olden instructional films
and the correct order
– for introducing everyone
– opening rolls to butter
– resting your not-in-use knife
– greeting your date’s clothing
– zig zag eating vs. continental
– separate the sediment by pour
– never cover the gun arm
one fine thing for another
Last night I made a storm outside that cracked at the ground and shook the houses like shoulders. Went to bed sweeping at the sky for the breeze to break heat, and rain so I wouldn’t have to water. Weather is not stubborn.
I mean, as long as we must be here – our emotional innards scraped raw and smooth like a pumpkin’s hollow – we might as well use it.
While I work now, I watch different versions of Wuthering Heights. I’m trying to watch them all. There are a lot. I’m looking for something, but I’m not sure what. It’s something about younger me, something that slipped off and fell. I’m trying to figure something out, methodically tendriling through the floor of a dark lake, searching for something rare I lost. I’m not sure what. A will or a desire or a spark, perhaps.
One of the times I miscarried early, I was alone on the floor, losing it, writhing in pain. Both of my dogs stood over me. The one, the small one, the Pisces Moon, concerned and tending me, the other, staring at me, her will and force telling me to get the fuck up.
I didn’t read Wuthering Heights until my late 20s which was like reading under a spotlight just turned on, angels trying to teach me something, pushing my head closer to the page, saying ‘learn.’ Wuthering Heights should never feel autobiographical, and, one should never have to consider the cost, decades later, a cautionary tale you arrived at too late to heed. What was dropped in the process of faith and karma, twinning and isolation, toxicity.
This protracted Scorpio season due to Venus’ retrograde through, then Mercury, now the Sun, has stretched our emotional excavation past a short season into an extended exhumation. Denying the work would only leave us lingering in ignorance later, less transformed, less faceted than we might shape ourselves now. That doesn’t mean it’s emotionally without cost. Excavating in the dark means we’re residing there, feeling our way versus seeing any dangers. We need to go back for everything we forgot, pick it up, or at least gather it so that no one else can have it without our consciously sharing.
– – Joyelle McSweeney
I’m the matron-king of hell In yoga pants and a disused bra for a laurel & shatter the scene inside your simmering year Like a ransom scene filmed through shattered transom I smear in my glamour I make as if to justify the ways of God to man That’s my ticket in That’s why God lets me speak here Crystostoma’d on his couch Even though I’m derived from Hell Hellish Helenish Hellenic I’m the hanged man in this version pegged up in mine pegged jeans by mine ancles, an inversion mine manacles are monocoles I spit out the key and squinny through the keyhole back at the unquittable world In my rainment of gummy sunglasses and crows wings for epaulets I delicately squawk from the edges of things balance unsteadily on the bust of the goddess squawk: Aeschelus Euphorion Aeschelus Euphorion &: I’m going to tell you something so bad that when you hear it you’re gonna know it’s true. Like all the worst stories It comes from the heart & it goes there too. Back here in St. Joseph County a struck duck flies crown first into the asphalt and is stuck there with its brains for adhesive like someone licked the pavement and sealed it a postalette with its cartoon feet in the air and its Jeff Koon wings that’s roadkill for you: realer than real and the cars mill by with their wheels in reverse heavy as chariots in a dealership commercial and I am walking my dog by the river a matron from hell look on me and despise I am like the river: thick as beer and with a sudsy crown there polyethylene bags drape the banks like herons and a plastic jug rides a current with something like the determination that creases mine own brow as I attempt to burn my lunch off the determination of garbage riding for its drain hey-nonny it’s spring and everything wears a crown as it rides its thick doom to its noplace gently brushed by pollen by the wings of hymenoptera like a helicoptera performing its opera all above Indiana bearing the babes away from their births to their berths in the NICU in Indie-un-apple-us Unapple us, moron God, You’ve turned me Deophobic the greasy tracks you leave all over the internet the slicey DNA in the scramblechondria the torn jeans panicked like space invaders in an arcane video game oh spittle-pink blossom the tree don’t need nomore shook down to slick the pavement like a payslip you disused killer app each thought strikes my brain like the spirals in a ham pink pink for easter sliced by something machinic each thought zeros in flies hapless and demented festooned like a lawn dart finds its bit of eye spills its champagne split of pain then we come to our senses suddenly alone in the endzone
I always like to think I’m sitting eclipses out when I don’t have a lot of activity in the houses they are occurring in. I never am. It’s never true. I did get through that New Moon Cancer one in early July pretty easily, but in general, I always, always rue that thinking. What a shocking, but also amazingly verdant and unfolding few days.
Things I’ve learned include:
Anyone who needs a single podcast that will rock you: This is as controversial as tarot gets; this is strong medicine, tarot related or not. These are a lot of things a lot of people don’t want to hear but are true. It’s partly why I don’t believe in, or practice, predictive tarot and it’s why I don’t do ‘Does he / she love me?!’ tarot questions… those are the wrong questions.
