Every week a different FADER staff member will pick a clothing item or accessory that he or she has lately been spending a lot of time with—or would like to—and write a little love letter to it. We would’ve done a column on who we’re dating but that seemed a little bit much. This week Alex Frank writes about the Gemini Pendant by Isabelle Grace Jewelry.
Next week is my birthday, a moment I'm not, nor will ever be psyched for. There are plenty of reasons why I never look forward to it, reasons you're probably familiar with in your own birthday dread. But one reason that is specific to me and all people born between May and June is that my birthday falls in the Gemini phase of the Zodiac. For those of you unfamiliar with astrology, this means that my personality is ruled by the Gemini constellation, named for Castor and Pollux, the two twins of Greek myth who rule all people born between May 22 and June 20. It is said that all Geminis have both brothers in their soul, a split personality torn right down the middle that makes it hard to ever feel whole. Geminis, they say, are never complete.
Marilyn Monroe was a Gemini and we all see how her ambivalence ripped her to pieces. I'm not exactly ashamed of my birthright, but it's the sign of the Zodiac that most ensures you're always a fixer-upper, forever trying to collapse two disparate feelings into one. Each birthday passes and I'm no closer to an adult sense of wisdom or complacency, always stuck in a civil war. I can't pick food off a menu let alone commit to a relationship. Even recently, the prospect of signing my very first lease to a beautiful apartment gave me pangs of renter's remorse, the anxiety of being forced to make any committed choice.
In an effort to resolve the tension, I got this pendant to wear around my neck, a single coin to house both Castor and Pollux in unshakeable, unmovable Sterling Silver. I will probably never allay my anxieties, but I can own them, wear them proudly, and maybe that's a step in the right direction. I'm turning one year older next week, after all, and maybe my birthdays wouldn't be such points of horror if I start acting one year wiser, too.