I was just looking at the slim pickings on CNN.com and found this article that caught my attention. Here is the lead to the article. Even the fact that this makes the front page of CNN is incredible in itself; it reveals how boxed in we are about what is possible, or normal, in relationships. And of course, it’s only vindicated because they are “struggling to make ends meet.” Finally, note at the end of the piece how open minded the guy’s new girlfriend will have to be, in order to tolerate something so utterly outrageous as adults living together and getting along.

(CNN) — Struggling to make ends meet, trying to dig themselves out of debt, Nicole Thompson-Arce and her husband have moved in with her ex-husband.

Together, the unlikely threesome of Omaha, Nebraska, is raising two young daughters from the first marriage.

It’s the kind of situation that has left cable guys howling.

“They’d never heard anything like this,” Thompson-Arce, 28, remembered with a laugh. “And they’re in people’s homes everyday.”

When she and Craig Thompson, 42, were going through a divorce in 2005, this was not a deal either of them could have imagined striking. It was a messy divorce, the kind involving a custody dispute. But once they ironed out that battle, agreeing to joint custody, Thompson-Arce said they were able to move on and forward.

Though the people involved don’t seem to know and don’t use the word, this is a form of polyamory. Though to our knowledge the threesome is not sexually involved as a triad, what they are doing expresses some of the potential of poly living situations (for example, a more convenient, workable way to raise kids, particularly under joint custody). Of course adding sex opens up a whole new emotional dimension, but if there is some clarity in the relationships and people understand what they want and what they have to offer, it doesn’t need to be that complicated.

The basic issues are the same, respect for space, and living something other than jealousy as a way of life.

Sari writes below:

There was a processional wobble last week (19th march) a birth pang on our path to the 2012, and these days we are truly under pressure. Retrograde Venus hopefully will encourage us females to take responsibility for our competitiveness and ruthless drive to be top dog. If we are really going into a golden age, we can’t be blaming men all the time. When it comes to addiction, a painful heart can be masked by substances, but its only when we shine the clear light of the rational onto our problems can we begin to give love one more chance.

Thanks for this reminder, Sari.

We’re in the last hours of the Aries New Moon, which of course throws the spotlight onto Venus retrograde. The Moon, as it’s now in the extreme waning phase by just two degrees, makes new a series of conjunctions over the next few days, and we can fee these.

The planets are currently clustered to one side of the solar system (one quarter, actually) and this has always felt to me like a moment when experience is especially concentrated. This has been going on for months, as the planets grouped first in Aquarius, then Pisces and now in Aries. The cluster is starting to fan out a little bit (spread mostly through three signs), but still the Moon goes past all of these planets in about one week; then it squares them; then it opposes them; then it squares them again; and so on.

(Of note, today’s New Moon is square Pluto in early Capricorn.)

So this is a ride. It’s superconcentrated time. And this feeling is increased as the Sun reaches the cardinal points, which it’s just done and which is still unfolding.

Sun-Venus in Aries is about how we relate to this strange concentric experience of seeking self in self and self in other; and of seeing other in self. Ego structure can be really a strange thing to study; it’s often a question of how perception perceives, and that means how it perceives itself in relationship to other. Part of where I know we get into trouble is having not claimed ourselves, our existence, as independent from other.

I would also relate that there are theories of personality that explain how and why the male and female ego structure are significantly different entities, and conceive of existence differently. We can train ourselves to see from other viewpoints, but we don’t often see the one we have — and gender roles are so accepted as at least being different that we don’t often see the many ways that this difference influences our cosmology.

Were we to actually experience gender as a diverse experience within ourselves, that is, actually and consciously, it would feel a lot looser than the current rules make it out to be. Venus retrograde in Aries is one meaningful version of an alternate reality; it’s a way to seek something within ourselves that we tend to project outward. I would sketch it out a little like this — for men (particularly heterosexual, but not only), we have an opportunity to seek this elusive, beyond-beautiful thing we see as Woman as existing within ourselves; and some of the contradictions we project onto Woman as also being inner experiences as well. For Woman, she has an opportunity to be a self without having to orient into relationship with Man as a prerequisite.

