umbra
approaching
Capoeira nicknames, apelidos, disguise legal identity, and yet deeply identify the (martial) artist, usually by something about their swagger, or some characteristic that defines them, sometimes (well, often actually) as a joke or exaggeration about them, but it’s also a communal acknowledgement of that person’s presence in the community. Your mestre can give you one, typically, and I happened to get mine in 2012 during a solar eclipse. My name. Eclipse/Eclipsa.
We were all standing on a rooftop deck in West Oakland, at a house where many capoeristas in our community lived on a rotating basis. Almost the entire academy seemed to be there, food was plentiful, and silly Sun-safe glasses were circulating, while I stood captive, facing the stucco wall and watching my shadow turn into a million crescents as the eclipse intensified. My silhouette burst into a wispy fur jacket before my eyes. It dazzled me.
Mestre points at me and christens me with my apelido. Eclipsa. He knew I was an astrologer, and for whatever reason, my movements that day finally locked in my communal name.
Adopting my apelido coincided with a coordinating shift in my training schedule, for eclipses only happen every six months in cycles, and i eventually stopped training weekly, or even monthly, and became more and more eclipsed, making a rare appearance every so often before finally moving away. That was nearly 14 years ago now…
Today, Pux Phil saw his shadow, not eclipsed, and promised more winter. Of course, the outcome is equivalent: six weeks til spring or six more weeks of winter. Six one, half-dozen the other. The gauge is on whether we should lean into pessimism or optimism, and this year Phil chose the former for us.
Great.
The Aquarius Sun is in the bounds of Jupiter, with Jupiter exalted (albeit retrograde and slow). You’d think we’d get a more promising message. Maybe he’s a realist. Maybe because Jupiter itself is in the bounds of Saturn-ruled Mercury, who is itself in the bounds of embittered Mars, critique issues line by line, document by document, email by email. Scrutiny.
We cannot seem to get away from it.
Each chisel, a sliver of the Moon as it eats away at our central star, bringing unseen things to light, in its iconic darkness. Showing some people what others have seen and lived through this entire time. Phil sees this shadow. Do you?
This bound is a time to lean into how we know who we know and where we are sharing who we really are when we are not here, online, pixellated, disembodied, surveilled. What nicknames have you been given; what nicknames have you bestowed? What names will we need going forward? Beyond the name, the appellation, the description, what’s the deeper movement it describes? The sway-ger, the thrust of your step, the making-your-way-through-the-world? Both alone and in engagement with others.
I like to recommend various art practices through the bounds, on what can best manifest. This one resists making as a material reality, and leans into the imaginal, mental, emotional exploration that leads to shifting our ways of being, life as performance art, engagement as craft, an expression of socially constructed selfhood versus a materialist item-on-canvas or composition as sound product… it’s a time to reflect on composure and the things that help define the contours of ourselves. Systems both healthy and corrupt and their deeper histories and legacies, as well as containers of support, but also depletion.
By Wednesday, (Jupiter’s bound ruler) Mercury moves into the bounds of Saturn, which helps us set new boundaries around access to ourselves (if not already in place), a great time to switch providers et al, to create by Friday evening (Feb 6) a more serene sense of peace, space, and protection when Mercury enters the bounds of Venus in Pisces (first twelve degrees). It’s not a privileged running away from the world; it’s breathing as a capoeirista, slipping into your apelido, and moving into iykyk spaces where possible. Bonus points if you get into CV dazzle on the reg. (I’d like to see a future with more of that normalized. The more we do it together, the more effective it stays.
On Sunday Feb 8, things will heat up again, so enjoy the relative peace while you can. See you on Superbowl Sunday (go Seahawks! and look, the official nfl branding already screams Sun in the Mars-bound of Aquarius with Aquarius Mars in the bounds of Jupiter.)
Brilliant work linking the wispy crescent shadows during the eclipse to identity itself being something fluid and performance-based. The way communal names actually shift how we move through space (like becoming more eclipsed in training scheduale) is something I experienced when I started working remotely. Sometimes the pattern follows the name rather than the other way around.
Love, eclipsa! I just took a walk, sans tech, in the not as bitter cold, and talked to this full Leo moon, currently squaring Algol/uranus and opposing my Mercury/moon. It’s the moon, shifted 20 degrees, of my monthly profection, where on paper it is besieged and estranged, but tonight it looks glorious and lovely, and I told her so out loud. Before I went out, I finished a “doodle”—lately I’ve been painting abstract watercolors on a variety of papers and letting them simmer. Then I’ll causally set a few out in various locations, with small collections of pens, waiting for me to pick them up, or not. Tonight: kitchen clean, nothing pressing, I picked up a paint stained square. Moon in the bounds of mars, a gold snake appeared in a green rectangle, within a spiky sun/moon. Whimsy and weird. (Wood snake bidding adieu?) Doodles. Satisfaction of a tiny completed piece. Could get framed, tucked in a letter, used as a bookmark, or recycled. Doesn’t matter. Art is the way.