Memories of Miss Molly and Venus kissing the Sun

Just a reminder: Sarah Taylor is taking a sabbatical from writing her Wednesday Tarot articles for the rest of the summer, but tune in Sunday for her Weekend Tarot Reading. – amanda

It had been rainy and overcast all day on Tuesday, June 5 — less than a month ago, yet somehow it feels like another dimension away now. I had given up on trying to view the Venus transit, instead making plans to celebrate with some inner journeying. I was trying to finish up some work when the clouds finally parted. It was still a good half hour before first contact between Venus and the Sun was supposed to occur; I was antsy to move around and needed to work on my lines for a play, so I decided to take a walk until the transit began.

I grabbed my camera and my script; at some point it crossed my mind to grab a pair of my solar viewing shades to take on the walk. Apparently that thought kept on crossing. I planned to zip over to the group viewing spot on the other side of town to look through a telescope once I’d satisfied my need to move around.

I walked and stretched and talked to myself (recited my lines) as Miss Molly: a 12-year-old trying to be too grown up for her own good, wearing her mom’s trashy dress yet not ready for the consequences, pugnacious and precocious and sarcastic and abrasive as hell. And I was falling in love with her with every step: this girl coming from a world of hurt she’d never admit, struggling with the incongruity of being worthy of having a friend’s beloved pet bird named after her. I watched her, from inside her and also from the outside, as she/we moved through her shock, disorientation, anger, defensiveness and boasting to a moment of compassion, understanding and acceptance — toward her friend and his dead bird, but also toward herself. But just for a moment.

Then I watched her bounce back to her usual abrasive self; though some subtle, new undercurrent seemed to be carrying her as she walked out of the play with her friends on the last page.

Throughout all that, I was stopping with near-obsession to take photographs, in love with the light and the scent of the wet earth and sparkling green things all around me as well as with Miss Molly. My walk was taking a longer time than anticipated. I realized we were probably past first contact already. Then I realized I had forgotten to grab my solar shades.

Still a good 10 minute walk from home, the clouds returned. I prayed for them to part again as I drove to the group viewing location. They never did, though I waited around reading my book about the Venus transit while sitting in a tree, hoping to conjure up a patch of clear sky. It was not to be.

Part of me still can’t quite believe I missed my one big chance to see Venus do her thing with the Sun, and for a while, ‘missed opportunities’ was feeling like the Venus retrograde theme I was destined to swallow. Even the play I was working on fell apart two weeks before what would have been its scheduled performance this coming weekend, due to a snowball effect of casting issues.

I’m realizing, though, that loving Miss Molly — all of her faults and awfulness and pain — was just one of many mirrors being held up to me by Venus as she dove deep into Gemini. Other mirrors made themselves known quite palpably later that night, quite unexpectedly, and with an unusual sense of unification and erotic healing. Just recently, I think I may have caught sight of another mirror. Maybe I didn’t ‘miss’ the transit, after all.