Fishing Guide to the Stars
By Kramer Wetzel
For the week starting: 6.18.2009
"There is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthron’d and spher’d
Amidst the other."
Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida [I.iii.92-4]
Summer Solstice is rapidly approaching. June 21, mark the day. (What the book says). Coming soon: workshop in old San Antonio.
Gemini: Your birthdays are over as of this weekend. Not all bad, except that Mars and Venus lag behind you. In Taurus. Still. Can’t do anything about that. What you can do is realize that there’s still that feeling, it’s just a feeling, and it’s still gnawing away at a corner of your mind. Like a little rat, or maybe, like an insect of some sort, eating away at some point in your brain, making you think that you might be losing grip on reality. Which you might, but that’s not part of the question, not really. The Gemini brian is a many-faceted wonder. Loosen up on just one corner of the firm grip you have on certain portions of reality
That’s not such a bad way to look at this. Besides, it’s only one little corner, not the whole brain that’s going. There’s a point, too, where this will be the touchstone of a new idea. Of course, at some point in the next few days, I will promise you’re going to feel like you’re going mad. Nuts. Insane. Clinically around the bend. Whatever you want to call it. However, that little point will shift, and the critter gnawing at the corner of the brain fragment will go away. Eventually. All a matter of how you look at it. Occasionally, there are brain cells we are willing to sacrifice.
Gemini brain and all, you’ve got plenty to spare. I think.
Cancer: Summer hits June 21, more or less. More than less, as that’s the Summer Solstice by my reckoning. Starting point for the Sun Sign Cancer, birthdays start and we have to just hold it down for a moment.
In the USA, July 4 is a big, wild party. Birth of the country, insert advertising, patriotic jargon here. Wave the flag. But seriously, it’s also a major excuse to party. Point is, not until your specific Cancer Birthday arrives, though, do you have license from astrofish.net/your astrologer, to party down. Then you can let loose. Until the actual date arrives? Chill and enjoy watching summer unfold.
Or around here? Watch the tourist fry in the heat.
Leo: Far be it for me to be the one who would question a Leo’s aesthetics, I mean, it really shouldn’t be my call. But it is. This next few days? Mars/Venus are still romping along in Taurus. Good taste. Leo, also a Fixed sign, under pressure from those same planets. Therein is the problem. If you’re buying clothing for me, given my lack of good tastes, it won’t be a problem. But if it’s a question about taste, beauty, style, and so forth? Maybe this isn’t the time to make such a judgement call.
In a few weeks, your taste will be back to being the best, as it should be, as Leo is the best. And tastes best, too. That’s a different question, though. No, the deal is to put off answering tough questions. You normally have a great eye for design. You normally have the very best tastes. The problem is that the Mars/Venus square is going to make life little tougher than usual. Not that bad, just less than best decisions pop up at this time. It is a problem. How much of a problem? "Which one looks better? This? Or this?"
Answer honestly and toss in a disclaimer, just to make sure you’re understood.
Virgo: The West Texas Plains are lonely, at best. Lots of open spaces, not a lot of material to hold it all down, or, for that matter, looking with an artist’s eye? No a lot of material to stitch together an image. Lots of open space. Spaces. Yet there’s a very real serene beauty to a whole lot of nothing. The sky itself, the horizon, the individual blades of grass, the occasional tree, leaning over in the wind, it all adds up.
Then too, towards the Panhandle, there’s Llano Estacado, the "Staked Plain." Or, to some, the enchanted prairies. I suppose, it’s all about how one sees it. The center of the Texas West Texas Plains is "Hub City" Lubbock. I can recite a half dozen artists, some you would recognize, who came from Lubbock.
Perhaps the city and its region has produced a disproportionate number of great artists because of its remote location. Maybe it’s something in the water. Perchance it’s something in the air, but on some days, that would tend to be a lot of eastern New Mexico. Or perhaps it’s that feeling of solitude that makes it easier for artistic expression to find its soul. Very few Virgo friends are currently in Lubbock, TX, on the edges of the high prairie, but that doesn’t stop this from being a source of inspiration.
