I’ll not be by the while. My liege, farewell!
What will ensue hereof, there’s none can tell;
But by bad courses may be understood
That their events can never fall out good.

Edmund of Langley, in Shakespeare’s King Richard II, (2.1.211-4)

Up next? El Paso then San Antonio, then back to Austin. Details at astrofish.net/travel.

Horoscopes starting 1.12.2017

Capricorn:

Acting like a seven-year old. It was me, I was working at an event, one of the last of the last year, and a client’s daughter was circulating around the tables. Kid was just seven years old. Every time she’d make a pass by me, she’d stick her tongue out and make a face. By her second or third lap, I was trying to beat her to the tongue out.

A business associate, sitting next to me, was greatly amused. “I’m trying to figure out, which one of you two is most mature.” My take? Girl-child. She’s probably way more mature than I am. I know this. The child’s mother was getting a little exasperated with the child, and then, when the mom figured out I was partaking, possibly aggravating the situation? We were both told to stop, “Both of you! Right now!” Mom turned her back to look at something bright and shiny, and I grinned then stuck my tongue back out at the kid, who, with a furtive glance over a slender shoulder, repeated the process. Mercury, no longer retrograde, and the Sun, still in Capricorn, happy belated birthday by the way, there’s a chance to act like a child.

“Oh please, you’re just making this worse!”

Capricorn: shrug?

Aquarius:

Love me my Aquarius friends, and they are nothing if not inconstant. Usually. Therein, my dear, is the Aquarius problem. There’s a certain requirement for “inconstant behavior” these days. My old “Mercury is Retrograde” trick was to take three passes at at least three different ideas, see which one was still standing when Mercury was no longer retrograde. With the cardinal energy loose upon the land?

A similar idea is still quite valid this week. Take three — or more — attempts. Realize that one to three of those attempts might lack substantial backing and support. Realize that there might be, to some, epic failure, and, the Aquarius Way? “Not failure, just experiments that didn’t bare fruit; although, failure is a positive result, in that, you know, it shows that it didn’t work, so we now know that one doesn’t work. Doesn’t work in that configuration, anyway. Right?”

That’s the way to see this week. False starts, dead-ends, left-over mishmash from Mercury Madness, and yet, it’s not all bad. I suspect this is all tangental to the basic Aquarius, but be aware, might be some false starts.

“Left, no, right, no left, no, I think you go straight here…”

Pisces:

Romance is, at best, a very fickle beast.

With Both Venus and Mars in Pisces, you would think this could be a bit easier. It’s not. Venus sows more confusion and deliberate misdirection at this time, rather than a making everything better — thank your main planet, Neptune, for that.

Although not clearly visible with a naked eye, the sense of what Neptune does is there. Now it’s a matter of using that energy correctly. Love me some Mars juice, too, but this isn’t the time to embrace it too fully.

Aries:

No, no-no, no no. No. There’s a rolling influence, comes in waves, washes over you, whispers in the Aries ear, “Change. Change for the better. Change something, now.” My first answer? No. It’s perfectly fine to listen to the voices. It’s perfectly fine to have a committee in your Aries head, making suggestions about possible courses of action. Every Aries loves action. The challenge with this week’s weirdo energies? Maybe not take action. There’s a push as Pluto (Capricorn) “squares” Uranus (Aries) and opposes Jupiter (Libra). Technical name? Cardinal T-Cross. Or, as I suggest, a time to stop, pause, listen to the voices and take their various advisements under consideration as a possible future course of action. But right now? Nothing. A well-timed pause serves you best, as that prevents a certain comment, one I’ve made many times myself, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Aries: Yeah, no.

Taurus:

“Mix earth (Taurus) and water (Pisces)? You get mud.” Old, familiar refrain, and while it isn’t one that I strictly adhere to, it is considered common sense among astrological-inclined circles. The predominate Taurus influence is mostly water, with Mars leading the way and Venus just getting more confused by the minute, and this tends to muddy the water for Taurus. So the analogy I started with, while it might be flawed, in both symbology and execution, yes, one of mine that didn’t work, what a surprise, while the analogy might be broken, the sense of this week’s message should be clear.

