7/18/1999

Perhaps nearly 200 times, I have had folks say, "Ya know, you can take that bar exam again...look at JFK, Jr., he took it what, eight times, and he finally passed..." Rarely, someone will state the correct number of times.

To which, I always, ever since I had just barely missed passing it in the Summer of 1995, have pronounced, almost verbatim these days: "No, actually three times. And what does he do now!? Publishing!! So, what's the big deal...half of all new lawyers are no longer practicing after three years, historically."

Then, I get the true last word, and always comment, "Oh, lots of folks get me confused with John. We actually have a lot in common. Another thing is that we are the two most handsome men in Massachusetts," I say Gal, to what I would estimate has been at least a hundred people, and in groups, even more...

And did John ever get slammed for having no direction! So did I! So do all poor slobs who don't pass on the first attempt. And it never seems to end. One is simply not a success with a law degree unless and until one passes the bar and practices law. John experienced it. One of the driving forces behind bar exam retesting is peer pressure! Newsday published a cover story in 1989 with the headline "The Hunk Flunks!". I can attest to the reality of being badgered by everyone who knows you did not pass, and it sucks. You almost wish you had never gone to school. Yet I have no regrets, and if I retest one day, it will be for me, yet I will also do it for John. Not my parents, not my friends, not for respect, not for money or glory...but for me and John.

John handled six cases for the New York D.A's office, then quit to influence political thought through his phat magazine George, to which I was an original subscriber, and of which I had a subscription for years. I am sure that being a law student yourself, and living in the Nation's capital, you have had ocassion to see this magazine. I thought it was just sublime how he set out to spice up politics by blending it with high fashion, and commingling it with taboo, like the Drew-Barrymore-as-Marilyn-Monroe cover, and the nude Kate Moss cover, and then appearing nude himself in that issue. I still have them all. I so respect that type of Uranian expression, no doubt a function of his fabulous, afflicted Aquarian Moon.

Another connection I have with John was that we both have Aquarian Moons. Here is what astrologer Donna Cunningham has to say about this uncommon Moon position, in her good book, Moon Signs:

Aquarius is the least lunar of all signs. They are in fact anywhere from indifferent to adamantly against everything that makes life bearable for Moon people. It's partly defiance of social conventions and partly the results of some fairly disruptive family conditions as they grew up (very true for me). Whatever the origin, they have difficulty settling down into monogamy and a stable home life. It's a people oriented sign, however, and so some may resolve their needs for a connection by getting into unconventional arrangements, such as a commune or a group marriage. You may recall that the Mormons believed in polygamy. Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons, and his follower Brigham Young, both had Moon in Aquarius.

Aquarius Moon men tend to be freethinkers who rebel vehemently against the establishment model of the family and commitment. Aquarian men don't believe in roles for men or women, and some, like Prince, are androgynous. They're capable of quite wonderful platonic friendships with women, which are mainly devoid of sexual tension, for they seek out mentally stimulating women as companions. Many are more committed to causes than to relationships and can view women coolly as comrades in the revolutionary struggle (I have felt this way for many years, Gal).

Men in general try to shut off their feelings, and Aquarius can be an emotionally detached sign, so the emotional suppression can be extreme in Aquarius Moon men. When this is done in the face of severe childhood problems, the result can be periodic explosions. They will also abruptly and coldly detach from anyone they feel is trying to control them or to impinge on their individuality. Many are calcified into a maverick pose, like Merle Haggard, the outlaw country singer, or like the bikers, so don't hook up with them expecting to change them. What you see is what you get. Still, there's a certain charisma and fascination about these unusual, interesting men, with their defiance of convention and their capacity to blast you out of a rut.

I always felt a sort of connection to John, Galileo, since I can remember. John was also a fellow human who was not totally thrilled about the law as it is practiced, and probably went to school for a reason not dissimilar to our own, Gal. Yet for John, it was not necessary to have a graduate degree at whatever cost. He thought for himself, and as an American like us, he made some serious choices, and perhaps, even to this day, some monumental mistakes.