Weekly Video (Monday, more or less) is here.
Libra: There’s a certain point, I get used to the absolute quiet and stillness of home, and some coffee, and it doesn’t take much to startle me. A loud noise, a neighbor’s car door slamming, not much to jostle the spirit. Top that off with maybe about a half a cup too much coffee, and I would appear just a little edgy, a little jumpy, perhaps a tad nervous to some people.
I get to a point where I’m so intent on what on the screen that I miss what’s happening around me. Clouds blew in the other afternoon, and if I had been paying attention by looking out the window, I would’ve been aware that there was about to be a thunderstorm. But I wasn’t. I was blissfully typing along, probably working on something you’ve already read.
Loud crack of thunder. I jump up. Heart races. I can joke and say I soiled myself, but in actuality, I think there was general tightening of the muscles, not the reverse. The next couple of days, for my better Libra friends, they are going to be like that morning. Me, all wrapped up and then, a sudden jolt. Same thing happens to you. Outcome? Depends. But I’d watch out for the sudden jolt. Try and act like you knew that was going to happen.
Scorpio: I was ordering an afternoon espresso in a certain chain of coffee shops. I looked at the counter help. She didn’t know my name. She didn’t know my order. She wasn’t new, so she said, but then, she allowed as how she wasn’t good with names. Neither am I. However, she did get the order right, and I did get my espresso, it’s just it wasn’t the way it usually was. No, the drink order was right, it was done correctly, it’s just I missed my usual banter with the Sagittarius/Scorpio/Leo/Gemini….
This is about things being the same, but not being the same. This is about the usual order and then, the unusual order. This about how items are all in the right place, only, they’re not. It’s about confusion and regimen. Order and chaos. Entropy, really, more than anything else. You’ll find, just like I did that fateful afternoon, the order isn’t right. It’s not like it used to be. Not that it’s bad, just different. And how we work with that? That’s what’s so important.
"Okay, so you’re new to me, so what’s your birthday?" (New counter help was a Scorpio; just made me seem that much more odd.)
Sagittarius: I’ve learned not to look askance at gifts. They might appear from a variety of places, but I don’t begrudge the gift. It was an Xmas card. From an international chain. Not that this is any big deal, someone gave it to as an tip/gift at Xmas time. Only way I know that is because it was festooned with Xmas images. I don’t know how long I carried that card around, as of now? Six months. Maybe longer.
Might be left over from two or three xmas seasons past. Who knows? Who cares? I do. Well, I hope I wrote a thank you note. I just rediscovered the card, so what I did was go and cash it in, and much to my surprise, I found a few bucks on that card. Good for a lot of certain kind of product at a certain chain’s outlets. Cool stuff. All from a card that’s been around for I don’t know how long.
We like little surprises like this. We can also, as our collective Sagittarius selves sally forth unto the week, then weekend, then early next week? We can look forward to just such a little object, a tip, a gratuity, a small gesture that means that much more now? It happens. Like Xmas. Only, in June.
Capricorn: I was listening to some blues. It was a pair of skinny white guys singing and playing the blues. I wasn’t going to mention color or size, except that one of the songs included some high-strung, acoustic picking. Not a usual blues sound, and I thought about the thin, reedy sound of the guitar, and I thought it sounded skinny, which it did, and then I thought about the performers, and I noticed they were thin. And white. Very white.
Almost pale to the point of translucent. I, perhaps erroneously, associate delta blues with a coffee color. Someone who’s really been downtrodden, and feels the blues. Which is why skinny white guys didn’t seem to add up, not at first glance. But listening, looking and digging? It makes more sense. The back story, yes, they have lived it , and yes, they do know the blues. But it’s matter of listening, looking and digging before I can render a value judgement.
Same thing for my little Capricorn friends, listening, looking, and digging a little before making a hasty judgement.
