You will never break the chain: how the air signs connect us
bridging the gap between my molecules & your molecules
Air is invisible, and thus it is too often perceived as empty. It’s the illusion of detachment to those who must see rather than feel and hear. Realistically, scientifically, air is a connection we can never, ever separate ourselves from. You can stop touching my skin (earth). I can wash your saliva from my neck (water). You can calm and snuff the flame I lit in your body and my body heat will fade from your sheets (fire). But no matter where you go, no matter how far we get from one another, there is a sequence of molecules that will always, always connect us, bridging the space between, keeping us bound to one another like an invisible string. That is air.
By the way of air, I am touching you right now.
“Electrified by desire so that they touch not touching. Conjoined they are held apart.”
Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet
Think about what air is in the actual, physical world. It’s zillions and zillions of molecules, invisible to the naked eye, surrounding us at all times.
Air is typically invisible, unless combined with another element.
air + water = mist
water + fire = air = steam
air + earth = dust, trees swaying
air + earth + fire = exhaust fumes, smoke, smog
fire + earth + air = flames
Air can’t be seen because its molecules are too small to reflect enough light on their own. on its own, air has to be felt. But wave your hand through the space around you; there is matter there and the earth of your body can feel it though the eyes can’t see it. Air has an intangible quality that is hard to describe. An unexplainable connection, chemistry between two people, good conversation, an idea, synchronicity, the synergy between people on a well-functioning team, finding the right words, sound – these are all air things.
Air’s connective quality can’t be seen, so it’s sometimes thought to not exist or is mistaken for distance, detachment, or untouchability, but it’s the opposite. Air is an eternal longing – much like Carson said of Eros, “It is the edge separating my tongue from the taste for which it longs that teaches me what an edge is.” Perhaps most especially, air is the longing for a world that hears and reveres connection as constant and immersive, as air does.
The first air sign, Gemini, is ruled by Mercury, the god of boundaries and traversing them. It is this expression of air that experiments with leaving the confines of self and entering the space between, meeting the outside world in the middle. The first fire sign (Aries) is the sign of first cry, the first earth sign (Taurus) is the sign of first nourishment, and the first air sign (Gemini) is the sign of first speech. So often it is through speech that we reach out our hands to connect with another person.
Anne Carson herself was born at the edge of Gemini and Cancer. Without her birth time, we don’t know to which side her sun falls, but she is also a Virgo moon (Mercury’s other home), a Gemini Mercury, and a Libra Mars. She writes of traversing boundaries in the way that Mercury does. In Gemini, air translates inner into outer, crossing the boundary of self as they reach out a hand into the airy abyss, the so-called emptiness that surrounds us, in the hope of encountering the twin, the part of self that has so far felt missing. Air is looking for similarities, patterns, and resonance. Air is the breath in your ear that sets you afire, longing and reaching, perhaps, but almost afraid to consummate, to leave air and enter the realm of earth, fire, and water. As Carson wrote, “To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.”