by Ang Kia Yee
Mars in Gemini stations direct, ending retrograde but staying in post-retrograde shadow (natal 8th whole sign house)
What I’m learning from the last months of wiggling-woggling my relationship with Buddhism, is that there is no out. Not just in the ways the teachings address, like facing your emotions and suffering, but also in engaging on the aesthetic plane of human being. I have been practicing detachment from the superficial and artificial, only to discover that any attempt to disengage fully is its own scam. Everything carries an aesthetic that takes its effect, and to ignore this plane is also a kind of hubris.
And perhaps, after all, I am very sensitive to certain aesthetic modes, in ways I cannot give up on. They have been a great part of my world-making, my survival, the driving curiosities that keep me going. I am invested in beauty, in material amalgams and manifestations that evoke joy, devotion, salvation. I have been saved so many times by beauty.
___
I am thankful to learn about my triggers and to grow, but god I would like some downtime, more cream, more ease with it. The fall into 2023 and these past two weeks have been very intense, very dense with revelation, relief, inflammation, shock, quick change. I am deeply tired. I have a long list of things to journal about, to process, to work through.
I’m irritated though to see how the recent anxieties around (having, not having, being involved with) money are a blatant inheritance from my parent(s). Like, not their fault for not having the means to wade through and unpick their trauma, but this is just. This is so much. To not only heal the trauma they inflicted on me through direct action, but also the quietly transmitted anxieties they carry in their more mundane behaviours and speech, which I’ve observed and internalised since infancy. ANNOYING
Well. As I’ve learnt from Mark Manson, Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga — it’s not my fault, but it is my responsibility. And as I’ve learnt from activists, friends, life — pleasure is vital. And as I’m still struggling to fully embody — there is time. We have time. I don’t have to save my whole world. Heck, sometimes I think what my world really needs is celebration, frivolity, beauty, generosity, world-shattering pleasure.
___
Suffering may be an inevitable part of life, but it doesn’t mean it’s fair, that we are at fault or deserving of it.
Many mundane errors are nobody’s fault. Most mistakes I make are my responsibility but not my fault. Not things to feel guilty about, or to carry like stones.
slow 