2008 July : Big Sky AstroBlog

Jul

28

leaving First things first. My friend Robert McDowell has just released his new book Poetry as Spiritual Practice. I don’t know much about poetry, and what I do know, I mostly don’t like; but Robert’s a wonderful soul and a soulful writer who has made a believer out of even a poetry curmudgeon like me – so join me in celebrating his achievement. And if you buy a copy of his book online from Amazon or B&N, you can participate in his special promotion and gain access to fab bonus gifts from participating partners such as moi-self. More here.

Secondly. Lisa Finander, the fine soul who, as an acquisitions editor, helped me midwife my book and get it to the publisher, has launched her new website. If you’re struggling with a writing project and looking for an enthusiastic coach to help you bring it all together, Lisa’s your gal.

And finally, yes: I’m finally leaving for vacation. But naturally enough (because yes, the upcoming eclipse falls in my 9th house – quel delight!), the road to good intentions has been paved with hell. Getting ready to go on vacation is always so ghastly that it makes one doubt the veracity of the entire premise. Irony alert: Nervous traveler that I am, I chose Qantas for our flight because of their excellent safety record. And of course on Friday… this happened. And today, this. Thanks, guys. Helpful. (As if I weren’t nervous enough about that transiting Uranus opposition to my natal Mars.)

But you’ll never hear an unkind word from me about the Passport Office.

Last week I realized that my passport – which would not actually expire until two weeks after we’re due to return from our trip – needed to be recharged, since New Zealand (and most countries, apparently; who knew?) insisted I have at least three months left on my passport after my intended date of return. My nerves already on edge about this trip (did I mention that I really hate to fly?), this put me into a tailspin. A couple of hours later I determined that I could in fact trek to the regional passport office in Los Angeles and do the renewal in person, and actually be able to make this trip.

So off we schlepped to LA the following day, and everything at the passport office went amazingly well. The lovely little Lisa Loopner look-alike who processed my application looked at my departure date, then at my San Diego address, and then at me. “Well, I want to get this processed for you today.” And bless her, she did: by 1:20, after killing several hours in Westwood, I picked up my fresh new passport.

In any event, tomorrow is given over to packing and last minute madness, and on Wednesday we finally leave. So tonight the auto responders go on my emails, and the next time y’all hear from me I’ll probably be writing with a New Zealand accent. Send good energy and safe wishes my way! And if you should find yourself in Auckland on August 3 (a lecture) or 10 (a workshop), you can catch up with me through these nice folks.

July 28, 2008 | 5 Comments

Jul

17

A friend of mine, born with the Moon in Capricorn, has an enchanting garden. It isn’t lush; there is a preponderance of desert plants, sages and succulents. But there are also a lovely little patch of lawn next to a soothing waterfall, wind chimes with a deep and resonant tone, and scattered everywhere there are rocks – smooth river rocks, crags of quartz. Appropriately for a woman with the Moon ruled by Saturn (the ruler of stone), she’s crazy about rocks. I admit I rarely give them much thought one way or another; but while she’s on vacation I’m looking in on her place daily, and her garden is making a believer out of me.

The scale is different, but her garden reminds me a bit of park in Southern Illinois that I used to visit as a kid, called Garden of the Gods. Less spectacular than its more famous Colorado cousin, it is nevertheless a kind of magical place, full of intriguing rock formations and old-growth forest. Standing atop a towering, rocky precipice, a little kid could feel close to God indeed – in fact, a bit like a Goddess herself.

We tend to think of rocks as boring, inanimate objects, but as my friend would attest there’s something magical about them – grounding and steady, eternal, peaceful. We could make grave markers from any substance, for instance; but when we want things to endure, we use stone.

Saturn was recently visited in the zodiac by Mars, in the early degrees of Virgo. Imagine the sculptor’s hand with a chisel, chipping away at a big hunk of marble, and you get the general idea. Somewhere inside you is a big block of Saturn that’s waiting to take a more useful form, to be fashioned into a protective container for your most helpful and practical impulses. The aggravating friction of the past two weeks was just Mars, chipping away the excess stone and polishing you with abrasives, to reveal your inner substance in a more graceful and glittering form.

Saturn symbolizes stones in the river of your life – they are obstructions that change your course, but they can also be used to provide shelter or protection – or to lift you closer to the Gods. For tonight’s Full Moon in Capricorn (12:59 am PDT; 3:59 am EDT), Saturn’s sign, give stones a place of honor on your altar. With both rough, unpolished slabs and smooth orbs, sculpted by river or by human hands, honor the hard lessons of Saturn that make us strong – and the friction of Mars that makes us sparkle.

July 17, 2008 | 5 Comments

Jul

11

Yesterday’s Mars/Saturn conjunction docked just a degree and a half away from my natal Pluto, and I’ve spent the last two days … trapped.

- Trapped by my plumber (Pluto!), who has been trying for days to close the deal on relocating our gas water heater from indoors to outdoors. As Joe has found to his everlasting despair, there is something flypaper/quicksand-like about this house: it absolutely consumes and ultimately, defeats anyone who would repair, maintain, or amend it in any way. It is a stubborn, stubborn house. Anyway, most of the work was going on outside, but there was a certain amount of access that needed to be granted to the inner sanctum as well; and while Joe seems like a good sort, I don’t feel comfortable leaving my home open to workmen when I’m not around. And so… stuck. And simultaneously…

… Trapped by my commitment to deliver a taped reading to a client yesterday, despite the banging and drilling that has been going on ten feet from my computer chair for three days. Finishing it at home was out of the question, so I finally broke down and told Joe I’d be gone for an hour, locked up, and defected to the pastoral garden of a vacationing neighbor, where I chatted away happily into my digital recorder, accompanied only by tweeting birds and whatnot.

