For the Week starting: 7.21.2005
“Thou art a slave, whom Fortune’s tender arm
With favour never clasp’d, but bred a dog.”
- Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens [IV.iii.252-3]
Saturn & Sun, into Leo this week. Mercury goes into apparent retrograde motion.
Leo: There’s a theory, I was introduced to it from a real estate client, about the broken window. “No, see, if there’s one broken pane of glass on a property, within a week, maybe two, most of the windows will be broken.” Might be a rule, probably dating back to a Spanish Land Grant and the Anglo settlers in Texas. I’m unsure. But the message is simple and clear, there’s one — fairly insignificant — item on your Leo list that needs to be fixed. Don’t put it off. Fix it. Fix it now. Right now. It’s like that broken window, see, if you don’t fix it now? Pretty soon there’s going to be a whole lot more that wind up broken. And to think, if you’d just fixed that one, this wouldn’t be a problem. Might seem a like it’s a task that is below your Leo qualities, not that I would want you to sully your royal paws on something so mundane, but there you have it. If you don’t do it, and do it now, there’s going to be a lot more trouble, later.
Virgo: Just as Venus exeunt Leo and scrambles her way into Virgo, Mercury turns on his winged heels and starts a backward trek through the heavens. It’s like a joke, and I can hear the Virgo retort, “Yeah. Ha-ha. Very funny.” There’s a little part I left off, because, after all this is the delicate sensibilities of Virgo land, but I know that you can fill in an appropriate expletive or two for the finally punctuation on that comment. But it’s not all that bad. The way I see, it’s like a little bubble around you. Let’s call that a “Venus bubble.” Like a soap bubble, though, maybe like a child’s toy that makes bubbles? There’s a delicate nature to this Venus Bubble, and one needs to handle it delicately. Take it easy, in other words. Go slowly, move with a methodical pace, make sure you know where you’re planting your feet before you step ahead. It’s a good time not to blindly leap off on some far-flung project or adventure. It’s okay to meet with certain friends for a quiet drink after work, but to take in some outlandish adventure? I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. Remember that tenuous surface tension that’s holding your good place, despite what is going on. Make sure you don’t do something hasty and burst your own bubble.
Libra: I got tapped by a girlfriend to help her shop for a new piece of technology. She was looking for an electronic address book. Big superstore with a lot of hardware. I was having fun, that’s for sure. We found what she wanted, I made a recommendation in the strongest possible way, pointed out the manufacturer was going to discontinue that particular line, and it was a close-out special. Then I wandered off to look at other toys. I was looking at a camera, another close-out special. Cheap, too, in the vein of “disposable” cheap. Never can tell when one of my cameras will go swimming. So I wander back to the sales kid, the girlfriend, and the hardware. While my back was turned, he had done a really nifty up-sell. To the tune of several hundred dollars. Plus the extended warranty, complete with a replacement policy. I shrieked. “No! I turn my back for three minutes, and that’s a hundred dollars a minute!” The sales kid just shrugged. In fact, he’d done just exactly what he was supposed to do. And the girlfriend got all the bells and whistles she wanted. Plus some extra stuff. Like a camera, and a cell phone, and an MP3 player. Plus a memory-expansion thing. Three minutes. That kid moved fast. I wandered off to look at the cameras again. Sotto voce, the sales kid said, “Oh good he’s gone now, let me show you this….” Look, that kid was doing his job, earning his commission, and the bells and whistles? The girlfriend really wanted all the extra crap. Deal is, she spent exactly twice what she had figured to spend. My dear Libra, are you sure you need to spend twice as much as your budget allows?
Scorpio: End of a long, hot afternoon. I’d gone for a swim, hiked many miles in blazing sun, gone for a dip in the creek, and hiked some more. My path wended its way around a local chain of sandwich shops. I kept thinking about a vegetarian sub, my style — with a couple of slices of bacon. Smelling faintly of creek water, I stopped in and ordered up. Only, what came out of my mouth was “Roast Beef on Whole Wheat,” not the vegetarian order I kept thinking about all afternoon. “Want to add anything?” the Scorpio behind the counter asked. “Bacon,” I croaked out, “everything’s better with bacon.” Actually, the bacon is for the cat. No, really, I only do it for her. The bacon request struck the sandwich maker as funny, and he proceeded to make my sub with all the fixins, just the way I like it. I got back to the trailer, though, and there was no bacon. The cat had to suffer with roast beef. Being a compulsive receipt saver, I checked, and no, I hadn’t been charged for bacon. Mercury is backwards. Someone is bound to make a similar mistake. However, I wasn’t charged for the mistake, and the sandwich probably does taste better without the bacon. Everyone’s happy, even though there was a mistake. Blame Mercury and save your receipts, just in case you’re not served by a fine Scorpio.
