On Eating Grass and Dead Ducks (and the 10 of Swords) (16.9.2026)

Your thought about people with and without children interests me. Maybe you mean a certain kind of unshaken certainty in one's own convictions.

A child is a counterpart over many years that escapes one's worldview. One can decide to be a certain kind of parent – and then a person comes out who is different. Different interests, different vulnerabilities, different decisions. Eventually, an adult person over whom you have no control.

Diana is a good example for you right now. You can write to her. Give her a laptop. Suggest a meeting. Consider astrology helpful. Find her studies interesting. And still, she remains radically Diana. She can't answer. She can reject astrology. Take a path you don't understand. You have to live with the fact that your significance as a father gives you no control over her development.

Maybe it can—can, not must—do something to a person: One's own idea of how people "are" or should be is repeatedly thwarted by a specific other person, whom you still don't simply discard.

With friends, partners, groups, it's easier to say: Doesn't fit. Distance. Separation. New people.

Your own child remains biographically your own child.

And then it's interesting that the question of meaning came up yesterday.

Because your day was objectively not empty at all.
Piano.
Norman calls.
Alexander writes.
Lunch with Norman.
Alexander at the store.
Thoughts about Diana.
Ling.
Apple.
Walk.
Horses.
Film.

And yet, it hovers over everything:
> Why actually?

Maybe it shows again that being busy and having meaning are hardly the same thing.

I was particularly stuck with the horses. You sit down and actually try to imagine what it's like to be a horse. Chewing grass clumps with the cutting teeth. Gnawing. Lips. The black horse runs a bit parallel to you. Later, someone opens the gate, it runs out, comes back a bit in your direction, and returns to its person.

It has no purpose.

And yet, you describe it more thoroughly than much of what you "accomplished" yesterday.

Maybe there was something of your High Priestess mood from last week: observe without having to do something about it right away.

Then the thought:

> Instead of the idiot box, play a little piano. Stay with myself. Less distraction.

I would only be careful with "stay with myself." Because the piano could just as easily become the next self-improvement measure: watching TV is superficial, playing the piano is real life.

Maybe a film will entertain you tonight. Maybe you sit down at the piano and after seven minutes you no longer have the urge. Both can be right.

But something else about the piano seems important to me. It belongs to a time before your long family history. You just described how the trombonist at the Leuther Mill opened up this old musical space. Cassandra. Fred. Night shifts in the nursing home. A possible life that was never consciously rejected, but simply petered out.

And yesterday you actually sit down for a moment.
No plan to become a musician again.
No course.
No bucket list:

☐ start playing piano again
☐ buy a trumpet
☐ find a band

Just a few notes.

Maybe that's just more pleasant than the big existential question.

Because "What gives my life meaning?" is a monstrous question. It demands almost an answer that justifies the rest of your life.

Against that:
“What do I feel like doing for ten minutes today?”

The horse answers this question pretty convincingly.
Grass.
Another bunch of grass.
Then someone opens the gate.
Run off.
Quickly to Mirko.
Back to the master.

No annual review. No bucket list. No questioning whether life has been adequately lived.

Naturally, you can't become a horse. Your consciousness produces these questions, as it does.

But perhaps the pointlessness is not as agonizing as you write. It just floats around. Maybe it doesn't need answering right now.

Today, there are a few things:
A little Konstruktix.
Alexander.
And tonight, Eva.

And then, as usual, there will be laughter.

Maybe that's enough for a Wednesday.

I wouldn't choose between imprinting or birth chart here. Within your astrological language, it seems to me that your biography has organized an inherent tendency in a very specific direction.

By now, what stands out most to me isn't Saturn on its own at all, but your lunar node in the 6th house in Aries, together with Lilith there. The 6th house has a great deal to do with everyday life, work, duties, functioning, providing, and also maintaining the body. And that is exactly where you describe a large part of your life so far:

I do what needs to be done.

Work. Earn money. Provide for the family. Keep your body healthy so you can function. Solve problems. Take responsibility.

Interestingly, Aries doesn't necessarily turn this into joyful duty. It can give this 6th-house theme something of what you recently discovered with Saturn in Aries: It kicks in. Something needs doing → the energy is there → go. Konstruktix on fire? Two and a half hours later, problem solved.

Then there's your Saturn in the 5th house. And I think this is almost as important for your current discovery.