- Trapped, later that evening, in the screened porch of the same neighbor – by a marauding skunk. Let me run it down for you. At twilight, I wander over to see how my neighbor’s fine, sleek, black cats are doing. I flop on the sofa, switch on the TV, and prepare to pass a little quality time hanging with the felines. I’ve left the screen door ajar to allow their easy ingress; one enters, and then, some time later, I catch a glimpse of something else small and black edging though the doorway. A tiny skunk with the most spectacular tail you’ve ever seen scratches his way across the room and toward the huge, inviting bowl of catfood.

(Tangentially, I’ve never seen a skunk do this before – I think it’s something they do when they’re feeling wary – but this guy kind of scratched and moonwalked his way across the room toward the catfood bowl. He looked for all the world like John Belushi in that scene in Animal House when he’s casing the sorority house, darting madly from side to side in a demented caricature of stealth.)

So. Cute, right? Fascinating in a Crocodile Hunter/Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom kind of way. However, one of the cats is perched on a cabinet staring down at the intruder, and he looks kind of twitchy, and all I need is for the cat to pounce on this damn skunk and detonate it. Meanwhile the other cat has become alive to the situation and is pacing nervously outside the door. And I’m stuck in the opposite corner of the room, afraid to make any sudden moves.

Because when a skunk sprays, it’s never good news. But this neighbor is the most fastidious housekeeper I’ve ever met. Martha Stewart is a slattern compared to this woman. If her sofas and carpeting – not to mention her cats – are reeking of skunk when she returns from her vacation, someone is not going to be speaking to her well-intentioned but ineffectual neighbor. Or, possibly, to the cats.

So everyone sits completely still – me, the cat on the cabinet, even the cat outside. Everyone but this freakishly hungry skunk. He chomped for a good, solid 20 minutes before I got the nerve to begin inching my way toward the door – a sitcom-worthy wacky neighbor, an ersatz Lucy Ricardo. Free at last, I fled home and spilled the sordid tale to my patient spouse. He followed me to the neighbor’s house with a large flashlight, shone it on the skunk, and tapped the window. Chastened – or perhaps just sated – the small fellow obediently cheesed it, disappearing into the shadows of the back yard while I sprang forward and sealed up the house behind him.

- Trapped, today, waiting for a building inspector who has, of course, utterly failed to appear.

How’s Mars/Saturn treating you?

July 11, 2008 | 7 Comments

Jul

9

Transiting Mars, as we all know, will rendezvous with Saturn tomorrow (11:12 am PDT) in the early degrees of Virgo. Pretty much the acme of a hard-workin’ transit, wouldn’t you say? Typically, I’m up to my elbows. We’re leaving at the end of the month for an epic journey to New Zealand, which it occurs to me I might not have really mentioned here. Have I? Well in any event, we’re going and will be gone for three whole weeks. Which means on the one hand clearing the decks of all the work I’ve committed myself to, and on the other hand making hotel reservations and reserving cars and figuring out how to get to LAX as easily as possible and buying luggage and freaking out about the flight, because I am not a happy flier these days. No sir, I am not.

Naturally, I’m bereft at the thought of leaving the cats for so long. Fortunately, doting sitters will be occupying the compound in our absence, so there will be none of those poker-playing, long-distance-call-placing hijinks for which unattended cats are justifiably famous. And they’ll be fed promptly, which is of course critical for Spike who, though he weighs in at a whopping 17 pounds, is quick to alert us the moment his supper dish falls below the half-full mark. He has PETA on speed dial just in case we dawdle.

Interestingly, given my interest in eclipses, we’ll be arriving in Auckland on August 1, the day of the Solar Eclipse at 9.32 Leo (which falls, appropriately, in my 9th house – conjunct my natal Sun and square Neptune). I’m putting together a talk on eclipses which I’ll deliver on August 3 to the nice people of AFI in Auckland… or at least I will be putting it together, when I’m a bit more caught up on everything else. God knows I’m looking forward to talking about something other than weddings and my book for a change (though I’m doing a wedding workshop over there on the 10th just to round things out). The biggest challenge will be overcoming jet lag so that I can deliver the lecture in a semi-conscious state. We’ve scheduled a couple of undemanding days in the wilds north of Auckland to give us time to sort ourselves out before mingling with the other humans.

(Fortunately a friend just lent me a nifty book about the chronobiological aspects of air travel and how to vanquish the dreaded ‘lag. The version she lent me dates from the Reagan administration – reference is made to smoking during the flight; quaint! – but my friend swears by the program. So even though it means giving up coffee for three days before I travel, I’m game to give it a go.)

I plan to post missives from the road, but on the other hand I also plan on relishing the first substantive vacation we’ve had in ten years. I can hardly wait.

Meanwhile, Mars/Saturn are impatiently tapping their dainty toes all over my desk, so it’s back to work. Be well, all, and get plenty of rest over the next couple of days. This conjunction, in the highly strung sign of Virgo, can wear on the nerves.

July 9, 2008 | Comments Off

keep looking »