Other podcasts of note: Inside Jaws. Ear Hustle.
I have thoughts and feelings about this,
and of course, this…
though I have surprisingly few thoughts about these eclipses (Merc Rx is tomorrow), followed by the doozy Aquarius Full Blood Moon, total lunar eclipse on the 27th. But boy-howdy are my pals and community feeling this. I have a legit queue of people waiting to talk to me about their natal charts and what-ever-in-the-world is going on. Hang in there, cuties… we are half way through eclipse season.
Horoscopes (just scroll down after the click) and thoughts from Chani Nicholas, on the astro of this week. This is all really insightful and well written.
Here is a perky spread I made for part of my astro class final, for this eclipse on the 27th.
(And, the Sun is in Leo now you all… in case your resident Leo hasn’t already reminded you. 25 times. And guess what, their birthdays are coming up. But I bet you knew that too… Make like a Leo; be bold, let your gifts shine!)
I’ve been too busy to watch through much of anything, aside from the giant nest of high school instructional films from the 40’s I was joyfully lead to and keep on while I’m working, but in honor of these golden age of TV announcements, let’s rewatch the finest fight scene ever to grace TV… which is always, wow. And ewwww. (cw: graphic faux violence depictions…)
Tomorrow, Uranus moves into Taurus, after 7 years in Aries. And, the new moon on the same day is also happening in Taurus… that’s a massive new tide. It’s the first and one of the only major astrological moves happening this year.
I’ve always thought of Uranus as Tesla – the man, not the brand – thinking and creating something(s) so unexpected and radical, communal, overhauling whole schools of thinking and moving the world forward in leaps. Of course the culture pushes back, stirred from it’s complacency, but it can’t unsee.
Now a bit about Taurus… Taurus the sign of earth, nature, sensuality, traditions, finance, luxury, food, work, art & beauty, values. I think of Taurus as Orson Wells – an unbelievably brilliant artist – a genius, a virtuoso summing up and aesthetically challenging his time, instinctive, successful, but ultimately (later) overindulgent, hedonistic, and obstinate. Sorta sloppy at the end — the shadow side of unchecked Taurus.
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Uranus is an outer, transpersonal planet. Like Pluto, much of the work Uranus does is cultural — broad strokes (versus the personal planets closer to the earth, such as Mercury and Venus). Think of how in 2011, when Uranus moved to Aries, Kardashianism, tumblr, and selfies were just starting to reach an apex. Everyone’s parents and grandparents finally got on Facebook. The broadly named ‘Arab Spring’ was in full swing and it felt like a new protest or demonstration in the middle east was happening each day.
Uranus is departing Aries and Aries is the sign of the warrior, of the self… Me-ness, and self advocacy and self focus. While many roll their eyes at the idea of celebrity-for-no-real-reason, self study through the eyes of others has its place, especially for young women who have been denied self-hood in myriad ways for thousands of years. Many artists, including Cindy Sherman and Francesca Woodman (to name just a couple), taught us that. We have to understand how we are in the world — the identity of our self — that is encountering the world.
Uranus in Aries also saw the cultural impact of the outer planet resonate with the start of protests in the US around the Occupy Movement, Ferguson, Women’s March, RESIST, #metoo, etc., protests about holding the culture accountable to how it impacts individuals and therefore non-dominant communities.
Apply those functions to Taurus – sign of nature and its resources – and suddenly things like the shift in focus to water rights, Flint drinking water crisis, the volcano Kilauea, begin to set the tone of the transit. (The 2011 tsunami in Tōhoku Japan happened right before Uranus moved into Aries.) Now apply that kind of transformation and addressing of long standing issues to the self, and we can begin to understand how this transit might impact us culturally, and personally. What will be revealed are opportunities to dramatically overhaul our emotional status quo, transform long-standing issues and bad habits, and forge entirely new ground by unearthing new beliefs and philosophies, all related to the house this is happening in for you.
And to look more closely at the personal impact of Uranus in Aries, think of what was going on in your life in spring of 2011, when Uranus last changed signs… what is different? How are you different now? What was your emotional tone 7 years ago and what did a day in your life look like? What were the most significant events through those years?
Look up what house Uranus was transiting in your chart — (I love this site b/c it defaults to whole house system, and shows current transits on the outer edge. Just start entering your birth city where it says Sydney, AUS) see what house Aries occupies. This will reveal which themes and narratives Uranus was impacting these last 7 years, and what running themes will be taking attention these next 7 years for you, in Taurus.