Sagittarius: It’s a pleasant loop, along the hike and bike trail, over the pedestrian bridge to the downtown post office, back across another bridge, over to the creek, and finally back to the trailer park. It can take as little as half an hour, or it can take as long as three maybe four hours, depending on what stops I make along the way, any social or business obligations that need to be answered and so forth. Or if I dawdled in Barton Creek, for a swim. Or, as it happened the other afternoon, when I stopped to watch what a group of urban youths were looking at. Two ducks were mating. Brings a whole new meaning to a certain term. Here it was, a little slice of National Geographic on the Nature Channel, right in front of our eyes. Yes, so there’s all this activity in Leo these days, and Leo, being a fire sign, means there’s a decent chance that some of that activity will spin our Sagittarius way. Now, when I was observing the ducks and the mating, and the group of people observing the ducks, I was an outsider. I was a lone, weird guy with wet hair, and a strange sense of humor. Wadded up in my shirt was a cell phone and other accoutrements that indicate I might actually be (don’t laugh) gainfully employed, but to that other group? I was just another weird person who wandered off the street for a dip in the creek. Well, think about those two ducks mating. Sagittarius: we’re outsiders this week. We can make good observers.
Capricorn: A certain red-headed Capricorn buddy stopped by. She was chatting and had her feet up on the coffee table. She picked up a catalog for “men’s things,” laughed at an item or two, and flipped to the end. Her gaze next strayed to the various plastic worms and assorted wiggly bits that were scattered around one corner of the coffee table. I consider that the rigging section, used for preparing lures and such. She picked up “Brush Hog,” took one look, gave it shake, and I looked at her, “Doesn’t that make your mouth water?” “Sorry, Kramer, not at all.” “That plastic worm, next to it, doesn’t that like, make you horny or something?” “Uh, sorry buddy. I think you’re fishing with the wrong thing here.” Probably am. My baits seem to universally not work on Capricorn. Not that it bothers me much, either. I thought the whole conversation about what was on my coffee table was rather amusing. To be expected, my conversation is often laced with sexual innuendo, with this one lass. She expects it. Rolls her eyes a lot. Eyeing my paltry collection plastics, hooks and so forth, especially some of the wilder creature-feature baits, just didn’t move her, except, possibly move her to mirth. With Mercury going backwards, I’d expect a little bit mirth, maybe a cocked eyebrow or so, but not much else. The usual bait doesn’t work on Capricorn.
Aquarius: I slept right through the alarm clock the other morning. Didn’t mean to, and it’s not like I was missing anything of great importance. I was aiming to get up and check on the fish, just see if any of my little buddies were feeding. So it’s not like I missed an important date, or an early flight, or something like that. But I was a little worried, see that alarm clock? I’d only set the radio portion, not the alarm buzzer. So that means, the other morning, I slept through an hour of local radio with the local version of country-shock-jocks venting about whatever is going on that sorely irritates them. The way I understand it, their spleen-venting is now imbedded in my subconscious. “Oh boy, kids these days, do you believe that?” What’s worse, I’m also going to spout out a weather prediction, hot and dry this summer, just as a casual result from listening to that material in my sleep. Also permanently embedded? There’s a fender-bender on the freeway, causing a traffic problem, and the sun’s not even up yet. Or it’s barely up. Sleeping through an alarm clock is a typical “Mercury is retrograde” tale. To prevent this kind of occurrence, set both versions of that alarm, the radio and the buzzer. As long as Mercury starts his errant path in the sign opposite you? Means it will take two alarms to wake your Aquarius self. Or two reminders.
Pisces: There was a film version of Romeo & Juliet a half dozen years ago, maybe further back than that. The play itself was pretty chopped up during the process of converting it to a movie script. The graphics and the visuals of that one movie, though, for all its textual faults, were pretty amazing. Grand on a scale that can only be done on film and in the land of make-believe. So when a friend invited me out to see a local version of R&J, I skipped it. Besides, I’ve seen that one play, almost as much as I’ve seen Hamlet. You know what? They all end the same way. Everyone dies. Blood at the end. Both are tragedies. They don’t have happy endings. But I’ve seen R&J often enough that, unless there’s something special about the production, I usually take a miss on seeing it. Not that it would stop me from using the lines, or quoting various bits and pieces, but I tend away from that one show. Sad story. Sounds a lot like a portion of my clientele, on a bad day. Ah yes, those of us who trade in love, as it were. Hey, I wouldn’t go on and on about a play I’m probably going to miss this summer, but you know, when it comes around? Might want to think twice about the play. You know how it ends, and with Mercury starting a backward trek? No need to get upset over a predictable plot.