Clear?

There’s a certain level of confusion and rather than trying to see clearly when it seems well-nigh impossible to see clearly? Consider that this is a murky, muddy situation. When fishing in water that is “stained,” which is a fancy fishing term for “muddy,” consider that movement and motion, not bright color, is what attracts the fish. No bright colors to help see clearly, consider movement and motion.

Gemini:

So, my fine Gemini friend, now that Mercury is no longer retrograde, what shall we do? The problem being, there’s still some left-over detritus, washed downstream, and now, unceremoniously dumped on the Gemini psyche. There’s still some clearing, cleaning, and picking up the pieces of what was shattered by Mercury in Retrograde. It’s not all bad, but we must pick our collective Gemini way along this route with utmost caution.

Can’t just go blindly forward. Pick our way, cautiously and carefully.

Gently.

There’s a chance to get moving forward, but to make that happen, we must proceed at a slower than usual Gemini pace. Which, as it turns out, will probably annoy more, but let’s just think about this, it’s Gemini/Mercury infused issue, and being hasty? That usual Gemini haste will just make this worse. Slow down, we’re moving forward, just not as fast as you think we should.

Cancer:

Not long ago, I switched out monitors, the single screen I look at when I’m work, at home. It’s not a brand I’m familiar with, and there’s a bewildering array of buttons to set pitch and yaw, high-def color spots, and many other choices I have no clue about. I was digging around to plug another thing into the thing, USB adaptor to phone cable, if you must know, and I hit one switch on the bottom of the monitor. Which, in turn, activated the picture-in-picture feature. Which, I suppose, is cool, but I don’t use it. At all.

Not my thing.

Accidentally bumped the button, and then, I was sent into a 15-minute distraction as I fumbled through menu item after menu item, trying to get the right control and just set it back to what I had it set in the first place. Took a little longer than 15 minutes, but I took a break to keep from getting frustrated, break for coffee, just to make life easier, and to relieve the angst of wrongful button pushing. While experimenting, I learned a few things. I had the pitch and yaw set for the wrong weave for the screen’s maximum performance, and I didn’t have a clue. While I deal with precious little animation, the stuff scrolls faster with better response. It was a painful mistake that paid big dividends, once I calmed down a little bit and started tweaking the controls. Still not intuitive, but better service, now. Mistakes occur. Accidents happen. As a Cancer Moon child, there’s a door, window, or even just a small control panel that pops open. After you calm down? Fiddle with it, make that thing work better.

The Leo:

This last Mercury in Retrograde kind of did a number on me, and there was a trigger point. That trigger point kind of did a number on a certain Leo I know.

Did you listen to my advice about Mercury in Retrograde?

Did you pay attention?

Apparently you forgot some of the guidelines.

We’re done with the fall-out from the previous Mercury thing, now, but we’ve got to keep an eye ahead, what’s just up, in this next week. There’s a certain kind of frailty, a kind of gentle hand that is required. Pretend Mercury is Retrograde. Pretend that you have to try extra-Leo-hard to be extra-Leo-nice, in order to move forward in these next few days. That trigger point is still feeling pressure from various locations. Mostly, all that watery stuff in Pisces? Mars/Venus and then, Venus/Neptune, and then, just stuff. Emotional waves that dredge back and forth. Pause long enough to recognize the trigger point and what it means. Some days, I know it’s justified, but some days? Just not worth getting all Leo-centric pissed off about this stuff. Pause.

Virgo:

I got interested in baking a few years back. No, not that kind of “baked,” although, sure, some insist I am half-baked. No, what I was striving for was a cookie recipe that was healthy, maybe gluten-free, maybe sugar free? I tried various combinations and an old girlfriend had this recipe for peanut butter cookies that returned amazing results. No, not what I was looking for, but as a starting point? Sure, what I began with. I substituted gluten-free, all natural, organic flour-like stuff. Then, free-range, sugar-free sweetener. Organic, all-natural soy-free almond butter instead of peanut butter.

