Capricorn 15° (January 5)

 

Today is the New Moon in Capricorn conjunct Pluto and Saturn (and Sun of course). And so it’s time to turn the corner a bit and segue into “second semester.” When Stella and I returned from our study abroad in France to finish up our senior year in Boston, the “second semester” concept became a thing. I had actually initiated it, I think, dating back to my freshman year when, after the first spent in the clutches of a controling (and obnoxious) Scorpio roommate, I moved out of that room, trading with our third “friend” Chris who was at that time becoming much more suited to his friendship with Mike the Scorpio, Chris being the Virgo that he is, and a poster child for that sign at that. I roomed with a Korean guy who spoke very little English and whose really name I don’t think I ever knew but he went by Chris as well. At least that is my vague recollection. He wore those black plastic sandles with the thick cross strap, kind of like Dr. Scholls, and he shuffled in them, just to push the stereotype. I never saw him naked. I never saw Mike naked for that matter. We once all joked about how he got dressed inside the shower, taking actual bits of clothing in with him. In the same conversation, it was revealed that everyone had seen me. I think I was proud of my body then in a way I no longer am; and I do remember feeling that much more average (or rather “textbook” enough) in the penie-department that I didn’t mind flaunting what I had, as boys typically do when they can. I remember saying to Mike and Virgo Chris, “well we all know who has the smallest one”—I meant this guy Marek from Connecticut who was naked more than most, and very comfortable with the fact he had a micro-one apparently—and Mike knew who I meant. But Chris suddenly burst into this rant of “okay, okay et ” thinking that we meant him whom neither of us had ever glimpsed. Oops, we didn’t mean you Chris.

 

Anyway, “second semester” signalled a marked change from the first. I lost the fifteen pounds I gained in the first; I spent more time alone. But it was really my sophomore year when the seeds of what I now, still, call “second semester” were born. It was then, while sitting around with Chris and Mike smoking bongs, I suddenly shot to my feet and called the study abroad office asking “got anything going to France?”; they had, but it was already booked, but I managed to squeak in, a move that changed my life. I also upended the single dorm in the Earth House I was inhabiting. I hung the metal box spring on the wall as a sort of industrial art piece and put my mattress directly on the floor, I made “shelving” from metal milk crates, attaching cafeteria trays I swiped from “Veg” (the vegetarian cafeteria where I now ate) onto them as shelving doors; I bought a used 1960 something red columbia bicycle; i wore thermal leggings with shorts and sweaters with brooches and big rain coats and floppy hats; I smoked a lot of green pot with red hairs in it and went on a few mushroom and/or acid trips. I started listening to Fripp and Eno and the like.

In France, junior year, second semester was all about pushing Spring and making weekend trips to le Cote D’Azur instead of the weekly trips to Paris; putting on shorts and espedrilles way to early. Nobody wore shorts in those days in France. In fact, two years later, when I was living in Paris, I wore bermuda shorts from my apartment on the rue des Halles all the way through the rues pietons to le Beaubourg and people followed me and hung outside of cafes-bars to gawk at the site of some American male in plaid bermudas. Oh how I loved my collection of bermuda shorts, but back to the story at hand….

The year between the two living in France, our senior year in Boston, second semester meant way more than ever, building on the energy, I think, I had channeled that year in the Earth House. I wore either tux pants with suspenders over rotating muted green and orange turtlenecks; and over that I would wear those thick red-black plaid wool ankle-laced hunters? pants, also with suspenders, so that my bottom half was never cold. I would take them off in class. We ate pretty much nothing but red bean soup made in a wok or the usual stirfry. I grew my hair to look as much as possible like Sting’s in the Do They Know It’s Christmas? video, wearing hats for several hours before going out so to make my curly hair straight and wispy. Second semester was spare and intellectual. As it was, just like with sophomore year, I got straight A’s only now, in senior year, I was taking all graduate level courses. (My junior year abroad completely wrecked my grade-point average because I pretty much failed everything as I pretty much didn’t even speak French and pretty much had no reason being on this program in the first place. But senior year “second semester” was about becoming empty (spacey) , lean (manarexic), exquisite (precious) and supreme (smug). Endless tea with lemon. There is so much more to say about this but I’m not going to.

 

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree of the Sabian Symbol may be higher than the one listed here  as the symbols cluminate in the next degree. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 days.

 Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
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