By the light of the Scorpio Moon
I have been thinking about the scorpion’s anus a lot as of late, as related to my getting ready to purge most of my prize possessions. You see, I am what one might call a hoarder or packrat, despite the fact that I have living out of a backpack for the last six months and couch surfing for much of the last 3 years. Before I embodied this whirling dervish gypsy dream, I had (and still have) a plethora of shiny, furry, fast and flashy objects that give me considerable joy – even if primarily in a very superficial sense.
I also have a lot of memories that I keep stored away in objects. Some of my pretty things are both beautiful and nostalgic. And some actually border on garbage-like; burnt-up candles from celebrations long past, post-it notes from long-estranged exes and SERIOUSLY even the smelly socks of someone dear I once loved and tragically lost that are sealed in a plastic bag just in case I want to remember them, again and again…
And there is nothing wrong with this really, so long as your lifestyle supports your crazy hat collection and cat lady level of madness. But what happens when the world you now need no longer mirrors the life you once had? What happens when there are too many metaphorical cats and they are overflowing right out of your basket? What happens when the things you cling to shift from creating joy inside you and instead now primarily induce stress? What happens when you desperately want and need to move on because the objects that you love and adore are ACTUALLY holding you back and you want to discard them, but you simply can’t bear to part with them because the emotional strain is crippling? How then do you learn to JUST LET GO of it all, as the wise Buddha would?
Well, I began to find this out for myself recently when I sold the most valuable thing I own – if value was purely a measure based on the hold it has on your heart. I sold my 1978 Datsun 280Z. Husbands and boyfriends have come and gone, but over the years my Z had always remained constant. It pained me tremendously to part with it, because in so many ways it represented a prominent piece of the story of my life.
Originally purchased as a gift to myself after an uncomfortable lawsuit and its subsequent settlement, the Z became so much more to me over the last two decades. Way back when, I used my hard-earned stripper cash to nearly fully restore the Z to its original condition. After that there were a lot of fast times and wild living that made it so that—even years later, after those sex, drugs and rock n’ roll days were over—every time I drove the Z, I basically felt like I radiated being a sex vixxxen and I had “Sex on Wheels!”
And that’s part of why that car was so damn hard to part with! The Z formed an integral piece of my identity. It served as a type of horcrux for my soul that I gave tremendous meaning to. And as I started to come to terms that I no longer could or should be attached to this material object, my ego began to fragment with judgment over the situation. I started to tell myself the story that I was a terrible “mother” that couldn’t take care of her “baby” – and believe me, that car DID feel like my baby. And the more I stagnated in fear and loathing telling myself this self-deprecating story, the harder it seemed to JUST LET GO and instead I was beginning to freeze in an anxiety panic and shame spiral.
Luckily, this long journey of self-help I’m on has not been for nothing! So, after some initial torrential tears I eventually knew I needed to meditate on the matter to make peace with the emotions that were coming up for me. When life gets overwhelming, you can gain so much clarity over a situation if you can simply take the time to slow down. This is actually NOT my forte, but I am getting better at it and much to my surprise in this particular situation I had some really beautiful insights when I played with my breath, stillness and visualization of what was coming up for me.
I imagined my breath was expansive and free, which took me into a cloud meditation where I was floating in the sky. Then, I became a bird (a three-eyed black crow quite specifically) and I had the ability to see my reality through an altered lens as I took my full surroundings in. I saw the clouds all around me as I soared in the sky passing them on by, but then the clouds transformed and turned into my material possessions all around me. Next, I saw them disintegrate and change back from the objects that I previously knew them as and they reshaped into metals, minerals and raw materials dissipating and losing all their energetic charge. Their energy dissolved in this waking meditative dream and when I came back into myself I remembered that I AM THE SEXUAL ENERGY and that energy comes solely from me!
The material objects that I love and adore are simply conduits for the inherent energy that I possess and give forth. The conduits can thus exchange hands, or transform themselves, and I will remain unaffected. So, even if I got rid of the Z and sold it, I could still be a sex vixen with or without it and all of my memories would still be a part of me. And, whether I still want to assume the identity of a sex vixen or not is completely a choice that I could also decide to either discard or still keep.
With or without the objects from my past that keep my memories so dear, at my core I am always still fundamentally me. My true self is simply an actor and I can choose to be any character in my story that I want to be, if only I can slow down long enough to decide which costume and role will presently best serve me. The story doesn’t have to be that I wasn't good enough to care for my luxury car, and instead it can be that I am NOW choosing a different lifestyle for myself actively. Empowering yourself from a position of choice and growth can be crucial for inner acceptance and greater personal ease. It can all be so fluid if only I allow it to be and it was finally with that knowing that I was ACTUALLY able to JUST LET GO!
So I did… and I made peace with the fear and attachment that was simply trying to keep me safe and that has been afraid to move forward with the instability of drastic life change. And in seeing that this pain was simply a construct of my mind I could then decide to manipulate the sensations in a way I found more pleasurable. So, I have decided to GET OFF on my purging and let the releasing wash over me like a sweet orgasmic wave and I am imagining that every item I get rid of will be like discarding another article of clothing from my soft naked flesh that when completely bare will feel so sweet and sensuous.
A friend of mine upon hearing this said he could almost, “imagine me masturbating in the corner at my own garage sale.” Maybe not in person, but I accept that as a fantasy!
And perhaps now we have come full circle and you are finally asking BUT WHAT ABOUT THE SCORPION’S ANUS?? Well, to start, scorpions have an antipredator adaptation called caudal autotomy. This is essentially a defense mechanism where an animal self-amputates one or more of their appendages to escape capture by a predator. In the scorpion’s case, it loses its tail.
Some of us are familiar with this survival adaptation because we have seen Snoop Dog’s (aka. Huggy Bear’s) iguana, Corky, hilariously lose his tail in the 2004 remake of Starsky and Hutch. Or it’s also possible we may have gone chasing after a gecko trying to get it to flee our home or hotel room and been horrified when, right as we are about to grab it to set it free, its tail falls off wriggling left behind in our hands! Whatever your previous experience with caudal autotomy may or may not be, what makes the scorpion unique is that once they shed their tails they do NOT grow back! Additionally, once they lose their tail they also LOSE THEIR ANUS, which eventually leaves them full of shit and feeling quite constipated.
It turns out that although losing their tail does not slow down the scorpion’s quite often elaborate tail-oriented mating ritual, or their ability to procreate, their constipation is not without considerable consequence. The female scorpion’s constipation makes her abdomen increasingly full of fecal matter and in turn able to store fewer eggs, which affects her ability to reproduce. And both male and female scorpions become so backed up with feces that they will both die within approximately eight months of losing their tail.
So, if there is a life lesson that we can all glean from our arachnid friend the scorpion, in my mind it is essentially the following: it is important in life to let go of your shit. And when you can’t, it affects your ability to thrive and survive! Thus I hope to learn from the wisdom of the scorpion, much like I always love the incredible teachings we can derive from nature. I hope that with a little humor and a lot of orgasmic sex appeal that every time I discard a once-loved piece from my past it becomes a little more pleasurable and lot less painful to purge.
>> COOL SCORPION MATING FACTS HERE
>> The Life of the Scorpion by Jean-Henri Fabre
Z photo by John Deane Benton