Profile: Playwright Edward Albee
Playwright and philosopher Albert Camus held that every artist, no matter the medium, spends his or her entire life working out one idea or problem, has one thing to say. He wrote that even no matter how many media were used creatively, the same problem was the focus of the artist’s life and work.
Understanding this, I’ve gone through phases of working with and in response to (being inspired by) the work of various artists. We all do this, but we don’t always understand why. We’re living myths in our lives, and there are others who provide examples for us along our way. We can lose interest when the artist seems to diverge from our path, or when our path changes and that of the artist seems not to.
I had this experience with the work of the playwright Edward Albee, ending a few years ago. I’d read or seen most of his work, and what he was trying to do became clear to me. And after that, I was bored with him and moved on. Thanks, Ed, I seemed to say, but I’ve gotten all I can get from you. Thanks for your time, and best wishes on whatever you laid out for yourself this time around.
And then, yesterday, something happened.
I heard an NPR interview with and about him, about the first act he’d written and appended to his famous one-act, Zoo Story. It’s a story about a fairly well-to-do, rather uptight, unimaginative man who has a chance encounter with a very different sort of man in a park. The new version (Peter and Jerry) includes an act previous to this act that tells the story of the rather uptight man, putting him at home with his wife. (I haven’t yet read it, but this is from the description in the radio story.)
Albee said something about the play had always stayed with him and made him want to do something else with/to it. When I heard about the new act and therefore context, I got back on the Albee train - he’d enlarged his previous vision, the one I saw and read too much of and became bored by. This play is the one that launched his career, and many in the theater world hold it as sacred and were confounded by his audacity to change the play they loved so. He commented in the interview that he’s after all the one who wrote it.
I couldn’t locate a birth time for Albee (12 March 1928, Washington, DC), but he’s got a Uranus-Jupiter in Aries that I just really want to put in the 3rd house. That would be an early-morning birth, and Chiron in Taurus would be in the 4th, one kind of signature for adoption. Now, it’s just speculation, but I rreeaalllllyy want that Uranus-Jupiter to be in the 3rd, because of his lifelong unapologetic styles of writing and speaking, and the nature of the stories he’s inspired to tell.
Without the time of birth, we can see the South Node in Sagittarius, with Saturn pretty tightly on it. This paints a picture of an orientation to beliefs and ideas that’s built intentionally and with much hard work. The Sun in Pisces squares the nodes, indicating that something very large in the karmic past, something that was orbited, was not approached and understood in ways that seemed to get him where he was going, and he now has the challenge of learning the right size and use of ways of defining the sense of self.
The South Node ruler Jupiter is conjunct Uranus in Aries, and squared by Pluto in Cancer. The role he expects to have (South Node ruler) is that of Jupiter in Aries conjunct Uranus in Aries - someone with something big, original and probably cutting to say. The square to Pluto in Cancer screams that he is not aligned with tradition and the powers that wish to uphold it, but is doing something original that probably challenges everything traditional.
And then there’s the pileup in Aquarius - Eros, Pallas, Mars, Arjunsuri, Ceres, Venus, Mercury, and Vesta. This underscores his expectation of the role of being Uranian, given the conjunction of the South Node ruler with Uranus. His sense of proportion and how he understands harmony and balance (Venus) is working together with how he perceives things and his communication style (Mercury), in the sign of things that are different. And the drive to action being there indicates that not only is what he wants to think about and express creatively (Ve-Me) in the sign of things working differently than normal, but how he’s moved to get things done (Mars) also works differently - how he goes about getting out there his ideas and creativity we can also expect to be different.
His North Node is in Gemini, which indicates a call to stretch into the new territory of flexibility, and curiosity, of openness to new information. Reworking the piece that launched his career is a very Gemini thing, most certainly not a South Node in Sagittarius conjunct Saturn thing. His willingness to stretch into what is new territory for him (the North Node for any us is new territory) surprises me more than his willingness to “ruffle feathers,” as he’s always been very good at that (check his biography for stories of him as the editor of the school paper). But refiguring a major work of his intentional design (Saturn in Sagittarius)?
The best part for me is that Albee’s almost 80 years old. I’ve always knows it’s never too late for 0ld playwrights to learn new tricks, but to see it happening with this one is an inspiration to me.
January 20, 2008 By Tom Jacobs
Transit Lab: Saturn in Virgo conjunct Arjunsuri
Yesterday I returned from a 10-day Vipassana meditation course, having learned this technique recovered by the Buddha 2500 years ago. The ultimate aim of it is the end of suffering, and it’s possible for every person to do this, given a commitment to patience, ardent work, awareness, perseverance and persistance.
Sound like a list of keywords for Saturn in Virgo, doesn’t it?
