The Bane of Being a Pisces

The story of Pisces began with a monster. A horrible, terrifying monster with a hundred different heads. Wild boars, bellowing beasts and fire breathing dragons, and every head had blazing red eyes that glowed with fire, and never once closed in sleep.

A monster so tall, he towered above mountains, grabbing and hurling them in anger and scraping the sky with his head as he walked.

If that's not terrifying enough, he didn't have legs, but coils of snakes and vipers, writhing where legs ought to have been, each as thick as Thor's thighs and a thousand times as strong.

If he extended just one of those snake legs, it would reach above his head, and they were constantly hissing, hissing as he walked.

Between the hundred horrifying heads and the writhing snakes that were his legs, he had the trunk of a man. Not just any man, but a man well-built like Thor, with dragon wings spouting from his back.

Monster of all monsters, deadliest in Greek Mythology, his name was was Typhoeus. Son of Gaea, Mother Earth and Tartarus, the under-world, born to smite the gods of Mount Olympus.

Come close. Let me tell you how this most heinous monster would come to define those born under the sign of Pisces forever after.

On the fateful day when Typhoeus attacked Mount Olympus, the gods fled in mortal fear, shape-shifting and morphing into birds and beasts as they fled, inspiring the Marvel Universe for years to come.

All but two escaped. Aphrodite and Eros, did not shape-shift fast enough and having been a parent, I relate for it seems half the job of being a mother is accepting that you shall be perpetually late.

Trapped on the mountain as Typhoeus was closing in, mother and child leapt from Mount Olympus into the raging waters of the ocean below. Better to die together in the watery deep than fall prey to the wicked hand of Typhoeus.

But the story does not end for the gods of love. Lo and behold, two giant fishes appeared and swiftly swam Aphrodite and Eros to safety and love was not obliterated from the universe on that day.

Then mighty Zeus used his thunderbolts to conquer the beast and trapped him deep beneath Mount Olympus. To this very day, they say when a volcano erupts, it is Typhoeus roaring his eternal rage.

We are made of stardust, you and I...

Mortal through I be, yea ephemeral, if but a moment I gaze up at the night's starry domain of heaven, then no longer on earth I stand; I touch the Creator, and my lively spirit drinketh immortality.

~ Claudius Ptolemy

Hundreds of years later, a twinkle-eyed old man stood under the night sky, pointing out stars and telling their timeless tales. Of Leo, the lion. Libra, the scales. Gemini, the twins. Twelve, in all.

Claudius Ptolemy, scientist, mathematician, poet, astronomer and astrologer. Some laughed at his storytelling, yet he was the first to draw lines of longitude and latitude on a world map sketched by his own hand 150 years after the birth of Christ.

Surely you understand that the traits of each astrological sign were not plucked from thin air at whim? No, each sign embodies the traits of the immortals that live forever in the night sky.

You may think it lofty, but every atom in our bodies once twinkled in the heavens above. We are made of stardust, you and I and not a word of a lie. Who needs fiction in a world made of miracles?

There, you see? South of Andromeda and right next to Pegasus. At 360 degrees longitude, there they are. Pisces. The fishes that saved the gods of love, that they should remain eternal.

And thus, all who are born when the sun takes up brief residence in the realm of Pisces shall share the traits of the fishes.

They shall be intuitive, as the fishes were in knowing where and when they were most needed. They shall be generous, and helpful, almost to a fault. And creative in thinking, finding solutions that appear almost without forethought.

Am I those? I aspire. But in honestly, it depends on the day, for which of us wears our goodness on all the days given us? A few elevated souls, perhaps, but if there are any, I am not among them.

But oh, the bane of Pisces!

Up there, in the night sky, the fishes are bound by a cord, tail to tail. It is the bane of Pisces. Not that they are bound together, but that they need to be, for poor Pisces is torn by desires that swim in opposite directions. With this, I identify to the core of my being.

My to-do list lays forlorn and forgotten, not one sorry task stroked off in yellow highlighter because despite my best intention of staying on task today, I have tumbled down a rabbit hole once again.

A rabbit hole that would make Lewis Carroll weep with envy, for instead of talking mice and a hurrying white rabbit, there are gods and dragons, monsters and thunderbolts that restore peace to the world and above all, love is rescued for all of eternity.

Oh, where does the time go, and I have done none of the tasks I so intended to do. But, tomorrow is a new day, and I shall be stern with myself and try once again to stay on task.

Opposites are my eternal struggle. I suspect they always will be.

Interest versus obligation. Analytics versus art, logic versus feeling, companionship versus solitude, and off in the corner, optimism wrestles eternally with pessimism in a battle that will not end until my days are done and perhaps not even then.

By comparison, the positive traits of Pisces seem as elusive and ephemeral as the bloom of a daylily.

We are entirely spun of the stories we believe

Perhaps you scoff at astrology and if so, I clap my hands in delight. Oh, then you have different stories. Tell me! What do you believe?

Even Einstein, possessing a far greater mind than mine, said common sense is only the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. What we believe is what we achieve and like gravity, the laws of nature apply whether we believe them, or not.

Do you believe in truth and knowledge, instead of story?

Whoever undertakes to set himself as a judge of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. Yes, that's Einstein again! Despite being a terrible husband, he did have a most brilliant mind.

We are entirely spun of the stories we tell ourselves, you and I. Stories and stars, and who really needs more than that?

And so I, born while the sun rested in the realm of the fishes, will spend my days battling with opposing interests. Fighting upstream and floating down.

Yet, despite the persistent draw to swim in opposite directions, I am saved by the cord that ties those selves together. I like to think that cord is creativity. It's as good a story as any.

"Everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”

~ Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind