Big Sky AstroBlog

Here's where the action is...

2006-07-28T12:06:00.000-07:00

Transiting Uranus conjuncted my IC...

2006-07-12T15:43:00.001-07:00

... and all I moved was my blog. Join the party at:
www.bigskyastrology.com/bloggish!

Full Moon in Capricorn: The Business of Taking Care

2006-07-08T16:10:00.000-07:00

In time for Monday's Full Moon in Capricorn (8:02 pm PDT / 11:02 pm), I've posted a new article at my website entitled "The Business of Taking Care":

There is an old adage that "good fences make good neighbors." Like neighbors whose picket fence strikes a happy compromise between privacy and sociability, we all feel safer and more relaxed when we know where the boundaries are. Capricorn is a master surveyor, with a keen eye for fairness and a strong back for building a good fence. At this Full Moon in his sign, consider where you might benefit from enlisting his services.... (read full article at website)

Taking planets... personally.

2006-07-06T21:44:00.000-07:00

Heh. Jeff's cranky today! Rant on, astro-brother!

(Mercury decided to turn retrograde about fifty yards short of my natal Mercury - but I'm trying not to take it personally. Wait... what am I talking about? I take everything personally! Damn Mercury!)

Anyway, Jeff's entry got me thinking about my own relationship with day-to-day astrology. I confess: I like the "personal" planets, the Sun - Mars shades of the spectrum. Not that I ever use them in working with clients. No, they come for the Big Picture, and so Saturn through Pluto it is, with maybe a dash of Mars or Jupiter thrown in for timing or much-needed hope.

But man, down here on the ground, in my own little day-to-day world, I'm looking for ANYTHING that can distract me from that interminable transiting Saturn/Sun conjunction I've got happening, and that oppressively unsettling Uranus/MC/IC transit. Hell, I needed regular diversions from Pluto for TEN YEARS. I mean, it's just too bleak to spend every day examining the big picture when the big picture is an epic mural of suckage.

So, I use the lunations, and the aspects of the fast-moving planets, and whatever, as a sort of microcosmic lens to bring the big picture down into life-size, portable focus. Sort of like - and this is complete overkill, stick with me here - someone who's in prison serving a ten-year sentence, what's he gonna do, sit there meditating each day on the ten year sentence? "Another day down - 3,284 to go!" God, no. That way lies madness! So, he breaks the sentence down, compartmentalizes the experience. Looks at the next two and a half years; maybe he can finish school or write a book in that amount of time. He plans to achieve a certain definition to his muscular system over the next nine to ten months. And maybe, by next month, he'll be able to wittle a shiv out of a mousetrap or something.

No doubt about it, to go through this exercise on a regular basis is to risk losing the big picture. And, like the cereal commercials used to say, "Lucky Charms is part of this complete breakfast!" In other words, tasty though it may be, obsessing about day-to-day aspects to the exclusion of weightier outer-planet ones can lead to astrological malnutrition. So, not unlike the prisoner who goes before the parole board, we astrologers check in with a colleague every year or two, so he or she can rattle the slow-moving transits and progressions at us, help us chart our progress, and kick us in the pants as needed.

But I don't know - the fast-moving transits, for me, are the warp and woof of daily life; they let me take each day as a beautifully complete little micro-lesson, a meditation, an astrological prayer if I were the praying sort. On the days when I give up and let Saturn chase me under the blankets for a good sulk, thank God there's still a Venus kiss from the husband, or a lunar bowl of vanilla ice cream, or a mischievous, Mercurial cat ready to lure me out and provide a welcome respite.

And on that note, happy transits to all, and to all a good night!

I'm such a card.

2006-07-06T20:08:00.000-07:00

"You scored as The Lovers.

Active passion; for a person or possibly for an activity or interest - Choice in making a relationship - Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - Issues of beauty, ugliness and the true nature of both - Passion and love.

These cards are from The Victorian Romantic Tarot. It's based on original Victorian engravings, some of which are now rare."

Which Victorian Romantic Tarot card are you? With pictures.
created with QuizFarm.com

Spike on wheels!

2006-06-28T09:40:00.000-07:00

Spike takes a spin in his lovingly handcrafted "Chuck wagon" - named for the Charles Shaw wine (known around these parts as "Two-buck Chuck", 'cuz you can buy a bottle for $1.99) box that serves as the cab.

Wedding stuff

2006-06-23T14:10:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I've got an article posted over at AOL Horoscopes about ... astrology and weddings and Venus' sign. There. I can't put it any more eloquently than that. (I've been struggling all morning to cut 500 words from a magazine piece that's due this afternoon. Apparently, I'm cutting words here so I don't have to cut them there.)

Plus, Sunday is the day! Jonny and I have spent the past several months developing a new report, a sort of astrological wedding planner called "Moonstruck," and it goes on sale Sunday. Consider ordering a fistful of subscriptions for all the rattled brides in your life....

Summer at Big Sky Astrology

2006-06-22T16:25:00.000-07:00

I've posted some of my old summer essays at my website, Big Sky Astrology, just to get you in that day-after-the-solstice spirit:

Slowing Down, Turning Around (2005) - "Just as the sun at the summer solstice appears to stand still in its movement across the horizon, then turn around and move the other way, that is our job at midyear: to stand still for a moment, look around, and take stock of where we are...."

Behind the Wheel (2004) - "Unlike when I was a small girl, I don't feel so safe out on the open highway, and I find reasons to stay put - work, cats, money. The truth is, everybody keeps leaving, and the more they leave, the more desperately I want to stay rooted in place...."

Tectonics (2001) - "As much as we seek security, our souls know we need movement in order to keep growing. Even the earth -- our home -- is not a given, not a solid platform we stand on. Like life, it's a relatively thin and fragile thing, broken into big pieces that bang together, drift apart, and graze each other in passing-- full of movement and change, designed to put us exactly where we need to be and to keep us wondering where, precisely, that is...."

True North (2000) - "Yesterday, as my aunt’s daughter, my sister, and I rushed around, providing food and comfort—a little clumsily, like children playing dress up—while waves of grieving men and children washed up against us, I thought, Good god, now we’re all that’s left. Our mothers left us their compass, hidden deep in our fourth houses like buried treasure; but we’ll have to learn to read it ourselves if we’re to bring this ship safely into harbor...."

Happy summer, y'all.

Ewww: a Mars/Saturn story.

2006-06-19T10:34:00.000-07:00

As a married couple with thirteen years of trandem entertaining under our belts, Jonny and I are fairly unflappable hosts. Spilled wine, broken dishes; inebriated or emotionally distraught guests, guests suffering from heat exhaustion or from canopies falling over on their heads; too much food, too little food, food allergies... we've seen it all.

Or so we thought. But Saturday night, a scant half-hour before our dinner guests were due to arrive - and just a few hours before the exactly conjunction of Mars and Saturn, representing blockages of all kinds - every drain in our house spontaneously... stopped draining. And for a moment, we froze like deer in the proverbial headlights.

But then the reflexes born of many years' experience kicked in, and we sprang into action. Within an hour, Jonny had gone to three home improvement stores and finally tracked down and rented an electric snake to clear the drain. Meanwhile, I held down the fort, finishing the cooking and entertaining guests with salty snacks and as little liquid as possible. Within 90 minutes, indoor plumbing had been restored and we were all sitting down to dinner and a dazzling array of cool beverages, which we enjoyed without restraint.

Teamwork and coordination, friends: thats the key to a marriage that works. That, and a 75-foot electric drain cleaner every few years.

Eclipse Midpoints: Kickin' up dust

2006-06-13T13:30:00.000-07:00

Just when the dust had finally settled from last March's eclipses, along come this month's lunations to kick it up again.

On June 11, the Full Moon at 20.41 Sagittarius formed a feisty square to last March 14's lunar eclipse point (at 24 Virgo). And on June 25, the New Moon at 3.58 Cancer squares the solar eclipse point at (8 Aries) last March 29.

Eclipses tend to briefly grab our attention twice each year, at six month intervals, when the eclipses actually happen. But like all astrological events, eclipses are part of larger cycles and represent not just solitary moments in our lives, but ongoing processes. Eclipses themselves are ground zero of a pivotal turning point in your life; but the midpoints in the cycle, when the New and Full Moons reach the 90 degree mark between the year's eclipse points, are turning points within turning points.

The March eclipses fell in my 10th and 5th houses, and I certainly felt ambitious, determined to succeed, and full of creative zeal. This September's eclipses (at 15 Pisces and 29 Virgo) fall in my 4th and 10th houses. So it feels as if this year is the opening salvo in a critical career/domestic campaign that will unfold over the next couple of years, as the cycle of eclipses churns through this axis of my chart and I ruthlessly advance my goal of world domination! (Cue diabolical laughter.)

Eclipses are agents of change; who knows where I'll be living and working two years from now, when they are done with me and these parts of my life. But this month, with the New and Full Moons highlighting the more intimate, collaborative areas of my chart, I'm reminded that interpersonal relationships are an integral part of my story. The people close to me have needs and goals that - imagine! - sometimes have nothing to do with my own! So, I can proceed entirely according to my own timetables and objectives - some of the most successful people do. But time for myself, and energy for those closest to me, would be the casualties of that approach.

Well, that's where we are this month. Preoccupied with a couple of areas of life, to the possible detriment of a couple others. Integration and compromise would appear to be the keys to sanity and success. That, and a good dust mask.

Shameless plug: In honor of this month's eclipse midpoints, I'm offering a discount on my "Followed by a Moonshadow" eclipse reports through June 30, 2006. Read more here!

Eight Random Things About Me

2006-06-07T22:39:00.000-07:00

Yikes... just noticed that Barbara of Silverwheel Astrology tagged me for this game like, five days ago! Thanks Barbara - I feel all loved and included. And tardy.

Being in a particularly Saturnian frame of mind lately, I'm looking for rules here and find that, guess what! there aren't any. Random! Right. Okay. Here goes.

1. Margaritas: blended, no salt.

2. Extra-terrestrials: completely neutral. Maybe there are, maybe there aren't. Though the existence of same would certainly explain some of the people I went to high school with.

3. First record I ever bought: Steven Stills, "Love the One You're With." I was seven. I have no idea what that was all about.

4. My ride: a shitty 2000 Toyota Corolla.

5. Flavor: Vanilla, not chocolate.

6. Chocolate: Dark, not milk.

7. Guilty historical crush: William Tecumseh Sherman. Don't judge me: the heart has its reasons.

8. Funniest movie ever: I refuse to choose just one. Put me on a desert island with a DVD player and the following comedic offerings and I'll die a happy woman: Airplane!, Blazing Saddles, Clueless, and State and Main.

You're it!
ethereal one
tai
susie

The Shallow End of the Pool

2006-06-06T16:36:00.000-07:00

Hear ye, hear ye: my latest article, "The Shallow End of the Pool," has been posted at my website. The Full Moon in Sagittarius is not until Sunday at 11:03 am PDT - but why wait?

At this Full Moon in Sagittarius, with the Moon conjunct passionate Pluto, the undertow is pulling us inexorably toward the deep end of the ocean. In the middle of this bright and glittering Gemini season of light comedy, fleeting romance, and trashy novels indolently read on a crowded beach, we're reminded of the need to stand in our Sagittarian convictions and proudly embody them, without shame, guilt, or violence.... Don't be surprised to find yourself examining your own Sagittarian truths this month, and in the unlikeliest and cheeriest of settings.... (go to article)

full moon

Catching up.

2006-06-05T21:17:00.000-07:00

Treated myself to a small vacation last week. Didn't go all that far (unlike astrobarry - showoff!) or do all that much, which was just the way I wanted it. Read trashy novels. Took afternoon naps, which is normally something I just can't manage unless horribly sick. (I attribute this to my many natal planets in hard aspect to sleepy Neptune in the 12th house: I resist unconsciousness!) Had breakfast in the park. Drank numerous margaritas (because I don't resist unconsciousness all that hard). Watched mindless teevee. Celebrated my nephew's high school graduation. And didn't write anything, hardly so much as an email. Ahhhh. Relaxing!

And who couldn't use a little relaxation? Between Mars entering Leo on Saturday, Venus square Saturn yesterday, and Sun square Uranus today, things have been a little tense. Those of us with tons of planets in the fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius) are in for a rollicking time of it through July 21, what with Mars lighting the fuses of the ticking time bombs of our legendary tempers. And Mars in Leo ain't the passive aggressive shrinking violet of Mars in Cancer - Mars in Leo lets fly with the drama, complete with objects passionately hurled, invective lustily spewed.

Venus square Saturn was a moment to revisit the more irritating themes of the Venus/Saturn opposition back in March. The less said about that aspect, and this one, the better.

And Sun/Uranus aspects are always good for a bolt out of the blue. Around here, it's meant, as always, technological challenges. We upgraded my hard drive and operating system, which of course meant reinstalling a metric buttload of applications, including the exercise in aggravation that is transferring Outlook Express. I only use if for a client's mail list, I swear; I'm a Eudora gal myself, and this little exercise reminded me why. Basically, I didn't get much done on this, my first day back on the job.

Both my desk calendar and my Pocket Astrologer look a bit calmer tomorrow. Maybe I'll get caught up after all... on my napping.

Beatin' the Drum

2006-05-28T18:16:00.000-07:00

My friend Simone has just posted a wonderful essay for the Gemini New Moon:

"You could have 99 things going wrong in your life and one thing going right," says Abraham, "and if you would beat the drum of that one thing going right, the other 99 would either have to go away, or improve, because the Law of Attraction cannot abide in your vibration something that does not match."

According to Abraham, if you don't have something you want, it's because you aren't energetically aligned with it. Conversely, if you have something in your life you don't want, it's because you are in energetic alignment with it. Here's the formula for changing your attraction: 1st) Get clarity about what you want; 2nd) Align your energy with it, and 3rd) Commit to receiving it and it will be yours. (read the full article)

Ain't it the truth? Today, for instance, I was supposed to align my energy with an article I needed to finish. Instead, the Law of Attraction magnetized a visit from friends and a big bag of lime-flavored Tostitos, accompanied by a refreshing margarita. I'm pretty sure that's not the drum I was supposed to be beating, but now that I'm sitting at the computer, perhaps it will summon a very entertaining article.

Venus throws a hissy fit.

2006-05-23T17:27:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, Venus in feisty Aries gave a nasty little 90-degree square, "I'm the boss of you!" hip-check to Mars in Cancer. You know, just because it could, exactly like some bratty little girl bullying a shy boy on the playground. People were feeling a bit out of sorts, I guess, and the ensuing brouhaha spilled out all over my second-house Saturn in Capricorn - a planet that, I assure you, needs no assistance in its never-ending quest to make me feel crappy about myself. Thanks very much, Venus.

Speaking of Venus, the marvelous Dana Gerhardt works her usual magic with a really splendid article about Venus in the June/July issue of the Mountain Astrologer. Get your hands on it, 'cuz it's swell. In the same issue, get the splendid Pete Watson's take on the suddenly-all-over-the-news Paul McCartney, as that gentleman prepares (on his upcoming birthday) to answer the musical question, "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?" Frankly, folks, it doesn't look good.

Last degree wonkiness

2006-05-19T21:32:00.000-07:00

Was it just me, or did the past couple of days seem sort of Mercury retrograde-ish?

A series of technical difficulties too exhausting to recount here in detail (problems with my recording software, my printer in nervous collapse, errant report binding machine, etc., etc.) had me scurrying to my trusty Pocket Astrologer to figure out what was going on, and I found Mercury - along with the Sun - hovering in the last, painful degrees of Taurus. Mercury finally, mercifully, flipped over to Gemini this afternoon, 1:52 pm PDT-ish, after which the long, difficult week sailed smoothly into a weekend sunset. Against all odds, I finished the week caught up on all the work that was due today, got a kick-ass haircut, and still managed to whip up a truly awe-inspiring turkey meatloaf for dinner.

I've noticed this before, how late-degree planets can stir up a certain cosmic wonkiness just before they flip into the next sign. Tomorrow the Sun follows suit, slipping into Gemini at 9:32 pm. One wonders what daft solar hijinks will ensue tomorrow. Take notes for me, will ya? Think I'll sleep in.

Bowling for Calamine

2006-05-10T17:00:00.000-07:00

So last night I added another to the long list of physical activities at which I am hopelessly incompetent.

It seems I really, really suck at bowling.

Awhile back, our friends decided that each month we would choose some wacky new activity to enjoy together. We're a bunch of middle-aged people with failing backs and poor eyesight, so we expect a certain amount of hapless flailing to be part of the entertainment value of these experiences. Last month we went to a roller skating rink, where I actually distinguished myself by remaining upright all evening - but then, roller skating was one of the few physical activities I enjoyed as a kid. The 44-year-old flesh was weak, but the muscle memory was willing, and it all more or less came back to me. Good fun.

But man, I cannot bowl. I was sort of getting the hang of it, and even managed a strike at the top of the second game, but it all went horribly awry from there. To make matters worse, several of my friends - even my own husband! - demonstrated their natural athletic abilities by picking up on the rudiments of the game fairly quickly, steadily improving as the night progressed. Whereas I... didn't. At all.

I blame the rented shoes, which looked like a carnival geek threw up on them - sort of neon orange and green. Really awful. I was psychologically diminished by these shoes. And I developed a small rash on my thumb. Yeah, that's it - the shoes and rash. That's why I sucked.

Oh, wait - I just thought of something else to blame: astrology! Today, still demoralized by my poor showing at the alleys (a mood not improved by Jonny's tactful reassurance that "you have...an interesting style"), I thumbed through my well-worn copy of Rex Bills' Rulership Book, which identifies physical coordination as a function of Mercury and ... Taurus. Aha! Unlike my husband, with his Taurus Moon, and my friends with their sundry Venuses and Marses and Mercuries in Taurus, I was born with Mercury in a fire sign and nothing at all in Taurus.

I suppose this explains why, although I've always been a fairly good mimic when it comes to anything mental, I simply can't watch someone do something physical and then replicate it. I have always been hopeless at dance, aerobics, volleyball, baseball, and basically any and all pursuits requiring motor skill and coordination. I can ride a bike and drive a car, and that's about it. Little did I know of my profound astrological disadvantage, the sad disconnect between my Mercury and the physical world.

But that's okay. At least I've got decent taste in shoes.

New Article: In the Belly of a Duck

2006-05-08T22:02:00.000-07:00

Hot off the presses, well in advance of Friday night's Full Moon in Scorpio, I've posted a new article over at my website called "In the Belly of the Duck:"

At this Full Moon in Scorpio, the sign of magical, unseen forces and the power of universal support, I find myself dazzled by such a generous display of cosmic goodwill. It's illuminating to contemplate that among the Gods of mythology, Pluto/Hades - ruler of Scorpio - was known as "The Rich One." In astrology, Scorpio, Pluto, and the 8th house have come to symbolize the world's riches - "other people's money," inheritance and loans, mysterious windfalls. It makes sense to consider that what we put forward from Venus and the second house must eventually find a response from Pluto and the eighth house. And yet, it's very hard for some of us to rely upon Scorpio's cosmic trust fund, the enormous stockpile of goods, services, and enlightenment that sits waiting for us to draw checks against it....(read the full article here)

Alert readers of this blog will recognize snippets from recent entries woven into the article... busted! One of the great joys of keeping this blog has been the periodic capture of little idea nuggets as they float downstream. Some of them grow up to be Big Ideas later on; a robust few mature into full-fledged articles. Still others, of course, skulk away into well-deserved obscurity.

Anyway, the Full Moon in Scorpio is on Saturday, May 13 at 2:51 am EDT; here on the left coast, it's more like Friday, May 12 at 11:51 pm. So enjoy that, ya'll.

Yikes! and, counting my blessings.

2006-05-03T11:29:00.000-07:00

Maybe it was that Venus/Pluto square on Sunday, but man, the woe that has befallen my friends! Since Saturday, I've heard from one friend who was injured in a car accident; another who got terrible news about a family member's health; one who lost a beloved pet over the weekend; and yet another who is on the verge of emotional collapse over a failed relationship.

My life ain't perfect, but I feel pretty lucky at the moment, I can tell you.

In fact, the past few days have been particuarly pleasant in Aprilworld. Caught up with an old student and friend from my Los Angeles days on Saturday, then had a great Thai dinner downtown with another pal. Sang with my trio at a friend's church on Sunday evening, then cut out to catch David Wilcox in concert at the church where I rent my office. God, that guy is amazing; an insightful lyricist and amazing guitarist, with a marvelous, smokey voice. I've adored his music since I first heard his song "Language of the Heart" on KTWV in Los Angeles, a lifetime ago.

Now, that's a guy with a splendid career. He travels the country in an Airstream trailer with his wife and son, playing in intimate venues before crowds of incredibly devoted fans. It's the kind of career I might have aspired to myself, years ago, before I largely gave up music. Watching Wilcox perform the other night gave me the first twinge of anything approaching regret that I've ever had about giving up that particular path. Not serious regrets - I love writing and astrology - but a twinge of melancholy, perhaps.

But it would be completely unseemly for me to feel melancholy this week, wouldn't it, with lots of fun work on my desk, a dear spouse, great cats, a cozy house, and good health. The path not taken could have been marvelous, but the one I'm on looks pretty damn good right now. Consider my blessings duly counted.

Cosmic muffin

2006-04-28T15:44:00.000-07:00

In honor of the Taurus New Moon - and ever hopeful of increased prosperity and other cosmic bon-bons - I decided to perform the Venus Santeria ritual that Dana wrote about this month. It sounded so simple; a piece of bread, a smallish candle, a running body of water. But it took me a bit of running around yesterday to collect the right size candle, the right shape roll. Finally, I had everything. My thought was to actually perform the ritual today, Friday, which is Venus' day.

So just before lunchtime I wrote out my wish list and prepared my little roll (although just as I'm writing this, I realize I left out the nickel - dammit!), and lit the candle. And it took forever to burn down, so I had a good lunch and then changed my guitar strings, which seemed kind of Venusy. Finally the candle burned itself out, and we were ready to - well, roll, so to speak. The question was, where to release my Venusian offering into the wild? I had been thinking of taking it over to Coronado and tossing it into the ocean, but then I reread Dana's article and realized salt water was out of the question.

Finally we remembered a spot down in the Valley where we might be able to get close enough to the bank of the San Diego River to surrender my cosmic muffin therein. We parked in a nearby lot, trundled down the street a piece, and found a likely - if rocky - spot. We picked our way cautiously a few feet down, where I perched on a rock and hurled the bun. At first, I was dismayed; the roll fell just at the edge of a kind of breakwater thing and just sat there for a minute. And then I noticed that the wind was blowing the water toward the breakwater, and despaired of my little offering to Venus getting very far at all.

Then, I was rescued: a group of four ducks descended on the roll, pushed it into the river, and began eating it. "That's... good, right?" I asked Jonny. "I mean, nature participating in the ritual, and all." "Well, think of it this way," he pointed out. "That roll is going to get a lot further down the river in the stomach of that duck than it would have on its own."

Now that I think about it, I guess maybe it's a good thing I forgot that nickel.

No costume, dance or song.

2006-04-27T20:50:00.000-07:00

The New Moon today was exact at 12:44 pm PDT, at 7.24 Taurus - the Sun and Moon square Saturn in Leo. Which sounds about right. Because when you're all up in your own petty dramas, strutting and fretting your hour upon the stage - Leo-style - Taurus is the big old hook that suddenly appears from the wings to drag you away before you can really make an ass of yourself.

Taurus is the tenth sign from Leo, and so is a sort of natural parent to our most flamboyant and self-celebratory urges. The down-to-earth mentor who let you know - hopefully without crushing your spirit - that even though you were indeed funny and talented, you might be getting just a little too big for your britches. The snarky but affectionate friend who never let you get away with your pretensions, because she infinitely preferred the real you. The loving mother who praised your talents but reminded you that there was more to you, too, if you would only buckle down and do the work that was necessary to uncover it, and then relax and enjoy it. And who assured you that, no matter what a glorious thing you made of yourself, you would never be any more beautiful than you were on the day you were born - perfect, unspoiled, equisitely unexceptional as the good earth itself.

Salt of the earth, Taurus. Rock of Gibraltar. Tender spring grass, verdant hills, and all the most luxurious treasures of the planet, unadorned and useful and utterly ravishing. No, we can never be anything better than that; no costume, dance, or song is the rival of earth in bloom.

Does anybody really know what time it is?

2006-04-23T06:36:00.000-07:00

Mercury is careening enthusiastically, if not always consciously, through Aries. Perhaps this explains a recent spate of rather retrograde-ish scheduling bloopers around here. It goes like this.

We had planned a small dinner party for Saturday night with a few friends. On Friday evening, one of the invited rings us up. "I'll be there as soon as I can," he apologizes. "I'm running a little late." My husband informs him that he is, in fact, running about 23 hours and 30 minutes early. We all have a good chuckle and go about our business.

Saturday morning. The spouse and I leap from our bed at a thoroughly unacceptable hour, lash up some coffee and a couple of bagels for the road, and head over to a friend's house to lend support for his yard sale. We arrive to find only a yard. Puzzled, we skulk home, where a closer review of his email reveals that the sale is, in fact, next Saturday.

Saturday evening, 5:30. I'm in the boudoir performing pre-party ablutions when the spouse pops his head in to let me know a guest has arrived. "But we said 6:30!" I whine, mid-coif. Except, as the friends who show up a half-hour later remind us, we actually said 6:00.

But who's keeping track.

MMMmmmm

2006-04-18T09:53:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm happy to report that the Pluto Monologues went over pretty well; I truly had no way of guessing which way it would go, since it was kind of an unusual talk. But my friends and colleagues at SDAS were, as always, warm and welcoming, and endured my 90 minutes of hyperpersonal yammering with aplomb. Thanks, guys!

In any event, what a relief that it's over with. Now I'm working my way through the mountain of work that's been stacking up on my desk in the past couple of weeks, when all other activity more or less ground to a halt while I worried my lecture to death.

