LANCE ARMSTRONG:SERVE OR SUFFER

Serve or suffer. That’s what the old time gloom and doom astrology books used to say about the task of those born at the time of astrological Virgo. 

OK! Under the most mundane interpretation that might fly.“Fly?” “Did I just say fly? “ Virgo, fly, Lance Armstrong.  What is this thread I’ve suddenly pulled that won’t stop unraveling? 

Other than my lifelong fascination with the New York Yanks, I’ve never been particularly athletic nor concerned with athletes. But for some odd reason I’ve always been intrigued by Virgo-born cyclist par excellence, Lance Armstrong. When it first occurred, his youthful bout with testicular cancer stirred within me a flood of empathy.  It seemed Lance went about attacking the cancer with a fortitude and courage that seemed superhuman.  Was he trying to outrace destiny, his unlived sexuality, his unborn children? He raced so well, so hard, so often, so as to  kill off the feared/inevitable invisible invisibles! And those yellow wrist bands: “Live strong, or was it Livestrong? “I still have mine tucked away somewhere in a drawer. The choice of yellow, an uncanny, unconscious advance reference to cowardice? Perhaps. But that was then.

 Like many clearly shocked by the recent news,  I wondered  about him psycho-diagnostically. Sociopath?  Borderline?  Narcissist?  An overly inflated addicted Puer? What god, what mythic figure might be behind, or within his tragic actions? Better to stick with the mythic choice. Psychopathology, while often true, and yes, often dangerous, somehow doesn’t quite cut it for me, not completely.

To me that youthful god on a bicycle, by the name of Lance Armstrong, feels like a present day version of Icarus, that lethally burned god whose inflated wings, drove him more and more, higher and higher, better and better toward the burning rays of the sun.  Lance, climbed too high, fell too far, committed atrocities, and lies, out of this self-burning. Yes, in part, Lance served, but he suffered and will suffer plenty as a result of his over amped ambitions.

For Virgo Lance Armstrong, those yellow bands offered hope, and a mantra to Live Strong.  The time has now arrived when, as Buddha states, for “three things” such as “the sun, the moon and the truth to become visible” and to no longer “be hidden.”

JUDITH HARTE

1/21/13

 

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