Kicking Off Q1: Springing into Aries Season
Break out your spiritual OKR's and start measuring your human KPI's everyone; it's officially Spring, the natural new year, and that means it's time to ram forward out of the muddy ether and into the wide open, forging trails like the heedless eager shoots of new life taking over the Northern Hemisphere and provoking your histamine response with increasing ferocity each passing day. For the Eastern elemental system, it is Wood time. It is sunrise.
To paraphrase the Good Lord himself from his memoir, Ecclesiastes, there is a particular structure ordering the overwhelming assemblage of life's events, and this one is go time. It's the chance for the phallic arrow of Mars to thrust outward into the world, screaming "ME!" and alternating between "LET'S DO THIS!" and "FUCK YOU!" regardless of what is called for in the situation.
I LOVE spring. I have a completely unremarkable theory that everyone loves the season, and more specifically, the relevant major holiday around their birthday more than any other. I've anecdotally confirmed this with all four people in my house, which means it's basically a fact. The point is, it’s the rams’ time to shine, and I invite you to shine along with us. A joyous belated Ostara and Vernal Equinox to you all, and happy Tuesday/Mardi/Mars day, weirdos and scientists alike.
Recently, on a visit to NY while reveling in the coming of my season, I said something about Aries being known for their big hearts, to which my sister the astrologer said I was high.
"Hearts of gold?" I suggested.
"Nope. That’s Leo."
"But we're fiercely loyal!"
"That's mostly because once you've decided to take a position, you aren't backing down from a fight. It's about you winning. It’s not about other people. Aries is never about other people."
Fine. I can accept that. The Disney character I most relate to is that one, insignificant classmate of Nemo who shouts, “I’m obnoxious!” I can be Martian testosterone spraying new life and vigor and that fighting spirit out into the world, and I don’t need anyone else to like it.
A fighting spirit is the bare minimum for creation. What percentage of seeds produced ever grow? In the touch and go moments of earliest life, nothing's relaxing–it’s all fighting to gain purchase on this mortal coil. We want peace on Earth, but we also need fighters in our corner. We invoke them when we need to get through something hard. We can't even separate them from our archetypes of calm. It is the peaceful warrior we seek so often.
When people are trying to brightside their way through crazy windstorms, variable temperatures, and unpleasant pollen counts, they talk about how they can finally see the sun again or how they are looking forward to summer. When people are trying to make Aries sound softer and nicer and less obnoxious, they really like to focus on the creative aspects of fire and downplay the things they personally don’t like about the conflict and conflagration Aries introduces by birthing the year.
Please, stop doing that. Astrologers and zodiac enthusiasts, we don’t need you to defend us. (Am I right, Scorpios?) Just like no woman on Earth needs anyone acting like getting a human or two out of your body and into the world is a peaceful, and magical event that you can separate from yourself. It’s work, bitches, and someone’s gotta do it.
So what work can you do this Spring? Don’t start no shit, won’t be no shit. So we’d all better get moving. I made the ridiculous goal of culling my hobbies, which will obviously not take in this season of expansion. In fact, I very firmly said I was going to stop doing stand-up now that I’m on a house improv team at the Harrisburg Improv Theater, but as recently as last night I was on stage bombing at the Mr. Tongue open mic (Mondays at HMAC).
Now I literally cannot stop doing stand-up because–here’s the theme–I cannot back down. Perhaps if I had an amazing set, there’s an outside chance I could have been satisfied. Instead, I had one good laugh followed by a totally missed mark and then I spiraled into faster and faster verbal heaving of basic premises with no regard for punch lines or rhythm as if volume itself might right the trajectory of my ship. Nope. Nope. Nope. Things rallied a little later when at the very end of the mic, I was the object of some hilarious crowd work from local master, Mike O’Donnell. I guess the only solution is to keep going forever.
Maybe you’re less inertia focused and you can think of a chiller way to embrace the season. Maybe you, too, would like to actually start a functioning garden this year. Or maybe you want to start with a few herbs in a window box in your kitchen and then use them from time to time in your cooking. Paint some furniture. Rearrange your desk. Whatever you do, put some umph into it. Penetrate the world with your unique essence.
Is there life on Mars? Did I say penetrate, seed, thrust, ram, and grow enough to really drive the idea of the season home? David, the answer is probably yes, there is life on Mars. It probably aggressively blanketed our planet with the seeds of life millions of years ago, and one of them took, and a long time later, some lady hamfistedly tapped that vein to relate her personality to the greater machinations of the cosmos.
I leave you now with three different versions of Life on Mars:
Giant Rooks (I don’t know anything about these guys, but I saw them on TikTok.)
Aurora (the ethereal voice calling to Elsa in Frozen 2)
David Bowie (OG)