This is a veiled subject in many ways, this notion of seeking the validity of self in other, thoughВ  think it may be one of the most all-encompassing factors of human existence at the moment. If we don’t look, this makes it very difficult to see who we are, and if we do look, we get many opportunities to see the choices we have about how to relate to one another.

Brother Sun and Sister Moon coming together represent a greater joining; a merging of the two major elements of personality; that which expresses and that which reflects.

A few thoughts on this waning phase. Keep an eye on that pressure. Personally I’m sitting here deciding what less I can do for everyone.

North Front St. in uptown Kingston, New York, facing west. Photo by Eric Francis.

As promised, a brief comment on the Aries New Moon. Mercury has already entered Aries, and the Moon will join it just past 1 am New York time. This Moon-Mercury conjunction commences the Aries New Moon, with a spectacular little conjunction on the Aries Point. Luna and Mercury join Venus, Eris and the Sun already in Aries.

At this moment the Sun is conjunct Achilles, a minor planet associated with crisis of false lack of self-confidence. An impressive array of other minor planets is in range of this conjunction, including Apophis (near-miss catastrophe), Bienor and Nemesis. Amidst much uncertainty and doubt there is strength.

The New Moon will be trine the South Node of the Moon, which is in Leo. Of note, this is also the interior conjunction of the Sun and Venus. The proper term for this is inferior conjunction, but as with a few other things in astrology, I am taking the liberty of improving the name (there nothing inferior here but there is definitely something interior). In plain English, Venus is exactly between the Earth and the Sun. There are not too many more of these — I haven’t worked it out yet, either one or two — until the Venus transit of the Sun of June 2012. Here is a little more about the most recent Venus transit of the Sun (which can only take place during Venus retrograde, and involves Venus coming between the Earth and the Sun, only near one of the nodes of Venus; yes, just like the Moon, Venus has nodes — as does every planet).

The exact moment of the New Moon is just past noon Thursday Eastern Time.

For those with their mind on Kaila and her community, I spent a really excellent afternoon with Tobi (Kaila’s mom) and Simone (her childhood friend and lover). We looked at pictures, told stories, played Under Pressure, and kept our hearts and minds tuned to Kaila as she makes her transition. Thank you again for all the emails of love and support. — EF, at Dominick’s Cafe in Kingston NY.

PS, just about everyone knows this song for its bass line, maybe even your grandmother. Here is the last fire-breathing stanza, apocalyptic and free. Play it loud, you will feel better. Kaila, we love you.

Insanity laughs under pressure we’re cracking
Can’t we give ourselves one more chance
Why can’t we give love that one more chance
Why can’t we give love give love give love give love
give love give love give love give love give love
‘Cause love’s such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And loves dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
Under pressure
Under pressure
Pressure

Dear Friend and Reader:

Unlike our editor-publisher Eric Francis, whose artistic expression is evidenced throughout the pages of Planet Waves, the Book of Blue and elsewhere across the web, I haven’t yet shared the other part of my creative life here at Planet Waves. Today, I break that silence.

I’ve been an actor and writer for years here in the San Francisco Bay Area, working mostly in women’s theater projects. Most of my writing work is as a dramaturge – someone who takes words and stories and makes them work for the stage. If you were wondering where my writing style comes from, its from aВ traditionВ where every word written needs to be spoken out loud.

I’m going south, literally. I’m drivingВ Interstate 5В В for a 400-mileВ road tripВ down to the coastВ of Santa Monica, also known as Los Angeles, to present a play that I’ve been helping develop this last year.В  Its called “The Unsung Diva” on the life of Sissieretta Joyner Jones, America’s first В black opera singer. Its going up at Highways Performance Space as part of the Los Angeles Women’s Theater Festival.

As an actor, it may seem strange that I haven’t gone down south to live and try to practice my craft. But I’m more of an art nurturer, or Art Mom, as my nephew calls me. I tend to go for more innovation in theater work, and I like to make and develop new work. San Francisco seems to support that.

Now for those unfamiliar or who think California is Los Angeles and that’s it, there are two cities that have direct claim to the economic and cultural life of the state:В  San Francisco andВ LA. В LA has a very very powerful energy charge, very different from the north. Like San Francisco, the Los Angeles metropolitan area also sits by the Pacific Ocean, butВ its ten timesВ its size. TheВ bulkВ of the city is inland, a basin divided by a mountain range. That basin is a huge collector of energy.