Meanwhile, Venus and Uranus engaged in an illicit tryst early this morning, 2:42ish PDT. Venus and Uranus often present as the irreconcilable tension between affection (Venus) and independence (Uranus); sometimes, though, they join forces and manifest as fabulous friends who bring delicious treats from foreign lands. Exhibit: decadent Easter bunnies from our neighbors, who just returned from Switzerland:

Passion and Prudence

2006-04-12T12:38:00.000-07:00

In honor of tomorrow's Full Moon in Libra, I've posted a new essay at my website entitled "Passion and Prudence":

Each year at the Aries New Moon, I imagine the great mass of humanity bursting out of the starting gate like the bulls running in Pamplona – highly charged with vim and vitality, impatient to get on with the business of … what, exactly? At the New Moon, we’re not exactly sure. We’re long on energy, but short on perspective. And Aries, of all the signs, exemplifies this New Moon spirit. At the Libra Full Moon, our task is to cast the cool eye of appraisal over the ideas and ventures that were initiated at the Aries New Moon. Two weeks down the road, do they seem revolutionary and creative, or merely impetuous - even reckless?.... (read the article)

The Pluto Monologues

2006-04-10T15:37:00.000-07:00

If you're in San Diego and would like to listen to me blather in person, drop by the San Diego Astrological Society's monthly meeting this Friday, April 14 at 7:30 pm. My lecture, on Pluto transits and ethnographic astrology, is cunningly entitled "The Pluto Monologues." God knows how the thing will turn out, since I'm still writing it. Given the topic, though, I'm sort of tickled to note that the Moon will be Scorpio that night and that it's Good Friday... fits the death and resurrection motif pretty well, doesn't it?

Mano a mano

2006-04-06T21:03:00.000-07:00

Mars in Gemini opposes Pluto this weekend; and when the irresistable force of Mars goes mano a mano with the immovable force that is Pluto, Pluto comes out on top every time.

The way it works is this: Mars stomps its feet and demands to have its own way, while Pluto remains singularly unmoved. Eventually, confronted with such implacable coldness and impersonality, Mars stomps away or curls up like a plant that's been flash-frozen.

Mars is finishing up his transit through Gemini; Mars and Gemini are a voluble combination, creating an atmosphere of busyness and a dissipation of Mars energy as it splinters in a hundred directions at once. If you've fallen under its spell (since mid-February), you probably find yourself finishing up this transit with more projects than you can possibly complete, more ideas than you can conceivably document, and more stacks of paper in your house than you can shake a file folder at.

The appearance of Pluto looming in the doorway, then, takes the shape of a stern figure who demands to know why: Why is your desk such a mess, why is the project two weeks late, and why didn't you return his phone calls?

They're fair questions. It's time to focus your energy, to recapture all the little shards of it that are floating around your life like dust mites.

Sounds like a splendid way to spend your weekend, eh? If you need help, you'll find me cleaning my office, finishing up a couple of projects, and catching up on my phone calls.

Strengthen and support

2006-03-31T06:48:00.000-08:00

The latest in a long line of renovation nightmares: shoring up our 80-year-old garage, which has been threatening to topple into our neighbor's yard. Since it's the nice neighbor and not the one who hates our cats, Jonny is parlaying the recent Solar Eclipse opposed his Saturn (poor guy) to strengthen and support this tenuous structure - a good use of Saturn energy, but not necessarily a fun way to spend your days. He found a pleasant Quaker fellow to give him a hand, however, and the two have been out back for the past couple of days wielding hoists, support beams, a jackhammer, and saws in a valiant attempt to rescue the old dump.

Mars is building up to an opposition with Pluto next week, though so maybe they'll decide it's too far gone and just pull it down. It would probably be smarter, in a lot of ways. But we like our old garage. It's old and crappy and crooked. It goes with our house.

Wait, that didn't come out right....

astrology

Me and We

2006-03-27T08:03:00.000-08:00

There's another eclipse this week, this one a solar eclipse at 8.35 Aries early Wednesday morning. What's been stirring and awakening in your life these past couple of years? Aries is the sign of quickening, or coming alive; somewhere inside you, a seed is trying to push through the earth's frozen crust after a long winter. The birthing takes place in the house of your chart containing 8.35 Aries, and involves any natal planets between about 4 and 12 of cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn).

This is the conclusion of an Aries/Libra eclipse season that began two years ago. Specifically, this eclipse falls opposite the eclipse point of the October 3, 2005 solar eclipse at 10 Libra. Relationship issues that were raised last fall are ready for review and reconsideration now. But relationships are always a dynamic process of negotiating "me" (Aries) vs. "we" (Libra), and while the October eclipse in Libra focused your attention on others, this Aries eclipse emphasizes the "me" part of the equation. Right now, taking meaningful steps to define and assert yourself as an individual will do far more to improve your personal relationships than trying to figure out what others want you to do or be.

Let's not take that message as a license to be self-absorbed or insensitive, however. The chart for this eclipse features the Sun and Moon in a sober trine to Saturn in Leo. The work of this eclipse seems to be about proactively assuming individual responsibility (Aries Sun/Moon trine Saturn) for the state of your life, including doing what you can to become a better partner and friend.

Overall, this eclipse should feel relatively benign after the rather horrid March 14 lunar eclipse. That one featured the eclipse point square Pluto, and was the first in the Pisces/Virgo eclipse series that will dominate for the next two years. We're out of practice with the Pisces/Virgo eclipses - it's been seven years since our last Pisces/Virgo season ended - so that one was kind of rough, stirring up a compost heap of all kinds of old muck. Alternately, this week's eclipse is a graduation of sorts; look back at how the landscape of your relationships has changed since 2004, and hopefully it will be with a sense of satisfaction at what you've learned and how you've grown.

And if not, you'll get another crack at it all beginning in 2013!

Sinuses and clean socks

2006-03-22T16:58:00.000-08:00

Ugh... what a miserable week for the old bod. First a nasty stomach bug, now a sinus infection. What Virgo lunar eclipse?

Other than that, I can't complain. (pause for riotous laughter) Okay, so I can complain, but I won't, because the heat has been turned down just a notch and I've been able to catch my breath after pushing full steam ahead for weeks. It really does feel like spring around here, with just enough rain to keep the air clean and nice, nippy days with lots of sun. I've actually had time in the past couple of days to get our tax stuff together and drop it off to the accountant, catch up on my invoicing, and do some laundry.

Take it from someone with Mars in Virgo: Nothing makes life seem quite as sweet as clean socks.

Balm for my Virgo midheaven.

2006-03-20T08:45:00.000-08:00

More celebration of Virgo's practical magic in this excellent article at Oculus Divinorum, entitled "From Subservient Secretary to Ritual Priestess."

It's easy to forget, in the push to simplify astrology for the masses, to look a little deeper at the signs of the zodiac and what they say about our style of doing things, perhaps more so than the kind of things we do. I am a recovered executive secretary myself (though not exactly subservient - my MC is flanked by Mars and Pluto, which often got me into trouble) with a Virgo midheaven. It's work I respect, but ultimately it wasn't right for me (too many Leo planets), even though all the astrology books claimed it was the perfect career choice for a Virgo MC.

While I wouldn't exactly call myelf a ritual priestess these days, I do find a very Virgo-like satisfaction in work that allows me to help people sort things out - websites, wedding dates, lives. Now, if I could do the same thing in my own office...

Living by the Moon

2006-03-20T06:39:00.000-08:00

Astrologer Pam Ciampi has just launched an online calendar called Living by the Moon, with daily tips for... well, living by the moon! I'm not entirely objective, since she's a friend and we designed her site and calendar for her; but I do think it's a pretty neat and unique service. Have a look-see!

Move along, nothing to see here.

2006-03-19T06:21:00.000-08:00

Update April 1, 2006: If you got here via a Google search and are looking for your Astrology Zone forecast for April 2006, go here.

Thank you to Susan Miller and the errant poster at Susan's blog for rectifying the problem I noted in my previous post. The apologies were prompt and gracious. I overreacted a bit and was completely wrong in assuming Ms. Miller would ignore my complaint; the person who tipped me off to the original problem implied that other such problems in the past had not been addressed, and I figured a high-profile astrologer like Susan Miller would have more on her plate than to deal with my hissy fit. Anyway, here was her gracious reply, posted on the board:

Thank you for your note. I am mortified that my readers on my board would take your copyrighted material and post it on my board.

No one is allowed to post another author's material without permmission and credit. The rules of this board is that no only shall the person doing the posting notify the author, they have to notify ME that they plan to do this as well. This selfish poster has done neither, obviously feeling that all rules do not apply to her.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. It has been such a problem with posters running rampant on this sort of thing that I am considering shutting the board.

I am terribly, terribly sorry, April.

Classy, and appreciated.

What is WITH some people?

2006-03-18T17:38:00.000-08:00

Update April 1, 2006: If you got here via a Google search and you're looking for your Astrology Zone forecast for April 2006, go here.

Honestly. What is with some people?

I had an email today from an alert reader who noted that an article from my website has been lifted verbatim and posted at Susan Miller's Astrology Zone message board without attribution.

Otherwise known as plagiarism. Theft. Which is pretty fucking annoying. I might be inclined to give the benefit of the doubt (maybe they just... forgot?), but from what I gather, this particular poster has had a long and infamous history of doing this kind of thing without getting kicked off the board. Kinda makes you wonder. So I posted a stern message on the board and shot off an email to La Miller, which I expect will go absolutely nowhere.

Grrr! I guess as eclipse aspects to my 10th house Mars go (what with the potential for bloody public attacks, a la Caesar in the Senate), this ain't so bad.

Here's a rather more amusing 10th house story. As longtime readers know, I've had a problem with people capriciously revising the spelling of my name. Yesterday I got the most hilarious interpretation of my moniker yet, courtesy of the American Federation of Astrologers. They sent a very kind invitation to their upcoming conference to April WILLIOTT Kent. Well, at least they got that extra "t" in there, I'll give them that!

Mercury Rx: Lather, rinse, repeat.

2006-03-16T09:01:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow the Sun makes its opening square to Pluto following the conjunction last December. I seem to have mercifully blocked out December from my consciousness, and my meager blog updates that month are no help in jogging my memory. I know November was hideous, so maybe I simply spent December in a convalescent state. But in any event, that was ground zero, if you will, of much of the past week's unpleasantness. The snake that's been coiled in the bottom of the laundry hamper for the last three months has suddenly reared up for a venemous strike.

Look for this square to unleash even more of the latent energy of last Tuesday's lunar eclipse. The degrees of the Sun and Moon (24.15 Pisces and Virgo) were within spitting distance of this square to Pluto at the eclipse, and now the aspect is perfecting in real time. It's been a pretty nasty eclipse season so far for a lot of us; that Virgo purging stuff has been harsh, and I'm hearing many stories of serious illness. I suspect that, after tomorrow, the worst of the shocks will be behind us. One hopes.

Naturally, it hasn't been dreadful for everyone. One friend parlayed all this cosmic energy into the purchase of her first house; other pals are in the throes of joyous passion of varying degrees of seriousness. Their stories are welcome dinghies in the storm-tossed ocean of lousy news.

Mercury retrograde hasn't been terribly helpful either, has it? I mean, Mercury Rx is a nuisance more than anything, but this time around it's been an expensive one, too, for us at least. A couple of weeks ago, both the power pack and battery for my beloved laptop went belly-up. Then I managed to kill my little comb binding machine just before an onslaught of eclipse report orders hit my inbox. And a few hours after I brought my new machine home from Office Depot and was all geared up to kick out a bunch of reports, the toner cartridge on my laser printer crapped out. Back to Office Depot, excessive $$$ for new toner cartridge, etc.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

The Espresso: Drink it, read it.

2006-03-15T09:12:00.000-08:00

My old friend John Rippo has been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st (well, the 20th at least) century with the launch of the online version of his venerable San Diego newspaper, The Espresso. A wifely shout-out to my darling spouse, who designed the site: http://www.theespresso.com

Sending positive thoughts and linky goodness to our friend Susie Madrak, who is having a bitch of an eclipse season, and to the lovely Ethereal Girl, who is bouncing back after her recent surgery.

Full Moon in Virgo: Practical Magic.

2006-03-13T20:18:00.000-08:00

In honor of tomorrow's Full Moon lunar eclipse in Virgo, I've posted a new article at my website called Practical Magic:

But most of us are not full-time priestesses or everyday saints. We're just people with jobs, carpools, and colicky pets. We may wish for more time - and tranquility - to spend in meditation, but as my friend Dana once pointed out, it's Virgo and the sixth house that represent the everyday world where we spend most of our time. Do we feel well? Do we have work to do? Is there bread for tomorrow's breakfast? Traffic snarls, paying the bills, balancing the checkbook, washing the dishes: this is the Virgo stuff our days tend to be made of.

And an extra essay at MoonCircles about Lunar Eclipses:
Lunar Eclipses and Earthly Instincts.
Be well, all.

Venus opposed Saturn: This can't be good.

2006-03-09T06:46:00.000-08:00

Venus in sizzly Aquarius is moving in on an opposition to Saturn in Leo tomorrow. Not a biggie - it'll all be over by Saturday - but just long enough to make you wonder what you ever saw in your sweetie and to temporarily tighten a tourniquet around your bank account.

Let me break it down for you.

With Venus in Aquarius, the impulse is toward unrestrained individuality. But Saturn in Leo is all about the dark forces that insist we kowtow to The Man. Or whoever. So someone in your sphere is gearing up to play Strother Martin's badass captain in Cool Hand Luke ("What we have here is a failure to communicate") - Saturn in Leo, if you will - to your irrepressible, nonconformist Paul Newman (Venus in Aquarius). In turn, in a kind of karmic relay race, you'll no doubt pass on the favor by getting all Strother Martin on somebody else.