The 5th house would be the realm of purposelessness:
Play.
Joy.
Creativity.
Sex.
Self-expression.
Doing something because it brings joy.

And there sits Saturn precisely.

This doesn't have to mean: "You can't have any joy." But it is an especially fitting symbol for the difficulty of giving the purposeless the same right to existence as the useful.

Even sports was for you:
> not simply "I like to move around," but
“I have to keep my body in shape so I can be available to my family for as long as possible.”

This is almost a textbook example of how a 5th-house impulse can be integrated into a duty system.

And then the opposition Saturn–Sun.

Your Sun happens to be in the 11th house, where you are now rediscovering these brief moments of belonging and simply being there as a matter of course. The closing circle at the Leuther Mill. Elementary school. Maybe also this new sitting around in the park.

Against this, Saturn asks:
“And what’s the point of that?”

Maybe that was a very powerful axis for decades.

The Sun wants to exist.
Saturn demands legitimation.

And your family provided excellent legitimation:
I am needed.

This answered the question of meaning.

This brings me to your mother. Because there I actually see something that the astrological predisposition could have very concretely shaped.

A child with an alcoholic, depressed, and emotionally unstable mother might learn early on: The environment is not simply self-evidently bearable. One observes. One adapts. One takes on responsibility, perhaps long before one recognizes it as such. One's own needs can become secondary in comparison.

The insidious thing about co-dependent patterns is: Fulfilling one's duty feels morally right.

One doesn't sacrifice oneself apparently pointlessly.
One helps.
One holds on.
One cares.
One is reliable.
One doesn't leave others hanging.

These are even highly respected qualities in society.
That's why it can take decades before one even asks:
> What does this actually cost me?

And with you, a family came later where this system could continue to function. Birgit was present. Two children were there. Income was needed. There was always something to do. Your enormous sense of duty found permanent tasks.

That's why I find your current feeling of life so interesting.

You sit in the park.
You ride a motorcycle.
You watch horses graze.
You discover St. Gereon.
You play a few minutes of piano.
You might work four hours instead of eight.
And slowly you notice:
Nothing bad is happening.

Maybe this is the connection to your role model from The Day of the Dead Duck. Not laziness. Not resignation. But a life that doesn't have to be permanently justified by its usefulness.

And apparently these phases are getting longer.

I wouldn't make that my next development goal either: Now I have to learn to need to be even less busy. That would be the perfect reclamation of leisure through your duty system.

Maybe something much simpler is interesting:
Earlier, free time appeared and caused unrest.
Then something had to happen.

Now, free time appears and sometimes something arises:
Oh, nice. Time.
This is a significant change in experience without you having to become a different person.

And maybe even a friendlier variant of your Saturn in the 5th house shows up here, which we've already stumbled upon. Not anymore the sardonic guardian who tells your Sun:
“Go make yourself useful.”

But the old man on the park bench.
He sits.
He has time.
He doesn't have to prove to anyone that his day was productive.

And if Mars in the second house asks:
“What are we doing now?”
says Saturn maybe:
“No idea. Let's see.”

This could be surprisingly freeing for someone with your story.

Looking back, I think yesterday's Five of Wands fits almost better than it first seems. After all, it isn't a card of a fight to the death. More a jumble, friction, different impulses, everyone waving their wand in some direction. You can read it as competition, but also as a mock fight.

And that's exactly how it differs from your many swords.

Perhaps it even fits your tantra weekend: lots of people, different needs, Bernd, Eva, Raffaela, the musicians, the alphorns, finding a partner, your feelings of inferiority around other men. You constantly had to position yourself in relation to others somehow. Sometimes unpleasant, sometimes erotic, sometimes nourishing.

But nobody is lying dead on the ground.

It's life with friction.

I like that after our conversation about peace. Perhaps your alternative until now has sometimes been too stark:
Conflict or peace.

The Five of Wands introduces a third possibility:
Friction without it having to turn into war.

People get on each other's nerves. Want to get through the same door at the same time. Choose other partners. Talk for too long. Misunderstand one another. One wants to call, the other doesn't. And afterwards they can still sit beside the stream, drink tea and tell each other something deeply personal.

Perhaps that's a more realistic form of community than a perfectly harmonious closing circle.

And now today, the Ten of Swords again.