Setting aside the film and television industry – also known as “the community” in localese and already a formidable global economic force,В  Los Angeles is one of the world’s centers of business, international trade, science, technology, and education.В With 12.9 million souls speaking over 200 different languages, its population is double the sizeВ ofВ the В San Francisco BayВ region’s population.В For me,В any stay in LA is plugging into a huge energy grid. If you’re not grounded, you can fry your circuitry. Many have. Just look at the tabloids.

Springtime almost anywhere in the world is a poem. I’m looking forward to this road trip not just for the creative process I’m about to undergo at its destination, but also the change ofВ internal landscape. Sometimes, even a cozy Berkeley cottageВ can be a bit of a cage, particularly if you’ve made coming and going into your own home a robotic waltz of habits and routine. I need to feel what home is being away from it a short while, and take a look at what the rains have produced.

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Today’s Oracle was a bust-out laughter moment for me, sitting here at Dominick’s. I remember writing that one, in the run-up to the Aug 11, 1999 grand cross / total solar eclipse in mid-Leo. Those 1999 horoscopes are all a study in that event, which I covered, among other places, in the article Thinking of You on Judgment Day. This is the one article reference I use frequently that came before Planet Waves was known as such — back then we were The Star-Navigator.

This was the story that focused our astrojournalism mission, and which taught me how to handle a public event in the private world of the horoscope column. I didn’t know so much about the Aries Point back then, but I know now that an event that occurs in the mid-fixed signs (mid Taurus, Leo, Scorpio or Aquarius) is an Aries Point event because of its mathematical relationship to the cardinal points — the first degrees of Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn.

We are about to have an Aries Point event tomorrow, which is a New Moon just six degrees from the point itself; that is, the place where the Sun is on the first day of spring. This New Moon is on the seventh day of the season, so it’s pretty close to the point; which is also called the sidereal vernal point or vernal equinox. (Just like in J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, everthings have many names in astrology.)

On a Kaila note, I would like to thank everyone who has written in and commented to this diary. I spent some time at her grave this morning, documenting it when it’s still a new thing. I have this idea to set up the tripod in the same place once a month or so and watch the Earth and the seasons change around it.

I got two emails overnight, one suggesting that there be a meeting point on the Internet for people trying to get out of the heroin mess, and their families; and another pointing to an actual place that can help. We have many resources areas on Planet Waves (they are filed above, under Archives). I propose a recovery resource area, for issues surrounding serious narcotics. This would include intellectual resources, covering science and psychology; websites; as well as treatment programs, support projects and other on-the-ground services. If someone is up to working as a team with one or two other readers and assembling this, please drop a note to info – at – planetwaves.net. We can dedicate this to Kaila, something I am sure her mom, the sweetest little Fish you ever met (well, she’s tied for first), will be happy to hear is happening.

Flowers at Kaila's grave, early the morning of March 25, 2009. Photo for Book of Blue by Eric Francis.

I will be back some time today with a few comments on the Aries New Moon. Also, I’ll tell you about how it is that we’ll be joined by many thousands of new readers. The details are less important than the fact that we as a community are energetically prepared for a lot of new people to arrive. I will be increasing the richness of this page for about a week (think of it as Sweeps Week), including posting more subscriber content to the free pages here, with the intention of picking up additional subscribers and thus building the quality of what you see here.

While we still have the relative intimacy of our older, smaller readership, remember that the relationship between what you see here and how many people subscribe is a direct 1:1 ratio, or better — due to a property called synergy. More subscriptions faciliates two things; one is it frees my time and energy to give you more of my creative output; and it allows me to get talent on board that does the same thing. Planet Waves is not about profits and I don’t care if it never is. Planet Waves is about serving our audience, by providing a spiritually-grounded journalism work and playspace. Unlike the “corporate” media, every dollar that goes into Planet Waves stays in, or somehow enriches, Planet Waves. I am not an investment adviser, and I’m definitely biased, but this sounds like a good one.

Long ago I decided I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for someone else to make the world a better place, and it’s in that spirit that I come to you every day, offer what I have to say, and lead our creative team.