Here's some insider information about Leo: just tell us what we want to hear, and then you can do whatever the hell you want. Just pretend to be respectful, and we won't have any trouble. But of course, that's the one thing Aquarius is constitutionally unable to do... unless....

Well, it is Venus in Aquarius, after all; and if anyone knows how to get around Leo, it's the Venus-ruled, particularly Libra. Libra definitely has something to teach Aquarius about handling the Big Cat. Observe him closely, and emulate his methods: When the tension gets too thick in the next day or two, just compliment Strother Martin on his hat, and we can avoid all that unpleasantness with the billy club.

Refurbishing

2006-03-08T21:26:00.000-08:00

What kind of astrologer launches a complete redesign of her website while Mercury is retrograde, you ask?

This kind.

Let it roll!

2006-03-01T15:56:00.000-08:00

The Sun conjuncted Uranus in Pisces early this morning, so take care - you don't want to go dropping the blow dryer in the bathtub. This is the kind of aspect that can make folks a little accident-prone, typically because Uranus makes us want to shake up our usual routines, and then we forget to do a lot of the things we normally attend to automatically.

We woke up this morning to the sound of sirens, and it seems like they haven't stopped all day; we live near several freeways, and we soon found out what all the noise was about - the traffic reports have been dire. It's been a pretty good day in our little world, though. The New Moon on Monday was energizing. We finished a website project, and work is flowing in again. The weather is gorgeous, we're catching up on our sleep, the cats are frisky; it is, in fact, one of those extraordinary moments when everything is lovely, and we really can't complain. The pessimist in me says, "Knock on wood." But the optimist says, "Let it roll, baby!"

Mars kickin' it through Gemini

2006-02-23T06:16:00.000-08:00

The pace of life sure seems to be picking up since Mars entered Gemini a few days ago. Of course, compared to the glacial progress of Mars through Taurus, anything would seem zippy. There were a few fallow weeks in February when many tantalizing work possibilities dangled from a lofty branch, but no fruit was actually falling from the tree; now, I'm so busy I can't think straight, and there's no way I'm going to complain about it!

I don't know what's going on in the world outside my tiny one, and not just because I'm busy. I've taken a perhaps permanent hiatus from following politics and world affairs, a withdrawal precipated by the Democrats' dismal performance during the Alito hearings. That was the proverbial straw that broke this camel's back. I now bypass Salon, Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, and Wonkette on my daily travels through the internet, no longer even watch the Daily Show. I've joined the legions of Americans who don't know what's going on and don't give a rat's ass, and I'm quite a bit happier as a result.

Oh, I catch the occasional whisp of information as it floats through the atmosphere... for instance, I gather Cheney shot someone, which doesn't seem like that big a deal given all the people he's killed in Iraq, but you know, whatever. Something something DUBAI. Yada yada AVIAN FLU. Whatever. Five years is long enough to live perched on the edge of heartbreak and insanity. Stick a fork in me, I'm done.

I guess with transiting Mars opposing my Ascendant, that's an unfortunate turn of phrase. Someone just might decide to take me up on it. Don't seat me next to Cheney at your next dinner party.

Venus and Mars are all right tonight.

2006-02-14T09:15:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine's Day, if you're into that kind of thing. I loathed it, of course, when I was single; none of my boyfriends were given to romantic gestures of any kind, and at the time - sitting at the office, watching my coworkers walk by with lavish bouquets from doting suitors - this really bothered me. Now that I'm married, I could not care less about Valentine's Day. Just goes to show... it's not flowers and candy and cards we want, it's simply someone to love and share our lives with.

Funnily enough, the spouse and I got engaged on Valentine's Day 1993. It wasn't terribly romantic. We sat out on the stoop of my little duplex and ate takeout Chinese (okay, so maybe there was some champagne involved), and later got to talking about the practical advantages of getting married. Before we knew what hit us, we were planning a wedding. All without the benefit of the diamond-ring, down-on-one-knee MGM version of romance... and very, very satisfying.

Well, here's to love this Valentine's Day, and with Venus in Capricorn trine Mars in Taurus, I imagine most will want tangible and impressive expressions of their sweetheart's affection. More power to you if that's what you want and what you can get. But if you're on your own this Valentine's Day, take it from an old married lady: someday you'll find someone sweet who shows their love to you every day, in a thousand small and practical ways, with real, goofy, and spontaneous affection. And chances are, you'll hardly notice Valentine's Day at all.

Leo Full Moon article posted at Big Sky Astrology

2006-02-08T16:49:00.000-08:00

Full Moon in Leo
Sun., Feb. 12, 2006
8:44 pm PST / 11:44 pm EST
Sun 24.20 Aquarius
Moon 24.20 Leo

In honor of the Full Moon on Sunday: my latest article, The Cat and the Computer, is up at my website:

The Full Moon in Leo reminds us that all creatures want to feel special and loved, and nothing makes us feel that way more than personal attention from those we care about. Right now, with Mars moving through the last, aching degrees of Taurus, in difficult aspect to the Sun in Aquarius and Moon in Leo, there are plenty of troubles to distract us from life’s inherent joyfulness. The Sun in Aquarius naturally tilts our focus skyward for solutions, gazing into the future and into our computer screens, scanning an invisible horizon for lightning bolts of inspiration.... hen we are gazing at the stars, or into the limitless horizon of the Internet, it’s easy to overlook what’s all around us at ground level....

astrobarry is huggable.

2006-02-01T15:22:00.000-08:00

Make with the quick clicky-clicky, and get on over to astrobarry's site, which I can only describe as... huggable. Adorable, in a completely non-nauseating way, plus smart and funny. Can one be cyber-smitten by a website? I am, friends, I am.

Circa 1964

2006-01-25T10:20:00.000-08:00

My brother, sister, and me, circa 1964. (I'm the shortest one.) Cool frocks, huh? A sentimental doff of the cap to my bro, who passed away eleven years ago today. I should have scanned this photo years ago, before it began to fade... it's one of my favorites. But in a way, I like it like this; it has the same soft, blurry, Neptunian quality that memories have.

Roadblocks and detours

2006-01-25T09:49:00.000-08:00

The Sun will oppose Saturn in a few days, and it's interesting to watch how things are grinding...to...a...halt. Emails - even spam - have slowed to a trickle. Projects are on hold. It's hard for me to focus on work.

I'm pampering my back; as a Leo, it's my weak spot, and it often gives out during Sun/Saturn transits. I'm also fighting a rising, Saturnine sense of futility - over politics, my work, all kinds of things.

A Sun/Saturn transit is quick, only felt for a few days either side of the exact aspect. A short-term street repair project that blocks your normal transit route and detours you for a few days. In short, no biggie. What's worrying me a little, though, is an impending conjunction of Saturn to my natal Sun, a much lengthier and more serious proposition. The other day, craving hope, I took a sneak-peek at my next solar return chart in August. What I found was the molecular opposite of hope: Sun conjunct Saturn, Moon conjunct Pluto. Yikes!

So I'm observing the next few days with great interest, as a microcosm of what the near future might bring. I'm reminding myself of all the things I tell clients during Saturn transits: do the work and make the sacrifices, and Saturn will ultimately reward you for being a good child. And I'm shoring up my spine: I'm going to need it.

Dancing as fast as I can.

2006-01-06T20:50:00.000-08:00

If you're one of the many people to whom I owe an email, a report, a reading, or some variation of the same, bear with me, please. 2006 is getting off to a galloping start, and I'm dancing as fast as I can. (And mixing metaphors even faster.)

Mars is Direct, all right, and stomping across my natal Sun - which is in enough trouble as it is, what with Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune stampeding across it. I'm trying like hell to be gentle and patient and compassionate with the whole world, but really, I need one of these, and I need it yesterday.

But I'm feeling pretty positive, actually, and a lot of people I've talked to in the last week are upbeat as well. It seems that November brought a lot of us to our knees, but now we're bouncing back. Which again, this.

Full Moon article coming in a few days. And remember, my eclipse reports and readings are on sale through February 3. Might as well get something good out of this Venus retrograde!

2005 was a crashing bore.

2005-12-31T08:10:00.000-08:00

Geez, where did THAT year go?

And I don't mean that in the sense of, "Wow, what a thrilling kaleidoscope of mesmerizing visions and whirlwind sensations! I can't believe ALL THAT happened in a single year!" Nope, I don't mean it like that at all.

Truthfully, 2005 was a bit of a throwaway year around here. Nothing big happened, at least nothing big that hadn't happened before. I tried to write a book but lost interest; then I tried to write another book and ran out of time. TMA published one of my articles. My friends Tim and Claudia and I sang at peace rallies. I got an office and a root canal. I started a publishing company. I worked - a lot. The cats endured the first full year of their Unfortunate Incarceration. In a single spectacular week in November, my husband finally got fed up and left his horrid job, one of our cats fell victim to a mysterious malaise, and my aunt died. And instead of preparing for or celebrating the holidays in almost any way, we had the scary, tinker-toy 1927 wiring in the front part of the house replaced by some of the nicest contractors we've ever worked with.

We didn't throw any big parties, but we had a lot of summer dinner parties in our driveway, which was much more enchanting than it sounds (I guess it would almost have to be). We made a couple of new friends. On more than one occasion, we shook our heads at the daily news and talked ourselves out of fleeing to New Zealand. I got fatter and older and greyer, although thanks to the miracles of Monoxodil I finally got my hair back.

Here's to bigger thrills in 2006. Peace on earth, y'all, and all the very best to you in the new year!

astrology

I want my winter!

2005-12-21T19:39:00.000-08:00

Winter arrived this morning at 10:35 am PST, and within a couple of hours the temperature at our house had reached 81 degrees F. A bit of a surprise (Uranus was rising in the Capricorn ingress chart), even by San Diego standards, and not an altogether welcome one. Sometimes our ridiculously congenial climate is entirely too perfect for anyone's good.

People visiting or moving to Southern California from colder climes accuse us of "not having seasons." Anyone born or bred here will tell you that's absurd. The changing of seasons here is subtle, and would make for a rather dull wall calendar, but it works for us. It's measured in the heavier blanket on the bed in winter, the first day of shorts in the spring, the debut of the air conditioner in summer, and a slight tang in the air come autumn. Sure, we rarely have an evening truly cold enough to warrant a roaring blaze in the fireplace without opening a few windows for balance; but on the other hand, we don't have to drive on icy roads or shovel snow. All in all, it feels like a fair trade.

That's why I'm amused by my neighbors who, during this festive season, mount expensive, complicated tableaux in their front yards, complete with shredded white insulation to mimic snow and artificial snow persons. Lights are fine, people - it gets dark pretty early, and we need all the light we can get - but face it, you're not living in Connecticut.

But we're not living in the Southern Hemisphere, either. And dammit, I'm not ready to throw off the heavy comforter on the bed and crank up the air conditioner. I want my winter, puny and nearly-imperceptible as it may be.

Blessings and cheer this solstice day, and on Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Hanukkah. Thank you all for visiting the Big Sky this year, for your welcome notes, and for making my world brighter and warmer even than San Diego in winter.

Civic Duty

2005-12-15T20:53:00.000-08:00

A confession: I'm 44 years old and have voted in every election for the past 15 years or so (and every presidential and midterm election since I was 18) - but I've never served on a jury. I never even received a summons until we moved to this house ... maybe I moved too much? In any event, I soon started receiving them regularly, but got excused so I could attend classes and later because I'm self-employed and need to, like, make money. Once I did try to go and do my civic duty, but here's the true story of why it didn't work out.

8:00 am, and I'm standing in a huge line of prospective jurors, loitering outside the courthouse. When they finally marched us inside, I... got lost. I trailed along behind a couple of people who looked like they knew what they were doing, but as it turned out their ultimate destination was ... the office where one requests an excuse from duty. At that point I was pretty disgusted with the whole situation. So I went ahead and got excused; it was easier than finding my way to wherever I was supposed to report for duty. (Perhaps as karmic retribution, the bus I was riding on the way home broke down.)

About a month ago (when both Mercury and Mars were retrograde) I got another summons, to report tomorrow. I'm no longer in school. Business is pretty quiet. And by God, I was all set to go. Then I looked at the fine print: "You're a prospective alternate juror," it read (I am paraphrasing). "Call us the day before you're supposed to appear. Maybe you won't have to." Sure enough, I called at the appointed hour and "your duty has been postponed. Keep calling until we decide we want you."

County of San Diego, hear ye, hear ye: Don't mess around - you need to grab me while you can. Before I lose heart. Before I get too much work.

Before I get lost.

Forward, march!

2005-12-09T14:28:00.000-08:00

Mars turns direct today, after a long, slow, backwards tango through Taurus that began on October 1. Finally, the long, frustrating planetary impasse is about to loosen up. But don't expect the kind of explosive release of energy that you might get from, say, cracking open a bottle of champagne; Mars is, after all, still in lanquid Taurus. Rather, picture yourself slowly getting up on all fours like a cat after a long nap, stretching extravagently, then sitting there for awhile, blinking.

Now, that's how it's done.

2005-11-28T16:30:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, the Sun in aspect to Uranus (such as today's square) acts like a truth serum - especially with the Sun in ethical Sagittarius. Case in point: Scandal-plagued San Diego Congressman Duke Cunningham resigned today - with honor and grace - from the House of Representatives.