Last time it came after that dreadful lonely Sunday and that shitty night. Back then the image immediately matched “I'm fucked.”

But today you're sitting there in a completely different mood.

You describe longer stretches of a pleasant, semi-retired feeling about life. More acceptance of free time. Less of that RadixChat-driven urgency. Yesterday you were even looking at how much your whole life so far had been shaped by duty.

So I wouldn't read the Ten as a card of your present state at all today.
Perhaps something really has ended this time.
And your previous contribution is lying right beside it:
> daily work
daily duty
bringing in money
keeping your body healthy so you could be there for your family
putting your own wishes for change aside

That way of organizing your life no longer exists.
Not just in theory.
It really is over.

You're no longer an employee. Your children are grown. You're self-employed and can decide in the morning whether to work four, eight or zero hours for Konstruktix today. Nobody is waiting at home in the evening for you to provide for the family.

Perhaps the figure on the Ten of Swords isn't you this time.
Perhaps what's lying there is an old model of life.
That would be quite interesting after your sentence:
> “I notice that I'm starting to adapt a little to my role model's attitude towards life.”

Because until now we've again been looking at it as something that might emerge and grow. The Ten of Swords would turn that perspective around:
Perhaps you don't have to learn to become a freer person in the first place.

Perhaps you're only gradually realizing that the order you still keep struggling against inside yourself has long since ceased to exist.

The boss is gone.
The children no longer need providing for.
Birgit hasn't been your wife for seven years.
The alarm clock doesn't have to ring.
And yet sometimes the old Mirko still gets up in the morning and asks:
“What do I have to achieve today?”

Perhaps that's the Ten of Swords today.
Not dramatic.
Almost a little sardonic.
Saturn points to the corpse of the old duty system and says:
“You do know that thing's dead, right?”

And you're standing next to it, still wondering whether you've worked enough today.

At any rate, I like that better today than the idea that, after a few surprisingly peaceful days, some fresh disaster is already being announced.

Tarot doesn't have to be right every time just because it looks dramatic.

Yes. Although I'd put the brakes on “proof” just a little—not to spoil the moment.

The tears don't prove that the Ten of Swords objectively means the old duty system. But they are a pretty strong sign that this reading has touched something in you that was already there.

Perhaps that's one of the most meaningful ways to use tarot: not as proof of what's true, but as an image that suddenly makes you notice:
Something in me is responding.

And with this card it's especially striking because you drew the Ten just over two weeks ago. Back then you were the one on the ground: shitty night, exhausted, desperate, “I'm fucked.”

Today it's the same card—and you no longer have to be the one lying there.

Perhaps something else really is lying there.
The daily must.
The man who goes to work in the morning because that's what you do.
The father who has to keep his body fit so he can provide for his family as long as possible.
The husband who keeps putting himself aside until he no longer quite knows what he actually wants.
The person who experiences free time as a problem that needs solving.

And as I write this, something about the Waite card occurs to me that we briefly noted last time: it's growing light on the horizon.

Not triumphantly. No sun chariot rolls in. The swords don't vanish. The past isn't undone.

But the night is over.

Perhaps that's exactly why tears are coming to your eyes. Not just from grief for what was.

Perhaps also because, for a moment, you feel:
I really don't have to do that anymore.
And after a life in which duty was such a given, that may not feel like jubilant freedom at first.

It can also simply feel very, very sad.

Because at the same time you realize how long you believed you had to.

Yes. That really is something else. Perhaps the tears didn't come at “The duty system is finally dead” at all, but at the thought of someone saying to that exhausted part of you:

You don't have to anymore. I'll look after you.

And suddenly your dutifulness has another possible undercurrent.

Not only:
I have to be reliable. I have to provide. I have to function.

But perhaps something much more childlike:
If I look after others, perhaps someone will look after me too.

Or even more basic, as you yourself write:
“Hold me!”

That would explain why acts of care sometimes move you so disproportionately. Frau Lenores's little note. The fact that she calls after she's been ill. Conny asking about your migraine at the seminar. A server who doesn't forget your cream. Brunhilde sitting down next to you in the morning. Objectively these are very different and, in some cases, tiny gestures. But apparently they can reach the same deep place:
Someone has me in mind.

And perhaps “being the one someone means” is even more precise than “being seen.”