This is the kind of thing most of think we could never do, but each of us can choose to do it. I heard about it from a friend who has in common with me a strong mental and communicative energy (Mars-Mercury in Leo in 11th-12th, with a 10th-house Gemini stellium I totally jive with), and a desire for progress that shapes a work ethic that keeps one going going going, that keeps one driven. She told me she’d done one of these courses a while ago, and I was inspired that if she could cause herself to do it, I could cause myself to do it.
Each of the things I knew about it before going in were entries on my well-established and -entrenched list of not-to-dos: sitting still, focusing the awareness on only the breath, following the ethical code central to the technique (read: someone else’s rules), refraining from any communication with other students for the duration of the course, no exercise other than walking, and - here’s the big one - no reading or writing of any kind. I mean, go down the list of attitudes and behaviors I’ve used to define myself, and each needed to be shelved for the duration of the course if I wanted to give myself the chance to suceed with the technique.
But in the face of the opportunity to take better care of myself, and to get to the bottom of a couple of personal issues I wanted to heal, I was willing to do a little Saturn-in-Virgo…which was, I desperately need to tell someone mean, a lot of Saturn-in-Virgo. A lot. I’ve never worked as hard as I did during the course. Never. As a matter of fact, I realized while I was doing it that I can’t remember even a handful of times I chose to challenge myself and work extremely hard in order to achieve something I wanted. When I chose to sideline the rules I’ve developed for myself and submit to someone else’s program (that Mars-Uranus in the 1st bristles at the notion of someone else’s rules, and my Rx Saturn in Gemini/9th and Jupiter in Capricorn/3rd are pretty sure I know what’s good for me and probably that no one else could).
When I studied music, it came easily to me. When I studied philosophy, I couldn’t find the point of most of it and didn’t work very hard, until I found Albert Camus’ brand of life-affirming existentialism and was armed with something eminently useful. When I began writing poetry and satire, it just poured out like you wouldn’t believe (it took a while to bring out my own voice in each, but that was less a matter of hard work than one of doing it enough that other people’s voices played themselves out in me and fell away). When I began with astrology, I dove in and it was, frankly, pretty easy. I seemed primed to incorporate it into the vocabulary I had already been developing about the meaning of life, etc. (building on my work with Camus, in fact). There have been questions and issues along the way in my astrology education that have caused more perplexation than others, but, generally speaking, it was just sitting there and I drank it in in giant gulps.
Okay, so, channeling class was difficult, but in a specific way. I simply had to make sure I didn’t turn down the opportunity every week for four months to confront my fear of doing it; I had to make sure I showed up to do the work and chose to be willing to learn what I needed to learn. And those four months, each weekly installment of which I dreaded like nothing else, were nothing compared with the challenge of sitting still to meditate for ten days and not communicating with anyone.
Do you know many people with Pluto in Libra (those born 1971-1984) who are willing to sit still for 10 days and not communicate with anyone at all? I realized that that in itself was a healing opportunity for me, giving myself the chance to develop a stronger relationship with myself. The soul wound in these people is in relationship, the relating function: the area of fairness, equality and balance - in the area of dealing with others as equals. To learn to sit with one’s self and get grounded in a deep understanding of and relating to that self is Pluto-in-Aries work, or Pluto-in-Libra polarity point work. Doing this is precisely what a Pluto-in-Libra person needs to do when stuck in cycles of Libra misfirings, malfunctionings and junk…which I admit to being prone to be in my more robotic, unaware moments.
The shiny experience worth noting here in terms of Saturn is that the eclipse at 18 Virgo squared from the 12th my own Saturn, Rx in Gemini/9th. I learned something critical about owning up (Virgo) to having compassion (12th house) that I allowed to override (square) an extremely fixed guiding principle I’ve carried (Rx Saturn in Gemini/9th) that no longer serves me. Okay, I’ll just say it: It hasn’t served me for hundreds of years. Even in a past-life regression taking me back to the 1080s, I had this fixed idea! It’s what I’ve known about myself, what I understand as me. I haven’t known any other baseline. So, understandably, I can’t wait to see what will happen next - it’s anybody’s guess.
I work with an archetype I’m introducing to astrology, associated with asteroid 20300, Arjunsuri. This asteroid is in my chart at the first minute of Virgo, so when Saturn entered Virgo, I was in need of some hard work of figuring out to whom to listen. The basic story of Arjunsuri has to do with the process of seeking Truth externally and ultimately learning to listen to your conscience as your guide, allowing the inner voice of knowing to be your final authority. “Finding Conscience on the Path to Truth,” the title of the article I’ve completed describing the archetype, is a good summary of the process.
