ASTRO PSA! ASTRO PSA! Full moon tonight. A super-powerful, super-pink, super-moon, no less. It may seem that even the heavens don’t have sway over the dreaded Covid-19. But astrology still offers guiding posts–grounding perspectives, much-needed clearings. Enter this full moon, which takes place in diplomatic, eminently social Libra. Ruled by Venus, this sign is all about navigating boundaries—literally! Now is the moment to refine our Covid Etiquette—social distancing behaviors that more gracefully honor the social contract. Ask yourself: How can I better honor the humanity of others while we’re wearing masks stripping us of human features? How can we more diplomatically ensure our six feet apart? How can we express our love, concern, grief, rage, and fear in a way that honors all of our big feelings?
Frankly, if you’ve been letting your inner misanthropist off the leash, you’re not alone. We are cooped up with our trauma during the season of Aries—the most zealous and impulsive sign of the zodiac. Given how little Aries tolerates restraints, it’s no wonder we’ve been extra salty. So even if you can’t go outside, let your inner wolf howl out the window! Punch that lunar pillow! Then put on your rosy glasses for this rosy moon, and set some intentions about how you may treat yourself and others with more grace. We are in the shit, yes, but we’re in it together. Let’s use it to fertilize something beautiful.
For more insight or to gain personal perspective during this upheaval, book a Life in the Time of Covid-19 reading. No one will be turned away due to lack of funds.
Friends, we are all struggling no matter where we are. But I’m having a hard time with tone-deafness.
For the people in less-afflicted areas, I’m glad for your nature communion. Sorry you’re tiring of TV offerings and snack options and that your trip was cancelled. Mildly amused by memes about how your hygiene and health routines are suffering. Even glad for those who are embracing this time as an opportunity for “radical self care.”* But speaking as a New Yorker I can’t walk a block without stumbling over a homespun sidewalk memorial for a neighbor who was just felled or an ambulance whisking someone else away.
So many people I know are sick, people I love and admire in my immediate world. It all hurts, even the deaths of the people you didn’t especially care for. And then of course there’s the terror of your personal welfare. The fear of the many unemployed. The fear of our deplorably unprotected essential workers. Most New Yorkers have no safe outdoor space whatsoever and for those of us who don’t have a second home or family we can run to, what is happening in real time is unfathomable. Because for many of us there is no other place.
Either we were raised here or this city welcomed us outcasts and it was here that we finally found a home. We loved that we were all crowded together–in it together–even when we complained, and now that has been ripped from us though we’re still all crowded in the same place. Only now it’s not “crowded.” It’s “caged.” And I’m relatively lucky as a New Yorker. I have enough food in my fridge, savings to get me through a few more months, framily support.
I am not saying anyone should feel guilty, it’s a useless emotion. I am saying we should be careful about what we put out there. Especially while so many of us are sick and dying and grieving and losing everything we thought shored us.
Don’t abstract this trauma. Don’t expect “good vibes only” when some of us legitimately feel a roaring black hole of loss and rage and fear. Don’t expect us to be available for business as usual while our entire worlds are tumbling down around our heads.
I send love and I feel yours too. But we are all going to have to take it up a notch in terms of how we compassionately and consciously hear and tell our stories–me included. A new etiquette is required–a new social contract for these no-contact times–and we’re just going to have to fumble our way through. Patience is the new praxis.
To me it’s fairly clear that Trump is holding on to necessary supplies until the Red and Swing States need them, at which point he’ll come to their rescue to ensure their votes. It’s cynical, and thus, I am sorry to say, likely true. Which means that he’s committing genocide–I am watching it happen in real time in the city where I live–and all pretenses of non-fascism have been dropped.
The electoral college is dreck. The alleged checks and balances are dreck. Federalism itself is dreck. We’re back to functioning as individual states–not that I didn’t feel my true country was already NYC rather than the USA.
Nothing is in place to address the self-serving virulence–and, yes, that noun is very deliberate–of a demon leader masquerading as a human being. For what threatens us most is Virus Trump, propagated by his cronies and cult members; by ignorance, greed, and selfishness (aka capitalism). One very small satisfaction: After we are released back into the wild, people may spread out across the country since living clumped together will re-trigger trauma. If that occurs, consider how this will radically change that our alleged electoral college and overall elections. O how the GOP will then weep.
The American experiment is over. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, I had an egg sandwich for lunch.
ASTRO PSA! ASTRO PSA! Full moon tonight. A super-powerful, super-pink, super-moon, no less. It may seem that even the heavens don’t have sway over the dreaded Covid-19. But astrology still offers guiding posts–grounding perspectives, much-needed clearings. Enter this full moon, which takes place in diplomatic, eminently social Libra. Ruled by Venus, this sign is all about navigating boundaries—literally! Now is the moment to refine our Covid Etiquette—social distancing behaviors that more gracefully honor the social contract. Ask yourself: How can I better honor the humanity of others while we’re wearing masks stripping us of human features? How can we more diplomatically ensure our six feet apart? How can we express our love, concern, grief, rage, and fear in a way that honors all of our big feelings?
So even if you can’t go outside, let your inner wolf howl out the window! Punch that lunar pillow! Then put on your rosy glasses for this rosy moon, and set some intentions about how you may treat yourself and others with more grace. We are in the shit, yes, but we’re in it together. Let’s use it to fertilize something beautiful.
Friends, we are all struggling no matter where we are. But I’m having a hard time with tone-deafness.
Don’t expect us to be available for business as usual while our entire worlds are tumbling down around our heads.
To me it’s fairly clear that Trump is holding on to necessary supplies until the Red and Swing States need them, at which point he’ll come to their rescue to ensure their votes. It’s cynical, and thus, I am sorry to say, likely true. Which means that he’s committing genocide–I am watching it happen in real time in the city where I live–and all pretenses of non-fascism have been dropped.
One very small satisfaction: After we are released back into the wild, people may spread out across the country since living clumped together will re-trigger trauma. If that occurs, consider how this will radically change that our alleged electoral college and overall elections. O how the GOP will then weep.