the small island of St. Eustatius, which one cannot reach except by puddle-jumper prop plane from St. Martin (actually, St. Maarten -- the airport is on the Dutch side of the island) or sailboat. I last visited my friend in March 2007; he'd been living in Statia, as the locals call their island, for the past two years. He died unexpectedly the following spring, from complications due to diverticulitis, which I did not know he had been diagnosed with, just two weeks after I'd returned home from a trip to the Bahamas with my best girl friend. It had been the first time in several years that I hadn't visited my oldest friend since he'd moved to the West Indies, and as I'd just returned from a vacation and was virtually broke, I did not make it down to Statia for his funeral, a fact that has troubled me for nearly three years. His three adult children made it down, and one of them gave me a pretty detailed description -- the pickup truck used as a hearse, the coffin built by a man who'd used the same wood to construct my friend's bookcase.

Through dreams I have often communicated with my departed friend. I do not feel as though I've "lost" him through his death; the sad, hard truth was that our true separation occurred while he was still in Statia. Four Marches ago, as I sat on the runway in the puddle-jumper that would fly me back to St. Maarten and then home, I saw that my friend's Jeep was still in the parking lot, and I thought I could see him, too -- a shadowy dot. I broke down and wept. I knew with absolute certainty that I would never see him again.

When you have a Plutonian relationship with someone, there is never easy "closure." My oldest friend, who was once upon a time not as platonic a friend, was persona non grata in my family, and no one in my post-2002 life knew him except for one ex-boyfriend (with whom, as it goes, I had a terrible falling-out a year and a half back, and is just now beginning to un-fall). I held a memorial party in my apartment at the one-year mark, to which his three kids, none of whom live in the NY area, did show -- though neither of his ex-wives, who are both relatively local in NJ, accepted the invitation. We talked and ate and drank and passed photos around. It was something; it just didn't feel like enough. I knew that somehow I had to get back to Statia, an expensive proposition given the fact that WinAir has raised skyway robbery to an art form and that my prospects as a freelancer were diminishing by the month.

So the trip finally happened, spurred in part by recently acquired steady part-time work, the other part from a false review I'd spotted on TripAdvisor about how the King's Well Inn in Statia was up for sale. This was my friend's last, and in some ways truest, home since he'd moved to the islands to teach pharmacology at the local medical schools. Far from a resort, the King's Well was a quirky little hotel run by an older couple, both Cancerians (in fact, the husband and I share a birthday and Moon sign!), who'd once run a restaurant on Long Island and fell in love with Statia while vacationing there in the '80s, at just about the time Pluto entered Scorpio. The King's Well had dogs, cats, and parrots, all of whom freely roamed the premises, so it was not a place for anyone who did not like or at least tolerate animals. The couple cooked savory, straightforward dinners (wiener schnitzel, chicken with ginger sauce, grouper with white wine sauce) and served huge gratis breakfasts to hotel guests. There was a nice swimming pool, jacuzzi, aloe plants in the garden; Oranje Bay was a short stroll down the hill. There was also a cemetery up the hill, which appears in this post's photo; I snapped this shot from the prop plane shortly before landing at Statia's FDR Airport in March 2007.

The review I read was so negative (the reviewer and his wife had left after only two hours, claiming extreme discomfort in the surroundings) that I immediately sent the owners of the King's Well an email to find out if the rumor was true. It was not; the wife informed me that the guest in question was out of his mind, and that when she and her husband were ready to pack it in, they would leave the hotel to their grown kids. I was also offered free accommodations if I chose to visit, only having to pay for dinners. Very soon after that exchange, I told my sweetie, who was in the process of packing up his apartment to move into mine, that I wanted to make a trip to St. Martin and Statia before winter's end. He was not surprised, since I'd mentioned more than once or twice my desire to revisit this part of the world, as well as my need to pay my respects at the grave of my oldest friend. It made perfect sense to start out in St. Martin and end the trip in Statia. Just before boarding the puddle-jumper, I picked up a bottle of duty-free champagne to thank the owners of the King's Well for their generosity.

What I was not expecting was that the King's Well Inn was just as decrepit, perhaps more so, as the reviewer on TripAdvisor had claimed. We were given an oceanfront room with a terrace, but it was situated near the hotel's dumpster, which reeked of garbage. The waterbed was fun and sexy in theory, but it was only halfway filled, causing extreme back discomfort for both of us. There were huge cobwebs all over the room. We did not put any of our clothes in the few drawers that passed for a bureau. The windows lacked screens, and the wooden French doors were warped and never stayed fully closed. Fortunately, the ceiling fans were in working order, which saved us from being eaten alive by mosquitos as we slept (albeit fitfully). The painting in the room was grotesque, depicting a couple clinging to each other not in ecstasy or tenderness, but in grief or agony. There were two other couples staying at the hotel, but I learned from the owners that they now only accepted known quantities -- even extending to those visitors who only wished to dine at the King's Well. The owner who is my astral twin was in a terrible car accident on St. Kitts last summer and is on a steady diet of painkillers; his wife, who never seemed to welcome "outsiders" to the King's Well as readily as her husband, seemed even more insular in her worldview; she will only visit nearby St. Martin a few times a year to pick up such hotel supplies as towels and sheets, since Statia does not offer much in the way of creature comforts. In her opinion, most people are morons or fools. The misanthrope in me sees her point, yet she is so strident and knee-jerky in her judgments that I find myself taking the other side, for the sake of balance and fairness. She also never asked me a single question about what had been going on in my world since 2007. I don't take this personally, as her own world is so circumscribed it could fit on one of her dinner plates.

