January 21, 2004

• Saint Wood Monkey

  
  

  Tomorrow is Chinese New Year.  Doug was on one online forum or another yesterday when he turned to me and said, “It’s the year of the Wood Monkey.”  That rang a bell for me.  I know I’m a monkey, was born in the Year of the Monkey, but I had to think a bit to derive the “wood” element.  I knew that the elements run in a five year cycle and the animals in a twelve year cycle, and 12 X 5 = 60.  I will turn sixty later this year.  Voila!  Yes!  I’m a wood monkey.

  
  

  I said as much to Doug, and his response was,  “Saint Wood Monkey.” (If you missed my canonization last week, today it will still be farther down the front page and can also be found here.)

  
  

  Ever since then my mind has strayed back occasionally to the topic of Chinese astrology.  I’ve told in my memoirs how I got into Western astrology in the ‘sixties.  Until the ‘eighties I hadn’t learned much about Chinese astrology.  I’d discovered from reading a placemat in a Chinese restaurant that I was a monkey and my then-husband Charley was a dragon.  One of the astrologers at the Astrological Center where I worked when Doug was a baby had, upon learning that, said, “That makes sense.  Only the Monkey can pull the wool over the Dragon’s eyes.”  I’ve always wondered what he meant by that, but I certainly wasn’t going to ask while Charley was around.

  
  

  Then for a while after we moved out here to the Su Valley, I was going into Anchorage on weekends to do readings in the window of The Source, another metaphysical bookstore.  One slow Saturday as I sat there being a living advertisement for my services, after I’d done a few card spreads and rune castings for myself, out of sheer boredom I looked around for something to read.  On the nearest shelf was Lori Read’s East West Astrology.

  
  

  After quickly skimming what she said about Monkey Virgo and finding it an accurate summation of my character, I turned to the Leo Rooster, Doug’s synthesized East-West sign.  What I read there explained for me the conflicts we had been having that had baffled me before that.  The kid had, and still has, an irrational and extreme need to choose his own way.  Since having a self-motivated, self-determining offspring was something I saw as desirable, I decided to make an even greater effort to let him express his individual Will.  The book said, in essence, that the only way to make a Leo Cock submit to anyone else’s will would be to break his mind and spirit.  That certainly is not what I want for my son.

  
  

  There were a few more details in that short article on Leo Roosters that I found interesting and helpful, not all of which I have always been able to accomodate.  One of the most difficult has been Doug’s need to have some money of his own to spend as he wishes.  There have been times when I didn’t have any at all to spend in any way.  Perhaps the greatest depth of our broke period was on his fourth birthday when his birthday cake was a twinkie, without ice cream.  But now, even though Greyfox and I don’t pay him for the work he does around here (Greyfox says, “He pretends to work and we pretend to pay him.”), I’ve made sure that he has his own Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend at his disposal, and the credit card companies have made sure ever since he got out of high school that he has credit.  He is in no way extravagant with his money or credit and he has been generous when we needed to dip into his savings to pay bills sometimes.  I admire his frugality and good sense.

  
  

  Having realized that I’d neglected to check out Greyfox’s Chinese astrology, today I decided to correct that oversight.  He is a Fire Pig.  When I saw that 1947 is the Year of the Pig, I said to myself, “It figures.”  Here’s what geomancy.net says about the Fire Pig:

  
  

  
  

  With the fire element, this pig is more ambitious, energetic, domineering and courageous.
  [Geez, I'd hate to have to live with a Pig without the Fire!  Okay, I could live without the ambition and the domineering, but if that man were any less courageous, we'd be in trouble fershure.]
  

  
  

  Is generous, tolerant but is more self-centered.
  [I can confirm the self-centered part and once again thank my lucky stars that my soulmate has that fire to mitigate the pigginess.]
  
  

  
  

  Is more willing to take up new challenges and can be successful but if failure sets in will be a broken wreck. This pig has fixed ideas and more obstinate and will not easily give in to other’s opinion.
  [uh huh! on the obstinacy, and thanks again for the (relative) willingness to take up new challenges.  Greyfox shies away from all things new and challenging, but that may be that "broken wreck" syndrome expressing itself, or simply the piggishness.  We're a bunch of sick puppies around here.  Don't tell anyone, because this would (we finally decided) be very bad PR, but for a while we considered making the slogan for our Addicts Unlimited project, "Healing the planet, one sick puppy at a time."  ...starting, of course, with ourselves.]

  
  

  Yeah, and I could write the book on Fire Pigs with NPD.

  
  

  Chinese Astrology – 2004, the Wood Monkey

  • 6:25 pm
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