It's a first step. First, get them to resign with honor. Then someday - dare we hope? - get them to serve with honor.

Thankful...

2005-11-26T20:37:00.000-08:00

For this. I'm going to stock up on canned pumpkin so I can make this on a fairly regular basis in the coming year. Because oh.my.God.

Thanksgiving was cool. We schlepped to the high desert as usual to share an excessive feast with my siblings. This year, for the first time ever, we celebrated on Wednesday, Thanksgiving Eve, so my sister and her family could visit her in-laws on Thursday. We weren't sure how we'd feel about it - Thanksgiving has always been sacred to my sister and me, enshrined in complex, precise, and non-negotiable ritual - but celebrating a day early ended up being completely fine. Other than getting stuck in horrible traffic coming home to San Diego on Thanksgiving Day, the trip was a complete success - nice weather, great food, a complete avoidance of political conversation.

Plus I came back with this little gem, courtesy of my brother. I think I saw Evil Dead back in 1983 or something, against my will (I sang in a band with a bunch of horror movie freaks and they made me sit down and watch it), and actually enjoyed it, but that's not why I asked to borrow the book. I'm just a sucker for amusing books about the behind-the-scenes world of moviemaking, and Campbell is a pretty funny guy who's had a singularly strange career. Good fun.

Now that the hideous Santa Ana winds have died down and Thanksgiving is behind us, it finally feels like fall (with only a few weeks to go before the winter solstice). The nippy weather is invigorating, and last night we enjoyed our fireplace for the first time this season. But these shorter days... oy. It's getting dark by 4:45 pm, and this is San Diego, latitude 33 north; in Scotland it must start getting dark at, what, noon or something? By 7:00 I'm ready to hit the hay. It's pathetic. My 94-year-old neighbor stays up later than I do.

The skies are changing as well. The Sun has sneaked into cheerful Sagittarius (although it probably has a few surprises in store for us on Monday, when it squares Uranus), and Saturn has gone into retrograde remission for awhile. Mars and Mercury are still retrograde, but not for much longer. The isometric tension of the current transiting fixed-sign configuration (Mars, Saturn, Neptune), which came to a head with the Sun moving through Scorpio, is beginning to feel a little less like a pressure cooker, a little more like a popcorn popper: hot, but effervescent. A bit of a relief, I must say. Enjoy - and be thankful.

Drive, she said.

2005-11-14T20:43:00.000-08:00

The lovely Ethereal Girl has posted a wonderful essay on her personal blog, Amethyst. Girlfriend nails that itchy, melancholy, "put me on the road to anywhere, pronto" mid-life angst. The feeling that it's too late to have the life that you want, and that if you had it to do all over again, you probably wouldn't do it any better.

Fear. Of failure. Of success. Fear. Of feeling. Of longing. In my head, it reverberates a foolish unbidden mantra: Just drive. But I won't. I won't because anywhere I go, I'll arrive with myself and the nagging longing and the unanswered questions and the half-over life in tow. And I can drive around the world a million times over and never be rid of it. If I can't accept the path of least resistance and I can't bear to drive right over the cliff of uncertainty then I'd better find a path that leads somewhere deep inside to the heart of this matter and turn shape this wanderlust and unanswered longing into something that will bring me purpose and peace.

Full Moon: The Tao of Taurus

2005-11-14T20:31:00.000-08:00

In honor of tomorrow evening's Full Moon in Taurus, I've posted a new article titled "The Tao of Taurus" at my website:

It seems whichever way we turn we meet resistance, and the impulse is to dig in our heels and then charge, full speed, at the brick wall in our path. But with Mars moving backwards, the forceful approach is not working. The harder we push forward, the more resistance we encounter, and the angrier and more frustrated we become. So why not follow the Tao of Taurus, the cow standing in the pasture, mooing contentedly? Why not just let things be for awhile?...

full moon, astrology, Taurus

Sun + Mars + Saturn = Compound Agony.

2005-11-03T12:36:00.000-08:00

The agonizing pressure you've been feeling over the past couple of days has been the two-pronged attack of Mars retrograde approaching an opposition to the Sun, while the Sun ramped up to a conjunction with Saturn. Sun + Mars + Saturn = Compound Agony.

Poor Spike took the biggest hit in our household, although lord knows it's been no picnic for me or Jonny. On Tuesday morning, Spike suddenly and unceremoniously hurled, and for the rest of the day he was Not Himself - listless, pooped out. Since I wasn't feeling so great myself that day, I didn't dwell on the change in his mood until later that evening, when he would normally have been nagging me to play catch with him. Instead, he moped around on the couch, his eyes slitty and watchful.

When he hadn't snapped out of it the next morning, I hustled him off to the vet, who examined Spike and proclaimed him magnificent and, from the looks of things, generally healthy. However, the youngster has a history of unmentionable gastro-intestinal problems, and I had my suspicions. Tests are being done, and meanwhile we're charged with giving him medicine to treat the likely malady.

However, we were given these medications in the not-handy-for-cat-owners pill version. I've been dosing cats for this and that since 1989, and never have I been charged with administering anything in non-liquid form. It looked easy enough when the vet gave Spike his first pill, so I didn't give it much thought. People did this kind of thing every day, I reasoned; we are capable, intelligent people; surely we could manage.

Despite a battle of wills that continued late into the evening and sorely taxed the serenity of our happy home, Spikey won in the end and went to bed dopeless. This morning I got the best of him by hiding crushed up pills into a pliable, if stinky cat treat and tricking him into eating it. But he was not pleased, and with the memory of last night's defeat fresh in my mind I did a little research.

Now, I'm waiting for a call from the vet to say our prescription is ready to be picked up and taken to something called a compounding pharmacy, which will transform the distasteful medication into a lucious, liquid delivery system that is sure to delight Spike - or, at the very least, be easy to slip down his unsuspecting hatch in a big hurry.

It's all worth it. By this morning he was already bouncing back, eating with enthusiasm, showing interest in his toys, and fending off attacks from his sorely neglected sister. Perhaps he would have improved on his own without any medication at all, but I'm not taking any chances. To the mysterious-sounding compounding pharmacy I will go. Maybe they'll have something there for me - I'm not bouncing back from the ordeal quite as quickly as Spike.

It's ON.

2005-11-02T20:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's New Moon at 9 Scorpio made a tight square to Saturn at 10 Leo. On Monday, a desperate Bush declared all-out warfare on Americans who are slightly to the left of Genghis Khan with his appointment of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid returned fire by forcing a closed session discussion of the lack of investigation into the lead-up to the Iraq invasion. His surprise move left Majority Leader Frist visibly shaken. Oh, it's on, alright.

Reid was born December 2, 1939 in Searchlight, Nevada, with his Sagittarius Sun in tight square with Mars in Pisces - the classic aspect of a fighter. In fact, Reid did some boxing in high school. He also has a bit of a reputation for bluntness (as befits a Sag); last May, Reid notoriously described GWB as a "loser." Appropriately for the leader of the "loyal opposition," Reid's chart features a Sun opposed the U.S.(Sibley) Mars, a Moon that is likely opposed the U.S. Moon (I don't have his time of birth), Uranus square the U.S. Mars (surprise attack!), Venus opposed U.S. Venus. Asteroid Reid (3422) sits today at 16 Aries - opposed the U.S. Saturn.

Yet tellingly, there is at least one striking conjunction between Harry Reid's birth chart and that of the U.S. - Neptune, which is at 22 Virgo in the U.S. chart and at 25 Virgo in Reid's. The highest ideals of the United States are best represented by people like Reid, men and women who know that good intentions will only get you so far... then you've got to roll up your sleeves and get to work.

Photo and caption idea from Daily Kos.

AstroCat!

2005-10-27T15:46:00.000-07:00

Spike, fact-checking my work:

Harriet goes down.

2005-10-27T07:40:00.000-07:00

Today, Harriet Miers withdrew from consideration for the Supreme Court. Miers, you will recall, was nominated on a Solar Eclipse with the asteroid Harriet (1744) only two degrees from the Solar Eclipse point. She issued her withdrawal with asteroid Harriet at 22.26 Libra - 2 degrees from the Oct. 17 Lunar Eclipse point.

Of course all of this unpleasantness could have been avoided if Sandra Day O'Connor hadn't had a hissy fit about getting passed over for Chief Justice. (Edited to add: Well, perhaps that was a bit mean-spirited. I mean, that was the gossip, but the ostensible reason was to care for her sick husband, so I shouldn't be such a shit about it, I guess.) Interestingly, asteroid Sandra (1760) is currently at 20.52 Virgo, headed for a conjunction with the U.S. Neptune (Sibley chart). Pretty fitting, given her resignation from the court has placed the country on a path to a full scale ideological showdown.

Time for Bush to appoint a no-holds-barred, base-chumming ideologue to try to bolster support before the indictments come down? Yeah, probably. He'll need to act fast: Asteroid Fitzgerald (3665) is currently at 23.07 Libra, opposed asteroid George (3854) at 20.36 Aries - conjunct the U.S. Chiron.

Lunar eclipse article at website

2005-10-17T20:41:00.000-07:00

In honor of this month's eclipses in Libra and Aries, I've posted a new article at my website entitled "You Were Asleep":

Eclipses simply tell you that a crisis has arisen, and something in your life must change. There are no guarantees that the changes will be permanent or positive, just that they must happen. And while the storm swirls around you and alters the landscape of your life, there you stand, motionless in the deceptively still eye of the hurricane. For you, my friend, are the constant. The eclipse is in your chart. All this turmoil has nothing to do with your boss, your mother, or the checker at the supermarket. You are the one who fell asleep at the wheel of your life; but bless you, you are trying to wake up...

"Fetch me more mead!"

2005-10-13T07:29:00.000-07:00

I guess it's the Sun approaching that conjunction with Jupiter - picture a sort of Henry VIII figure sitting at a banquet table that's groaning with food and drink, waving a turkey leg and hollering "Fetch me more mead!" Well, Sun/Jupiter or whatever, we've got a busy weekend coming up. Friday night my buddy Natori is lecturing at SDAS about Mars retrograde, so we'll be going to that. It's weird...I've been a member of SDAS for something like ten years, have been a speaker (and will be speaking again in April 2006), designed their website and act as webmistress, but I don't think I've been to a meeting in three or four years. What can I say; nobody believes me, since I can be a fairly ... strenuous personality, but basically I'm shy.

On Saturday my brother and his wife are descending from the high desert for an overnight visit. We'll probably haul them off with us to our friend Claudia's art opening on Saturday night; she's in a four-woman show, a tribute to Frida Kahlo and celebration of the Day of the Dead. Claudia's paintings rule; I can't wait to see her tributes to Frida.

Then Sunday is Jonny's birthday, so we're having some friends over for dinner and cake and general revelry. This month's eclipses are really pounding him hard - conjuncting, opposing, and/or squaring his Sun, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune - and he's pretty stressed out. The guy could use some champagne, is all I'm sayin'... so we'll do our best to cheer him up.

Full Moon is on Monday, so look for a new article on my website this Saturday. This one's about eclipses (surprise, surprise). Speaking of which, I'm running a special on my eclipse reports: If you order one before the 17th you get a free "Sky Within" report, with text by Steven Forrest. Rush over now and buy a bushel!

Losing the seasonal groove.

2005-10-06T17:38:00.000-07:00

Since 1992, come rain or shine, I've published a seasonal essay at each equinox and solstice. Through moves to San Diego (Kensington), Santee, Santa Cruz, San Diego (Hillcrest) and San Diego (Normal Heights); through deaths of brother, mother, aunt and uncle; through two junior colleges and a university, an associate's degree and a bachelors; through the most ghastly renovation ever visited on man, woman or child - through it all, I've written this newsletter. I think I missed publishing one winter essay in 2001 or 2002, and that's about it.

A couple of weeks ago the autumnal equinox came and went, and struggling with two other writing deadlines, I shrugged it off. "I'll get to the newsletter before the New Moon," I assured myself. The New Moon came and went. No essay. And now it's time to meet another deadline, and I'm trying to finish another big project by the end of the year. And I find I just don't have the energy or the inspiration left over to tackle another autumn essay.

Is it possible that after thirteen years, I've simply run out of things to say about the seasons? They've been a real mainstay, helping me keep a toehold in cyclical time, teaching me how to peel back the layers of basic astrology and peer deep inside. And in a place like San Diego, where physical reminders of the changing seasons are so subtle as to be nearly undetectable, it was nice to take that moment, every few months, to meditate on the seasonal changes that take place on the inside. I enjoy going back and reading those little essays; they remind me who I was and what I was doing all those seasons ago, and how my mind was working.

When I look back over all those years of essays, the ones written in autumn are not my favorites; strange, since autumn is far and away my favorite season. I seem to write pretty well in spring and especially summer, but autumn finds me adrift, trying to find some kind of hook that resonates. And the winter essays are worse, a lot of fairly repetitive whining about how grumpy and awful I am and how Scrooge had the right idea all along. Maybe I've worn a groove in the seasons, revisiting the same themes over and over until the seasons themselves are losing their meaning for me.

So I'm not writing an autumn essay, I guess. Maybe I'm letting go of that long, beautiful, contemplative era. Or maybe it's a one-time thing, a fluke, and I'll be back at it this winter, bitching about Christmas. I really don't know. Let's see what happens.