We arrived late Friday afternoon, just before the New Moon in Pisces; after a quick dip in the pool, which thankfully was clean (I learned that the man who lives in my old friend's apartment, which is right next to the pool, performs this task), I cleaned up, donned my black sundress and shawl, grabbed a stick of incense and a candle that came in an ornate tin, and headed up the hill to the cemetery. It was my intention to be there at sunset, the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath. My sweetie accompanied me. It did not occur to me that I would be unable to locate my friend's grave; that it would still, after nearly three years after his burial, be unmarked. My sweetie helpfully offered to walk back downhill to the hotel restaurant and ask the grande dame of the King's Well, who was preparing our dinner, for directions. In his absence, as the sun sunk into the ocean, I wandered around the cemetery, studying each headstone in the hope that finally I'd found the one I was looking for...and taking great care to avoid the mounds of goat shit (or maybe it was cow shit) that decorated the grounds. My sweetie returned with the information that my friend was buried near the break in the cemetery wall, near "Hank the plumber." Supposedly there was a pile of rocks to mark my friend's burial spot. I did not find a pile, precisely, but there were a few heavy rocks near the plumber's headstone. My sweetie respectfully walked off a ways as I lit the stick of incense and stuck it in the ground; I lit the candle, and as soon as I asked my friend if he knew I was there, the flame went out. I spoke to him for a few minutes -- nothing so different from the times I've spoken to him in my mind. But the situation was so dismal and depressing I did not want to stay in the cemetery for longer than that. I wrote in one of my first astrology posts that I rather liked cemeteries, but this one was the exception that proved the rule. It really took the cake (or cow patty).

I planned to mention the sorry state of the cemetery, and my friend's unmarked grave, to the grande dame once we'd finished the chicken with ginger sauce. But as soon as I voiced to her that I'd probably found the grave, she weighed in with her judgment that cemeteries were pointless, that she herself never visits, and that my friend was not really there anyway -- his spirit was at the hotel. I managed to hold my tongue. After all, we were staying at the King's Well for free, and we had another night to go after this one. But here is what ran through my head: So what if it was "just" my friend's empty shell rotting in an unmarked grave, in a boneyard scattered with shit? It was still the container of his spirit, his soul. He'd apparently asked for a Jewish funeral (which ruled out cremation). His adult children, at least the older two, were financially solvent enough to have chipped in on some sort of simple marker. That they hadn't done so this long after the fact left me gobsmacked. I have a difficult relationship with my own father (whose nickname just so happens to be identical to Statia's aforementioned dearly departed plumber -- ain't irony grand?) and yet if he died anywhere on this planet, even if I did not have my mother or sister around to help out on this formality, I'd make it my business to mark that shell.

My visit to Statia lasted for less than forty-eight hours, but it felt like far longer. There were some bright moments: yoga, making a decent watercolor painting on the moldering terrace, a long frolic in the sea with my sweetie (though the beach of Oranje Bay had eroded considerably since my last visit). Neither of the owners of the King's Well wanted to drink the bubbly I'd brought, so my sweetie and I shared it during our second and last dinner, which was grouper with white wine sauce, at the King's Well. (The food, thankfully, was as delicious as in prior visits.) Near the end of the meal, I met the man who took over my friend's dwelling; he'd just celebrated his fifty-seventh birthday, and was studying to be a doctor after considerable success in the business world. When I introduced myself, he came over, charming Texan that he was, and sat with my sweetie and me for a spell. I'd had enough champagne by then to mention that my oldest friend had once lived in his apartment, and asked if he'd ever sensed anything strange, any movements; I so wanted to believe the grande dame of the King's Well that my friend's spirit was on the hotel grounds, though I hadn't sensed it at all in the past day. He immediately shook his head no and said, "Only when I had that rat problem."

Later that night I sat alone on the rotting terrace's mildewed couch, sipping from one of the bottles of Ma DouDou rum punch I'd picked up in St. Martin (my all-time favorite elixir, particularly the banana-vanilla and chocolate flavors). It was just past the Lunar Return of my oldest friend, and with the Moon/Uranus conjunction approaching, I was trying so hard to connect with his spirit as I stared at the palm trees and the night sea. But it all felt like a stage set, perhaps because of the harsh lighting. All I could think was that I'd come to Statia to pay my respects, and found (barely) an unmarked grave and a dying hotel. My sweetie, who'd been reading in the uncomfortable bed, eventually drifted out to the terrace. He reassured me that I'd done what I'd set out to do. Maybe so, I fretted -- but what about my friend's pathetic excuse for a grave? Should I contact his kids or what? Lying in the swaying bed, my sweetie and I clung to each other much like the angst-filled couple in the disturbing painting overhead. We were tired but restless, sensing unrest if not outright ghosts.

The next morning, upon our departure, I was told to "have a good life" by the grande dame of the King's Well Inn. Obviously she realized without my having to say a word that another visit was not in the stars. My astral twin, who was apparently not too badly incapacitated from painkillers that morning, drove us to the airport. My sweetie and I were not able to grab seats together on the WinAir prop plane, even though we boarded in tandem. Perhaps having to sit next to a stranger was what made it possible -- that sense of aloneness I felt as I watched Statia recede in the blue haze that melds sea and sky -- for me to finally be able to cry for my oldest friend. Once again.