Geminisms

venus & serena w Il lI ams

Gemini often occurs among siblings or couples who become prominent in related professions, and whose personal relationship is professionally relevant. Serena is a Libra, an air sign like Gemini, in fact the most serene of the air signs. Venus, the Gemini sister, is paradoxically named, since the planet Venus rules Libra, her sister's sign. Thus in their very naming began the intended intermixture of their identities. They are the only pair of tennis players to have played championship singles matches and then partnered in doubles. This year they did it for the second time. I relish the exemplary equanimity of these sisters who shift from opposition to cooperation, expressing the astrological nature of the signs of the Twins and the Balance. 

iSaiaH Berlin

 

Anglo-russo social philosopher, historian of ideas, and intellectual playboy (6 June 1909-1997).

A portion of his voluminous correspondence (Enlightening:Letters 1946-1960) is reviewed by Terry Eagleton in The Guardian:

“Berlin was not only a compulsive chatterer; he was in a chattering class of his own. These letters are great splurges of urbane speech, which at times come close to stream-of-consciousness mode.”

"Fragments of political philosophy blend with upper-class gush ("divine", "delicious", "adorable"). There is the odd, respectfully restrained note to Winston Churchill, along with loquacious missives to Arthur Schlesinger, John Sparrow, David Astor, Richard Wollheim, Violet Bonham Carter, Bernard Berenson and a glittering array of others. Berlin's parents are kept informed of the socially glamorous crew he has just dined with in Paris. All the time the man himself is darting from Harvard to Aix-en-Provence, Italian castles to Tel Aviv, penning his views on the Palestinian question while his social life proliferates hopelessly beyond control." (Terry Eagleton, The Guardian)

Geminiana

MrsRaptor, the Open Salon blogger born May 22 whom I wrote about yesterday, adds that she is a twin,  mother of two sets of twins, and grandmother of twins. She's  typically communicative: not only a blogger but a ham radio operator, and her English (not her native language) is impeccable. Geminis show their need to communicate by picking up languages easily. (My father was a G and spoke 5 languages. Whenever we traveled he would pull out the local phonebook, even in some podunk motel that we stayed in for one night, and find someone in it who was related to someone from his home town in Eastern Europe, call them and invite them over for a drink.) 

Also, check out Neeti Ray's lovely appreciation of Gemini here.

Virgo and the Grid

Modular cube, Sol LeWitt (b. 9 September 1928 - 2007).

Virgo is the concept of the grid: as armature, as classification system, and ultimately, as the woven fabric of human reality itself -- woof of matter and warp of consciousness. Virgo is the natural process of unfoldment along determinative patterns, the interplay of timeless abstraction (logic, mathematics) and temporal developments (organism, culture). The grid of Virgo quietly underlies  the wildest tendrils of nature as under the statistician’s strict bell curve teeming reality flourishes .