Deirdre Tanton writes:

To get back to the German story, yesterday, on that Big Full Moon day, my strategy was to stay in. I saw Venus opposed Pluto involved in the Full Moon, and since I know I like being stable, the one and only reason I planned to go out was to get my haircut by my beloved Croatian haircutter. On the way there, I was at a red light on my bike, and suddenly, as close as Moon was to Pluto, right next to me was a Sagittarian woman I wasnt friends with anymore. If we had been in cars, it would have been easy to give a salute to what had been and go on, but we were conjunct, parallel and closely confronted with each other. “Deirdre”, she said, “it’s just like yesterday, we should really get together sometime and have an ice cream.”

I smiled a disciplined Capricorn ascendant smile, untangling my aura from hers and knew I would never have an ice cream with her. I was wishing the light would turn green and let her take off like a rock star. It did and I didn’t budge and neither did she. “Petra and I talk so much about you”, she continued in her fast, slang German, “we were just saying the other day, gosh how did we lose touch with Deirdre?”

Finally I told her, in my slow, grammatically correct German, that we lost contact because we never call each other anymore. I reminded her of the natural qualities of me she told me back then she didn’t like and I told her I am still the same. “Why would we meet?” I asked. “We don’t understand each other, remember?” She was taken aback, but I am not interested in being in a loop — it’s really painful.

There is a certain way that people of different cultures can clash and when that is added to normal friends’ problems, it makes a cloudy psychological labyrinth with no exit. People here often tell me Americans are superficial because if you meet an American, the first thing the American will say is “Great to see you, please come to our house anytime for dinner.” Is this the family that lives at the entrance of the Grand Canyon or the other family who lives next to Graceland? Otherwise, who are they talking about? Then, they say, if you show up at the American’s house, you realize they didn’t mean it. Whatever! I don’t like hearing about this, and I have heard this same story at least twice a year now for 13 years. Plus, I experience the same here. Why did this Sagittarian woman just say she wanted to go out for ice cream, isn’t it the same?

Have you ever gotten involved in cultural misunderstandings? Where is your Jupiter?