Aries 27°

(For last year’s meditation on the Sabian Symbol for this degree:  click here)

I woke up to this very vivid dream that I couldn’t much figure out. Stella and I were outside some fancy club late night. It felt like being in Portland Square in London and also uptown around Studio 54. It was like we were waiting to hail a cab but were in no rush. It was a warm night with a perfect breeze. We kept hearing voices of people behind us exiting the club. Stella asked, “is that Tony’s voice?” And I said “no”, dreamembering that “Tony Randall’s dead.” To which she replied “he is?” “Yes.”

Then suddenly near the curb where we were standing poured a couple, post club, arranging their clothes, he was refitting his white sports jacket to his frame. They were both very tanned; and I realized it was Sean Penn with a small round faced “date” who had thin blond hair piled on top and minimal make up and very down to earth looking like Kaley Cuoco. Stella sort of stage whispered to me who she was and how she came to be with Sean Penn, but apparently too loudly; because the date confronted us. “Yeah that’s right….that’s who I am and that’s how we met” confirming anything that Stella would have heard in the gossip columns or what not was true.

We apologized profusely and assured the twosome that we weren’t in for that sort of thing; that we weren’t mongers and didn’t care and we apologized for commenting on them too loudly. They immediately disarmed and the date connected with Stella, now apologizing to her for overreacting; at the same time Sean was now shaking my hand, which he would do periodically through out the dream, each time trying to get the grip more precise and make it more heart-felt it seemed. Anyway we were soon the best of friends and decided to go back into the club which was super snazzy and of the supper variety I now realized and we were ushered through to an outside space with tables and metal patio furniture and we sat at a table meant for about eight people, which was fine, because folks, other famous or at least fame-ish people kept popping by and plopping themselves down. Sean and I were locked in conversation as was Stella and the date who said she didn’t much feel like drinking but she wanted to smoke dope. Cue dream reality: Suddenly I’m like I have this bag of the best green and she grabs it and fills herself a bowl and smokes it as Sean grabs some weed to and is rolling a joint in what seems like nori, you know, for making sushi.

He explains that he lives up north with a nod. And I’m like where? The Hudson Valley. “Nah,” he replies. So I’m like…Woodstock? And he’s like “Nah.” And he makes a more precise movement of his head in what would be a diagonal across the Hudson River and I guess, “Where? Pompton Lakes?” and he says yes near there. So he passes me the nori joing which is as thick as a Cuban cigar and suddenly a waiter, a very professional crisply uniformed Asian waiter—all the staff are wearing dark green trousers with white shirts and sort of striped dark green, black and white vests and black bowties—and I’m thinking I have to hide the joint under the table while the waiter puts a huge bucket filled with two or three bottles of champagne on the table but sure he smells it but he doesn’t much seem to care; at least he doesn’t care on behalf of the establishment but I get the distinct sense he doesn’t much like the smell himself or the practice of smoking weed in general.

I explain to Sean that I come from that part of New Jersey and he says how much he likes it. And his date politely asks if I mind if she takes more weed because she really loves it and wants to fill another huge bowl which she does with the weed pouring over the top of her pipe and Stella, of course (even in dreams) isn’t smoking the pot but I suspect I should open the champagne, not just for her, but for those of us who are surely on the brink of having very dry mouths. And I want to say to Sean that I know Robin Wright (I don’t really, I’ve only sort of met her) which I do in the dreamreality, but I decide I better not drop her name just in case it triggers some emotional reaction because I am on tinderhooks knowing he’s got quite the temper. But right now he seems to be my best buddy and he’s kicking back with his black shirt open exposing his very bronzed smooth chest and I think he either blends the bronzer really well because there is no glitch between his face and his neck and he’s a bit glistening with sweat but still has on his white sportscoat. While across the table the date looks very comfortable and happy and as if the temperature is just perfect for her though she’s wearing a sort of think silk jumpsuit with some kind of jungle pattern, batik or bamboo or zebra printed but in a pale giraffe color scheme, and I don’t realize (until now) that this might be significant.

I’m awash with the feeling that I’m enjoying one of those rare moments in life where relating with a fellow, a decidedly straight, guy doesn’t feel like a lot of posturing and posing and heterosexual-male performance art of clipped speech and sideways relating out into space with zero eye contact. It instead feels—and I am aware how rare a feeling in the dream—like the easy kinds of male-to-male bonds guys enjoy nearly totally more readily as a boy or young man before the trappings of the world set in and separate us only to reunite us in approved settings such as golf courses and at dinner parties where we slip away to some billiards room. I feel at home with this guy. At home with him as I did with my dearest, and some dearly departed, friends I knew from childhood into my twenties, the ones who knew me like brothers or cousins would, and who would laugh at my comments or actions with a loving eye roll that would say “Oh man, that is so you,” preempting the end of a story with an expression that says “Oh man, I know where this is going.

