The Astrologer sat quietly listening.
The waify man in brown seemed determined to stay on magic, clouding portions of the dry and ossified room with hints of an airy presence. It was easy to sense, though subtle and odd, like pockets held deep and detached for lifetimes from connecting with all common, passing winds. Words heard were an upward tug of bubbles . . . up . . . up through something else still and turbid.
Oh, but for some dates to see behind it all!
Yet the Astrologer willed himself to put his most familiar urge on hold as something in the tender man’s unusual speech caught and arrested his attention in a hands-on-cheeks gasp sort of way.
The Astrologer decided to speak, saying to no-one in particular, “I think with magic, things like what it means or why . . . that really doesn’t matter. Not nearly as much as we’d want it to.”
The rigid Psychologist turned to glare with the cardinal force of a freshly sprung snare, appearing as he had at first—a modish, grumpy goat, content in his outwardly drab world of practicalities and perpetual lists with partial cross-off lines. “What do you mean?” came the tinny, nasal-bark reply in what seemed a tone one might reserve for cross-examining a less-than-competent witness.
“Well,” began the Astrologer, “since I’m here, I’ll just share that, yes, I’ve always felt a little weird, deep down, for the way I see the world. The idea that our lives could be guided somehow by movements of planets or angles and gravity . . . cosmic positionings at moments of birth . . . it’s all a rather flaky way to make decisions and sort people, yeah? Birth charts are a fairly arbitrary filter through which to see the world…? But even though it should make no sense, I could honestly show you all in detail what each specific part means. I could show you . . . for you . . . how every alignment connects to a real piece of who you are today! But why? Why, why, why? I have no idea!”
Another asked, “But couldn’t there be some other reason? Couldn’t the way it matches personality and everything be true without the symbols and all that?”
The frail man in brown sat staring straight ahead, a resolute gleam in his quiet eyes portraying to the Astrologer something of hidden perplexities best etched in layers of byzantine glass.
The Psychologist mumbled, “I’d like to return to, um—”
But the thin man in brown softly interrupted with: “I think we still are… I mean, I think this might be helpful.”
The Astrologer nodded, piping back with, “Since we started with talking about relationships, yes, I think it will be helpful. Each of us are born into different elements and modes, connected to different traits. And these react with others’ traits in interesting ways. Some combinations are good and smooth, where others feel less natural, and…”
A thought occurred, which the Astrologer chalked up to the mix of quirkiness and comical seriousness inherent within his own stellar stew.
There I go again, of course . . . talking and talking about all this stuff. It’s all going to happen, anyway. So just shut up for a minute!
The small man in brown began to quiver like an unthreatening bomb before exploding forth with words as uncontainable as the contents of a slashed balloon: “I don’t know anything about astrology. But I’d guess there really are no bad relationships between people with different . . . like, signs or whatever. Even opposites . . . wherever it seems rougher. I’ve found, just through work and people I know, when someone rubs me the wrong way, it’s really only, like, how we might balance each other out. One pushes, and the other pulls. But I think it’s always good in the end. It’s like . . . personality gravity.”
I don't know anything 