Aquarius: I’m not much on violence. I’ve lived in violent places, and I’ve seen my share of the results of abhorrent physical violence. I have a few scars myself. So this is way more on a allegorical level rather than a real, physical level. You need a slap to the back of the Aquarius head. A simple, it’s really just a tap, on the back of your head, just a reminder, like the kind given by superior, maybe supervisor, or a spouse.
Significant other, somebody needs to bounce an open palm across the back of your Aquarius head. "What were you thinking?" That’s not going to work. That’s the point. It’s about thinking versus dreaming. Dreaming is good. What I scoured off the inter-web thing, people who dream tend to be brighter. The more you dream, the bigger the brain. However, and you knew there was a problem, there’s a "foot in reality" motion here. Need to get a little grounded. Which is why I was favoring the slap to the back of the head.
Slap you out of that Aquarius dream state long enough to get a clue.
Pisces: I think the town is Lubbock, (Lubbock — Texas). There was a logo where the double letters in the middle of the town’s name were turned into cowboy boots. Little letter "b," it could be done. I might have the wrong town, or for that matter, the wrong logo, but the suppositions fit the facts. Close enough, anyway, and certainly close enough for a Pisces.
I’m looking at a number of influences, and all I really want to do is insert a dose of color into the Pisces mind. Into the day-to-day existence in Pisces Land. In what’s happening around you. Made me think of that logo, if I had it right. While modern and post-modern advertising know-how and theory suggests that a simpler logo is better, that slightly ornate name with two cowboy boots in the middle? The fancy stitching on the uppers of the boots?
Maybe the colorful pattern of the boots against a drab lettering? Adds that special (something), like a special sauce, and it’s just what is needed to make the Pisces week look attractive. I’m not saying you need new shoes. Or a little spice. Or a little colored pair of cowboy boots. But the idea is that it’s time to add something, a little spice, of one flavor or another, to make it all work right. Like that pair of boots in the middle of the town’s name, just as an added attraction.
Aries: I was walking the other morning. Hot summer’s day, or will be soon enough. The city streets smell like heat. Hot pavement, the aroma of car exhaust lingers after the morning rush hour, and the nascent aromatic blend of fossil fuels and partially spent hydrocarbons wafting gently on the air. Then I passed a garden. It’s next to a gallery, and the garden is well-kept. It had been freshly watered that morning, maybe against drought restrictions, but whatever.
It smelled like rain. More than rain, it smelled like water on hot pavement. As a city boy, I can identify that smell. Hot, wet asphalt. Usually find this next to some kind of urban oasis. That smell, it has to do with what’s happening with Aries. It’s right under your nose. Open your eyes, quit looking way down the road, and start looking at what’s right in front of you. For me, it took the smell of summer, cool water evaporating from hot pavement to realize that it was there, right under my feet, so to speak.
Don’t look to far away to find the secret for today.
Taurus: After this weekend, or at the end of the weekend, sort of depends on how you divide the days, the Sun will shift into Cancer. Mars and Venus are still loping along in Taurus, and Mercury is trailing the Sun. Means Mercury is in Gemini. Adds a double-tap to the weekend, then adds a little punch to the beginning of next week. Adds up to three hits.
"Are these good hits, or what?" Perspicacious Taurus, always there with the questions. Sort of depends on how you roll with what’s going to be thrown at you. It’s easy to argue, it’s better to negotiate, and it’s best to just be clearly right, from the start. While I’m sure you’re right, and I’m sure you have the moral high ground in this dispute, I’d watch it a little. There’s a time that requires immediate action, and there’s a time that requires a pause before you act. I’d suggest the pause. I was working a trick worm through the water, a favorite lake, and I wasn’t getting much action.
I tossed the worm (attached to a fishing line, attached to a reel, attached to a pole) back in the lake and let it pause. Then I let it pause a little longer. Then, I let it pause for a third beat. A third second, a third (some measure if time). That was the secret, the last pause.
Took the bait (six-inch "bubble gum" colored-worm).