The meditation course for me, then, had to do with doing some real, some hard Saturn-in-Virgo work, but also with developing a closer relationship with my conscience. One of the conditions students agree to before taking a Vipassana course is to refrain from killing anything, which includes eating meat (as I understand it, if you eat it, you’re participating in a process that began with the killing of the animal). I found myself yesterday on the way home from the course at a restaurant, evaluating the excitingly extensive omelet list. (Omelets with the trimmings are my favorite meal these days, and if I’m going out to eat, I’m going to gravitate toward homey places that serve such things.) Aware that the meditation technique is built on a foundation of vegetarianism, and aware that I’m presently beginning a practice of that technique, I opted not to choose a meat-ridden omelet. I recognized this choice as a Saturn-transiting-Virgoan-Arjunsuri choice: My conscience, with its commitment to giving the technique a real chance in my normal life, overrode my love of meat-riddled omelets. And this asteroid is in my 11th house, indicating how I look to the future and realize goals. My mouth was a little disappointed, but the rest of me felt great in making an informed, healthy choice (Virgo) that supports achieving my goals (11th house).
If you’re interested in learning more about Vipassana meditation, check out: http://www.dhamma.org.
If you’re interested in learning more about asteroid 20300 Arjunsuri, sign up for my mailing list at http://www.tdjacobs.com. It’s the best way to keep up with my activities in introducing this archetype to the astrological community. Within the next few months I’ll be doing a podcast interview about it, and I’ve written an article that will in one form or another be published in the near future, both of which will be announced via my mailing list.
Tom is available for consultations and lessons. See http://tdjacobs.com for more information and to book a consultation.
September 17, 2007 By Tom Jacobs
Down With Robots: Self-understanding, Creation & Growth With Astrology
In my experience, people learning astrology have a suspicion somewhere below their skin that tells them that it’s useful for self-transformation. What they find when beginning their study, though, might not seem to support that suspicion.
What I’d really like to say is that people are not as stupid as most of the teaching of astrology seems to assume they are.
While astrology employs many lists of data, those data are not the heart of astrology. Those coming to astrology bring their hearts usually before their heads (if you wanted simply to be seen as smart because you can master teachings, astrology with its entrenched & widespread misunderstanding by the culture won’t likely be your first choice), and such a study is a great way to work with that heart and understand what it means to have and create meaning in our lives, a fundamental issue for any human seeking self-knowledge.
Again: The heart of astrology is not sets of data. Every astrologer needs to have learned the lists of data, but not at the expense of creative thinking and the urge to connect with soul that drives so many of its students to find it.
People are not ever truly convinced at the soul level that they’re the robots that traditional astrological teaching and analysis with its emphasis on clear-cut delineations of planets in signs and houses, etc., indicates, and we should stop trying to believe that we are.
I know in my bones that no one truly wants to believe that he or she is a robot (and that a transiting square from Saturn to a planet in the 1st or any other nonsense interpretation will result in the development of arthritis), but the alternatives can be hard to identify and approach.
Over the last few days, a vision of my work, what I’ve been developing for over three years, has begun taking shape. I should say a clearer assignation of words to the feeling of inspiration I have when doing astrology either as a counselor for deep transformation or initiating students to the evolutionary, growth- and choice-oriented approach I practice.
The bottom line of that vision is my conviction that not only is no human a robot, but that anyone can learn to use astrology to understand and change his or her life. If you accept astrology as something that tells you what and who you are, you embrace a view that’s based in an absolute lack of imagination. If you buy into it, you will be confronted with the option of numbing yourself by attempting to fit yourself into little boxes created by organizing lists of data that were never meant to take into account your complexity - your humanity.
Personally, I love how truly complex you are. No matter how you see yourself, I can’t see you as a robot…because you’re not. You’re just not. You’re not the product of lists of data, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t make it true. No one can.
My vision of this work centers on the fact that anyone wishing to understand his- or herself better can learn a rudimentary approach to astrology that will serve as a profound tool for discovery and understanding of self. Beginning to learn the language of astrology by getting a grounding in the grammar of it.
No matter who you are, if you’re willing to look at your life in order to make it more reflective of your divine complexity, your magnificent conflictedness because you’re spirit temporarily tied to matter here on this wet, beautiful orb, you can learn to use astrology to transform your life.
I spoke with an old friend today on the telephone, someone who always inspires me to bring forth my vision…whichever one I’m harboring at any time we speak. She has this precious effect on me for which I’m perennially grateful. I told her about some of the stuff I’m working on these days, and she reminded me that people are hungry for meaning. And the only way to have meaning, I chimed in as I remembered my work with Albert Camus’ version of existentialism for my college thesis, is to create it.
You have the choice each day to create something, to be creative. Whether its art, music or literature or social change, an easing of suffering or a more ordered or beautiful world, you have this choice each and every day. The purpose and the meaning you have in your life you must create. Camus makes the statement that the only serious philosophical problem is that of suicide: So many of us can’t find a meaning to this whole life thing, and all we have to do is understand that up to us to have meaning at all.
(One reason I like this format is that when I stray from a point or dive into what seems like a tangent, you’re saying to yourselves, “Well it IS only a blog.” And you probably already have dreadfully short attention spans, polished blue hot dogs in cellophane shoes.)
My lord, finally a closing: No, no closing.
(It’s just a blog, after all.)
http://www.tdjacobs.com
July 22, 2007 By Tom Jacobs