And in the meantime, there'll be an article at the full moon, cross-posted at my website and at MoonCircles. And other stuff too, eventually. Autumnal greetings to you all!

Fun with eclipses and asteroids

2005-10-05T09:00:00.000-07:00

On Monday, a few hours after a solar eclipse in Libra, Bush announced his appointment of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court - an appointment that seems to have pleased practically no one. Not surprising, really, given that the eclipse, at 10.19 Libra (the sign that rules judges), conjoined Saturn and squared the Sun in the (Sibley) chart for the U.S. What is pretty amazing, though, is that on Monday, asteroid Harriet (1744) was at 8.46 Libra, only 1.5 degrees from the eclipse point.

Look for interesting developments around the 17th, when a lunar eclipse at 24.13 Aries squares the U.S. Mercury Rx/Pluto opposition.

Okay, so maybe I'm slightly lovable.

2005-09-27T09:33:00.000-07:00

You Are A: Pony!

Who doesn't love a pony? You are one of these miniature horses, renown for your beauty and desired by many. Full of grace, you are a beautiful and very special animal, full of strength and majesty.

You were almost a: Duck or a Squirrel
You are least like a: Puppy or a Mouse The Cute Animals Quiz

(Thanks to Ethereal Girl for the link!)

The point was the rope.

2005-09-27T08:21:00.000-07:00

What happens to us when we get into our forties? After a lifetime of appeasement and making nice, I have absolutely lost the knack for putting up with people's crap. I'm practically brawling with people in the streets. Granted, transiting Pluto has been squaring my natal Mars seemingly forever, so mine is perhaps an exaggerated case. But it's worth noting that at around the age of 45 (I'm currently 44), all of one's solar arc directed planets are at semi-square angles to their natal placements. You're literally at war with yourself.

My advice: Even if you're a notorious placater, as I am by nature, blow off some steam in your twenties and thirties. Make it a point to piss somebody off like, once a week. Otherwise you arrive at the threshold of your fourth decade of life feeling like a high-pressure water heater, just ready to blow. Example:

For anyone who didn't catch it, my article Letting Go of the Rope is posted at my website. It chronicles my inner struggle dealing with the Katrina fiasco, a struggle illustrated by my reaction to a fellow patron at my hair salon who had a different response to the disaster. Since I posted the article - and it appeared also at MoonCircles and Beliefnet, so it's been seen by a number of people - I've received some surprisingly rabid mail from people who chose to (a) take me to task for my refusal to engage in a public screaming match with someone who blamed the victims of the hurricane for their trouble or (b) defend people who blamed the victims of the hurricane for their trouble, since "those pesky black folks down in New Orleans obviously refused to evacuate just so they could steal shoes."

Brother.

People, beyond the fact that I entirely disagree with you, you completely missed the point of the article. True, I deliberately used an emotional situation from my own life to provoke an emotional response in my readers... but neither the guy in the salon or my response to him was the point of the article. The point was the rope. The point was letting go of the tension of opposing viewpoints that we seem willing to defend to the death, rather than find any way to compromise and listen to each other.

That includes me, by the way... I'm not just accusing people who disagree with me of being intractible. As I said in the article, I'm no saint. The fact that people can still get me pissed off enough to write a blog entry about them is proof of that fact.

Autumnal Equinox, Mars retrograde, general exhaustion

2005-09-22T21:24:00.000-07:00

The Sun entered Libra at 3:23 pm PDT today,signalling the beginning of Autumn here in the northern hemisphere. I'm working on my newsletter, but it's not going very smoothly. Perhaps I'll get something posted in time for the October 3 Solar Eclipse/New Moon in Libra.

Meanwhile, Mars will be retrograde October 1 - December 9. In Taurus. Yes, that is as sucky as it sounds. If you have any planets in fixed signs, especially around 23 degrees, they're screaming for mercy about now. Having a hard time keeping your cool? With Uranus at 25 Leo, I know just how you feel.

Meanwhile, all hell is about to break loose down in the Gulf. Again. Ya'll take care down there, hear?

"One of the worst disasters to hit the U.S."

2005-09-08T11:33:00.000-07:00

Sorry, I promise a return to astrology eventually. Meanwhile: I'm in love with somebody at Sky News Ireland (thanks to Daily Kos for link):

Funny, cuz it's true.

"A place where they felt at home..."

2005-09-07T11:53:00.000-07:00

The Moon has just entered Scorpio, a perfect atmosphere in which to read this essay from New Orleans-born author Anne Rice (thanks to MoonCircles reader Augustine for the link):

But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your backs.
- Anne Rice, from "Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans?", NY Times, September 4, 2005.

The buck stops here.

2005-09-06T12:57:00.000-07:00

Our fearless leader, August 29, 2005

I know my fellow citizens here in Arizona and across the country are saying our prayers for those affected by the -- Hurricane Katrina. Our Gulf Coast is getting hit and hit hard. I want the folks there on the Gulf Coast to know that the federal government is prepared to help you when the storm passes. I want to thank the governors of the affected regions for mobilizing assets prior to the arrival of the storm to help citizens avoid this devastating storm.

I urge the citizens there in the region to continue to listen to the local authorities. Don't abandon your shelters until you're given clearance by the local authorities. Take precautions because this is a dangerous storm. When the storm passes, the federal government has got assets and resources that we'll be deploying to help you. In the meantime, America will pray -- pray for the health and safety of all our citizens.

Saturn's crossing your ascendant, George. The buck stops here.

A great sadness.

2005-08-31T09:44:00.000-07:00

I don't have any sage astrological commentary about Hurricane Katrina, just sadness at the sight of crazy, beautiful New Orleans under 20 feet of water.

We'll kick down some bucks to our favorite relief organization, but if feels like such an inadquate gesture. Certainly not as magnanimous as leaving a month-long vacation two whole days early...

Bloggus interruptus

2005-08-22T21:40:00.000-07:00

Yikes... the Astroblog is languishing in neglect. Have had a completely enjoyable visit from relatives that ended up being an almost total vacation for us as well. More bloggage soon. Meanwhile, there is a new article up on my website, though, in honor of the full moon on August 19:

There is a good reason for Leo energy in our birth charts, and in the world. Where would we be without the joyful spirit of Leo, and without the individual bonds it represents - the ferocious attachment to one's lover, mate, or child? These celebrations of individual need and attachment are the cornerstones upon which societies are built. The Full Moon asks only that you look at your shadow self from across the horoscopic wheel and listen to the other side of the story....

Finding the Inner Puritan

2005-08-10T13:05:00.000-07:00

Garrison Keillor, no doubt responding to transiting Saturn approaching his Sun in Leo, ruminates in Salon today * about "finding one's inner Puritan" as the road to "weight loss and eternal happiness."

When I tell people I want to lose weight, I wish they’d look at me in slack-jawed amazement and cry, "You? Lose weight? Are you mad? You are the very picture of slim-hipped elegance." But people don’t, they say, "Have you heard about the North Shore diet?" or "I was reading something about losing weight while you sleep." So there seems to be a perception out there that less of me might be a Good Thing.

* You need to be a Salon member or watch a "Free Pass" advertisement to view this article. Ironically, the "Free Pass" ad I was offered was for an ultra-slim cell phone advertised with the phrase "Thin is in." Heh.

New article at Big Sky Astrology: The Astrological "I"

2005-08-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

Now posted at my website: My article "The Astrological 'I': Putting the Self Back in Astrology", which originally appeared in the April/May issue of The Mountain Astrologer.

Saturn in Leo really IS bad news for leaders.

2005-07-28T00:08:00.000-07:00

In light of articles such as Ed Tamplin's, which suggests that Saturn's recent entry into Leo spells difficult times ahead for "kings and kingdoms" (are you listening, George?), I found this story from Salon very amusing (note: to read full article you'll need to be a Salon subscriber or sign up for an advertiser-supported free pass):

A sewer might be no place for an emperor, but it is precisely from an ancient drainage system that archaeologists have dug-up a large marble sculpture of Constantine, one of Rome's greatest leaders.

Archaeologists found the 24-inch-tall head last week while clearing up a sewer in the Roman Forum, the center of public life in the ancient city, said Eugenio La Rocca, superintendent for Rome's monuments.

"We can't be sure of why it was put there," La Rocca said Thursday at a news conference during which authorities showed the bust to the media.

One possibility is that the sculpture of the man who reunited the Roman Empire in the early fourth century and ended years of persecutions against Christians was unceremoniously used later to clear a blocked sewer, he said.

Hee - Constantine: the original Rome-o Rooter!

April retrograde.

2005-07-26T15:05:00.000-07:00

Mercury stationed retrograde last Friday, and that's exactly how I've been feeling: stalled, and starting to move backwards. The week leading up to the station was exhausting, thanks to an ugly interaction with a difficult client, a visit from a long-lost friend I hadn't seen in fourteen years (fun visit, but such reunions inevitably make one a bit tense), and some of the most disgusting weather in recent memory. Forgive me for complaining about the weather (in the 90s and brutally humid); I do realize I live in a city with one of the world's most enviable climates. But on the other hand, we pay dearly for that climate, and we get a little scratchy when it turns on us.

As for Mercury retrograde... I get snippy when clients push to organize our work together around Mercury turning retrograde, then get their knickers in a twist when, for whatever reason, that proves to be impossible. Look, once Mercury enters its shadow period (reaches the degree where, while retrograde, it will make its station before turning direct again), that bus has already left the station. At that point, you're better off, instead of pushing, simply heeding the advice of the universe, which advises us that Mercury approaching or in retrograde motion is a time for contemplation, not action; reflection, not proactivity.

If you're pushing too hard to make a decision about something before Mercury turns retrograde, ask yourself: what am I so afraid will happen if I wait? Use the period between now and mid-August to slow down and relax a little. Catch up on your correspondence, balance your checkbook, reread a favorite book. In the frantic pace of Mercury direct times it's easy to overlook things, and to make assumptions based on past experience. Mercury retrograde periods, on the other hand, are an opportunity to recover what's been lost, to examine assumptions, and to see what new information presents itself. Often, it's exactly the information you need to make a really good decision.

Mercury is retrograde July 22 - August 15, 2005. Shadow period: July 9 -August 29.

A lesson in midpoints.

2005-07-11T14:56:00.000-07:00

So this afternoon I toddled off to the local hardware store to fetch a quart of paint. Parked in their nearly-empty parking lot - no cars either side of me. Got my paint, returned to my car... and there was a blue Honda Civic parked at a sharp angle with its front right bumper resting up against my left. Blocking the driver's side door of my car, of course, so I had to shimmy through the passenger seat to get in. Started the car and caaaarrrrefully pulled away. Inspected my car for damage... hard to tell - I was in an accident a couple of years ago that left that bumper pretty scuffed up. Decided the possibility of unseen damage to the car was outweighed by possible confrontation with apparently sociopathic driver of other vehicle should they appear. So I jotted down the license plate number and make of car and drove off... kind of shaken, to be honest. I've lived in large cities for 34 years, but I never get used to random aggression. Although I suppose it's entirely possible the person responsible was drunk (Mercury and Venus are opposing Neptune today) - or just a really bad driver.

Today, the Sun in passive-aggressive Cancer is within orb of squaring Mars in aggressive-aggressive Aries (the aspect will be exact tomorrow afternoon, 4:01 pm PDT). Put these two hot-heads in a room together and someone's walking out with a black eye (or a dented fender). But I don't even have any planets especially close to 19 or 20 degrees of a cardinal sign. Why is it my poor little car - and, by association, me - that's getting picked on?

On a whim, I checked my natal midpoints (360 degree wheel): My Sun/Mars midpoint is 18 Cancer, my Pluto/Ascendant midpoint at 19 Cancer. Here's what Reinhold Ebertin has to say about the Sun and Mars with these midpoints in his classic book The Combination of Stellar Influences:

Sun/Mars: Hastiness, violence. A strained relationship with other persons. Upsets.
Sun = Pluto/Ascendant: A ruthless conduct with regard to people in one's environment.
Mars = Pluto/Ascendant: The tendency to expose oneself to danger. Injury, accident.

Huh. See, I like midpoints but since I never became practiced enough to see them in a chart at a glance, I don't use them much - unlike, say, my colleague Pete. Usually I drag them out when nothing else seems to explain a situation. But that Ebertin actually summed up my little drama rather well, didn't he? Although it makes it sound as though I kind of purposely threw myself into harm's way (when all I really did was park a completely innocuous white Toyota in a nearly-empty parking lot in a fairly good part of town). It also makes it sound like things could have been a lot worse, though, so I'll shut up now.

Drive safely, y'all.

From Zero to Fuck You

2005-07-01T18:04:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling kind of impatient with people lately. If any interaction doesn't go smoothly from the start, if there are missed emails or misunderstandings or annoying questions, or if I'm (god forbid)asked to compromise, I simply can't be bothered. Recently, I took stock and found an alarming trail of roadkill strewn in my wake; the second these folks started to bug me, I went speeding off, accelerating from zero to "Fuck you" in seconds flat.

This morning I was describing this unfortunate tendency to my friend Natori, who immediately put her finger on the culprit: "It must be Uranus," she told me. "No patience; quick getaway." Ah. Yes. Uranus, the urge for escape, the uncompromising lust for freedom; when left unchecked, an utter contempt for the kind of give-and-take that characterizes normal adult interactions. Like most astrologers, I certainly have my share of antisocial Uranian traits, but recently even more so, with transiting Uranus squaring my Moon. I'm recognizing a fairly destructive trait in myself that really needs to be reigned in.

