silk-scarfed French (or, possibly, “French”) astrologer, both he and Miriam believed Cicero to be an Aquarius. Now came the day’s second shock of refusal: When Sylvia de Grace presented Cicero’s chart accurately drawn, he was revealed as nothing more than a flat-out Capricorn.
“Still, isn’t he on the cusp?” Miriam demanded of Sylvia de Grace, reluctant to surrender the Aquarian delusion on Cicero’s behalf. Here in the hot, radiator-clanking loft, Miriam had removed her coat, revealing her hippie garb in full. That costume of hers, as much as Sylvia de Grace’s, seemed to argue for a belief in talismans, hoodoo, sacred monsters.
Being on the cusp
might be even more special, Miriam quickly explained, seeing as how it would combine aspects of two adjoining signs—Cicero’s would be a stealth sign, then, a spy in the nation of destiny.
But the astrologer only rattled her own elaborate jade earrings and stole Miriam’s hopes. Cusps, she explained, were a phenomenon popular with amateurs; for serious astrologers like herself they didn’t exist. Worse: Not only was Cicero a dull earth sign rather than one of those transcendent slippery Aquarians, whose age the planet was now entering, but all his subsidiary details were, so far as Cicero could follow them, disheartening: planetary rulerships in disarray, each in houses that signified, according to the increasingly severe Madame de Grace, only to that planet’s detriment. “Nothing dignified anywhere?” pleaded Miriam on Cicero’s behalf. The word
dignified
apparently held special value here. But Sylvia shook her head. “Not well dignified, no. His moon’s in Cancer, but in the twelfth house. We call that
accidental dignity
.”
“Accidental dignity?” repeated Miriam anxiously.
“Placement within this house circumscribes the moon’s opportunities to express its benevolence.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
To Miriam these facts were important, perhaps even dire; to Cicero not particularly so. Cicero knew his obvious features defined him absolutely in others’ eyes. Further definitions—limitations onthe moon’s benevolence, say—were fictions imposed from without. Definitions unmistakably in error but with which he saw no strategic reason (as yet) to differ. Cicero was still in the information-gathering phase of his life on this planet. Thus everything Miriam revealed to him was good information. The chess shop, Lenny’s cipher allusions and black and gold molars, had been good information, even at the price of Cicero’s chess vanity. This fake-Frenchwoman’s salon, squirreled into the brick warehouse full of painters’ lofts, was full of good information, a cavern of exotica, patchouli pretenses of sophisticated adulthood he could use to fill in the picture he would eventually be fitting himself into. No hurry, though.
Anyway, and more simply, Cicero had never been able to take any mystical shit like astrology seriously for a second. This was true for Cicero even before Rose’s influence had reached him. Rose’s materialist worldview, against which he supposed Miriam’s gestures in the faintly pagan direction of astrology were directed as protest. Cicero felt he’d been
born under a bad sign
having nothing to do with any rams or fish or bearers of water. He didn’t need another layer to his identity.
Astrology fell into the class of a
fake lie
, one many of its own exponents actively disbelieved—not only Miriam, obviously, but most likely Sylvia de Grace herself—and not worth the efforts of the debunking engine Cicero had been born with in place of a brain. Cicero’s capacities were reserved for the lies that mattered. Ideology, though that word was as yet unknown to him: the veil of sustaining fiction that drove the world, what people
needed
to believe. This, Cicero wished to unmask and unmake, to decry and destroy. Only, not yet.
Lies of that kind were strewn everywhere. Cicero had strewn a few himself, like
“Still, isn’t he on the cusp?” Miriam demanded of Sylvia de Grace, reluctant to surrender the Aquarian delusion on Cicero’s behalf. Here in the hot, radiator-clanking loft, Miriam had removed her coat, revealing her hippie garb in full. That costume of hers, as much as Sylvia de Grace’s, seemed to argue for a belief in talismans, hoodoo, sacred monsters.
Being on the cusp
might be even more special, Miriam quickly explained, seeing as how it would combine aspects of two adjoining signs—Cicero’s would be a stealth sign, then, a spy in the nation of destiny.
But the astrologer only rattled her own elaborate jade earrings and stole Miriam’s hopes. Cusps, she explained, were a phenomenon popular with amateurs; for serious astrologers like herself they didn’t exist. Worse: Not only was Cicero a dull earth sign rather than one of those transcendent slippery Aquarians, whose age the planet was now entering, but all his subsidiary details were, so far as Cicero could follow them, disheartening: planetary rulerships in disarray, each in houses that signified, according to the increasingly severe Madame de Grace, only to that planet’s detriment. “Nothing dignified anywhere?” pleaded Miriam on Cicero’s behalf. The word
dignified
apparently held special value here. But Sylvia shook her head. “Not well dignified, no. His moon’s in Cancer, but in the twelfth house. We call that
accidental dignity
.”
“Accidental dignity?” repeated Miriam anxiously.
“Placement within this house circumscribes the moon’s opportunities to express its benevolence.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
To Miriam these facts were important, perhaps even dire; to Cicero not particularly so. Cicero knew his obvious features defined him absolutely in others’ eyes. Further definitions—limitations onthe moon’s benevolence, say—were fictions imposed from without. Definitions unmistakably in error but with which he saw no strategic reason (as yet) to differ. Cicero was still in the information-gathering phase of his life on this planet. Thus everything Miriam revealed to him was good information. The chess shop, Lenny’s cipher allusions and black and gold molars, had been good information, even at the price of Cicero’s chess vanity. This fake-Frenchwoman’s salon, squirreled into the brick warehouse full of painters’ lofts, was full of good information, a cavern of exotica, patchouli pretenses of sophisticated adulthood he could use to fill in the picture he would eventually be fitting himself into. No hurry, though.
Anyway, and more simply, Cicero had never been able to take any mystical shit like astrology seriously for a second. This was true for Cicero even before Rose’s influence had reached him. Rose’s materialist worldview, against which he supposed Miriam’s gestures in the faintly pagan direction of astrology were directed as protest. Cicero felt he’d been
born under a bad sign
having nothing to do with any rams or fish or bearers of water. He didn’t need another layer to his identity.
Astrology fell into the class of a
fake lie
, one many of its own exponents actively disbelieved—not only Miriam, obviously, but most likely Sylvia de Grace herself—and not worth the efforts of the debunking engine Cicero had been born with in place of a brain. Cicero’s capacities were reserved for the lies that mattered. Ideology, though that word was as yet unknown to him: the veil of sustaining fiction that drove the world, what people
needed
to believe. This, Cicero wished to unmask and unmake, to decry and destroy. Only, not yet.
Lies of that kind were strewn everywhere. Cicero had strewn a few himself, like
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