For me, Aries is my 12th… the house of death, self-undoing, subconscious, suffering… or so it’s called. I find it to be the house of psychology and our shadow selves – the decisions we make and how they impact us in ways we didn’t imagine. Ultimately, for me, everything that had to die — relationships, jobs, situations, friendships, beliefs, habits, did die. I leave that transit a distillate of myself, far more purely me than 7 years ago, but chrysallis-ing, with no excess. I am wholly pared down and what I hold close, is fiercely held. There’s no surplus — everything that was supposed to leave me, did. What was built on false, weak soil atrophied itself, removed itself, withered off. What’s left is: of the self, as the self, mine.
It’s curious then to now see the focus shift to Taurus and my first house of self, the house of my ascendant. What I know is that in 7 years time, I will likely not be very recognizable. My self will be transformed into new, and the nature of Uranus means that the changes will be innovative and unexpected. I’d imagine the places I’ve always been pushing for – living off grid in a wooded area or living abroad in Bruges or Malmö, but the nature of Uranus means the changes will likely not be ones that were able to be imagined.
A tarot spread I scrawled – hopefully helpful to begin conceiving of this transit.
My beautiful, dear one reminded me that when in any doubt, return to the basics, and do not forget them. That was right before she took my child outside in the sun and taught him to hold stones closely, cast his wishes into them, and bury them so that the earth can work.
It has been a year of the very best friends.
Current celestial intensity. Plus, Mars and Saturn’s current antics led to these dreams… A man who seemed to be on drugs or simply raging, cut a woman’s face on a sidewalk. As she slumped down, he began looking for another victim. A man near me was bent fixing his bike and the knife wielder approached him. I was walking away to find help, but realized the man with the bike was about to get harmed so I moved closer, trying to prevent it, but the man slashed out with his knife. As I got to the victim, the perpetrator seemed to be moving to cut him again, but saw me and moved his attention. I began speaking to him like a friend, saying, ‘oh can you get some cloth and help me with this man’s wounds?’ trying to throw him off and emotionally shake him to. He was confused, then started towards me seemingly to cut me as well.
The next dream began. I was leaving an event or maybe work at night, in a city. It was busy on the street and a man with what looked like a smallish battery-powered (?) circular hand saw was threatening people on the street, grabbing them, threatening to cut them, then letting them go. I was debating what to do. Then suddenly he took the saw to himself, right across his stomach. He crumpled over, blood everywhere, people freaked out. I walked quickly away, shocked. I didn’t want to have to talk to the police about it for hours, having to relive it. I tried to call a friend to pick me up, but couldn’t get through. I was walking through a part of the city I didn’t know and accidentally walked into someone’s private property. I didn’t see the ‘no trespassing’ sign until I was already inside. I started back towards the exit, but the occupants were coming in — several large men in hunting or military type clothes with large dogs. I figured I would be attacked, and I started apologizing for being there, but they were understanding about it. One took my bag off my shoulder and showed me a way to stretch to relax after the scene I had fled. He told me to look up at the stars while stretching and it would be more effective. …These are the Mars-iest, Saturn-iest, Capricorn-iest dreams possible.
The best example of Aries in action is currently seen across media… the young women who are survivors of mass school shooting speaking fiercely, honestly, and holding accountable the entire country, in front of an audience of thousands of activists and protesters. It’s so Aries-in-action to watch, it’s breathtaking. Children holding our culture’s terminal apathy accountable, righteous anger peppered with ferocity, correct, outraged youth.
Jupiter’s retrograde in Scorpio has a role here too. Jupiter is a planet that enlarges everything it touches or passes through. Jupiter through Scorpio (coupled with Mars which finally left the sign) is what gave us #metoo and the deluge of finally illuminated truth-tellings and stories of assaults perpetrated by scores of high profile men last year. It’s given us people speaking and living their truth, releasing it from shadowy places, finally. Scorpio is liminal, where painful secrets, hurt, and anger reside – feelings and subjects we as a culture consider taboo.
Think back to November of last year when the Sun was also in Scorpio. How much did we learn about those around us and our own truth? What was brought to light that had previously been just a resonant subtext? Jupiter still in Scorpio, continues to pluck that string in a big way and on a grand scale. What have we changed since then? Jupiter’s current retrograde in Scorpio says that we aren’t done yet, facing what’s true, unpleasant, difficult, and desperately needing to be addressed, both personally and culturally.
Whether #metoo or outraged shooting survivors or our own realizations about our ability to look at our own emotional shadows , Jupiter is saying, ‘Yeah not so fast. I’m not leaving until I’m sure you can’t deny this any longer. You can’t unsee.’
A note about the 12th house — I’ve been asked by a few friends recently to explain the mysterious 12th house. It’s been called the ‘house of suffering,’ ‘house of self-undoing,’ ‘house of subconscious,’ house of death.’ It’s the house where we face ourselves, whether we want to or not and whether we are aware of it or not — where we are our own worst enemies or create narratives about ourselves and our lives that we cling to, even when they are outdated, preventing our own real happiness and growth, sort of like emotional and psychic security blankets. Comfy, same or similar, safe choices that ultimately work against us.