Funny we should have found ourselves chatting about Uranus: In the wee hours of tomorrow morning, at 3:38 am PDT, the Sun will trine that prickly planet. Seems like an especially appropriate aspect to kick off the Independence Day weekend: Freedom! Independence! Words to thrill the Uranian heart.

But today, as the aspect came into orb, I found myself thinking, once again, of fleeing - this time, the country of my birth, for the umpteenth time since 2000. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced she will hand in her lunch pail and retire from the Supreme Court, leaving a gaping hole that has been filled up to now by a relative moderate. Gee, what kind of appointee do you suppose will be proposed to fill this spot? Will plummeting approval ratings persuade our Chimp in Chief to rethink his radical agenda and appoint someone slightly to the left of Genghis Khan? We'll find out soon enough, but something tells me that by next week we'll be roadkill in the Chimp in Chief's rear-view mirror as he speeds off in his humvee (his would be armored, or course), merrily flipping us the bird.

If you can't beat 'em, you can learn from 'em. The best I can do is regard this guy as a cautionary tale of what happens when Uranus is overindulged and allowed to run amok. "I don't have to listen to anyone! I know everything! My way or the highway! Insert banal cliche here!" That kind of attitude is not appealing. It is, in fact, reactionary... which is the antithesis of real freedom.

This weekend, what do you say we practice not running away, not flipping the bird, and entertaining healthy compromise? That sounds like an Independence worth celebrating.

Love the rock.

2005-06-24T16:59:00.000-07:00

The other day I'm hiking around the World Famous San Diego Zoo (right? you folks in South Africa, weigh in: have you heard of this zoo? Is it really world famous?) and on my way to visit the lions I pass some bears. The weather's nice, I'm in no particular hurry, and I haven't really taken any time to look at the bears before, so I slow down for a little visit. They all look - you know, big, brown, bearlike. I drift along and find myself standing in front of the habitat of the Alaskan Brown Bear.

She's hanging out in her little bathing pool, washing her beautiful little face with paws that are surprisingly dainty, given her general dimensions (huge). Eventually she considers herself, apparently, suitably gorgeous, and emerges from the pool, like Venus on the half shell. This dame is enormous. She sort of lumbers around, shifting her girth from side to side; she stands directly in front of me, yawns, and shakes the water from her fur. Then she settles herself down next to an absolutely huge boulder that's been placed in her habitat. She lays both paws, and then her head, on the smooth, cool, gray rock. She looks as comfortable as if she's lying on a feather pillow.

This morning, absently perusing my Pocket Astrologer, I noted that tomorrow evening - right about the time I hoping to be cuddled up on the couch with my sweetie, eating Thai food, drinking champagne, and watching a DVD of "Kill Bill Vol. 2," - Venus will conjunct Saturn. And my initial reaction was, "Damn! There goes my lovely weekend, my sweet date." The restaurant will be overloaded and our food will be late and cold; the champagne flat; the movie a disappointment.

Well, maybe it will, maybe it won't. And if it is... maybe it's not a punishment, but a gift. Maybe there's something better we could be doing, something more satisfying (although it'd have to be pretty damn good to trump that little Thai/DVD date scenario), and Saturn might roll some huge boulders out into our path to try to divert us to something different, something marvelous.

And that's when I thought about that bear, snuggling up to that big old, hard-looking rock. That bear was the picture of Venusian pleasure; I think if you'd offered her a Sealey Posturepedic at that moment, she would have declined. She was enjoying her Saturnian rock; it was something cool and comfortable to lean on.

And that's when it hit me. Ah... it's simply a question of attitude, isn't it? When you're trying to have a good time and the world rolls a rock in your path, well, there's only one thing to do:

Love the rock.

Venus will conjunct Saturn at 27 Cancer, July 25, 2005, 7:57 pm PDT.

Summer newsletter posted at Big Sky Astrology

2005-06-20T19:02:00.000-07:00

The Sun enters Cancer tonight at 11:46 pm PDT, marking the summer solstice. So put on your sunblock and sandals and paddle on over to my website, where I've just posted my summer newsletter, entitled "Slowing Down, Turning Around":

If the beginning of winter is the time of determination, of buying new calendars and drafting bold resolutions for a year of success and prosperity, then the summer solstice marks the year's reevaluation point. Even if we've been underachievers in the first half of the year, there may still be time to reach our goals. But we can't speed our way through this transition. Just as the sun at the summer solstice appears to stand still in its movement across the horizon, then turn around and move the other way, that is our job at midyear: to stand still for a moment, look around, and take stock of where we are.....

Article here.

In which I join Zach Braff's writing group.

2005-06-10T13:29:00.000-07:00

Zach Braff is an engaging young actor. I've enjoyed his joyful goofiness on the television series Scrubs, and found his Garden State movie reasonably entertaining. Other than that, I've never given him a second thought.

Until last night, when I was forced to consider The Braff in a new light. You see, he invited me to enjoy his weekly writing group, which meets on the back patio of a semi-seedy coffee house in L.A. Except in this dream, he wasn't actually Zach Braff, per se - just some random guy who took an inexplicable liking to me and invited me to join his group.

Now, I don't usually remember my dreams, and the ones I do remember are rarely peopled with celebrity cameos. (Although I remain traumatized by a semi-romantic dream I had many years ago featuring - and, with all due respect, *gag* - Neil Diamond. Further proof that we are not, indeed, the casting directors for our own dreams.) So when someone completely off-the-wall, from an entirely different generation, practically from another planet - say, a Zach Braff - shows up in one of my dreams, I can't help but think it means something. Perhaps even something... astrological.

So I look him up on IMDB and find that The Braff is an Aries, and writes his own screenplays. And immediately, his guest appearance in my dream makes sense. My fifth house (creativity) is ruled by Aries, and I'm currently having a devil of a time with this book project. This isn't the first time a younger man with an Aries infuence in his chart has appeared to help me jump-start my creative career when I've hit a wall. True, these creative interventions don't usually take place on the astral plane or whatever, but hey - you take what you can get.

But the thing is, I didn't know Braff was an Aries. Maybe I read something, somewhere, about how we writes his own movies, but I have no conscious memory of it. How in the world did my subconscious manage to Google a database containing the millions of people and faces and images collected throughout my lifetime... and deliver up a Zach Braff search result? It's mystifying. And what was Dream Braff trying to tell me - to join a writing group? Drink more coffee? Cast Natalie Portman in my next dream?

I haven't got a clue. Maybe he'll tell me next week, when we go pick up our dry cleaning together.

A fresh stream.

2005-06-07T17:22:00.000-07:00

The Friggin'Book is unfolding at the rate of about fifteen badly written pages per week. Several mornings each week I hie to my office, fire up the laptop, and crank out some dreck. It's painless work, because I'm not trying to write well; I'm just trying to get a lot of stuff written down so that I can imagine a little more clearly what its final form should be. The painful process of making it all worth something will come later.

Elsewhere, the flow of my words is absolutely drying up. This blog is languishing a bit, I realize it, and I haven't written anything new for my website in a month. I'm even procrastinating about answering my email, which for years has been one of my life's great satisfactions. Used to be, writing felt like a dip in a reflecting pool of feeling and meaning. But lately, I'd rather do almost anything else than try to write well. It's as though my keyboard were subjecting me to aversion therapy, sending out little electric shocks every time I put my fingers on it. And as the textbooks would suggest, my stomach (ruled by the Moon) is a wreck, jumpy and upset, a bit like seasickness or that inner-ear disturbance that animals get before an earthquake.

I was born when the Moon was in Gemini, a lunar sign that finds comfort and refuge in words; for as long as I can remember, I've never really known how I felt about anything until I wrote it down. But now, with transiting Uranus squaring my Moon, I'm rather stereotypically cut off from that source of inspiration. I don't want to write about my bloody feelings, I'm bored with the narrative of my life. I'd rather move to a new house, learn the piano, practice conjugating Spanish verbs. And aside from bloodless technical manuals, anything, anything but writing.

Well, what a perfect moment to be writing a book, right? I suppose if a client came to me with this transit, and this particular dilemma, I would suggest a Uranian approach. "Keep changing your schedule," I might advise. "Make a little altar to Uranus, with a radio and a big old crystal and some aluminum foil on it." Or, "Move your furniture around." I think I would have, perhaps short-sightedly, advised courses of action designed to bring a sense of order and stability to what I would have assumed was a chaotic inner life.

I see now that while that's not strictly bad advice, neither is it strictly helpful. I think if I were to sit myself down in the client chair, my wiser astrologer self might instead say something like this:

Go ahead and run wild; be a bad, wicked child. Break some pottery and use the chips to make a mosaic. If you must write, try fiction for a change. Do something weird to your hair. Shake out the cobwebs of your old personality. The keynote here is change: you can't outwit it and you can't control it, so embrace it! Your old sources of knowledge and inspiration are fast drying up - so if you want to stay alive, be a wise animal and go looking for a fresh stream to drink from.

Tell me what you're thinking.

2005-05-27T13:40:00.000-07:00

Early Sunday morning - meaning, we'll be feeling it most today and tomorrow - Venus will oppose Pluto. Pluto in hard aspect to Venus always puts me in mind of a bandit holding up a bank in an old-time western. "Gimme all yer money!" Pluto hisses, low and mean -- or something you love, or something crucial to your self-respect. Give something up, Pluto insists... and Pluto in Sagittarius is not your silver-tongued, wheedling kind of gentleman bandit, he is blunt and rough.

And Venus is in Gemini, so what's at stake is probably not so much money, but the currency of words, thoughts, and information. "Tell me what you're thinking!" someone close to you is liable to demand, sometime in the next few days. Impatient-like, as if bone-tired of playing guessing games that you had no idea you were playing. As if they had a right to your thoughts, a right to hear particular words come out of your mouth, a right to make you put your signature to something you don't want to sign.

Fortunately, Gemini can make up long strings of words, entire paragraphs that mean nothing but sound plausible; and it's with this fool's gold that he will try to appease beligerent Pluto. "Sure I love you," says the boyfriend whose girlfriend has pinned him to the wall, Pluto style, to "once and for all" declare his true feelings for her. And here - he has given her just what she wanted, and exactly the words she longed to hear, and she can't quite figure out why she's not happy to hear them.

If you find yourself playing Pluto this weekend, shaking someone down for some kind of words or assurance or guarantee, beware. Like a prisoner being tortured, people will say anything you want to hear, if you hit them hard enough... but can you then trust what they tell you?

Less than perfect.

2005-05-19T21:27:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy couple of weeks, with lots of work, plenty of socializing, and a root canal (which I can only attribute to a bad Neptune transit). And I've been spending a lot of time over at my new office, painting everything in sight. Despite my best intentions and hours of time I could ill afford, none of it is perfect. I ran out of paint before I could put a second coat on the walls, so it looks a little blotchy in places. I accidentally bought an oil-based polyurethane for the floor instead of water-based, and rather than schlep all the way across town for a replacement I used floor wax over the white paint, which immediately turned it the same color as very old, very well-used dentures. There is a water stain on the ceiling that is too high for me to reach, so I'll be living with it. So none of it is perfect; I have enough Virgo planets to wish it were, and to beat myself up a bit for my haste and laziness, but apparently not enough to keep me on task.

Truth is, it's a habit of mine to settle for less than perfection (except in my choice of spouse, of course - hi dear!). I've had the kind of life that put perfection patently out of reach early on; I've never had a chance of getting anywhere close to the perfect figure, the perfect career, the perfect family life, or even, apparently, perfect teeth. There's a sadness to that, and occasionally the sense of wishing one could trade in a beat-up old life for a shiny new one. Maybe in my next life I'll take my time and do it all right the first time. Maybe I'll lay off all those cans of Pepsi in high school and never get that first filling.

This time around, though, I've found that there is a certain relaxation that comes with giving up on perfection and making do with what comes your way. For instance, if I squint and tilt my head the right way, the blotchy paint on the walls looks a little like a faux finish. If I use my imagination, the yellowed floor looks nicely antiqued. And I've learned all kinds of interesting things about endodontics.

It's a grand mess of a life. I wonder how perfectionists get anything done. I'd rather get five things done reasonably well in a day than one thing perfectly. I'm pretty sure that makes me a bad person; at least, my Pluto in Virgo thinks so.

When trines attack!

2005-05-04T17:36:00.000-07:00

I was chatting the other day with an astrologer friend whose birthday is the day before mine, and we were comparing notes about the recent opposition from transiting Neptune to our natal Suns. In short, pretty good for me, not so great for him. We pondered and mused about this for awhile, and then I remembered something my teacher told me many years ago. Her contention was that a transiting planet in hard aspect to a natal planet isn't so bad, provided the natal relationship between those two planets is also hard (e.g., square, opposition, semi-square). But if you have a trine between two planets in your birth chart, she warned, and then one squares or opposes the other by transit, you're in trouble.

"The theory is," I explained to my friend, "that if you have them in hard aspect natally, they're accustomed to wrestling with each other. But if you have a trine or a sextile, you're used to things being easy where those planets are concerned. You're used to them getting along, so you don't know what to do when they don't." I guess it's the same as having a good friend who you get along splendidly with, just about all the time: the occasional spat or disagreement between you is really disturbing, because it's so ... unexpected. You haven't developed any coping strategies for this situation.

