My birthday, actual and projected, spans Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. I didn’t realize this until recently at 53. It’s been staring me down for half a century, but I’ve been busy manipulating my reality. I built so many masks for survival I even lost sight of my own reflection. Now inner knowing leads to understanding that my core traits were always so closely aligned with Pisces, I cannot unsee what is now is plain sight. This understanding is so well aligned, I’m nearly speechless. Well, speechless for me is still running my mouth more than most. Now it’s also clear why I was so drawn to the ocean at such a young age.
I spent summers riding the waves at Edisto Beach and Isle of Palms. Time well spent on Sullivan’s island where my birthday twin, Edgar, Allan Poe, used to inhabit. My profoundly empathic, artistic, romantic, and heightened sensitivities of Pisces have rung true for so long, but as a half century narcissist I saw these traits as weaknesses. Now I fully embrace this water sign’s waves of consciousness as my true north. Well, south really if we’re talking about my imagination. I was never really a Capricorn. I was a water sign disguised as an earth sign. I enjoyed finger painting in nursery school dipping my fingers in muddy water.
During the hot, dry summers that resembled barren, cracked desert the cracks kept widening resembling tiny earthquakes as they spidered out in all directions. The ground uneven, uneasy shaking between breaths. These little earthquakes that Tori Amos sung about eventually lead us into a state where nothing feels grounded anymore. Every moment is spent trying to gain balance in a world that worships paint and suffering never truly offering relief, just selling another unneeded product so another fat cat board member’s stock rises one more tick. Their slight of hand, now obvious to us all is played out.
They also remind me of lightning right in that single millisecond moment spreading out forking across the skies. While looking in the mirror now I also see them as veins scattered all over my eyes. Some days more bloodshot than the next depending on the amount of sleep I survived the night before. Born with a wandering eye requiring surgery at age one, my eyes still played tricks on me. Somehow no one ever noticed that my permanent scowl wasn’t solely due to always feeling like a social outcast, I was also nearsighted. Just as my need for glasses since birth wasn’t corrected until I reached 19.
Every year during roll call my homeroom teacher always accidentally embarrassed me when they’d ask if Carol Vinson was present. I was, but they thought I was a girl. I was even scolded for intentionally horsing around pretending to be the Carol in question. 1991 became the same year mine and Dad’s first names were adjusted from feminine, Carol, to masculine, Carroll. This plagued me every year beginning in nursery school following me all the way through high school. Junior year was I free from the bullies, but still not the teachers. Do yourself a favor and don’t name your kids with androgynous names.
Masculine versus feminine spellings confuse the simplest of minds. As fate would have it, my birth name and birthday both held connections to two of the most enigmatic geniuses in the histories of art and prose. I share my birthday with Edgar Allan Poe and Leonardo da Vinci’s name is hidden within my own. Edgar’s detective genre prose filled with mystery and mayhem and da Vinci’s thoughts on our interconnectedness with everything around us also pulse through my veins. Once awakened there’s no turning back. There’s no magic blue pill to re-enter the matrix. Even if I could go back I would choose to continue moving forward.
Pisces, the most awakened of the Zodiac, interprets the rhythms, patterns, and musical dialects of reality, hidden and implied, with such rich intention it’s become it’s own living, breathing entity. Pisces represents the highest elevation wielding psychic forces greater than any others of the dozen or baker’s dozen if you know Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer. Once I reached my half-centennial my mind shifted, adjusted, and woke up enlightened with what I’ve coined as an activated intuition. My mind was awake again as it was the first time I drew breath. Finally everything was clear. The why of it all shimmering like diamonds.
Every mental block, creative or otherwise, vanished within 36 hours of my psychiatrist removing lithium’s toxicity from my bodily temple. Swimming with the fishes always felt natural, primal. Although the lure of Capricorn’s success at all costs mindset kept me under its spell for fifty years once I came up for air I knew I was finally home. No longer taking dips in the deep end of the pool, sitting at the bottom drawn to the echoing reverberations and pressure giving me immediate relief from the earthly attacks and taunts. Twelve feet down felt safe, familiar as if I was still floating in my mother’s womb.
The American Dream that I now call the Grand Illusion brought up ad absurdum more times than I could ever count. I ran out of fingers and toes to tie it to since I was three years old. Chasing and realizing a dream planted into our subconscious passed down from one generation to the next in the form of capitalistic materialism. I now live peacefully, purposefully, and prayerfully more in line with a monk than a successful American businessman. I dodged those bullets like Neo. Rather than chase an unattainable dream maleficent and mirky, I chose to address my own independence. There’s no admission of tithings or guilt. Calm.
No secret society writ the lines of absolute plagiarism plaguing our world’s societies. We’ve traded our humanity for the seduction of technology. Our critical thinking skills are melting en masse. It’s time to wake up folks. You’re just falling for another golden calf sold by a snake oil salesman who recently announced he would soon “treat adults like adults.” Feel free to search that one. It’s utterly disgusting. Those of us who chose not to join the zombie horde’s goblin ranks have work to do. We’re spreading old-fashioned truth bombs for those who choose to not only see the truth, but continue spreading disguised lies like wildfires.
