It was 4:30 am, but the line at the Quito airport was already long. The man behind me admired my tote bag, and we ended up telling each other our life stories. He was a Peace Corps volunteer who had morphed into an organic potato farmer. I was a post office worker who turned into a roving lesbian astrologer. About that time, the line started to move, and then I went and stood in another line, and another, and another, and another, after which I flew through the air, stood in nine more lines, and flew again.

Finally I stood at the curb at National Airport, where the police make sure the cars never park. I watched the drivers circling endlessly, like suitcases on a luggage belt, until their people came out.

That was two days ago. I’m still feeling some culture shock. I don’t drive at all in Quito, and here I’m driving all the time. I’m speaking English all the time, talking non-stop to people that I haven’t seen since last summer. I’m standing in a supermarket and looking around in awe, feeling like the rube in the big city. It’s huge, it’s a cathedral of food.

And yesterday, I took a walk. It was a gorgeous day, bright and green. I walked down streets with names familiar from my adolescence, and thought about how easy it was to get lost here. The houses all looked the same. It was like seeing a tribe that has inbred for centuries, so that the same face is repeated over and over at different ages.

And no one came outside. I saw no people at all on those graceful lawns, no people sitting under the gently spreading trees. Was there some invisible danger that kept everyone behind closed doors? It was impossible to be afraid when walking through the leafy patterns that the sun traced on the sidewalk. I could almost believe that there were no other people, and that everything was being held in a strange stasis, perfectly pruned and maintained but never used.

I didn’t like suburbia when I was young. I walked up and down these streets, my thoughts furiously beating at the walls of my own mind. Now I can stroll along here and enjoy the peace and the stillness, though it still seems strange to me. The difference is that now I know there are many, many other places I can go.

Tomorrow I’ll get in my car and head south, joining thousands of other Memorial Day drivers on the road. Like them, I’ll stop to get gas and ice, and to stretch my legs. Unlike most of them, I’ll end up in a temporary lesbian writer’s village in Georgia.

The next week will be spent listening to the voices I haven’t heard since last summer. I know many of them will be discouraged, worried, since they’ve watched the right wing grow stronger and more omnipresent through the last year. Some of these people will be planning to leave the country, to try other fairer lands like Canada or Spain or India. Some will stay, tied to jobs and families and communities.

June is a restless month, with the sun and Mercury in Gemini at the new moon. People are thinking about alternatives, seeing the forks which divide the roads ahead. To go or stay? And if the choice is to go, then where? The world is wide and various. With such a strong Gemini influence, people will walk and drive more, covering distances, seeing the world and taking notes. They will talk and listen, learning whatever they can about other options.

At the new moon, there is a configuration called an Inara, named after an Anatolian goddess who, with the help of an earthling, rescued the human population from a great dragon. This configuration is three-pronged, consisting of two planets in harmonious aspect, and a focal planet which challenges both. In this case, Pluto, the planet of fate and power, is focal. Pluto is the Dragon, that which must be faced and either vanquished or transformed.

The two planets in harmonious aspect are Mars and Saturn, respectively the planets of action and time. They are both in receptive, intuitive water signs. And so it seems to me that the Dragon will rear its head in June, and people will be exposed to a deeper and more truculent power than they’ve ever known. But, with a combination of intuitive action (Mars in Pisces) and respect for older traditions (Saturn in Cancer), we can tame this dragon, harness its power, learn to ride it.

What is this Dragon? With Pluto in Sagittarius, it’s about the passionate, fiery need to commit oneself to a particular cause, religion or philosophy. This is antithetical to the Gemini need to wander, to check different things out, to see varying points of view, to recognize the duality in everything. Sagittarius is a generous and good-natured sign in itself, but with Pluto in Sagittarius, it reveals its shadow side. A cause or philosophy can become a hunger, a need to swallow all which is different.

And so what are our tools, our strategies? Mars in Pisces is slippery, flexible, adaptable, and highly psychic. With Mars on our side, we can slip through the jaws that are held open for us. We can move like otters in the water, endlessly playful and creative, capable of amazing gyrations. Meanwhile, Saturn in Cancer represents the structure of neighborhoods, families and traditions. As we own our own history and our attachments to each other, we build a strong sense of who we are and where we’ve been. With the elasticity of Mars in Pisces, and the emotional ties of Saturn in Cancer, we can weave a binding spell which stops the Dragon in its tracks.

And we need to do this at the new moon on June 6. The full moon on June 21 brings a cardinal cross along with the summer solstice. This is a moment of strong alignments, a wide-open moment of change. There is enough force in this full moon to scatter us in many different directions. Let us go freely, as explorers and messengers, and not because the Dragon chases us.

It is very late at night. I feel the Dragon in my own heart, the bite of my own shadow self. I feel her endless hunger, and know that death lies at the end of every extreme. I set my clock for tomorrow, thinking of Saturn and her gift of time. I put down my pen, thinking of Mars and her gift of action. I open the window, feel the soft breeze outside, and notice how quiet it is in the Dragon’s lair.

Index of Jenny Yates' Writings on Lesbian.com