Absolutely Fabulous, Series 4- the Detox episode.
On a girls night out, which is every night frankly, because no one has a man, the girls are talking about how every racehorse needs a donkey (symbolically speaking) as 2 racehorses in the same stable would, as Patsy so eloquently put it, “kick the shit out of each other”. The discussion moves onto attachments:
Magazine Girl to Katy Grin: Everyone has their crutches, their security blanket- being mean is yours.
Eddie: I haven’t got one
(all the girls laugh)
Katy: You’re fat. Surely you can see that, we certainly can’t miss it!
Katy: What’s yours Patsy?… Its obvious… the 60’s forelock. Put it back, lets see what you look like under there….at least you can pin your fringe back whereas you (turning to Eddy) you can’t pin your fat back.
Eddy has an epiphany and decides to reinvent herself into a luggage-less version of herself. Her fat is her excess baggage. She embarks on a detox (nobody diets these days, darling) with the aim that in 3 weeks time she wants to be on the cusp of organ failure, an x-ray with a pulse…
Eddy for all her “out there” behaviour and spotlight hogging, swallows her real feelings and accumulates things around her to guard against tomorrow. When Pats says “your stomach is like a dog that doesn’t know when it is going to be fed next and just hangs around until you want to kick it,” she is talking about a reluctance to trust that abundance will continue. (Patsy, on the other hand, hasn’t eaten since 1974.)
Materialism, attachment, accumulation, fear of letting go- all of these are words associated with Taurus. It is no coincidence that the RSS feed on my personal email has lately been filled with other peoples blogs on materialism, living the minimalist way or getting rid of attachments.
Like Eddie and Pats, our attachments don’t necessarily need to be materialistic. It can be anything that makes us feel safe, anything that makes us feel secure. I can totally identify with Eddie’s fat as security- those extra layers can definitely provide protection- they stop people from seeing the person under the layers, in a way they provide protection from temptation or exposure. They provide an excuse for staying with the status quo.
We can be attached to feelings, to goods, to a hair style, to the past. We can be attached to the way things are, the way things were or the way that we think they might be. We can be attached to a dream, a hope, or a vision. We can be attached to a lost love, the idea of love, the fantasy of a love.
Not everything that we hang onto is, by definition, good. How many people do you know of in unhealthy relationships for whatever reason? How many people do you know who will listen to good advice and then pop their own roadblocks or excuses up? I’ll be the 1st to put my own hand up for that one- on a number of different levels.
Getting rid or letting go of what we are attached to can be scary as it removes an excuse for moving forward. Holding onto that clutter or baggage can weigh you down physically or symbolically. It is there in the friend who insists on closure from her ex before saying yes to the guy standing in front of her. It is there when we hold onto a job long past its use by date because the current one, for all its faults, makes us feel safe. It’s there when we hold onto a pair of jeans that are 2 sizes too small because throwing them out is almost like abandoning the idea that we will ever fit into them again. I still have a bra in my undies drawer that’s a 12B- yes a B cup. I used to fit into it…20 years ago…
At the end of the day, those jeans really are just jeans (no pun or inadvertent advertising intended) and getting rid of them is not an admission of failure. It is acknowledging that they are taking up valuable room in your wardrobe that can be filled with something fabulous and new when you do drop those 2 sizes.
I am doing it at present- holding onto fears. Old fears. Fears of change in a close relationship, fear of finishing a project that I know will expose me, fears of completion.
Given that Saturn is in the 8th for me at present, this makes sense. It’s also why here in Chez Tracey we’ve been doing some hard work around finances and budgets.
Speaking of Saturn, he’s involved in this New Moon- as are the nodes, Mercury and Mars. There’s no getting away from that.
Wherever 19 Taurus is in your chart will give you an idea about where you have problems letting go- and a clue to what you need to actively eliminate or get rid of. When Saturn is involved, if you don’t do the hard work, he will find some way of doing it for you- and that is rarely pleasant.
19 Taurus also shows where you need to just “be”- in the present, in the moment, in the pleasure. Where you need to take the time to smell the roses, reconnect with your body and indulge your senses. It will show you what you are really hungry for- and it isn’t the pumpkin mac I baked last night.
With Mars also in Taurus, once you get started, the potential for success is great- Mars in Taurus rarely changes course. That’s a good thing when it comes replacing old worn out habits with something more appropriate- the most annoying thing about starting new habits is that you have to do it more than once…
Anyway, back to Eddy… after 3 weeks on detox without so much as a sniff of alcohol, she has lost some weight and is feeling well chuffed with herself. The same group of girls in the same restaurant, but this time they are discussing Sex & the City.
“I’ll be Sarah Jessica Parker,” volunteers Eddy.
The others laugh and Katy Grin says “you’re still too fat!”
No one notices Eddy’s weight loss- that particular baggage was more important to her than it was to anyone else… as all good baggage usually is.
Taurus New Moon and Solar Eclipse 19 Taurus 31′, 10.28am (Sydney time) 10 May, 2013