Horoscopes for 4-23-2024
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (Prologue, 1-4)
Horoscopes for 4-23-2024
- Mercury Direct 4/25 15° Aries
- 4/23 Shakespeare birthday
Taurus
Watching a rather dated detective show, I realized, after a certain episode? An updated version would simply have pulled DNA from the grip of the murder weapon, and then? The killer would be caught, and since this was a show, I’m sure there would be a long confessional scene to wrap it up. Explain motivations, reasonings, and the mechanics that had hitherto been obscured from the viewer. Obscured from the viewer might not be the correct turn of a phrase, more along the lines of dramatic irony wherein the viewer knew enough of the story to know what way the plot should go, and who was guilty, it was just a matter of whether or not the authorities could detect the correct answer. On TV, when DNA is sampled from a discarded prop, it looks easy and instantaneous. In the real word, what I’ve been exposed to it takes a decent sample, like hair or patch of skin, maybe a pint of blood, and even then, the sequencing can take up to a week, if there is a rush. Real-world versus make-believe Movie Magic. This is about what you know is going on, what you know will happen, and how soon it will happen. Like the Romeo and Juliet opening quote, we know that the play ends badly for the titular characters. Taurus: you know how this ends. Mercury is not done with its cosmic messaging and review just yet. Pause, Taurus, pause. Takes a while for the real lab to sample that stuff and render a verdict.
Gemini
Gemini tends to fall into one of two camps for this. Either a typical Gemini will time the synodic period of Mercury’s retrograde pattern to the minute, and live by that, or there’s the other version, the typical Gemini who understands that it takes a few days, maybe even a week or so, for Mercury to catch up then move out of its shadow phase to be fully un–retrograde. Two camps, both hard detail and both attentive. Which one is correct?
My answer? “Yes.” I’ll dissemble and fritter away an answer, because both sides have merit. Both sides are correct. Both way of looking at this are, technically, accurate. Both are good and right. On the one side, the exact moment, locally, when Mercury goes direct? 4/25/24 at 7:55 AM. Mercury doesn’t officially exit its shadow 27° Aries, until 6/2/24. What that implies? Somewhere between 4/25 and 6/2, someplace in between those two dates, like, in the next week? There’s a point where the mercurial madness begins to fade, but note: we’re not totally in the clear until that lasts date.
Cancer
The term is “housecleaning.” Use it a lot, and it refers any number of chores from something as simple as straightening up a mess of loose paperwork floating around my office area, kicking out out a guest who over-stayed his visit, and now I have to burn those sheets, to merely making tidy. Picking stuff up. Dirty clothing in one pile, possibly clean clothes in another, I fished all day last week in that shirt, it has to be cleaned, and then there were the stacks of books I was working my way through. Everything has a place, and everything can now be returned to that place. There is one messy Moon Child, a Crab-like personality, and her answer? “Place for everything? The floor. It just works.”
The Leo
People consult with me for business advice. I’m good at the stars, the star charts, and where the planets are plus where the planets are going, and what that might represent. That’s where my skills begin and end. My business acumen is strictly based upon my own success and failure, and I’ve long since been asked as one who was hoisted with his own petard — more than once. Successes, and failures, I’ve had many. But turning to me for business advice itself? Yeah, I know what I’m good at, and I can suggest timing for events, but I’ll leave that as the best use of my time. This week’s transits cut both ways. I’ve seen the highly improbable succeed beyond the wildest dreams, outstripping what the forecast was, and then, what seemed like a solid idea, I’ve seen that fail miserably. Part of that, I’d suggest was the timing, but part, is also the amount of tenacity, drive, and effort put into the single goal. No one has as much drive as The Leo, but is that drive headed in the best direction? Are you willing to adjust the trajectory, the destination coordinates, the way points, goals, and possible outcome itself? Up to you, but adjustments might help.
Virgo
One buddy had a “Rock Crawler.” It was 4X4 (Jeep-frame), with what looked like a cage for the driver/passenger, then huge tires atop extended shock absorbers, and the rest is pretty much left to the imagination. However, in this one example, instead of being a show-stud vehicle, my buddy drove it out in the hills, the unincorporated countryside, and he would drive up gullies, and down dry creek beds, and often as not, take his rock crawler places that I wouldn’t even walk. Turns out there is a sub-culture of the off-road set that is purely dedicated to rock crawlers. I know nothing about this, except what I’ve seen and heard from my friend. The closest I’ve seen inside the city limits? The ubiquitous spare tired cover, labeled upside-down, “If you can read to this, please turn over.” Bouncing along in that in my buddy’s rock-crawler is a bone-jarring event. Mercury coming un-wound from its path is equally bone-jarring, and equally disturbing, and like the spare tire cover said? “If you can read this, please turn me over.” Virgo: if it is upside down, please right it. All that’s required, I mean, I think those guys enjoy occasionally flipping those things.
Libra
Buddy of mine, his kid got promoted to Washington DC — government liaison for an armed forces position. Kid was stationed for a year or two, and couldn’t wait to get back in the field. Anything — anything — but riding a desk, and watching how government works. After listening for a few moments, and my own experiences with city, county, and state offices? I can’t find the source, but the quote kept coming back, “It’s like making sausage, everyone likes it, but no one wants to know how it’s made.” It’s not an original thought. I kept thinking about that with the tail-end aspects of Mr. Mercury, then Taurus, and everything else unfolding? “Everyone likes it, but no one wants to know how it’s made.” That’s this week, in Libra. In a nutshell? Worse, in a sausage casing.
