Sun in Sagittarius

When life shrinks, you notice within a week. The same commute, the same four conversations, the same answer to “how are you”, and something in you starts pacing. Within the month you have booked a trip, signed up for a course, or started reading about a country you have not thought of since school.

Toward the middle of everything

The centre of our galaxy lies in the constellation of the Archer, near the tip of its arrow, where the Milky Way is thickest. Away from city lights, looking toward Sagittarius is looking toward the middle of everything.

Every planet in the old tradition has a house it loves best, called its joy. The Sun’s is the 9th, the house of far travel, learning and faith, which the Greek astrologers named the house of the God, and astrologers pair it with Sagittarius. The host is Jupiter, the largest planet, and it makes your hopes the size of continents.

Frank, funny and far away

You ask the big questions and enjoy the argument that follows, and a disappointment rarely lasts you past the weekend. In any job you see the point of the whole thing, and make other people see it too. Your stories are famous: the night bus in a country whose language you did not speak, the wrong train that turned out to be the right one. Half of them are about getting lost, and all of them end well, because you tell them. Teaching comes naturally; you have explained the rules of a card game to strangers in three languages, two of them with your hands.

Your address book reads like an atlas, and you pick up with each name where you left off, as if no time had passed.

True, and badly timed

Your honesty bruises. You say the true thing at the wrong moment: the joke about the ex at the engagement dinner, the frank review of the novel a friend spent four years writing. You promise more than one life can hold, and when things turn dull or difficult, some part of you is already looking at train times.

That honesty is also why people believe you. When you say the work is good, the friend with the novel knows it is, and keeps your message for years.