When Ed introduced us, we both took a couple of steps forward and shook each other’s hand silently. As everyone knows, there are varying kinds of handshakes. Some people grab your hand and squeeze almost a little too tightly. Some people barely hold on and you wonder if they’re as enthusiastic as you are to be shaking their hand. This handshake was right in the middle. It felt like a true meeting of equals, almost like Craig was a mirror image of myself.

After getting acquainted with Craig a couple of times at Ed’s, which wasn’t hard to do because he was very laid back, Ed, as he usually does, created a horoscope for him. There are three aspects of a horoscope that are most easily seen.

The first part which is often the thing seen first by anybody is called the ascendant. It governs the physical body, outward appearance, mannerisms, approach to life, and the personality. I distinguish personality from the self, because sometimes we wear a mask to people we don’t know so well, even if it isn’t for deceptive purposes and even if we aren’t consciously aware of it. The ascendant cycles through all twelve signs on a daily basis, so people born only hours or minutes apart could potentially have a different ascendant.

The second is the Sun sign. This is the part of astrology that literally everyone knows about. It is determined by the date of birth, and which astrological season is present. It governs the inner self, the identity, the ego, individuality, and the truest self as well.

Third, there is the Moon sign. The Moon changes signs every few days and is usually shared by most of the people born on a certain day. It governs emotions — emotional reaction and expression. Sometimes it even displays itself in physical characteristics. For example, a Scorpio Moon individual may have intense and penetrating eyes as Scorpio is the sign of intensity. There are probably many other examples, but that is the one I know well.

Ed pointed out in Craig’s chart that his ascendant was in Taurus, his Sun was in Leo, and his Moon was also in Taurus. Having Taurus on the ascendant is often associated with having a darker complexion and a thick body-type, though Craig was very thin. It was interesting to me, because my ascendant was also in Taurus, and my Sun in Leo as well, but my Moon was in the opposite sign as his, Scorpio. So, both of us having the same astrological placements of both the inner and outer self could help explain the affinity we had — the perfect handshake and the attunement to his presence. We did have vastly differing emotional natures, though. Each planet in astrology has one sign where it is exalted and one sign where it falls. As the perfect example of this, Craig’s Moon in Taurus was exalted. Taurus is one of the strongest and most stable signs in the zodiac and is sometimes prone towards stubbornness, so having the Moon there speaks of emotional fortitude. My Moon was in its fall in Scorpio, because Scorpio can be very deep, complex, suspicious, and transformative. Emotions don’t flow so easily because they are not always understood, and are sometimes kept hidden from others. I learned to hide my emotions because I was often dealing with very untrustworthy characters in my daily life. The less they knew about me, the better.

Craig and I were both what is called fixed-dominant, because the majority of our planets were in fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius). My friend Richard calls heavy activity in these signs “Mandatory destiny.” In his interpretation, because the fixed signs are so constant, they have a very determined and “set in stone” quality about them. People with heavy emphasis in these signs are often the people who wake up every day, have many daily rituals they stick to, dislike change, but are usually reliable due to that unchanging nature. Taurus is a rock (Earth sign + fixed sign), Leo is loyal (The sun, ruler of Leo, shines and sustains life every day), and Scorpio is FIERCELY loyal (Taking any notion to extremes). Aquarius is kind of all over the place sometimes, also being an air sign (“Free as the air.”), but is continually moving toward the future with new ideas such as invention or social reform. The destiny part comes in under the philosophy that everything that comes to pass basically had to happen that way because there weren’t any external circumstances present that would have influenced the outcome, and that something can only be called destiny after the result, not beforehand.

We are what we are, and everything is what it is, but some things are more determined to happen than others. Some people change so quickly that they can barely keep up with themselves. In astrology, the signs that are most associated with changeable behavior are Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces, together called the mutable signs. I once chatted online with a young woman about anger issues. She said her Mars (energy, temperament, drive, physical strength, ambition) was in Gemini.

“You probably get over things real quickly, don’t you?” I asked.

“Honestly, I forget what I was even mad about,” she responded humorously.

Over a period of about three years, I went to various community functions around Madison, and I always seemed to run into Craig there. It got to the point of ridiculousness.

“I think it’s something…we basically have no control over,” Craig said as he seemed to think there was something larger at play.

I also went to see Ed and Craig’s play at the Esquire Theater in Madison. My favorite part was when Craig, playing his character, went on a ramble in the middle of a pub and finished by saying, “No pun intended.” The bartender in the story looked confused and paused for a moment. “No pun achieved,” he finally said. It had the audience busting out laughing. He probably said what everyone was thinking.

The first time I ever went to a bar with my father in Madison, we went to Mickey’s on Williamson Street, and we ran into, of course, Craig. Somehow we ended up playing doubles in pool, with Craig and I on one team, and my father and an unknown bar patron on the other.

