vanish
Virgo disappearing act
I’ll never forget (or fail to inform my students and clients) my first Virgo disappearing act.
There we were, having six conversations on six different platforms, simultaneously, yes, even Skype chat, because that’s how long ago this was . . . my mind and heart were on fire, the level of intellectual stimulation exponential, invigorating on all levels . . . and then one day, this Virgo Sun–having interlocutor vanished.
no replies,
all platforms crickets,
not even one, a sign of life,
nothing.
everything imploded.
no warning, no apologies, no more replies . . .
With an actual (Atlantic) ocean between us, i pivoted and unsuccessfully filled the emptiness with other pursuits.
no amount of busy work and distraction could hide the severe presence of absence.
it must be where the Portuguese came up with the untranslatable word saudade
longing so intense you can feel it in every cell, it saturates all time,
even their word for No sounds like an impatient NOW
não
~
So, I dubbed this the “Virgo disappearing act,” and I started to observe my other heavy Virgo-placed friends and familiars doing the same thing, more or less, in their lives, to their social fabrics. To varying degrees . . . it became a lesson in the earthy dual bodied essence of that sector of space.
initiation into this phenomenon, unbidden and drastic, left a permanent mark of awareness
~
and now you, too, have tapped into a phantom Virgo solar month of bound reports that never were. And like the Virgo need to vanish, i didn’t dissolve on purpose. I could place blame on eclipses, or whatever other star factors, but it was, true to form, an innocent retreat. a digestion that consumes all available energy, preventing outside contact, a private processing that ends when it ends. There’s no set time for how long a VDA will last. When you fall into one, it just takes you, puts you through the paces, and you’ll know when it is time to emerge again, and the kicker is, it’s as though nothing happened.
Nine or so months after I realized my friend wasn’t returning, I wrote a short one-liner. It’s a shame we’re no longer friends.
An immediate reply.
“What do you mean?”
. . .
The ghost had no idea I’d been stewing in private torment at their abandonment. In their experience, they’d gone nowhere, just hadn’t noticed that six conversations got dropped all at once, shattering like plates at a German wedding.
And we picked things back up, this time only two or three platforms, not six.
~
Now we begin again, equinox, a levelling, a Libra fairness, balancing out presence and absence. It always kicks off with sober Saturn setting the terms, portioning out what needs structure and what can be eliminated.
One step forward, six steps back, a bit quieter, a bit more resolved, vehemently aware of what’s missing, of who is missing, and doing the work of missing it/them, either by getting back in touch, or making peace with goodbyes.
creative energy is limitless, but thrives on limits and liminalities. As we cross into a new season, the border between light and dark shifting both north and south of the equator, consider what you must increase/decrease in equal measure to proceed.
See you a lot sooner than last time, when we hit the bounds of Mercury and celebrate my birthday.
-jenn
tears.
La Pietà