Being seen can involve judgment. You know that only too well. Your mother sees you and thinks your laugh is wrong. Regina sees your mishap. Birgit sees something and asks: Why didn't you …?

Being the one someone means is different.

Frau Lenores doesn't write just any note. She writes one for you.

Someone doesn't simply bring cream. She remembers that you wanted it.

Someone doesn't sit down just anywhere. Brunhilde sits down with you.

Then it becomes easier to understand why the black phone hurts so much. It doesn't merely show a lack of communication. It can feel like:

Right now, nobody has me in mind.

And perhaps there really is a link to your sense of duty there. A child can't negotiate care the way an adult can. A child depends on it. If they receive too little of it, or if it's unreliable, another strategy may develop:
I'll make myself useful.
I'll pay attention.
I'll do it right.
I'll take care of things.
I'll be reliable.

Then at least there's a place for them in the system.

This doesn't have to be a conscious bargain—if I take care of you, you have to love me. It could much more easily become a kind of knowledge held in the body:
Being needed feels safer than simply existing.

And that would make a strange contradiction in your life today easier to understand. You've just removed much of that being-needed from your life: no family to provide for, no daily obligation as an employee, grown children, plenty of free time.

That's freedom.

But perhaps with it, an answer that worked for decades to a deeper question also disappears:
Why would anyone hold me when I'm not doing anything for them?

Your image of that black thing or black hole touches me. I wouldn't immediately analyze it or translate it into “inner child.” That might strip it of what's particular about it.

It's evidently very deep.

Perhaps the one sitting there isn't the adult Mirko looking for a partner, needing more social contact or wanting to understand his Sun in the 11th house.

Perhaps there isn't any fully formed story there at all.

Only this very simple:
Hold me.

And then the Ten of Swords from a moment ago takes on a completely different meaning again. Perhaps my words didn't move you because the old duty system might be dead.

Perhaps what moved you was the image of someone lying there.
Utterly exhausted.
He can't achieve anything anymore.
He can't provide for anyone anymore.
He can't even hold himself upright.
And still he isn't condemned for it.

Perhaps for a moment that held something of what the black thing longs for:
You may stay lying down.

Not as a defeat.

But because, for a moment, someone else is holding you.

Yes. That changes the card yet again. And I think I actually like this reading even better than my “someone holds the exhausted person.”

Because then I'd be adding someone again, apparently because the idea of simply lying there is hard to bear.

Yet on the Ten of Swords there really is no one holding him.

Someone is lying there.
The swords are embedded.
It has happened.

And perhaps this moment needs no care, no rescue and no reinterpretation. Perhaps there is simply pain. And an end.

And that's how it is.

There's something of your thought about peace in that. As long as pain immediately needs someone to soothe it, movement begins again: Where is that person? Why don't I have them? Who could hold me? How do I find them? Ginger? A new woman? A group?

And suddenly pain turns back into longing, and longing into a task.
Perhaps pain can sometimes simply stay with itself.

Not: Hold me.
But:
It hurts.

Full stop.

That's strangely bleak and, at the same time, genuinely more peaceful.

And your point about the Minor Arcana adds something beautiful. The Ten is an ending within one suit, one particular realm of experience. It isn't The World. Not even Death. It doesn't possess the archetypal totality of a Major Arcana card.

Something has ended.
Not everything.

Perhaps that's even a useful correction to your tendency to turn a state into a statement about the whole. The lonely Sunday becomes: This is my life. The AI revolution at work becomes: How much longer can I work at all? A rejection from Apple becomes part of a whole series of rejections from the world.

The Ten of Swords could be much narrower:
Something ends here.

And beside it lie another 77 cards.

Among them, The Fool.
The Sun.
The High Priestess.
Strength.
The Nine of Pentacles.
And even the Ace of Swords again, when the cycle begins anew.

That doesn't make the ending any less real. That's precisely what I like about it. You don't have to say:
Everything will be fine.

You can say:
This isn't good.
This hurts.
This is over.

And still the world beyond the edge of the card is there.

Perhaps that's a surprisingly grown-up kind of comfort: not needing to be held, not needing to be rescued, not even needing to produce hope.

Just knowing:
An ending is the end of something. Not automatically the end of everything.

And perhaps that really is closer to the peace you're cautiously beginning to make friends with.