“Man, this is like the Civil War. Got family fighting against family,” my father said.

I’m pretty sure Craig and I won that matchup, though it was close.

Here in 2023, about 25 years after I first met Craig, I am helping watch over his son in the after school program I’m involved in. Whether or not astrology can be blamed for two people with very fixed and determined characteristics constantly running into each other over decades, it certainly corroborates it, meaning that astrologically, things would be likely to happen that way. Take away all the astrological input, and it still is what it is.

I needed to save up some money for my move to Florida. I had just left North Farm Food Co-op because the management was acting like *BEEP*. There were too many examples of how those guys were mistreating employees, not just me. Racism and everything played a part.

One day I was eating lunch at my old workplace, Pasqual’s on Atwood, which was actually my first job ever. The reason I originally left was because I had WAY too many things on my mind. Even when I was a kid, my mind was working constantly, and doing basically anything took away from my thought processes. Because of that, I was a little bit slow in the kitchen. I always showed up and did what I was supposed to, very well according to one of the managers, but my speed was unsatisfactory to them. Without firing me outright, they took me off the schedule, and I sought other employment instead of trying to explain things they wouldn’t understand anyway.

While eating lunch at Pasqual’s, I noticed a young woman about my age working in the deli. Something about her caught my interest. Yeah, she was cute and all that, but there was more to it than that. I thought, “Hmm. Maybe I need to be working here again.”

Within a week of applying, I got my old job back. One young worker named Nick who worked with me at North Farm Food Co-op even came back to work at Pasqual’s just before me. I didn’t realize he had old ties to the place just like me. It was almost a sign that I made the right move at the right time.

A few of my old high school classmates were still around, including Nik, the one who got me the job. I was rehired without question. The owner, Libby, worked with us back in the kitchen sometimes. She was decent enough of an owner. She wasn’t too critical or harsh, and she didn’t care if kitchen workers occasionally took small samples of the delicious food we were preparing.

One night, it was just Libby and I back in the kitchen. We were getting decked on because the Barrymore Theatre next door was having a concert, as they usually did. I’m not sure why we were so understaffed.

“I’m gonna need you to go a little faster on the grill,” Libby said in a not so demanding way.

Something inside of me got activated at that moment. Perhaps I COULD do things faster. So I started working faster and faster, and within a few months, I became the fastest worker in the kitchen. That was very ironic, considering I was taken off the schedule for being too slow a couple years earlier.

We definitely had a crew of some characters. Not everyone knew how to get along either, unsurprisingly, and there was an accusation of theft that led to the firing of a manager. The girl who I saw before I started working here again was named Brianna. It’s no wonder that I was curious about her, because she had one of the most enjoyable personalities I have ever been around. She was cute, but she didn’t have an attitude about it.

As a newcomer to astrology, one of my favorite things to do was guess which sign someone was based on their appearance and behavior. Sometimes I’d eat my break meal in the deli area, and I’d see Brianna running around to different tables and to and back from the kitchen.

“I think she’s an Aquarius,” I said to myself, which was purely instinctual because I didn’t have anything solid to go on.

Then I later changed it to Gemini, and then finally Scorpio.

Brianna and I became friends. I could talk to her about a lot of things I don’t usually talk to other people about because she was so open about everything. With her permission, I ended up making a horoscope for her, and I couldn’t believe what I saw! She had the Sun in Aquarius, ascendant in Gemini, and Moon in Scorpio! Those were the three signs I guessed that she was, and all of them can be related to physical appearance.

A new kitchen worker named Brian showed up in late fall and was quickly promoted due to his experience and need to fill the position. Brian was an interesting guy who was hard-wired for action and was always jumping from one thing to the next without slowing down, his work or his words. Brian was also into astrology, and he prided himself on being a Scorpio, a powerful sign.

Brian, though he was all action, liked it when the people around him weren’t into drama. He eventually constructed a small nighttime “handpicked crew” as one of the other kitchen workers put it who wasn’t very happy about it. That crew was Brian, his friend Aaron, and myself.

I got to know those guys a bit. We went to their apartment a couple of times after work and went to The Up North as well.

While I was at The Up North, the bartender was especially friendly with me and it was easy to talk to her. Her name was Casey. Somehow astrology got brought up, and I mentioned how I liked guessing what other people’s Sun sign is.

“OK! Tell me what sign I am!” she said and lowered down to my level and looked straight at me across the counter.

I wasn’t expecting to get called out, but I wasn’t going to fold either. I looked back into her eyes and noticed that her eyes looked like my old friend Kathy’s from Anime Club. They were hazel and the pupil was so wide that there was only a small ring of iris. I also noticed her hair was long and very fine like hers. Kathy was a Cancer. Those were the first two hints.