Meet your Astrologer
(in 2 Perspectives)
BIO (PROSE VERSION)
Willamarie was born on the south side of Chicago in the riotous ‘60s. Finding – playing – music early in life, she credits Beethoven, David Bowie, and Sweet Honey in the Rock with saving her life over and over again. After schooling in the DC area and cornfields of OH, she went off to Asia and lived in urban Japan and rural Cambodia for most of her twenties. Back in the U.S. (and in alignment with her first Saturn return), she settled in the Northeast after grad school. Married, and after a beautiful chapter concluded, divorced. Taught in classrooms, museums and yoga studios, and after another blessed chapter of life concluded, went on sabbatical… and never returned.
Moving to the Southwest allowed her to exhale. And invited her to look up. From the constellations in the clear, dark night skies, answers came. Coaching and counseling (herself and) others with the tools of Evolutionary Astrology has been her passion ever since. Along with writing poems and songs. Iyengar Yoga, Vedic Chant, and frequent immersions in Nature remain staples of daily life. As do the songs of Bowie and Sweet Honey. And especially Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.
BIO (POETIC FORM)
Inspired by Lisel Mueller’s poem, “Curriculum Vitae”
C.V., by Willamarie Moore
(1) I was born on the south side of Chicago, Michael Reese Hospital.
(2) In the year of my birth, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead and Chicago was aflame with riots. Of course I do not remember this.
(3) Parents brought me to the elders in Virginia, including Great-Grandaddy just before he passed and whose smile at me is etched forever in one of the greatest of the family photos. (The Philippines was too far away for an infant to travel. But not for a toddler – when the parents took me there and we adopted my brother. I do not remember meeting my Filipino relatives then.)
(4) Nursery School was on the U of C campus in a building that was originally a house and stood across the street from the Frank Lloyd Wright Robie House. Finger-painting vividly colors my memory.
(5) At home books filled shelves, art filled walls, music filled the air – whether coming from my tiny hands on the mammoth upright piano or wafting from the 8-track cassette tapes: Simon & Garfunkel, Joan Baez, the Carpenters. I wrote poems.
(6) On Sundays we went to Chinatown for dim sum. I always had to unbutton my pants under my sweater to accommodate my “happy Buddha” stuffed belly.
(7) Our family was struck apart, temporarily at first, when my mother moved to Washington, DC for a job.
(8) My father brought me and my brother at the end of the school year so we could start the next in a DC suburb.
(9) I moved into adolescence as the “new kid” with David Bowie as my familiar – passionate – companion.
(10) Two parents split for good; I went off to college. My brother stayed behind with my father until it was his turn.
(11) At Oberlin I experienced expansion: Junior Year abroad, Phi Beta Kappa. I experienced contraction: stomach ulcer, deeply broken heart.
(12) When I went to Japan in my 22nd year, the language I had studied since high school served me well – perhaps too well, as I slipped effortlessly in the grueling “salary-man” worklife.
(13) The death of 13 commuters from the 1995 sarin gas attack on the very Tokyo subway line I used to ride daily took place only months after I’d moved to Cambodia.
(14) By no means an ordinary life there: An American girl living within the Japanese expat community, working with international aid organizations to help rebuild a broken country. I could ride my bicycle to Angkor Wat – but only carefully: landmines remained buried.
(15) One year of this.
(16) Back in DC, grad school for Anthropology – only to academicize what I’d been living for years.
(17) And then love. To Boston. Marriage. Ten years – a beautiful chapter. Rumi was part of it.
(18) We tried. Made a home but couldn’t make a family of it. He needed to be a father; I needed freedom. Parting was filled with grace.
(19) One day the density of crowds around me disappeared. (The population of the entire state of New Mexico is less than half of Greater Boston. And elevators are a rare ride.)
(20) So far, so good. The days get more and more brilliant. The night skies are filled with constellations that tell stories. What will follow – in the second half of my CV?