The results were spectacularly bad. Or good, depends.

The cookies were soft, pliable, chewy, rich in texture, and totally devoid of any kind of flavor. Tasted like cardboard. Not a winner, by any stretch of my imagination, other than, all healthy and stuff.

Pretty epic fail.

Weeks later, I still had some left over. Still chewy, and still the right texture, just, no flavor, or, a flavor that was eerily reminiscent of most cardboard boxes. Brown, moist cardboard boxes as the white boxes tend to have a bit more definition to the palate. Probably the bleach and chemicals in the cardboard’s coloring. This week is like my attempt at baking. I was thinking about that miss, heart was in the right place, it was heart-smart, but the flavor? Not so much. Not even. This week, reminds me that I stumbled across some of those cookies the other afternoon. Still not good, but serviceable — as need be. It’s a Virgo thing.

Libra:

There’s an amusing, to me, study of where famous authors quit reading other famous authors’ books. The one I recalled, the most influential novel of the last 100 year, James Joyce’s Ulysses, there were a handful of contemporaries, some even wrote glowing critical praise for the book, but few of them made it past the first hundred pages.

In my own library, I have a decades-old version of that text, and I made it to about page 120, over the years.

“Book, novel, etc., you’re supposed to read, most important novel of the last 100 years,” and so on. As a goal, one winter’s eve, I sat down with a digital copy and read the whole thing, all the way through. Goal accomplished, but the digital version was much easier for me to read since I could tap and search for the strange terms, the insider jokes, the allusions and references buried in that epic tome. Didn’t take long, once I set about tackling the job of reading the whole thing, three or four days.

Like me, there’s a longstanding Libra goal, and like me, you’ve put this off for many years, almost 15 years, for me and that novel. Unlike me, you have renewed interest in getting the door shut, getting the job done, finishing that thing, whatever it is, that goal. That thing. You get a chance to make great headways, if you bow your Libra head and plow on through it, whatever that thing is. Goal. Onerous task. Something you need accomplish. You can do, it this week.

Scorpio:

The character Lucy, in the original comic strip “Peanuts,” offered psychiatric help for $0.05. That’s a nickel. With my background and years of experience, I’d like to think I’m worth a big more than five cents. Adjusted for inflation, even? I’d like think of myself as Dollar Store self-help.

The Dollar Store self-help for Scorpio? Lots of craziness right now. Don’t partake. Eventually, this year, even, you’ll have some rather positive Jupiter action, which, in turn, means Scorpio relief. The deal is, there’s still a lot of insanity and to some Scorpio folks, inanity loose upon the world. Don’t buy into other folks’ troubles. Not your mess, don’t clean it up. If you’re not getting in engaged in other peoples’ troubles? I’ve been worth that dollar.

“Nope, not my mess.”

Sagittarius:

A certain woman I knew, she was, is, left handed. When she writes with her left hand, I get all — her actions leave me speechless. In part, this is because, she’s got all the right girl parts in all the correct places, thin, willowy, etc., etc. She’s also much younger than me, so there’s not really a physical affection there, until she starts to take notes when I’m talking. For several years, I attempted to train myself to be left-handed. Never worked, as I am hopelessly mired in my rut. However, I still, to this day, use a “mouse” with my left hand. It forces me to think in a way I’m not accustomed to thinking. It makes me adapt.

It forces me out of a comfort zone, but this is all, plain enough, a deliberate action to get me to act and react in a new way. Break the patterns. Now, with Mars/Venus/Neptune in Pisces, break some patterns. There’s certain pressure, mostly Lunar-inspired, but a certain pressure to change for change’s sake, and that’s not what this is about. When I see that woman taking notes with her left hand, I figure how gifted she is, in seeing the world, and expressing what she sees, from a slightly different perspective. As a Sagittarius, we can adopt a different way of seeing matters, be a big help. Break a pattern that no longer serves us.