Speaking of which: to our editor candidates, please bear with my delay getting back to you — it’s been an unusual time in my life, and I’ll contact you as soon as possible. Feel free to send a second email, as I tend to work off of the top of my inbox.

Carrying on, live from Dominick’s Cafe in uptown Kingston, NY, this is

Twilight from a dark bus in Buenos Aires. Photo by Dani Voirin.

To see more from contributing photographer Dani Voirin, click here.

At a certain point we all learn to stop judging ourselves. It could be sooner; it could be later; but in terms of saving time, emotional energy and conserving opportunities that only come once, the sooner the better. One thing you might have to get over is the notion that the kind of self-critique you’re accustomed to makes you a better person. I don’t think it does. I would say that the only possibility we have of being better people is awareness, and the gradual, repeated choice to surround ourselves with aware people. In the trapeze act of life, we need to work together and the main thing we need support in is consciousness. What you seem destined to learn over the next few weeks is that having a fixed concept of who you are, or who you’re supposed to be, is the basis of your overly critical opinion of yourself. Judgment requires criteria, and when those are unconscious, unreasonable or unrealistic, then the assessment is more of a mental or emotional trip than it is a g rowth process. You’re working toward an extraordinarily rare moment of being able to let go of the self-concept that is at the heart of this crisis. With it, you may find yourself letting go of certain ideas of why exactly you deserve so much attention. You do, but it’s for reasons other than you think.

More of this story is told on Book of Blue.

Good Morning,

The Moon conjunct Mars: that was an intense night.

I was very happy to wake up to the light streaming into my studio. I didn’t remember that the Moon had just gone rolling over Mars until I looked at the chart this morning, and I understood a little better my experiences of the past eight hours: this mix of ripping fear, passion, sadness, loneliness and plenty of erotic energy.

Kaila Watson and her mom Tobi. Picture of family photos by Eric Francis.

After spending the past two days at a funeral for a 20-year-old who overdosed, I was in a pretty strange mood. It was cold, that is, too cold to feel like bundling up, warming up my car, and going home. The wind was howling past my windows. So I decided to lock the hatches and stay in my studio…and before I knew what was happening was creating these images that I had never seen. Very Mars-Moon-Pisces.

Then I started looking at the photos of Kaila’s funeral and could not believe the visual beauty that was pouring off of them, despite the obviously horrific nature of what happened, this stark quality they have. I will post a few of them later.

What I do like about funerals is that for the most part, they are get-real experiences. Not entirely so; but a community acts like a community, people express care for one another openly, and we get a window into how life might be on Earth if we took life seriously. Apparently actual death, in our faces, is one of the few things that temporarily snaps us out of the trance.

The other thing I noticed last night was feeling like I was psychically slimed by being in the presence of some of Kaila’s heroin people, who were at the wake and the funeral. There is a vibe of desperation that stuff has that erodes any possible ethics or morals. This is a drug that takes on a life of its own and I think acts as a kind of demonic possession. True, I have not spent a lot of time around cokeheads, but even cocaine seems more civilized than heroin (perhaps because it has a productive quality, to a point), which energetically resembles a fast tug into the underworld.

Her story resembles Persephone, the daughter of Demeter (in astrology, Ceres), who ends up kidnapped by Hades (in astrology, Pluto) and ends up the queen of the underworld. Kaila does indeed have a rough Ceres aspect: Mars conjunct Ceres, on the Aries Point. For the days of her funeral, the Sun was going right over those two points. This is the eternal grief of her mother, most of it public; the heart surgeries were indeed a public event and Kaila is a �famous person’ as a result of them — and now, as a result of her death.

Throughout Kaila’s whole life, her mother, Tobi, was threatened with losing her: first to the multiple heart surgeries and then to a two-year spell of severe drug use, though it was on and off; so it was another one of those roller coasters. When I would see Tobi (usually when I was placing a classified at in Woodstock Times) she was as calm as she could be about it: calm, but edgy. Then one day I figured out what was really going on for her when she suggested that doing more photos with her daughter would be a good influence on her. You don’t usually think of a mom (even one you’ve known for a while) being totally encouraging and positive that an older guy should photograph her 20-year-old daughter nude. Then I got it.

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