Piss in your shoe

Pass in Review

“Love is merely a madness, and I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do;”

• Ros. in As You Like It (3.2.195)

The term, “Pass in Review” was — in my mind — a close-order drill command. The sarcastic, regimentally funny version was “Piss in your shoe,” and given the way 2020 has wrapped up? Martial madness and empty promises?

Go with the sarcastic, as that seems to echo the times, no?

A meme popped up, other afternoon, and a client bounced it back to me. “We’re calling it ‘MadDog,’ you know?”

• Maddog 2020¹.

If the term fits? Just let it stick, although, I’ll be honest, it wasn’t wholly original. Still, “Here’s to 2020?”

As a moment of reflection I never realized that this would be a great year to be an “omni-vert.” I can either be an introvert, or an extrovert, depending, and curling up with a book, maybe a screen to jot notes down? That works well for me.

Even months at a time.

I already had an active meditation process in place, just allowed a little more time in the afternoon, but my schedule got all turned inside out.

Then there’s the joke, “The year in three letters? W.T.F. 2020,” yeah, that about gets it, too.

Started the year strong, several back-to-back events, then a quick trip to the spa in New Mexico, a hideaway if there ever was, and one that suits my own temperament fine.

But once the panic and pandemic started to get serious?

One cousin lost two-thirds of front-line crew to the virus. Hospital workers in Washington State. But personally? I have no connection, separated by six degrees or more.

According to local, neighborhood lore²? One family got the corona, but even the aging grandma, there were three generations under one roof, even the grandma made it through. However, as noted, that’s gossip, not facts.

So what happened? There was a hint about what was going to happen, in late March, maybe a month after the first of the corona crap started, and I got used to the shut-down. There was one post from an early morning trip to Costco, to stand in line to get an extra pack of paper products, and more bottled water, but I tend to favor a “hurricane box” mentality, and that means I was sort of set, at least for a few weeks. Didn’t have to rob the neighbors or anything.

Couple of cancelled fishing trips and eventually I snuck off to Canyon Lake³ and fished from the bank, like the old days. Then, finally, back to back trips to the coast, and the promise delivered⁴. Big fish. Fun fishing. However, walking into a burger joint, masks and social distant were carefully observed.

One buddy termed this “a retrograde year,” and I would sort of agree, between the various Mercury Retrogrades, then Venus, and finally Mars, plus the whole idea of 28 degrees?

There was the election. One, I voted early. Two, I was on the road the day the Biden bus was surrounded and harassed by the Trump Train. Not really a proud moment for Texas, no matter which side one falls on, am I right? Fortunately, for me, I was on the back road from Dallas, and avoided the whole scene.

Turned another year older in near-quarantine conditions, with Sister and my own wee mum showing up for a few days. Stretched into a week, and it was actually fine.

It’s about three years too late, but I finally, and I mean finally got a rough draft version of my little book of transits out the door, and on the street? I’m not unhappy with it, as it serves to straddle ground that I find ultimately more useful, with the two bookend pieces being either epic in nature, or too brief. So far, I’ve had to comb through the text a half-dozen times, wary of copyright details, legal issues, and solid astrological evidence⁵.

Still, there’s a prevailing sentiment that the year can be best summed up with a few letters, “Whisky Tango Foxtrot.”

Toying with various imagery, to this day, I’m still enthralled by the depth of the material covered in my go-to, New Age staple, the everyday deck of tarot cards that I favor. The Hermit, used it before⁶, will use it again. In that one card, there is Cerberus, the hound of hell, guarding. In that card? He’s nipping at the heels of the monk, the Hermit. In some belief systems, though, that lantern, shines with the light of the lord, and that protects the hermit from being truly all alone.

Think there’s the message, and it’s fitting that I started the longest spring break ever, and finished the year with similar images.

Noted: It’s a Virgo thang.

1. Maddog 2020 as the fortified beverage? ↩
2. Check the fine print, see the disclaimers. ↩
3. Summer fish. ↩
4. Big fish. Fun fishing. ↩
5. cf. confirmation bias. ↩
6. cf., The Hermit. ↩