The Age of Weird

Pluto in Aquarius

It’s been a weird week.

I’ve been mostly in bed incubating a virus, and my moments of emergence have been largely at the direction and discretion of the two small magical creatures that live in my house. I’m not sure if pretending to be a cat, coloring skeleton parties or organizing an impromptu glow-in-the-dark Avicii rave in the kitchen counts as “normal,” but it’s what life has delivered me in between episodes of The Americans.

It’s strange to take in all of these experiences in turn, like if you ordered truffled foie gras rillettes as a starter followed by Salt ‘N’ Vinegar Pringles as your main. And now that I think of it, my food choices have gone weird, too. I don’t know how gummy bears and tortilla chips go together, but it turns out they are happy to meet in my stomach when I feel queasy. (I know. WTF.)

I can’t say that I’m feeling unsettled by all of this, exactly. I know there is nothing sinister going on, and I can’t point to one single thing that’s out of place. But when you put it all together, it’s just… weird.

And maybe I’m weird, too. After all, I’m the one who meowed, the one who bought the Day of the Dead coloring book, the one who turned off the lights and put on the Swedish EDM. I’m also the one who scarfed sweet and salty snacks while I watched a gory 1980s Soviet spy drama set in my very own home state. I can’t tell you why I did any of these things, but I can tell you that they all felt perfectly normal at the time.

Thanks for the youthful look, Dall-E!

So then what exactly is weird? Is it just a label we put on something unfamiliar or in some way different from how we expect it to be? Are rainbow top hats weird? Are chocolate chip potato pancakes weird? Are Christmas miracles weird?

The more you get into it, the more that everything seems weird. From a brief sampling in my own immediate environment: Fingers are weird. Fingernails are really weird. Computer screens are weird. Keyboards are even weirder. Electricity is weird. WiFi is beyond weird.

From this thorough scientific experiment, I conclude that weirdness exists exclusively in the eye of the beholder. It’s a relative concept we can apply to anyone and anything we wish, and we can change our conception of what is “weird” at any time. You have probably done this yourself, for instance the first time you tried bubble tea and found out how delicious it is.🧋

I’ve also noticed that ideas of weirdness seem limited to adults. My little dinner companions have no compunction about turning their veggie burgers into heavily compacted ketchup sandwiches with limited nutritional value. And when I was a kid, I remember once warming up a whole pack of Starburst in my hands and then smooshing them together into one giant ball I could bite.

Side note: “Gross” is another common variation of “weird.”

This looks one million times more appetizing than what I ate.

So weirdness has something to do with novelty and social convention, and it leaves us somewhere between celebrating uniqueness and other-ing. With these Earthly themes on my mind, there’s only one place to look in the sky: Aquarius. Aquarius is the place where we step outside of (1) ourselves and (2) the world structures we have created together, also known as “society”, “the system”, and “consensus reality.” It offers us a reflective perch above the frenzied fray of day-to-day drama, a reclusive retreat into our own sense of belief about who (and what) we are.

I’ve written about the current prominence of Aquarian energy a fair number of times over the past few years, perhaps most notably back when Jupiter and Saturn came together in the sign of the water-bearer in 2020. And just shy of four years later, Pluto has come out of Capricorn and into Aquarius for keeps this week. Our favorite icy rock is now here to stay for twenty years in this most humanitarian of places.

Pluto expertly illuminates the shadow of disgust wherever it sits, and right now to me this feels a lot like “weird.” I remember when weird had a moment in American politics over the summer, and I also remember being confused about whether it was an insult. I gather that it was intended as such, and I now appreciate my discomfort at using weird in a pejorative way. Weirdness is not an objective (or negative) quality that can be permanently ascribed to others, and it’s neither kind nor helpful to call someone “weird” just because they are different from you. You can also bet that if someone looks weird to you, then you probably look weird to them, too.

We’re all aliens somewhere.

So how do we work with Pluto in Aquarius to rewrite the script on weird?

For one thing, we can all embrace our own signature brand of weirdness, that curious collection of quirky characteristics that set us apart from the pack. Because if all of us get comfortable being weird, then weirdness becomes totally normal. And if we’re okay being both weird and normal at the same time, we can enjoy feeling wholly unique in ourselves and also fully belong to the world around us.

For another thing, we can start noticing when we describe something we encounter (a person, a place, an experience) as “weird.” We can pause to appreciate its novelty, and we can choose not to recoil in fear but instead to listen with love. We can remember that everything on the outside comes from the inside, and that we are really only ever reacting to ourselves.

I hope you are looking forward to these next two decades of weird camp as much as I am. May we live forever in interesting times!

Love,

Patrick