This clever but devastating New Yorker cartoon is pretty much the motto of Mars in Scorpio and Mercury in Capricorn—both of which can be found in my natal chart. Officially we say that all astrological aspects are positive. And of course this is true, in the sense that everything offers growth. But it is also true that certain elements of our natal charts are more challenging than others. Thus I am not the sort of person who thinks of things she wishes she’d said. Rather, I am the sort of person who, when threatened, says things other people wish they could forget. As April begins and we dig into a new year of astrology, I offer this transparency to inspire your own. Ask yourself: What tools have I allowed to become weapons? What personal traits and astrological elements are my help and hindrance? In my intuition practice, I love this part of soul-expansion. For contrary to contemporary belief, self-love is not blanket self-acceptance. It is ruthless self-reckoning coupled with powerful compassion.
After a Mercury Retrograde-inspired break, I am once again offering readings Wednesdays and Saturdays; get in touch.
Archive | Spirit Matters
Saint Agnès Now
Agnès Varda’s movies were dreams spun by a woman, a punk rock pixie whose gaze–wide and eternally bemused–was amazing to behold but even more amazing to share.
A powerful female director when the world had few, she spun her dervish dreams while the rest of us stumbled stridently in linear time. While watching her films, I always calmed down and also came alive. Not one did I watch on a small screen. That would have been a profaning of her magic–that wondering wonderful movie magic that she birthed while like lovers and children we sat at her feet.
Once at a luncheon I was seated next her—the host thought we’d like each other–and I was struck uncharacteristically dumb. Her lavender-auburn coupe à la Jeanne d’Arc, her oyster smile, her puckish striped costume, they were all like her movies and it was just too good. Both object and subject, she was art and artist–what woman are trained to be, what women fight to be–and as we ate our lunch she asked good questions while her eyes told much more. I wish I’d asked more, said more, taken the hands off the clock. But then again, there are some people from whom we can never get enough. Fairy godmother, thank you for sharing your gaze. You showed us life.
Diving Into the Wreck
16 at 48.
My eldest goddaughter calls me a “method writer.” By this she means that I experience everything as I write about it and materialize in real-life whatever I author on page. As is often the case, she is absolutely right.
I’ve been thinking about this because I spent the first half of this day writing a scene I’ve desperately avoided writing for two years. It’s about all the stuff I don’t like to think about, let alone read about. And yet the scene demanded to be written.
At heart my book is about post-traumatic growth–the magic that’s conferred when we rise from our own ashes– and you can’t write about such an ascent without first describing the fire.
After I sent in the day’s work I spent an hour curled up in a ball. I was worrying about the impact of these pages on my reader and overwhelmed by the sadness and rage and fear I’d had to unleash. I do not know how to write about pain without experiencing it anew.
For me the the worst thing about writing isn’t the writer’s block (I rarely have it) nor the poverty (though it’s becoming devastating) but that crazy, out-of-control feeling of diving into the biggest and hardest places without someone or something to pull me back out. There I sat in the late afternoon sunlight crying like a Child who had never been rescued. Continue Reading →