Why Geminis Lie.
Friday, June 6, 2008 at 02:08PM
Mark Shulgasser in Elsa Maxwell, Gemini, alexander cockburn, billy baldwin, cole porter, gemini, gossip, lies, lillian hellman, mary mccarthy

   Gemini Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds."

His friend Gemini Walt Whitman: "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself."

Is it that Geminis are aware that truth is something we seek and travel towards, continually shedding old interpretations, experiments and mistakes behind us? Or maybe they’re just whimsical.


      Gemini, the twins, mirrored, mimics, mimicry, imitation: the lie is the imitation of the truth, so a gemini may enjoy the lie, the fiction, for its own sake. It can be compulsive, it can be useful, it can be amusing . . . For attorneys, writers, boxers, it’s punch, counterpunch. [Counterpunch is the blog of Gemini Alexander Cockburn.] The statement’s force is not entirely due to its truth. And Geminis have a fundamental love of language and communication — sometimes, they remind us, the act of communication is more important than the content. As the 18th century Gemini letter writer Lady Mary Wortley Montague put it, “When one loves, one always has something to say.” Inconsequential chatter, gossip, ”garrulous to the last,” (Walt Whitman), Gemini’s planet, Mercury, thr messenger, is also the god of thieves and liars.

      Geminis are the great networkers, always pairing off, putting people together. Timothy Berners-Lee, inventor of the www was born June 8.


      They are often creatively identified with a particular partner, collaborator, spouse or sibling. It’s interesting to observe them pairing with each other. Two writers, both famous gossips, Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman, had a famous feud. McCarthy public,ly accused Hellman of being a liar (most offensively: "Everything she says is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'.") and Hellman sued her. A 1990 book, “Telling Lies” contains chapters on each of them. McCarthy's own memoirs deal extensively with the role of lying (and its twin, theft) in her self-creation.

      3 noted cafe-society gossips: According to interior decorator Billy Baldwin, ‘Cole Porter called Elsa Maxwell “Miss Liar” to her face’! All three were Geminis.

      Geminis will sometimes tell you what you want to hear, in order to further the conversation. So do we all. But then they turn around, after you liked them so for having understood you so well, and they're laughing their heads off with your worst enemy, about how screaminhgly funny your cherished little ideas are. This is a Gemini type of betrayal. They can't help it.


    

Article originally appeared on astrologydatapoints (http://astrodreamer.squarespace.com/).
See website for complete article licensing information.