Fatah & Group Chart Readings - Monday, 17 May 2010

Fatah and I went out to breakfast at a little place I'd noticed about 1/2 a mile away. It took us a while to realize that we were supposed to order at the counter. The folks behind the counter had spoken to us about their menu, and watched us sit down, but they never said anything when we just sat talking for 15 minutes. We assumed they were busy, and were engrossed in our conversation, so we didn't pick up on it until we realized people were coming in and ordering and nobody was coming to serve us. I remembered that at one or two other places this also seemed to be the convention. Later, when I was talking to Pascale, she mentioned reading in a restaurant review somewhere that food was cheaper if you stood at the bar and ordered it. I have a theory that the restaurant doesn't have to add the 13% VAT (value added tax?) if they don't bring you the food themselves. I'm not sure about this, but it seems to fit the situation, and is an interesting way of getting around the law, if so.


Both Fatah and I had to leave around noon: he was off to his train back to Paris, and I went to my supervised chart reading group class. It was a really different class than the last time. For one thing, Juliet, the teacher, was having a real "Monday" kind of day. And the person who was supposed to bring a chart for us to look at didn't show up. So we got to chat about things while Juliet went off to see if there was any word from the no-show student. I'm interested in medical astrology to a certain extent, so I was asking about astrological signatures for things like ADD and ADHD, etc. That led to some very interesting discussions. Then another student arrived late, and she had a chart, so we talked about that one. The discussion ranged from the details of the particular chart to societal values throughout history in different cultures, and how culture and time all affect/create psychological states. (For instance, we spoke about how European women in Freud's day were treated for "hysteria" and fainted a lot, and how much of that could be attributed to sexual/emotional repression and tight clothing.) It was a fascinating afternoon, hanging out with astrologers and talking of these things from an astrological/psychological point of view.


Our teacher, Juliet, is a practicing psychoanalyst, and her perspective on things is a marvel to me. She'll look at a chart and ask extremely interesting and deeply insightful questions about the client, questions I probably wouldn't have thought of, but that make perfect sense to wonder about. I hope some of it sticks with me. 


These classes I'm attending are bittersweet for me. I am getting exactly what I want out of them, which is to be exposed to ways of thinking and interpreting charts that I would not get to on my own. That's the sweet part. Very sweet. My expectations are completely being met, and the caliber of the training is above and beyond what I could have hoped for. But the bitter side is that I have such a short time in which to absorb it all. The other students have all been at it for years. Some have taken a break and are now coming back, but most know each other and have a certain camaraderie built on shared experience. I envy that a bit, but being the extroverted person that I am, I'm making my way into the group and feeling less like an outsider each time. It's just that I wish I had years to devote to these studies, too. The knowledge that the classes will end next June, and that I might not even make it back for any more of them, is a bitter pill indeed.  But there's no point in spoiling the sweet side by dwelling in that which I can't control at the moment, so I'm grooving on every bit of this training that I can.

So far I've come home from these group sessions happy but tired. I keep thinking that one Monday I'll stay out and have an evening on the town, but actually a half-day class with all that thinking and interaction is quite draining, and I find myself staying in. Which is just fine. It probably helps the material settle in.