Venus-Uranus Aspects: Two-Minute Friends and other Modern Relationships

 ©2009 by Donna Cunningham

Note: Just so astrology lovers will keep reading, these personal vignettes illustrate my Venus-Uranus conjunction in the 11th, the house that describes our friendships.

I just got off the phone from a two-minute conversation with  one of my favorite sister-friends, Gretchen Lawlor, Astrologer and wise woman extraordinaire.  In our twice a year calls, she’s often harried, rushing somewhere that she’s already past due. We quickly update one another, and she promises to call back later, but never does. And yet, I know she loves me as I love her. At irregular intervals a year or three apart, she descends on Portland for some event, stays overnight, we go to our favorite Indian restaurant, and talk rapid-fire for hours to catch up. And, in the timelessness of true friendship, it’s like we’ve never been apart.

Is two minutes worth it? Yes, as it contains the essence of our connection. The most fascinating folks I know—the ones like Gretchen whose company I most enjoy—invariably are BUSY people. Their interests are many, their experience rich, their companions legion, and their time limited, so I’m pleased to share them with the world. (If you’d like to know why Gretchen is worth it, read a story I wrote about her at http://www.floweressencemagazine.com/feb07/cobwebstory.html.)

Denver, Colorado, May, 2008

It’s the first night of the United Astrology Congress, an international gathering that features 150 of astrology’s top speakers. I haven’t been to a conference in six years, and I’m in a trendy hamburger joint on the strip in front of the hotel. I’ve just met in person my two-year email friend, Liz Houle, my successor on the Astrologers’ Memorial Website. As we chat and chew, I watch astrological personages parade past the picture window—Rob Hand, Caroline Casey, Steven and Jodi Forrest, and many more.

I wonder if I’m dying, because my life is passing in front of my eyes. It’s like Main Street of some surreal Astrology Town, USA, except for the inconsequential fact that we all live elsewhere. And that’s how the whole week went. Almost everyone that I’ve known in my 40 years in the field who was still alive was there. (As well as a slew of dignitaries who are no longer with us, but that’s more of a story about Pluto than Uranus.) The congress was a warm homecoming for me and 1700 of my closest friends.

And just like Gretchen, many of these encounters were the two-minute variety—just enough to paint a portrait of our lives in rapid brush strokes, but no less real. So many colleagues, so little time! We’ve aged in six years, some of us startlingly, but we seemed to have mellowed as well. No feuds, no pitched battles for power this time around. We seemed conscious that it could be the last UAC for many of us, maybe even for the field—you just never know. At the Regulus banquet, we stood and cheered for our brothers and sisters who won well-deserved awards for service. (To order tapes of the speakers, see the link under Useful Sites.)

Internet Friendships—Another Modern Relationship

My most cherished internet friend is Deborah Bier, who 11 years ago approached me by email to ask if I’d join her in creating an online magazine about flower essences. And so we did, starting with the May, 1998 issue—10 years of publishing over 400 articles on the topic.

For the first year, we communicated entirely by email. We edited and set into html some 40 articles without speaking once. Then I decided that was ridiculous and picked up the phone. A year later, we met in person for the first time when she traveled to Portland to care for me for a week after my hip replacement.

We still often work on the ezine by email for hours, sending messages, images, and articles back and forth…along with clever repartee and execrable puns (hers, not mine!) It’s the best working partnership I’ve ever enjoyed, and being a continent apart is no barrier. (Note: We’re now converting Vibration to a blog that you can see at http://www.floweressencemagazine.com/blog.)

And so it is. Don’t get me wrong—not all my friendships are the two-minute kind. I spend hours gabbing with my friends here in town. But, rest assured, they’re a bunch of Uber-Uranian folks as well, BUSY people with wicked wits and weird interests to match my own. My 11th house is the greatest gift God gave me.

More Articles about Venus & Relationships On This Blog:

• Venus-Uranus Aspects among the Glitterati
• Venus-Saturn Aspects—Waiting for Love
• Relationship Patterns of Venus-Neptune Aspects: The Sociology of Thrice-Married Venusians
• Venus in the Elements: Fire, Earth, Air, & Water
• Saturn Transits the 7th House—a Rare Interview with Father Time Himself

More Posts about Uranus on this Blog:

• Uranian Ideas—Exceptional Thoughts about an Exceptional Planet
• URANUS IN THE CAREER HOUSES—“YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!”
• Vocational Angst for the Pluto-Uranus in Virgo Generation
• Venus-Uranus Aspects among the Glitterati
• Venus-Uranus Aspects: Two-Minute Friends and other Modern Relationships
• Some Life Patterns of People with Uranus-Saturn Aspects in the Birth Chart
• Neptune & Uranus in Mutual Reception
• Piracy on the High Seas and the Pirates among Us: The Transiting Mars-Uranus Conjunction
• The Transiting Mars-Uranus Conjunction, Last of 4

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