Aha, we concurred: My friend has a natal Sun/Neptune trine, while I've got the square. So this transiting opposition of Neptune to my Sun has occasionally left my him feeling a bit adrift in Neptunian waters, while if anything, I've been feeling uncommonly focused.

On the other hand, folks like him and my artist friends Tim and Claudia (damn, I'm surrounded by you people!) get to enjoy the spiritual, creative, compassionate, divine magnetism of Sun trine Neptune more or less constantly, except for a year or two out of their lives when Neptune makes a hard aspect to the Sun. All things considered, I think I'd rather live with a happy cat who scratches me every 25 years than with a wild one who jumps up to lick my face once every 25 years, but who the rest of the time has to be held at bay with a whip and a chair.

Saturn Diego: Dick gets it right.

2005-04-26T16:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning, beleaguered San Diego mayor Dick Murphy announced he will resign effective July 15. Murphy's resignation comes only five months after he claimed victory in a hotly contested three-way mayoral race; Murphy actually garnered fewer votes than write-in candidate Donna Frye. It also comes as San Diego teeters on the brink of bankruptcy and several councilmembers face legal investigation - including Deputy Mayor Michael Zucchet, who is in line to assume duties of acting mayor in the event a special election is held to replace the mayor after July 15.

Marc Penfield's Horoscopes of the Western Hemisphere gives the chart for the city of San Diego as July 16, 1769 at 8:52 am (he uses Porphry house system and PST). The chart below shows San Diego's wheel with the city's planets on the inner wheel, and transits for Murphy's resignation on the outer wheel. Dig it: San Diego is having a Saturn return, and the April 8 solar eclipse squared the city's Sun and Saturn. True to Saturn's symbolism, the city's leaders are under increasing pressure to answer for the decisions that have led the city to the brink of financial ruin.

Murphy was an unpopular mayor who would like to be remembered for getting a second baseball stadium built, rather than for overseeing a council that systematically underfunded the city employees' pension fund. By stepping aside now, he at least honors Saturn's command that we step up to the plate, take responsibility, and do what's right.

Aries eclipse postscript

2005-04-18T12:35:00.000-07:00

As nice a summing up of the recent Aries eclipse as I can imagine, albeit uttered in an entirely non-astrological context. Compliments of the peerlessly eloquent Al Swearengen:

Pain or damage don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back.

Eclipsed!

2005-04-14T12:17:00.000-07:00

I came down with a humdinger of a cold a week and a half ago, and it's still kicking my ass. Meanwhile every blogger and his mother has already weighed in on the Pope, Charles and Camilla, that woman who died (Shiavo?), etc. I have no further insights to offer about these earth shattering events.

I sure am hearing some interesting real-life eclipse stories from people, though, ranging from the annoying to the disastrous. I actually got to observe that one from the sidelines, more or less, since 19 Aries doesn't aspect anything in my chart very closely. A bit of a break, actually, since that eclipse point exactly opposed my husband's Mercury - and between that and Mercury being (until recently)retrograde, he's had a bit of a time of it. Within the span of a couple of days, his car broke down and his computer crashed. Poor guy.

He recovered his computer and I hope he can get his car running, because the lunar eclipse on the 24th almost exactly squares my natal Mercury. I've been busily backing up my computer and checking out deals on rental cars. Do you think it would be a bad idea for me to buy my long-awaited laptop computer this weekend, a week before the eclipse? Yeah, I thought so. Dammit.

Tempting the gods.

2005-04-04T09:09:00.000-07:00

Charles, Charles, Charles... It seems to me that when you schedule your wedding on the day of a solar eclipse (square Saturn), with Mercury retrograde, you're just tempting the gods.

But I don't want to wake up.

2005-03-29T21:34:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-20T16:54:00.000-08:00

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.

2005-03-17T17:25:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-09T17:01:00.000-08:00

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

2005-03-01T17:24:00.000-08:00

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.

Somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert...

2005-02-22T16:23:00.000-08:00

I can assure you I was the only 12 year old in my Catholic grammar school who ever toted a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to class. For this, I blame not only my insatiable need for attention, but also my older brother, ten years my senior and unusually attentive to his young sister's cultural development. He had me on a diet of Hunter S. Thompson, Rolling Stone magazine, Leo Kottke, Mott the Hoople, and the films of Akira Kurasawa before I was in my teens.

As an adolescent I didn't understand most of Thompson's opus, but something about the tone of it really appealed to me. He had a Venus in Gemini's rapier way with language ( it didn't hurt that his Venus exactly conjoined my natal Moon; he was the funny valentine of my Gemini heart), and his sheer delight in wrestling words to the ground made me want to jump up and down and applaud wildly.

Thirty years later, I had more or less forgotten about Thompson until I read his merry screed against the Bush administration, published just a few days before the election. This time I did jump up and down and clap, and made sure to forward the link to my brother with the subject line, "Kerry gets the Gonzo vote!" Good times.

Nobody seems to know why Hunter S. Thompson killed himself on Sunday. I couldn't sleep and got up to watch TV in the middle of the night, and there was the news: Hunter S. Thompson, mortal gunshot wound... I was so stunned that my initial response was, "But... is he alive?" Because geez, he was not that old, and his writing was vibrant, and he seemed utterly untamed and full of piss as ever. My 4 am mind simply couldn't wrap itself around the twin concepts of "Hunter S. Thompson" and "mortal." It's not having much more luck two days later and wide awake.

The Vapors

2005-02-14T20:44:00.000-08:00

What a fantastic aspect for Valentine's Day: Venus conjunct Neptune (Feb. 14, 4:48 pm PST). Dreamy, candy-coated luvvvv. Romance. What Victorian ladies used to call "the vapors."

Despite my occasionally crusty exterior, I am no stranger to idealism and romantic love; I was, after all, born with Venus trine Neptune (one of the few nice aspects in my chart, actually). But whether it's age, experience, or my progressed Moon in Capricorn - I no longer find idealistic love particularly appealing. It's so exhausting, keeping up a pretense of perfection, pretending your partner is utterly blemish-free. Just... exhausting.

On the other hand... There is something terribly romantic about someone who is fully aware of, and painfully realistic about your faults - yet persists in cherishing you, calamitous failed experiment in humanity that you are. Someone who never stops trying to help you achieve your vision of a somewhat better you, the you that you never quite get around to being, the you that you would be if you worked out more and didn't lose your temper so much and were just generally nicer - yet who never makes you feel you need to be anything other than exactly what you are, right now.

That kind of love is just grand.

New article at Big Sky Astrology

2005-02-07T10:40:00.000-08:00

Just published an article at my website in honor of tomorrow's New Moon in Aquarius.

Aquarius New Moon
Tuesday, February 8, 2005
2:28 pm PST / 5:28 pm EST
Sun and Moon at 20.16 Aquarius

Shooting is Fun-damental!

2005-02-04T10:30:00.000-08:00

From Salon:

Lt. Gen. James Mattis, a career infantry officer who is now in charge of developing better ways to train and equip Marines, made the comments Tuesday while speaking to a forum in San Diego.

According to an audio recording, he said, "Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot. ... It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up front with you, I like brawling."

Right here in my home town, folks! Nothing like Mars richocheting off a conjunction with Pluto and careening through the last degrees of Sagittarius to make a military man stick his foot in his mouth. Well, at least he was being honest (sadly enough).

In other news: If you don't subscribe to Bill Herbst's newsletter, you may have missed his latest, in which he explores Pluto in Sagittarius with great insight and sagacity. It's a good read.

April. Elliott. Kent.

2005-02-03T19:45:00.000-08:00

So... admittedly, this is kind of a stupid thing to get annoyed about, and I must be having some kind of tough Mercury transit or something, but...

My name is April Elliott Kent.
Not April Elliot Kent.
Not April Elliot-Kent or April Elliott-Kent.
And certainly not April Kent-Elliott.

April. Elliott. Kent.

I'm more or less used to the dropped-t, because Elliott was my maiden name and people have been trying to rob me of that last -t all my life. I don't know why. I guess it's an honest mistake, but sometimes I suspect people think I don't know how to spell my own name. "Oh, her finger hit the 't' too many times, let me fix that for her." No. My finger knew exactly what it was doing. My father spelled it with two t's, as did his father, and so on. I'm not being greedy, taking an extra -t that doesn't belong to me. I own that sucker.

My name is not hyphenated because my last name is Kent. Elliott is my middle name. See? I like to use all three names. I understand the confusion - these are complex times we live in! - but I am not hyphenated. Because Elliott is not part of my last name.

Now, April Kent-Elliott is an entirely new one. Apparently it came up on a Google search when someone was looking for me, and they were nice enough to pass along the link. It's a little scary, because the link was to a catalog entry for a book I contributed to. Is the person who created the catalog the same person who is designing the book? Gack!

April. Elliott. Bloody. Kent, people. It's not like I'm named Schwarzenegger or something. Thank God. Because that would really be something to bitch about. Maria Shriver might've been crazy enough to marry the guy, but even she didn't hobble herself with that spelling-bee nightmare of a name.

She probably gets sick of people calling her a Kennedy, though.

Mars and Pluto in Deadwood

2005-01-28T11:58:00.000-08:00

After a couple of days of foreplay, Mars and Pluto had a rendezvous at 24 Sagittarius this morning at 9:44 am PST. The symbolism: nuclear (or nuc-u-lar, depending on how you vote) weapons (John Ashcroft exploited this theme only yesterday), transportation disasters, unbridled hostility and violence.

Among other things, of course. My friend Natori, with Mars marching across her Ascendant, experienced the Mars/Pluto/Sagittarius combination in the form of a couple of Mormons showing up on her doorstep, for the first time in the many years she's lived in her house. Onward Christian soldiers (Mars in Sag) !

Thankfully, I'm experiencing this conjunction, so far, only in the realm of dreams. I don't usually remember dreams or think much about them, but last night a graphic and completely uncharacteristic one grabbed my attention. I was chattering with some nice, if somewhat unkempt and eccentric, blonde man, when suddenly he slumped against a wall. I thought he was just tired. Then another guy (who, I swear, was Al Swearengen from Deadwood) appeared and told the blonde man, in a calm, menacing voice, "In a few minutes you will realize that I've sliced the back of your head open and that you are dying."

Ack! Murder! Menace! Horror! Not my kind of thing at all. But if you are, in fact, every person in your dream (true? where have I heard/read that?), I am the victim, the murderer, and the horrified onlooker. So at some level, anyway, I guess I'm pissed off, afraid, and freaked out. And John Ashcroft is the terrorized, the terrorist, and the terror.

Today, the unholy alliance of Mars and Pluto signals high noon in Deadwood, and all of us have itchy trigger fingers. We are all ready to shoot, all about to be shot, and all standing on the sidelines, fascinated and horrified.

Either that, or it's something I ate before bedtime.

Good night, Johnny.

2005-01-23T01:20:00.000-08:00

Johnny Carson has died.

From Salon:

Carson choose to let 'Tonight' stand as his career zenith and his finale, withdrawing into a quiet retirement that suited his private nature and refusing involvement in other show business projects.

Johnny was a Libra, the acme of cool Libran charm. But with the sun in the twelfth house and a Scorpio ascendant, he was notoriously private offscreen. That didn't matter to us; our experience of Johnny's twelfth house/Scorpio energy was that he always felt just right late at night, in the dark, in the privacy of your bedroom. You'd be lying there in bed, half-asleep, or wishing you could be. And there Johnny would be, flickering away on the TV, graceful and deadpan and ... comforting. It wasn't a Mr. Rogers kind of comforting, or a Walter Cronkite kind. Johnny was not avuncular or warm; he was Mr. Cool, with Mercury/Saturn rising in Scorpio. Yet considering he was such a smart-ass, Johnny inspired tremendous warmth.

It's been years since he left the Tonight Show, and it's surprising that the news of his death should hurt so much. I suppose losing the icons of our youth is wounding because they take little bits of our youthful selves with them as they go. At least with Johnny, you get the sense those youthful fragments are in good hands. Vaya con dios, Johnny.

Hell to the chimp

2005-01-19T19:12:00.000-08:00

Look for me tomorrow - I'll be the one dressed in black and buying nothing.

Still, look to the day of an event and by observing the aspects the Moon will make before leaving its sign, you can get a pretty good picture of how that event will wash out in the end. For example, I'm just bitter and vindictive enough to be comforted by the absolutely retched aspects of tomorrow's Moon in Gemini. Oh, there are trines to Neptune (pretty fitting for the ultimate Wizard of Oz presidency) and Jupiter (plenty of hot air and overoptimism), but I prefer to focus on the oppositions to Mars and Pluto (the last aspect, representing "the end of the matter"). I feel confident that in the fullness of time, the Chimperor will get his comeuppance.

Here's something completely unrelated to that, and kind of funny. Last night, between the Sun entering Aquarius at 3:22 pm and the Moon square Uranus at 11:55 pm, our electricity went out. (For those who don't get the joke, Aquarius/Uranus rule electricity.) It was sort of fun staggering around looking for candles, cooking on the gas stove by candlelight... I felt like I was on one of those PBS programs where they put a 21st century family in a 19th century situation and let them see just how tough life was back then. Except, you know, I didn't have to make my own soap or anything.