#8: I'm tired this week and the astrology backs it up!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Upcoming Astrology:
There are plenty of week ahead resources out there (the CHANI podcast is a good one), so I thought it might be more fun to read a focused interpretation of one dynamic in the sky.
Solar eclipse in Aries on Wednesday night: This week is astrologically exhausting. Maybe that’s showing up for you, maybe it’s not. I am definitely tired today.
Physically, that’s because I drank coffee too late yesterday and then woke up around 2am. It was a blessing in disguise, because I heard my dog shuffling around in the other room and had a gut sense that he definitely needed to go outside. He did, despite our having gone out a few hours earlier before going to bed. Astrologically, it’s exhausting mostly because of the eclipse on Wednesday night, the square between the Sun and Pluto on Thursday evening, and Mercury’s impending retrograde on Friday. Most interesting to me is the eclipse, because it’s happening in Aries, kicking off the beginning of a new eclipse era.
Some other time I can write about eclipses and their history, but, basically, it’s the beginning of a shift of eclipse energy into the axis of Aries-Libra, an axis already about balancing between the self and the other, selfishness and reciprocity. Eclipses, famous for portending the death of kings, are symbolic (also, I guess, literal) snuffing out of the lights. The not always super helpful astrological advice with eclipses is: “just… don’t do much.”
If you’re feeling extra depleted or depressed or confused or unsure or annoyed or touchy, feel free to blame the eclipse. If you want, you can see where Aries is in your chart and consider how those topics are being activated. Either way, I am going to enjoy being tired and let it pass.
Instead of a longer newsletter this week, here are two of my favorite poems, one that’s heavier and resonant for me as business interests continue to run the USA and one that’s less heavy and makes me smile.
Republican Living Rooms by Sharon Olds
I have known the Republican living rooms,
spacious, the oversize furniture,
overstuffed linen floral, the big
mahogany coffee-tables heavy as map-tables
in some war room, the huge clawed feet
piercing the deep wall-to-wall,
the table-lamps large and brutal,
their tall, shot-silk shades
shedding a bright gold haze,
the light of the rich, the high ceilings,
the strange spaces between the chairs and couches
after most of the guests have gone.
Those who remain are drunk, so they take up
more space, their thick financial
auras expanding in the quiet. All is
suspended in the 14-carat
blaze of the lamps turned up so high.
It takes a while to notice there is something
going on near the doorway into
the well-appointed dining room-
some kind of tussle. On the carpet, the host
is kneeling on the throat of a woman,
her face streaked with blood. His cheeks are
glazed with sweat and happiness.
When she dies he glitters with excitement, his life
makes sense. He has a brief moment,
before anyone comes close,
of perfect bliss- he has finally found something
he really likes, something he can do
for fun. Best of all, it costs
absolutely nothing.
Poem Beginning With a Line Overheard in the Gym by Ross Gay
I'd drive a thousand miles to suck the dick
of the man who fucked her once. If you're like
me, the pristine lilt of iambic verse will halt
your dumb work on the bench press. You also love
the hyperbolic rattling of logic's cage.
Mostly, you love the way the loins fuel
the tongue's conjure. But what grand sadness dragged
in misplaced desire; as though from another's memory
of smoke we might glean some end
of ache. Truth be told, ache's shop is long
set up. Is birth's phantom. Let's, instead admire
the tether. Its
wrangle with the loamy earth for the body,
the keepsake.
Thanks for reading.
Always a lot of credit goes to the people who have been my teachers, both directly and through their freely shared knowledge, and so many books.
P.S. Send me your Enneagram and astrology and random questions why not?