I dated a girl in the late 80s, a Boston University coed, who was friends with Carolyn's roommate at BU. I believe that I partied with Carolyn a few times, for I immediately recognized her name when it was announced that she was engaged to John. Looking at the picture of her in the 1988 Girls of BU Calendar, I do recall being near her at BU parties, and at Father's Too. My friend Miss Alexis commented that the news of her probable death must be devastating for Calvin Klein and his wife as well, who mentored Carolyn. I do not see how anyone can see this event as anything but utterly tragic, and I do hope that they all rest peacefully now, their souls comfortably away in Summerland, awaiting an incarnation for a brighter day...

I do hope that this horror will result in the recovery of the three, alive. Yet I fear it is grim, and that they lie in their watery grave as we correspond today. Please allow me to tell you that I have so had the worst of times hearing about this horrible event. I was in a hotel room when I saw it on TV. Oddly, I was in a hotel room in Montreal when I heard that Diana Spencer and Dody Fayad were killed. It was 11 pm, and I heard about it the evening before most of the world heard. I migrated to the lobby bar to find other souls in mourning, and surely did, and we commiserated. I did a candle spell in my window on the 9th floor, and my new bride was surprised, and could not understand my devotion. I happened to have this same candle with me this tragic weekend.

Perhaps I will never fully understand my devotion either. Yet when a promising life is cut short by the specter of an early death, we can be sure that the soul was simply too good for this Earth plane at this time. Witness the comments of great men on this subject...poets of all ages have divined it. Here are some examples, taken from the late Grant Lewi's wonderful book, Astrology for the Millions.

Two hundred years before the myth of Christ, the Roman Plautus wrote...

He whom the gods favor dies in youth.

Wordsworth knew it:

The good die first,
And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust
Burn to the socket.

Even the cynic Byron claimed:

Heaven gives its favorites --- early death,

and Shelley's "Adonais", mourning the untimely death of the brilliant and lovable Keats, is one long ecomium of a spirit that Earth was not good enough to chain.

Those who die young, violently, tragically, are all to likely to be the best that Earth has given, and that this is more than a sentiment is borne out in the birthchart. For the positions and aspects that make great people are the very ones which, as seen in the birthcharts of the early dead, have brought them beyond material and temporal greatness, into greatness of the spirit, frequently into genius, always into an exceptionally mature, sweet, lovable personality, showing great promise, perhaps already on the high road to success. The forces of genius are there, brilliantly controlled, and since genius is the closest that the chained spirit of man gets to immortality during life, the transition is easy to make from what we call life to what we call death.

Perhaps we may believe that those lovable souls who went on their way too soon,as we thought, did not embrace death with fear, yet probably had within themselves that which made death to them, as to the mystic Lawrence of Arabia, somehow the last adventure of life, and the greatest.

No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old.
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold. For sudden the worst turns
the best to the brave
The black minute's at end,
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest.

Poets approach nearest the bourne of wisdom, and Robinson Jeffers envisions a great cosmic truth that only a mystic or a student of astrology can fully comprehend:

Too great self-control is dangerous ---
It attracts hard events, as height does lightning.

The quivering neurotics will never experience anything in reality except what they cause to happen in the fears and bogies of their minds. They invent terrors so frightful that their whole lives are an effort to escape their dangers: thus they avoid all positions, emotional and material, in which they might be harmed. The great sudden things, tragic or ecstatic, are reserved for the disciplined, the controlled, whose spiritual stature "attracts hard events as height does lightning", and, also, attracts triumph and ecstacy unknown to the fearful and the evasive. Only a great soul can feel cramped. Only one that towers can be struck down, or, indeed, be aimed at. And there is every reason for the instinct which tells us that those who go early are "Earth's best, who learned their lesson here" and that, in going, they bear a song in their souls. And I do feel that Lauren, and Carolyn, and John were in that category, whether others do not agree does not matter. I pray to the gods that their souls will rest, and incarnate into beautiful beings who will help to heal the Earth and Her children, for we need more of that healing in these troubled times.

Here endeth today's lesson, my student and friend. We will begin transit analysis in our next correspondence. That will be next month, post eclipse. Until then, Bright Blessings, and I am ever,

Sincerely Yours,

Carlo