That Explains It

From the beginning I did not like Yasmin. It wasn’t her lovely face and springy dark hair that she insisted upon denigrating at each storefront window and other reflective surface we passed, though that didn’t help. It couldn’t be simply her gentle, but monotonous voice that invariably left me drowsy when she rambled. Maybe it was the way she glossed over my objections in discussions, but then again she never dismissed them entirely. I didn’t know quite what it was, but each time my flatmate brought Yasmin around or invited her out with us, I found myself irritated.

“Why do you even like her?” I asked one evening Yasmin left (I had “gone to bed” early, but returned to the living room as soon as the door shut behind her).

My friend gave me an odd look. “Her life is fascinating.”

I found it unbearably droll.

A few weeks later I was lured into meeting Yasmin by my flatmate’s promise that Yasmin’s international romance was really getting juicy and I could not miss the details. The three of us met up at a cafe. I wanted to sit outdoors in the warm night air of the busy city, but Yasmin balked.

“Is something wrong?” my friend asked her.

“Well. I guess not. It’s just...”

“What?”

“It’s nothing.” But still Yasmin didn’t sit.

“Would you be more comfortable inside?” I suggested reluctantly.

“Yes. Is that okay?”

“Totally!” my friend replied automatically. I rolled my eyes to the pavement, followed them inside, and took the seat facing the mirrored wall so I wouldn’t have to hear Yasmin talk about her “huge pores” that were actually invisible.

We chit-chat, and while we wait for drinks I get lost in thought and the quiet breathiness of Yasmin’s voice. I came back to the conversation for a minute when the waiter returned, but then I found myself staring out the window and up into the polluted night, my eyes following a satellite streaking across the Cairo skyline.

“Hey, you there?”

“Sorry,” I turned to face Yasmin.

“What did you say?”

“I asked what your sign is.”

“Astrological sign?”

She gave my friend a small smile. “Yeah. That’s what we’ve been talking about.”

“I’m a Capricorn.”

“Oh,” she smirked. “That explains it.”

I glared back at her and furrowed my brow, waiting for a continuation that never came. How could she possibly dismiss me based on my birthdate? Why the hell did a stupid goat and gaseous Saturn give her the right to think she knew me? “What sign are you, Yasmin?” I asked forcibly, as though I might be able to corner her with that information.

She picked up her spoon, stirred, and stared deeply into her swirling tea. “Libra,” she replied airily.

I wanted to denounce her belief in astrology, prove that whatever her assessment of me was, was wrong. I stopped myself: that wouldn’t do at all. I was steaming but had no ammunition. Fighting about the validity of my sign would only propound her assertion that I did indeed embody Capricornism! I gulped my coffee too quickly and then sucked water through the straw frenetically, trying to cool my burning tongue. Yasmin watched me wryly, sipping her tea with annoying little slurps.

I only saw a Yasmin once or twice after that night (she ended up moving away to be with her transcontinental lover after the drama cooled down), but I couldn’t ignore that her nonchalant comment insinuating it was my sign that explained my less-than-welcoming attitude toward her had struck a nerve.

No matter how I spun it, I hadn’t given Yasmin a chance. Perhaps she wrote me off when she discovered we were elemental opposites, but I had written her off from the beginning. I had demonstrated, in our few interactions, my stubbornness, insufferable self-confidence, and persistent condescension. Embodying Libra, Yasmin took it into stride. I had pegged her as piddling when she was probably just trying to remain cooperative and forge a bridge over my judgments. I had been intent on proving myself right, I had missed my own foolishness.

Charting the movements of the ever-splendid celestial bodies, which serve both as aspiration and metaphor for life on our own glowing spheres, has been a standout obsession for humans throughout history. Charting the movements of stars and planets was one of the earliest useful observations a human could make, and they informed religions, metaphysical theories, navigational methods, farming, and more. Now, calculation, empiricism, and precision, hallmarks of modernity, oppose astrology. And yet, just when I think I ought to entirely disown what seems clearly to be fortune-telling chicanery, I think: What thought system better explains my incompatibility with Yasmin?

At some point, to make itself clear, even science relies upon metaphor to explain itself. Astrology is at heart metaphor, relating flesh to elemental substance and celestial activity. Saying that Yasmin and I have disparate values or brain chemistry doesn’t seem much different than saying that like air and earth, we will always be separate, like Saturn and Venus explained by our occupation of opposite halves of the solar system: primeval disparity that can never be reconciled. There’s a great deal to be said about industry and empiricism, but it wasn’t astrology that created this permanent pollution cloud blocking the fantastic movements of the stars, and it’s so like a Capricorn to admit that it took one of her least favorite people to demonstrate a most important point.