Memory. Photo for Book of Blue by Eric Francis, with retouching by Kelly.

Today’s photo was taken Monday at about noon in Rosendale, New York, where our community laid to rest a young woman who died of a heroin overdose last week. Not that I assume a lot of heroin junkies read Planet Waves, but if you hear of anyone getting hold of some “really good stuff” called Parmesan, or just simply cheese, it’s a killer. Not that ordinary heroin is good for you or anything.

Kaila’s story so far is told in three parts in Book of Blue. Note that they are posted in reverse chron order. The first is called “It’s Not Hard to Die.” The second is “The Faces of Kaila Watson” and the third is “How These Things Happen.”

This news arrived late Friday night. Among other things, since the year began I’ve photographed a memorial service, a funeral and a child being born. In the process of having many 8thВ house transits (I have Aquarius up there) I’ve begun to associate these moments with the theme of getting real.

I have cast her birth and death charts. Personally I think that death charts are among the strangest entities in astrology. The summary version is that Kaila was late Taurus rising (with Jupiter in the last degree of Taurus tight against the ascendant, in the 1st), with a Cancer Sun and Libra Moon. She has an intense 8th house — precise conjunction of Saturn and Uranus conjunct the Galactic Core; this is a one-degree alignment and Pluto just spent two years working it over. Those were the heroin years.

Please hold her in the light. Thank you.

Dear Friend and Reader:

The Moon is in Aquarius sitting right on top of Chiron as of this writing, and it’s about to pass over an existing conjunction between Juno and Neptune.

This is to say, there is currently a cluster of three close planets (Chiron, Juno, Neptune) and the Moon is right there. Juno-Neptune feels like the gradual dissolving of the social pressures on conjugal relationships. Juno is about relationships based on competition, jealousy and expectations. Add the word “scorekeeping” and you have a nearly complete profile. At its best, it will describe an ideal marriage partner, but more often it describes the expectations on that partner, who they will be or how they will act, given from a mother to a child.

Of course conjunct Neptune that could be an expansion of the idea; it could be the delusion getting so big and so misty that nobody even sees, it which sounds true enough for the average day. Where you have Chiron present, you have the invitation, and the urgency, for awareness. Look around and you will notice that a lot of relationships are in unsteady territory, and by that I mean delivering more challenges than rewards. We take this for granted, without questioning the rules (unspoken or otherwise) by which we live. Personally, I think it’s the rules that are the issue. I don’t question monogamy, for example, as much as I question the reasons for its existence and the harsh codes by which it’s mediated.

Many of these rules are based on social lies; for example, the wide-scale social expectation that cheating will happen. So we make the biggest deal out of this one kind of relationship, as if it were the only kind there is — and then we have this notion that cheating is going to happen. This does make sense; if you make rules too strict for anyone to follow, nobody will follow them, because they cannot. Why we don’t negotiate the contract seems to be a matter of lack of consciousness, and of taboo.

After the Moon finishes these conjunctions, by modern rules it’s void of course, which may give today the feeling of perpetual drift. Don’t try to get too much done. This is one of those let it happen days.

However, while it’s busy being void, the Moon is opposed to an odd little hypothetical called Transpluto. I ignored Transpluto entirely until a software upgrade by Time Cycles Research included it in the new version. I could click on that point and remove it, but it seems ridiculous to pretend something is not there, even if it happens to be opposite Neptune.

Transpluto, not a real planet but rather a narrowing, focusing influence. I’m just getting the feeling for how it behaves and responds, but it’s a little like a funnel. It will guide ideas and experiences into one direction, which can be friendly or not, depending on the circumstances: that is, a force for restriction, or a force for discipline.

The Moon will ingress Pisces tonight at about 5 pm ET, where it will begin to make a conjunction to Mars. That is exact early Tuesday morning ET. This is all a leadup to the Aries New Moon, which is exact Thursday at 12:05 pm. This New Moon is all about the Aries Point. We will have Mercury sitting right there, plus a conjunction of the Moon, the Sun and Venus just a few degrees away. We will see and feel some effects from this alignment.

One of them will be to make the world feel smaller. It’s a lot smaller than we think.

Catch you later,

Photo by Eric Francis.

Lately I’ve been experimenting photographing things rather than just people. These are rusted structures and objects, with a little wood mixed in, attached to a junk and antique shop in the town of Ulster, New York.

Photo by Eric Francis.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-xVb1qsPCw[/youtube]

Dear Friend and Reader:

В There’s a lot going on to be pretty crazy mad about: economics, foreign policy, the environment. Not only now, but over the last year, the last eight years, hell, the last thirty or forty years. As I was writing “Blowing the Roof Off the House of Cards,” it dawned that I was coming close to self-parody. In writing about manufactured outrage, I was naming the outrage a distraction from the true crimes being committed in the name of saving our economy. Yet, there I was writing to encourage outrage about manufactured outrage. I must have been channeling the editorial board at The Onion.

Just what is the manufactured outrage about? Why are we so drawn to it? Did it begin with Clinton, followed by eight years of Cheney-Bush. Since Neptune entered Aquarius nearly ten years ago, it seems so. Now night after night, we watch and listen to news about the latest bailout scandal at AIG, served up with a pinch of blame, a scoop of moral indignation, a cup of schadenfreude, served on a platter of outrage. We have come to expect outrage to accompany and maybe even replace thinking.В The problem is who is really thinking these thoughts? Are they our true thoughts and feelings? Are they being created for us so we don’t have to do either?В 

Media-manufactured outrage is a way for us to remain passive and unproductive because it gives us a false impression that we’re expending energy doing something. We’re not. We’re just getting angrier. Something is being played here and its not violins.

Continue Reading »

Peeling paint on an old door, off of Albany Ave. in the town of Ulster, New York. Photo by Eric Francis.

“the war against ourselves,” Stop That!В  There is a way to say that you know, with behavior, conduct.В  People are apt to take that personally, such a bad habit since it manifests as auto-critic, the erotic part of that is getting off on yourself as the center of the universe, or rubbing elbows in a fraternity hot tub with your potential Secretary of State, potential -but you never do know. Well sometimes you do Know, that is to feel what (the) War is really all about. In the form of it All, it matters how you go about things, the doings -that which contributes and transpires. As the planet breathes. Somehow, apparently, as the spiritual loses touch with the earth as an aspect of being, Earth is no longer an aspect of the Self, make that respect.

the war against ourselves is how we manifest, seems to be a matter of choice, in response to what? Fear for example, drop a coin into that well -a rather simple equation, speculation, what you put in is what you get out. Of course we all know by now that is not true, some manner of cunning is required. We may as well say here that you are what you eat, as a vortex, eating being what you cultivate; the till, the toil, the seed, the soil. Sweat sometimes, on the reins. Work. & live with respect within the entire.

Patchen so much as said it, lived rich that way. Like we all live in a yaw, torque, Being There. Shit done hit the fan, red flags all over the place. Big segue scene. Where is Steve McQueen when we need him. Fill in the blank, we will have a contest. Putting your own name in there is legitimate, you know where it says self. putting your life on that line. Right there where you draw it. Perhaps as a mustachio on the Mona Lisa. here we are trying to transform a much larger picture.

– Ronald Dahl