No matter what sign is in this house, trying to understand it will probably feel like trying to grab at fistfuls of fog. What the 12th house wants you to know is likely functioning like a rider on the other running themes in your life, asking to be addressed by the choices that we actively make towards our fulfillment and wholeness, instead of our stagnation and undoing.
A lot about Chiron returns after the clicky click
…conjunct natal Venus (which is opposite natal Saturn), square natal Pluto… It’s like noble Venus is being constantly hollered at in both ears by relentless drill-sergeant Saturn, and Pluto is shouting up: “Heeeey, I can just tear it all down if you want!”. Not helpful, Pluto, but I feel you.
The Moon through Pisces and Cancer was emotionally intense. And, so much is still in Pisces (Sun, Nept, Venus, Merc. and Chiron), all trampling over my natal Moon in Pisces, conjunct Jupiter (and both planets are square Neptune {which my north node sits in exact conjunction} in my stellium sign and house… yeah. Let that sink in, chart readers!). Even I was impressed by how much my subconscious self decided to shut down last month. After a cold, I developed some sort of extremely painful rib lining and sternum inflammation (?) I had never heard of, got a bunch of needles and rolfing which only slightly helped, and ended up staying home for over a week until I could breathe deeply and move my right side. It cleared up, but I can see now it created a strange pocket for me to totally check out. I just read, researched, and slept and played with my kid. That part was kind of a dream, minus the sparking white pain while breathing.
I probably shouldn’t grouse. A few days ago was a lovely, surprising dream. But Saturn is nearly conjunct Venus now… I’ll be deeply relieved when this transit eases and planets leave Pisces. We folk of the Pisces Moon are a very singular sort. A lot is written about us. Astrologers respond soberly when they find out. And, having so many planets though the sign is kind of our worst Piscean fear — like a spontaneous, gregarious party appears in your house and will not leave and will not allow you to leave.
3/4/18 – dream notes
living in or visiting an apartment in a neighborhood that reminded me a bit of Kensington, in London. I was walking at night and saw a house between two others had been demolished, debris cleared. In its place, like a full-scale placeholder, someone had built a house from rich black earth — stairs, stoop, second floor, columns and all. They even gave the facade a beveled art deco detail. It made me think of how beautiful it would be if everything started growing from it, but also, how it might be like a sand castle, but from earth. It was solid and gorgeous. I wanted to show you. I was sad I didn’t have a camera.
I went back the next day, but it was gone. A new, boring building, a 3 story walk up trying to look authentically old, but super phoned in had been put up in the meantime. I was totally disappointed, but not surprised.
I went to an historic, indoor arcade which was supposed to be a local attraction, but it was super small… only 1 skee-ball alley, and 3 bumper cars that couldn’t get enough space to work up any speed. Some kids were trying to use them. There were 2 llamas outside that I could see through an open dutch door. The woman running it seemed like she had been doing it a long time.
As I was leaving, I saw several felt feathers affixed to an interior column, like someone had made them and posted them up. I was drawn to the white one, but also a striking cobalt, and a rich rust. She told me I could take one. I put the white one in my pocket.
I started walking home. I thought to ask you if you had seen someone make the earthen buildings before, but knew I had no way. And then, my fingers fell off. I gathered them with my palms and put them in my coat, hoping I would later be able to get them back on.
journal notes 1/9/18
I write, Sitting in the Vietnamese Restaurant
an astrologer worked my chart. tapped: this, this improbable lattice, where does this much go, taps the moon, jupiter – it shrugs my shoulders
brushed or bashed in transits. a fly on the neptune, moth on your moon — the fine trembling resulting. a consequence along the wire, numen or flare.
*raises vow* all my dreams are and always have been buildings houses or water.
Do you have to have the dreams. I’ve kept them, some days I guess I will not ever tell you.
How to accept, Pluto, Pluto in my pets, in my health, in my daily routines.
A truck passes: Rental Repairs. Motto: “Our name says it all.”
Don’t ask for anything else.
A sublime sun, just after the winter cusp, white golding off glass. I’ve gone so long without my eyes water back at it, grow the lazing strobe. My corneas prism a holy pattern, seraphic.
I know one dream is the water, your hand pulling me. Another, blue moths pulse.
I count up every patron, study first dates, the friend dates, all of us at the solo table staring, shooting lit information at our faces. Crow-like risings, one after the other off a line, kiting our bodies on the day.
In my favorite poems, women walk outside and see every color. They are given the spectrum and immediately cast it.
I see this. My child’s face veiled clear emerald and plum, marbled yellow. My skin polychromatic, gone kaleidoscopic, all verdance and grow back, rhizomes splitting shoots and everything pressing out now now now.
1481hyperion 