Wednesday 17 August 2022
\Milton, Rhyme, Sonnet, Moon/
Moon in Taurus
|Karmically serious, sobering, challenging third| of this week begins at 7:53a PT | 10:53a ET | 2:53p UT (until late Friday night)
Moon void-of course? Not today. Yet I am writing about it to prepare you for the next time it happens.
It was v-of-c on Sunday morning when I have been attending a spiritual meditation group. I didn’t feel like going but I am not a slave of the v-of-c nor do I cancel all regularly scheduled activities at those times. That would be carrying a valid indicator beyond its proper boundaries. I dragged myself to the group.
It seemed fine. Pleasant companions to chat with. But then the administrator found that he could not get the Zoom to work properly. (I am not fond of Zoom so always attend the group in person.) He struggled with it for a quarter of an hour and finally just gave up, No “hybrid” meeting that day. It is the first time that has happened in this group. The moon being void-of-course was accurate, especially for those out in Zoom-land. The rest of the meeting went quite well however. I also found a book for sale for just $2 which I needed. Good things in the v-of-c sometimes have to do with “old stuff” and I already have a copy of this book but through much use it is frayed and falling apart. Yes, good things can happen.
But to give the administrator an excuse for his Zoom problem, I told this story. In Boulder Colorado I often hung out at Penny Lane, an iconic style coffee house. One night I knew the moon was void-of-course but went there to see what would happen. A troupe of actors was performing in a small space near the large plate glass window. At one point one of the actors had to pretend to hit another one, who pretended to fall, but then actually fell right through the plate glass window. That was the end of that performance and the owner had to be notified of the problem. The moon’s void-of-course ended in a void, in more ways than one.
It is also void-of-course now as I write on Tuesday afternoon. I have been lazing around and not really motivated for much, but I have been doing my hatha yoga exercises more faithfully than usual. That is good. I really really did not feel like witting a sonnet today. So I decided to “go with the v-of-c flow” and write what I am now writing and you are reading. It has occurred to me that a writer might try the experiment of writing a book, or collection of stories or essays, only during v-of-c times and see what would happen. (I wouldn’t recommend that for technical or scientific writing.)
So, no sonnet today. Are they really sonnets? A sonnet has the same form, but the last two of the fourteen lines are supposed to rhyme in the usual sonnet form, as in Shakespeare’s. But yesterday, while the moon was not void-of-course, I happened to take out John Milton’s Paradise Lost from the public library and was fascinated by his introduction. He says: “The measure is English heroic verse without rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek and Virgil in Latin; rhyme being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age . . .” Hurray! John Milton approves the sonnets of Cosmic Piper! Well, their form anyway. And calls the measure or meter “heroic”!
Should I apologize for not struggling to put a sonnet together during this v-of-c? If you ask for an apology, I shall give it, but otherwise I am just going to relax a bit on this beautiful summer day (and do the spiritual study I do every day, plus maybe a taste of Paradise Lost).
Reminder: A Dark or Slow Hermetic Epoch of two months begins Saturday the 20th and lasts until October 17. We may be feeling it a little already, in a “slackness” or a “sense of change in the air.” Be prepared for wanting to “slack off” more than usual. This can be wise and healthy unless it goes too far.
{Wednesday} /Milton, Rhyme, Sonnet, Moon\
Cosmic Piper
Also at: hughhiggins.substack.com
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