But I don't want to wake up.

Jeez, it's like I've been in a bunker around here. Work, work, work, then yesterday Jonny had a miserable cold (and he almost never gets sick), and the next thing I know it's more than a week and I haven't updated the blog. For which you might well thank me - because it is beyond boring to read about how busy someone is. And I have little else to share.

I mean, I could tell you about how my hair started falling out a couple of years ago, when my progressed Moon entered my first house. I blamed it on a deadly stress cocktail of school and home renovation, but even after my life stabilized, the hairline didn't. So last week I abandoned my flaxseed and evening primrose oil hopes and officially descended into the shameful, heart of darkness, Rogaine for Women abyss. It's true: I am dosing my scalp twice daily with this astringent goo, in hopes of Stimulating My Folicles. I simply don't have the bone structure to pull off baldness. When did women start going bald, anyway? One friend, slightly younger than I am, is having a similar struggle; another friend has been wearing a wig since her late thirties. What gives? Is Oprah talking about this?

I could tell you of our restless ruminations about buying property overseas; about the fact that I'm finding it next to impossible to carve time out of my days to write This Friggin' Book; about how I'm really not sleeping well, not at all, and that I blame this - all of this - on transiting Uranus aspecting my 12th house Neptune. "Wake up!" Uranus is fairly screeching at me, and I just want a good night's sleep and a vacation. And some hair.

Puppets for Peace

A view from yesterday's protest at Balboa Park, marking the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. The San Diego Puppet Insurgency created and manned the giant puppets (thanks to Mel for the photo):



Shown: Uncle Sam with "Big Business";
Iraqi mother carrying her dead child.

Despite the threat of rain, about one thousand people are estimated to have taken part in the rally. One group marched all the way from Oceanside to the event over the span of two days.

Meanwhile, supporters of the war manned a few small booths across the street, and a couple of groups of surly, leather-clad patriots wearing flags stuck in their sleeves and brandishing bibles strolled through the throng of protesters, glowering. Good thing they were there to uphold an important Christian value taken directly from biblical teachings: "Thou shalt menace the peacemakers." I'll bet Jesus had bouncers at the Sermon on the Mount, too.

But it was, appropriately enough, a peaceful event, and all went smoothly. The only way the day could have been any better would have been if there had been nothing to protest in the first place.

This Friggin' Book.

Lately I am reminded of a curious bit of truth initially gleaned in my reckless youth. I learned it first in the context of dating, but I find it applies to just about any situation, and it is this: You are never more desirable than when you are unavailable.

Along with the usual astrology stuff, my website design business grew suddenly, freakishly busy at the beginning of the year. Meanwhile, I pitched a proposal to a publisher (say that three times fast) a couple of months ago and they gave it thumbs up ("it's the feel-good proposal of the year!"), and now I'm supposed to submit a manuscript in August. So my goal was to finish up all my outstanding projects in February and turn my attention this month to what I have come to refer to as This Friggin' Book.

Hahahahahaha! And ha! Because as we know,it is almost exactly halfway through March, and yet it's only this week that I've managed to extract myself - surgically, in some cases - from the desperate clients who needed Just One More Thing Done on their websites before we said our goodbyes, meanwhile stemming the tide of further requests for this and that from here and there.

I suppose it's my own fault; last week's New Moon in Pisces fell in my fourth house - "the house of endings" - so I should've known all along that this would be the finish-up month. Looking at it from an astrological perspective then, I'm actually ahead of schedule! And the Aries New Moon falls in my fifth house; doesn't that sound good for writing? I mean, other than the eclipses and everything? One friggin' well hopes so.

Swimming with the fishes

In honor of tomorrow's New Moon in Pisces (1:10 am PST), I've published a new article, Divine Vulnerability, over at my website. Here's the New Moon chart (calculated for San Diego, using Koch houses):



It's a kicker of a New Moon chart, with the Sun, Moon, and Venus all square Pluto. Here in San Diego, Pluto falls smack on the ascendant and all that Pisces stuff (including Uranus) is in the third house. Guess that explains why it's feeling a bit Mercury retrograde-ish around here already (Mercury doesn't actually station until the 19th), and with a nasty twist to it, too. Mercury in his Trickster guise can usually get a rueful chuckle out of us even while he's eating our email messages and giving bad directions to out-of-town guests, but this time, the beasts are snarling and nipping at each others' heels, and misunderstandings and delays are causing tension rather than mirth.

Fortunately, Saturn is a saving grace in this chart, providing able support and spine to the Pisces planets, and hopefully restraining impetuous Mercury in Aries (square Mars) from doing anything too rash. Presumably when Mercury turns retrograde, Aries will be unable to locate his ammo. Still, drive safely out there, campers.

The Dustbin

My friend Claudia, a Pisces, disliked astrology for years because she objected to the way most astrology books characterize her sun sign. "They always call it the 'dustbin of the zodiac' and stuff like that," she complains. And she's right; lazy astrology writers who begin with Aries and work their way down to Pisces have often run out of interesting and eloquent ways of expressing themselves by the time they get to the twelfth sign. "Alcoholic poets," they might say, or "just this side of insane; thieves, priests, escapists."

But even more problematic than tactless astrologers is the fact that Pisces is a symbol that defies rational and linear description. It is everything and nothing, the alpha and the omega, the heights and the depths. Some of the most fascinating and formidable people I've known were born when the sun was in Pisces; every Pisces I've known well (and I count among these my best friend and the dear aunt who helped raise me) has been an achiever, an activist, an artist, and a treasure. They've made me jealous and crazy, have intimidated and inspired me. And just when I think I've got them figured out, they surprise me.

Pisces marks the culmination of our seasonal year, and the culmination of human experience. The world is full of dirt and refuse and difficulty that collects in our odd corners, but Pisces avoids ninety-degree angles, swimming out to sea for regular baptisms. So no, Pisces brethren, you are not a psychic dustbin; you are the repositories of our collective wisdom, pain, and ecstacy.