Tomorrow is technically my birthday but astrologically today is my solar return. I always tell my clients: What you do on your birthday sets the tone for your year so only do what feels really really right. On this, my 47th return, I knew, I just knew, that I had to be back in the mermaid woods since I want to be here as much as possible in the upcoming year and all the years after that. So I drove all day to arrive at Provincetown’s Lands End Inn, all soaring ceilings and bold pastel stained glass and Mucha and Erté reproductions and busts of beautiful ladies, with decks and porches overlooking seemingly the whole mermaid world. The building is at the very edge of the continent (hence the name), and I’m wearing one of those lush hotel robes with all the windows open, smelling the salt and wind and wood-burning stoves of the area. I ate very fresh oysters a few hours ago with new friends and now am drinking champagne in a red velvet chair listening to the fire crackle and the wind rustle and the waves crash and am writing to you before I open my book back up. Because that’s how I want my next year to be. The sweet semisolitude of my adulthood, garnished by Venus and the words that somehow always pour through me even when I’m tired, even when I’m sad, even when I’m not sure anyone is there to receive them. Sending my birthday light to each of you because I’m glad we’re all still here.
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The House of Sunshine Compensation
Today is what they’re calling a bomb cyclone–a hurricane-cum-snow and ice storm made possible by our brand new climate. Outside the heavens rage, but I did my due diligence and am prepared for their wrath. Bagels and cat food sit pretty on the counter, produce and protein line the refrigerator, house is scrubbed clean. I have books and notebooks and candles stacked by my armchair, whiskey and a tumbler by the turntable, a kitten at my feet. But it’s into the kitchen that I putter as the world blurs white and lights flash off and on.
I may be old-fashioned, but I prefer my kitchen to be devoid of electricity anyway. I keep the lights off during the day, and eschew unnecessary gadgets, including toasters, food processors, and juicers. Eating and cooking is one way we still connect to the cycle of life, and I like to feel all the unadulterated core elements- earth, sun, water, fire–as I step into that flow. This morning the world is furious, and I am glad to know. I squeeze sunshine into a glass and dream of warmer days.
Mercury Retrograde Casualty
I was so into this Mercury Retrograde. Delightful! I crowed. It’s a trickster, engineering sparkly run-ins, bewitching us with time-travel adventures! Then tough-love Saturn entered big-daddy Capricorn on December 19 and it’s been a shite show, not a star shower.
Website hacked, wages garnished for unpaid taxes that in fact I paid, transportation black holes, clusterfuck communications, unseemly encounters applying exclamation points to long-simmering emotional run-on sentences. Then there’s the U.S. Plutocracy taking its reality-TV larceny to new let-em-eat cake levels: Climate change denial. Orwellian language control. The destruction of national monuments and healthcare for millions. Emboldened Nazis. Stolen Supreme Court seat. Crushed net neutrality. Cabinet departments handed to people bent on destroying them. Tax welfare for corporations.*
Am I learning? Yes, motherrrrrr, I am. But these lessons are proving as charmless as a Masshole when the Sox are losing. The good news: today’s winter solstice is sure to puncture this overarching darkness. In the meantime you can find me cowering with Gracie beneath the covers with champagne, hot sauce, and oranges from 
Rachel, laughing like a hyena with (not at) the brilliant sorceressery of Broad City and trying valiantly not to check my phone. Bright light to you, loved ones.
*Hat tip to Shawn Levy for breaking it down.