16 on the 16th Series: March
Woofda!
I know February is a short month, and this year was even a day longer, but this March 16th came up out of nowhere! Thankfully, I have many thoughts and this blog series project has been nothing but a joyful addition to my life. A lot of the thoughts once we entered Pisces are about death and Erin so just be forewarned.
As this thought came to me I went “Oooo first thought for the month!”
-Being in the Fulton subway station feels like being a rat in a maze. So for those not in New York, this station is big and it’s right under Wall Street and this area of town has changed A LOT in the 4 years since Covid. I’m looking around at everyone and no one knows where they’re going and they have a panicked, where am I look on their face because it’s a confusing ass station. Now, I get that a lot nyc is confusing when you don’t know where you’re going. Being a midwesterner with bad direction, I am so grateful that I have GPS because I get lost A LOT, but something is different about this station. Who designed it?Everyone is on their phones all the damn time. Like ALL the time. This can’t be good.
The more I get to know myself the easier it is for me to laugh at the regularity of my randomness.
I’m typing this as I am eating dinner outside on a beautiful day in NYC and a guy just walked by me and said, “I see you laptop, AND the noodles, that’s what’s up.” It’s funny that he noticed me now because I was actually walking behind him for like 10 blocks while he was on the phone earlier. I wonder if I’ve walked past him in my neighborhood before.
Sometimes I see tarot cards out in the wild. Pretty often actually, a few weeks ago I saw the Justice card on the train. The Justice card is about truth, law, commitments/contracts, money and getting what is owed to you. I love that there is even the eyes above, because this card has a lot of “big picture” energy… maybe it feels unjust what is happening to you right now, but it’ll come back around soon enough. (As I’m posting this Deb thought it didn’t look the same but hey- it’s my thought, not hers)
6. Just because you remember something doesn’t mean it necessarily happened exactly that way. I heard a podcast with a therapist say when you remember an incident, you’re also remember every time you remembered it and memories can become like a long game of telephone. I have a lot of confusing memories from when I was a kid and it’s okay that I can’t remember everything like a movie.
7. People can only be as compassionate to other people as they are to themselves. If you are hateful to yourself you are hateful to others. If you assume the worst from yourself you will probably assume the worst from others. Thinking about that makes it easier to be around super mean people.
8. I do a lot of my smart thinking on the train or at restaurants, and as I mentioned last month I often hear a bell or an alarm or something when it’s a particularly good smart thought and I just wanted to know if that was real or if it was me being crazy. So, one time while I stood waiting for the train, I thought really hard “If I’m right about the alarm bells give me a sign” and then I waited. And it was silent. Like eerily silent for a subway during rush hour. And then I looked up and saw this. The word “ding” cut off of Boarding, only visible from exactly where I was standing. I didn’t get a sound, I got a sign - just like I asked. And I laughed.
9. Chiron, the minor planet named after the myth about a wounded centaur who was a great healer, conjoined with the Sun this month and it was a day that I expected to feel a lot of pain, or intensity around the death of my twin. Learning about astrology and watching it unfold has been really cool because I can kind of know what to expect. My chiron is in Gemini and quite close to my rising degree and when Chiron has big moments in the sky it has corresponded with a lot of feelings about Erin. But this time, contrary to my expectation, I actually felt a lot of clarity and ease while I navigated a situation that just a few years ago might have thrown me into a depression. So that day, I watched the movie “Us” by Jordan Peele which I had never seen before. It was also his bday, which I found out later, but anyway- if you haven’t seen the movie, heads up there are some spoilers. The movie follows a woman who has a shadow/mirror self who has escaped the underworld type of place she lives and comes to find her double in the real world to kill her and assume her life. When I was younger I had dreams that Erin was alive somewhere and a similar thing would happen, or that I was Erin and she was the one who was alive and I was actually dead and this whole world was dead too but I was the only one who knew it. It was very confusing for me when I was a kid and honestly doesn’t make much sense to me now either but after watching the movie I could think about these complicated things without flipping out. I could have conversations about them with Deb and my mom and my therapist and myself and I didn’t feel like it would destabalize my entire psyche. It was cool to see the Sun shine a light on my chiron wound and feel warmth instead of burnt.
10. Erin has been on the forefront of my mind a lot lately, as our birthday approaches. My friend Artemis got me a Minneapolis hat for Christmas and I have never lived in Minneapolis but in NYC people don’t really know the difference between Minneapolis and St. Paul so I figured it doesn’t matter. I put it on and looked in the mirror and thought, “The other twin city” and then I realized this is what Erin would look like if she were alive, we were identical afterall. I’ve never looked at myself and thought that before, even though it’s such a simple thought.
11. AI is getting real ballsy with it’s predictive text guessing. Stop trying to influence my ideas AI.
12. I was making a lot of jokes at Erin’s expense on March 3rd. I was around people I trust and feeling particularly funny and the dead twin sister jokes and puns just kept coming to me, so I said them out loud and it felt nice to laugh. Then, when I went home and I was wondering if I went a little hard and if Erin would have been okay with me joking like that. I did a crossword puzzle to clear my mind and I got an Apex and an Erin, and I felt like it was alright.
13. March 5th was the first time in quite a while that I cried. I usually cry a few times a week but I had been on a bit of a dry spell. I was talking to my therapist about Ruth, my grandmother who was recently put into hospice. She has been in a memory care facility with Alzheimer’s for almost a decade and hasn’t known who I am for even longer. I never really got the chance to know her as an adult but the fact remains that there are only a finite amount of people who have known me since I was a little kid and I can’t grow more of them. And there are even fewer people who knew me since Erin was alive and Ruth is one of them. So I cried about it. And it’s been raining so hard in New York.
14. Ruth died the next day. I don’t have a good adjective for what I feel right now. I feel sad but also relieved. It’s good that this part of her life is done because the last decade wasn’t who she was for so much of her life. I keep wanting to say I’m glad it’s done but is death done? Is a circle- nay, a spiral ever done?
15. My stance of rest is my resistance. You can’t fight your way out of a fight. You have to stop fighting. I really want to fight against war and money. But you can’t fight against something to prove that there shouldn’t be fighting, so the real fight is in the resistance from war and money. And I have to do my taxes with this mindset? How is that fair?
16. I went to see The Eccentric Cabaret at Brooklyn Art Haus and the theme was St. Patrick’s Day. I raised my hand when the host of the cabaret asked who was Irish and he asked me my name so I said Rebecca and he said, “That’s not very Irish, what’s your Irish name?” and I said “Erin.” to both his and my surprise. He goes, “yep that one’s pretty Irish.” I told you, Erin has been around a lot more than usual. Doesn’t she have better things to do? Or maybe it’s me that needs her.