And I’m happily aware that the date and Stella are likewise bonding and laughing and exchanging knowing expressions of soul-sisterhood and the dream goes on and on like that and i can feel the metal chair against my back and ass and have to keep shifting because it’s hurting my lower spine and I can hear the scrapes the chairs are making on the slate patio from all the tables and it’s a dark night with no moon, a new-moon night so we are relying on what are outdoor chandeliers—are they hanging from trees—and I’m so blissed out and so comfortable and so relaxed and so at ease and so pampered and still young and I’m not stoned or drunk but I’m a little bit of both, so everything is heightened, Sean’s orange tan against black shirt and white jacket, the black wrought orion mesh table with the dark green padded leather ice bucket with bottle green bottles and the waiters in their dark green and black and white. Green, black and white and crystal light from dull gold chandeliers and it’s London, New York and I have a beautiful wife and I’m looking and feeling my best and I have a new best cousin friend who is famous but I’m unaffected by that as the standout quality of the burgeoning bond is our seamless like-mindedness and I feel for the first time in a long time or ever that I’m not floating or waiting or hoping or expecting or biding or negotiating or debating or hedging or trying or watching myself in any way shape or form. I am. I have. And the night is going to last forever. It already has.

I awoke from this dream, for the day. And was happy. My whole body self was suffused with a blissful feeling of elan and acceptance. I was still (and still am) wrapped in the dark emerald green of the world which, I neglected to say, was appointed with lush greenery—trees and shrubs and ferns and bushes shaping and dotting the private patio—and also perfumed with various notes of wisteria and bearded iris and eucalyptus and other fragrant flowers, not to mention the primo weed; and it dawned on me, increasingly throughout the day, that this private gardened emerald city-club, lush and heady, luxe and overflowing with finest champagne, was a Taurus landscape wherein no self-consciousness could reside. That I had entered into my own version or vision of Eden which apparently includes a negligent chic form of formal seating and service. I scratched my head. So my ideal best friend is Sean Penn? And now I realize that Sean Penn reminds me of my first cousin Gary, some six years my senior, whom I never knew very well; but he has/had that same blotching irish, orange, bronze, loose leathering neck and upper chest as Sean Penn and, moreover, a surpassingly tough-guy persona—both my Irish mother and her sister married Italians and my uncle Gus (Cosmo) was not only my godfather he was, by all accounts, a godfather. He spoke, as his kids tended to, and certainly Gary did, with what we used to call a “dees, does and dem-y” accent. If you don’t know what that is too bad, I don’t feel like working that hard.

I could mine this dream forever; and I probabably will in my own time, but I’ll stop wasting yours here with my realizations. The only one you need really take in is the Taurus landscape of ease and acceptance with no second-guessing of any sort. I did ask Stella what she thought of the dream as we made coffee this morning; before she could answer I said, “you know, isn’t it ironic: because back in the eighties and nineties Madonna would factor into my dreams a lot in a similar manner where we were fast friends, no questions asked, seamlessly connected; and I always too those dreams a signal of ensuing or desired or some form of success, fame and acceptance on some world stage.” To which Stella replied, in a gossipy, on the q-t tone that, well, didn’t I know that supposedly Sean and Madonna are back together, that they’ve been seen together, and are probably dating. And I thought how weird. I mean, maybe the blond in the dream was some sort of reborn and decidedly rejuvenated Madonna who has finally “got it” and no longer needs all the flash to feel good about herself because she got what she wanted, what all the desperate need for attention was actually a subsitute for, the love of Sean Penn. That might be true. And despite the fact that, in life, the two of them are probably totally bonkers and are perfect for slash will end up killing each other, the Sean of my dream and his confident and friendly and unapologetic date were just the kind of good-time Sal and Sally that suited that Taurus environment. But then again, she was wearing something jungle print and Madonna, like Sean, with his big bad tawny-orange skin, is a Leo. And real-life Sean and Madge, should they be reunited, would spend a good decade being the King and Queen of this crazy global jungle in which we live; and like dream Sean, real Sean would surely prefer to hang out and buddy with me in the private garden patio of our favorite exclusive London, New York supper club than be barraged by paparazzi a string of whose lights, like those draped through the trees of my emerald dream, he would spend that decade, undoubtedly, punching out.

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