Desperately Reaching For The Final Digital Straw

When the FCC threw the off-switch on analog TV signals, even though I have a converter box and an outside antenna that worked just fine before the the drop dead date, when it happened I lost all TV reception. Dead. Nada. Not a peep. I must have rescanned dozens of times. Nothing. The screen blinked Weak Signal incessantly. When I clicked on the Info button, I got "No Information". I became extremely frustrated because I had already switched and was receiving digital signals.

My brother stopped by during this period and I tried to pick his brain to find a solution to my situation. He was receiving a signal just fine, but he has a TV with a digital tuner, not a converter box. He told me he had just rescanned after the switchover, and everything was just dandy at his house. He asked me if I'd rescanned. Yes. He asked me if I'd called the FCC number for those having difficulties, no, I didn't know the telephone number.

I found the number on the internet. I called, and some kid came on. He was polite and read what he saw on the computer screen in front of him. Nada. He said he'd call a TV station near me and see if they had problems. We both knew they didn't. He was just trying to help. He put me on hold to make the call and I hung up.

In the end I was able to get it running by finding a setting that read "Default Settings" and resetting the converter box. This is where the miracle came into play. I still had the documentation that came with the converter box I brought home several months ago. The documentation had the PIN number that allowed me to reset the default settings. I actually got through this transition without having to beg for help. All fall down

The sign Gemini has been/was a bit of a mystery to me. A mystery because what confused me was transparent and right in my face. 

Since I was born when the Sun was at 0° 2" Taurus, it's been easy to figure how the Sun has progressed from my natal chart. The solar progression happens at the rate of 1° per year. Thirty years after the day I was born the Sun progressed into Gemini, and thirty years later it progressed outta Gemini into Cancer, the sign of the home. 

I received my remembering vision when I was thirty years old at sa-me ti-me my Sun progressed into the sign of Gemini. Not long after that I began living with a Gemini woman down in Key West. 

It was when I moved in with this Gemini woman (that I later married because she became heavy with child) that I was able to stay in one place long enough to begin studying the occult in a serious way. 

The most helpful feature I witnessed about this woman was the way she multi-tasked. I first noticed it when we were doing a tour of the country in her Volkswagen Beetle. She had never toured America. Too young. Too busy trying to get away from her mother. High school up near Cleveland, college in Florida, her first job in Key West, where, for better or worse, she found me. 

Anybody who has driven across the country from east to west for the first time learns that America is a large country. There are huge stretches of land west of the Mississippi River that gets to look exactly the same to an Easterner. She began reading a novel while i drove, and talked, and talked, and talked. I guess I was bored, but when she stopped reading long enough to point out that the odometer was about to add a bunch of zeros one time too many, I got mad at her and accused her of not paying attention to me.

She refuted my accusation calmly by repeating what I'd said. Sometime saying it better than me. Then, I accused her of not really reading her book, but pretending to read in order to ignore me. She recited what the book was about, and then read the last couple of pages out loud. I was excited and terribly confused. She was doing something I wasn't ready to believe was possible.

Certainly not possible for me. At least, up until that specific conversational exchange. I was more adept at doing one thing at a time better than most. I meditated. I dismissed the possible intrusions into my focus of singularity. On the other hand, watching her multi-task was a challenge for me. It's almost like I had been assigned a mentor to break me out of my rock-solid, fixed sign, Earthen mold.

Gemini is ruled by Mercury. Mercury also rules the sign Virgo. Mercury is exalted (at home in it's best location) in Aquarius, another fixed sign, which can be indicative of how the flightiness Mercury exudes in the two mutable signs it rules works best when kept in it's place. Mercury is in the worst sign it can have for a home in Sagittarius and Pisces, the other two mutable signs.

The four mutable signs are Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces. Mutable means unfixed. Amorphous. Without a nay-me-d direction. The very opposite of the four fixed signs of Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius; and the four cardinal signs of Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn.

Mercury rules the local mind and lower education through Gemini, and the long-distant mind and higher education through Sagittarius. Mercury is in it's Fall (it's worst location for doing what it does best) in Sagittarius. It seems odd to me that higher education is a bad thing for the mind, but Sagittarius learns through doing, not playing kiss ass in a class room. The world is it's classroom, and nature is it's teacher.

In reflection, it seems very odd to me that I would have a life-changing visionary experience, move in with a lanky ex-model, and begin studying the occult with deep and abiding vigor. With the same "dedication" I lacked for studying drama and music. I didn't think the occult was a good fit for me, but the fact that I could generate a sense of dedication to anything after a very long dry spell of no inspiration was enough to keep me studying the occult no matter what other people thought of me for doing it.

Mercury in my natal chart is in the Cardinal sign Aries. I've read that this is the esoteric placement of Mercury, but I don't know what that means. Maybe it's esoteric in the sense of how Einstein used his natal placement of Mercury in Aries, i.e., "to go where no man has gone before". With the question being: How else can one find out how far they can go with something (like the theory of general relativity) if they don't go too far occasionally?

Going too far with one of their adventures appears to be the bane of the Mercury-in-Aries configuration. It's easy enough to discern through reading the astrological aspects that Mercury can play havoc with a placement in any of the mutable signs. It works best in the fixed sign Aquarius, and it's a better day when it's placed in any of the fixed signs, as long as it has a positive aspect to the Moon, but even a positive aspect between Mercury and the Moon, when the Moon is in it's fall in Scorpio, can be a hard row to hoe in a field fulla stumps.

I became intensely interested in the mechanics of how this Gemini woman could keep so many balls in the air at once. The keystone to this understanding appears to be how they deal with information. She didn't memorize anything she could find in the file cabinet of the stacks of any database. She didn't have to shuffle through a lotta baggage that could be acquired within minutes from a fixed source. That way, she had all the ti-me in the world to address the present moment with aplomb.