I don’t want to believe it. It’s already eclipse season already. Everything gets shaken up, time passes and it congeals all of our possibilities. Life shouldn’t but must.
During an anxiety spiral last month, I wandered around my room, desperately trying to find something to calm me down. I looked through all the books in my bookshelf and found a zine that my friend Adder had printed out for me before I moved to Japan in 2021, it was left only read halfway through.
< The zine “Friendship as a Form of Life” > (which ushered me into a remembering and reanalysis)
I have been thinking the horizon is friendship. What is friendship? Or more specifically, what is the feeling that constitutes the relation that compels us to call ourself or someone else friend?
I think about friendship as a promise, a promise to love with a certain level of distance. Or maybe for some, friendship is a declaration of an alliance, that we are walking down a path of similar interests (not a love beamed directly and solely towards each other, but a shared love directed towards a third something, even if it be the concept of friendship). Nietzsche also describes friendship as a three-way relationship, in which the friend is the third-party that cuts through and disrupts the knotty and torturous relationship we have with ourselves.
I’m getting lost in my own writing on friendship. Friendship is confusing for me, mainly because I have always been committed to it, without ever considering that the definitions we share may not be the same.
Friendship is not a relation between two people, but a relation to being. The friend then becomes the mirror for this relation, a space in which to practice this form of love that chooses to walk down the path together. A relation beyond familial bond, legal definition, the boundaries of identity markers.
This definition, situated inside the belief and action and not the personhood, helps massage the grief. After all, there are people I have loved, for a second, for a season, for years, who I cannot love anymore. I cannot comfort myself with the assuredness that we still have more memories to make together. Every relation is limited in this way, even if I have defined myself through my love for you. On many occasions, I have conceived of myself as someone, that exists before my job, before my hobbies, before interests and dreams, I have seen myself as a friend, your friend.
Quoting Derrida in the “Politics of Friendship,” “Friendship is never a given in the present; it belongs to the experience of waiting, of promise or of engagement. Its discourse is that of prayer, and at stake there is what responsibility opens to the future.”
These are the feelings that emerge from this moment.
I think this Pisces season, we must acknowledge death. The ending of all things. In February, we faced a kind of horror and existential dread, but as we move into March, there is a quieter and open storm. Quiet might be confused as peaceful, no, actually, it is silent and moving around, a brick. The valley of death, washed in light.
In astrological jargon, the eclipse on March 25th is ruled by a Venus and Mars in Pisces, co-present with Saturn, and ruled by Jupiter in Taurus approaching Uranus. We are beginning to build up our courage to go for the new thing, to make the break for it, but right now we need to balance our desires to please and to assert. Things might need to move slow still, and yet everything is spiraling out of control.
This newsletter is all over the place. I think everyone is dealing with a lot recently. But may we approach with world in friendship.
March features …
a Pisces New Moon on March 10th (new beginnings towards what you want to change, but having to walk a tightrope between fantasy and reality)
Venus enters Pisces (sweetness, prioritization of emotional connection, artistic maturity, may require commitment)
And March 25th is the Libra full moon Eclipse (balancing initiative and solo desires with others’ needs, fully being out at sea)
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆ personal announcement ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆
I’m very excited about my participation in a group exhibition, titled Reflection on the Sublime, at the Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art. The show is conceived by artist Kazuna Taguchi and structured by artist Soshiro Matsubara.
For the show, a collection of my writing will be published in a booklet. I look forward to sharing more with everyone.
https://www.hiroshima-moca.jp/exhibition/reflection_on_the_sublime
! Readings are limited for March and have been already booked. If you have reached out personally, I will email you back soon. For everyone else, I will share April bookings next month. Thank you always for your support. !
Horoscopes (read for your rising or sun sign)
Pisces:
Discipline, sobriety, and taking yourself and your desires seriously / Get used to saying No, only because you want to say a Yes that has weight to it.
Aries:
You can’t hide from the fact that sometimes in life, you will be helpless, sometimes the wind comes in with the floodwaters, and you are caught with your pants down. There is no shame in weakness or in being stuck, give yourself that allowance.
Taurus:
There is a deep deep desire to be held in community, and this month might bring up the pain and trauma from the past when community has been untrustworthy. You need the right expectations so you don’t lose yourself the moment it seems the ship of everlasting love is coming (or leaving).
Gemini:
Where are you growing to, is it too big, too fast, too much expectation. Do you want to rise up to the challenge, but is the challenge on the wrong field? Don’t get caught up in trying to do all the things at once, and think about what you really really are invested in, with your one precious life. You will be able to face it, when you choose to stand in one place with both feet on the ground.
Cancer:
To enter the gate, you need to solve three riddles. One, is what? The second, is how? And the third is why? They seem simple, but it might give you pause before you can answer with the conviction needed to move architecture.
Leo:
While you are mostly on top of things, this month may be highlighting the places in your life where you don’t have control. You can’t hold onto water into your palm, you must trust it to flow where it needs to. Trust that the air is the right container.
Virgo:
From my window, I’m watching pairs of white herons fly through the canal. I think this moment asks some existential questions about your love life and how you view your role in partnership. I don’t know how much you’ve been holding, or how much you’ve been forfeiting, but there are ways to rebalance so that you can actually take the responsibility to be present both to yourself and to what partnership means.
Libra:
Trauma-informed physician Gabor Mate talks about self-denial as one of the leading causes of chronic illness or cancer. This refers to people who deny their own needs to take care of other. Your body holds the signs of how you’ve treated it. Make sure that you take care of it properly.
Scorpio:
This is a month of birthing pains and possibly some doldrums. The challenge is to watch the paint dry, and only in the pain of boredom will some new possibilities arise.
Sagittarius:
Home and belonging are some big themes for the last year, and this month will continue to highlight it. It might even ask you to make a more conscious commitment to where you will root yourself.
Capricorn:
Thinking processes, scrambling, for safety and the shiny dream. To hone the vision is the dream. As you nurture it, you contribute to its solidification in the realm of human thought, that exists beyond this dimension. in March, you are engaged in the immaterial work of belief, to share it in fellowship.
Aquarius:
You would give the shirt off your back, but maybe this moment is asking you for to think about if that’s really the best thing to do. This month, you are growing your power in communion, not in self-abandonment or in the disavowal of all systems.