fullman*

‘You are an Aquarius,’ a childhood friend once proclaimed, and I was hooked. As a kid, I immediately subscribed to the idea that our lives are determined by the stars. An avid reader of printed news, I would take time reading through the daily horoscope, plotting my days according to the lay of the stars, seeing how the predictions fit into my daily life. I’d read the frontpage, the komiks, then the horoscope, and maybe the opinion page – the editors of PDI surely had wise words to share, but could they be wiser than the stars?

Everything crashed down when, years later, I made a discovery: I was a Capricorn. I never bothered to understand how the whole thing works,and relied on the assessment of my friend (I was doing his slum book then). Suddenly, all the incidents that only the stars could explain became arbitrary tragedies and random moments on joys. I still feel the urge to apologize to friends for committing an error in answering their slum books, although to put things in perspective the actual perjury is in the ‘your crush’ entry.

Since then I have come to accept life as a rollercoaster of tragedies and joys, some of which are truly laughably random, and others my own doing. In the course of adulthood, I have also sloughed off religion, nay, bigotry masked as faith, and charted my own moral coordinates – the lines of which may not be perfectly drawn, but that’s exactly what makes it enduring and real. Right or wrong is black and white, but it can also be a spectrum of colors, an explosion of light.

To doubt the stars, to lose a religion, and to be guided by your own sense of morality. It can be alienating, and you are constantly on your toes to check your moorings. You learn to embrace your flaws and limitations, and transgress borders that you yourself have built. I have discovered, too, that you have climb to break your closet; closets are glass ceilings, too, a fact that the stars never told me. My horoscope never predicted that I have to come out again and again. If life is textured, then why should we expect our existence to be less complicated, a matter of the stars?

A few days ago, some cosmic dude decided to change the zodiac sign of just about everybody. I am no longer the uptight, controlling goat. I’m now supposed to be the passionate, hippie Sagittarius.

But I am not miffed. Been there, done that. The only horoscope that I read is Inquirer Libre’s, but only because the entries are closet haiku poems (Capricorn: Susubuan ka niya ng napakainit na kanin. Sagittarius: Makakagat mo kutsarang bakal, aray). I stopped blaming Madam Auring for all the deadlines I failed to meet, but I want her hanged for inflicting upon us her ex-boyfriend, Jimboy, who is now insulting the entire gay community by claiming that he’s gay.

There’s google when I have questions, and for big decisions, I’ve learned to take a leap when I can, and when I cannot, I guzzle a glass or two of vodka first. And then I jump.