Scorpio
Due to circumstances, my usual number of e–readers has increased. I do most of my recreational reading, and professional engagement, on a tablet so I have, i–books, Kindle, Cloud Library, Libby, and now? B&N Nook. All of these are apps for reading books. I have preferences, but that’s best left to other venues for discussion. It was adding that last e–reader that annoyed me. I think there’s another format or two I might be missing, but the Nook one bothered me although, it was for a free copy of a book, and what’s one more pieces of digital ephemera floating around? What annoyed me was having to add an app to do something that I already had apps for. I don’t like the notion of proprietary software with the vertical data silo. Annoys me. The price was right, and I suppose another reader never hurt. Kind of like reading glasses, I guess. Never hurts to have a spare pair bedside, computer-side, couch-side. Framed like that, e–readers and reading glasses? Maybe it’s not so bad. Scorpio: all depends on how you frame the answer.
Sagittarius
Shakespeare Scholarship, the study of the plays, the background for the author, and the words themselves? It’s an endless, bottomless, area of conjecture, observation, study, and no small amount of extrapolation. There are precious few remnants of the actual life, and from that? More than 400 years later, there’s a whole fabric of history that’s been spun up, and most of it lacks substantial documentation. Absence of facts never bothered me. I am quite clear, though, when I veer into a space that is pure whimsy, pure imagination, or pure male bovine excrement. It’s one of the reasons, as I’ve aged, my hobby of Shakespeare Scholarship is more amusing. I can dissect a particular play, or better yet, take apart elements in a certain scene, and look at those pieces closely. Then, like the good Sagittarius that I am? I can drop that line of inquiry, figuratively shove it on a shelf, and move on to more mundane matters. I might come back to a comment, years, or even decades later, with a new, or renewed, or jaundiced view. Our Sagittarius Secret Sauce is the ability to shift focus — especially in the next few days. “I’ll get back to that line of questioning, later.”
Capricorn
The black bass, Black Bass often inter-bred with Florida Bass, those fish I used to target? I kept thinking about them, those fish, and the one lake I liked? More like a large pond, not really a lake, and there was a single wooden dock stuck about a third of the way into the lake’s body, itself. Those fish, the ones I wanted to catch, over and over? They liked to hang out under the dock, or at least around it, as that provided a place to lurk. “Bass relate to structure,” what I heard, and then, in the bays along the coastline? “Fish relate to structure.” So fishing at that lake, it was in and around the dock. In the big Corpus Christi Bay? It’s along the various oil (and gas) platforms doting the surface. The long pilings provide something like the structure from the lake’s docks. “Fish relate to structure.” As an addendum? With material starting to either unwind, or get wound up? My statement? “Capricorn relates to structure.” (Fishing Guide to the Stars).
Aquarius
Comes a time when an evergreen piece of text, in my example, a blog post, but comes a time when that evergreen piece of text is useful. The editor who was more formative at the beginning of this career? His admonishment was was always, “Write once, sell many.” Might’ve stolen the idea — I’m not sure. But I can hear him, to this day. When I answer a singular question, not a thing, but when I see the same question, over and over? That piece of evergreen text is handy. It’s helpful to have something in place, in my example? A simple link to an article, or one of my long blog posts about certain astrological features, as an answer to what becomes a common question. No need to go back retype the same material over and over. When you see the same inquiry popping up, over and over? Think about having that evergreen text ready to send out. No need to have to keep typing it over and over, repeating yourself.
Pisces
It’s easy to do a two-dimensional graph of former loves. The way this plays out? There’s a certain desire, even what feels like a need, in Pisces, in the Pisces heart of hearts? There’s a basic revisiting, eye to revision, and really, just deeper understanding, what went wrong. The relationship gaffes of lifetime come rushing back into the Pisces Psyche. But think in terms of a two-dimensional chart, remember doing these in school, or at work, or even, the online versions of a simple graphs. Just two axis, one up and one to the right, or the left, I guess orientation matters a little. But in this example, trying to graph what has occurred, so to better plot a forward step for Pisces? One is an “Ex” axis and the other is the “Why” axis.
Aries
Odd tangent at the moment but I’d suggest it holds up. I was looking at some books, and then, some of what I’ve been reading lately, I started to realize that the Meso-American, Native-American, Mexican-American material was richer in magical realism, more steeped in those traditions than other, similar sources. Some have ghosts. Some have horror. Some have reality. The confluence and conflating myth and reality? I found more of it in the local, indigenous literature than any place else. “Dead white guys,” and the related fiction, literature? There’s a sprinkling of that, but it doesn’t run as deep or common in our stories. Not that it doesn’t have a place, or that it is unheard of, but the material from (mostly) non-anglo authors, with rich cultural ties to either Central America or parts of SouthWestern United States, the magical realism was more ingrained. Not saying good or bad, that’s not it, but the idea that the magic of the land, the unexplained, the ghosts, and spirits, the sprites of the forest and jungles, the airy hauntings of the highlands, just more real here. I’m not about to undertake a quantitative study, this falls in the realm of “Just seems to be — to me.” This is an example of a person drawing a conclusion based upon evidence that the person has collected so it might be, not saying it is, but it might be tailored to produce a desired outcome. While I might be right? Best check it out and verify before you accept any premise, Aries.
- Aperture: ƒ/1.8
- Camera: iPad Pro (11-inch)
- Flash fired: no
- Focal length: 3mm
- ISO: 64
- Shutter speed: 1/60s
