Into the night

Good evening.

In recent weeks, we’ve drawn in many readers from new parts of the Internet. I’ve been wanting to step back from the fast-motion pace of writing and editing this website and tell you a little about who I am, who is here with me, and what we’re doing. I’ve heard from readers what it’s like to arrive here for the first time. A tour guide would be helpful. [Reading it back over, I feel like I could do a bit more on the ‘what we’re doing’ part and also I will do a separate piece about how the site is organized; because unlike most websites we don’t delete, reformat or restructure the past — we leave it so you can go digging like an archeologist.]

So, I’m a freelance writer and I live in upstate New York, two hours north of New York City. That’s the part of the state where people like bears live, various other wildlife and there are far more trees than humans. Planet Waves has long had a triple base of operations: our business office in the United States which is run by Chelsea; our web office in the Ukraine which is run by Anatoly; and wherever I happen to be. Many other people help out significantly, with dangerous tasks like proofreading, database programming, helping me stay organized.

Along my recent journey I’ve made friends in places like Vashon, Vancouver, Black Rock City, Miami, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Krakow. But after more than 10 years of nearly nonstop travel, my land was calling me, the part of the Earth that really first adopted me here in New York. I had a few foster-Earth homes places like Bucks County, PA, where I as a camper at a Quaker summer camp in the 70s had my closest ability to witness girls become women; where I found out I like forests at night.

The Brooklyn seashore also felt great to me: it was reassuring to have the entrance to the ‘world beyond’ lapping at a shoreline one block from where I grew up, in Marine Park. However, though living at the edge of New York City shaped my world view, that was a relatively short stop along the way. The part of the Hudson Valley most commonly known as The Gunks is the first land that truly felt like my family – what I call the Grandmother Land.

I’ve always been a writer. The first ever book-type project I ever made was a booklet and matching matchbook cover, advertising, “How to Become a Pro Football Player at Home in Your Spare Time by Joe Namath.” This was complete with diagrams and instructions. I was about 12.

Astrology has been in my life for about twenty-three years. There was a long delay between when I was introduced to it, and when I felt a calling to do something with it. I associate my first moments of true discovery as the winter I acquired my first ephemeris, and spent nights figuring it out with The New York Post horoscope; this was at a girlfriend’s house in Woodstock, up on Ohayo Mountain, the summer of 1994.

The next winter I was still reading and searching charts. This time I was living with my two cats in a little place called Keator’s Corners; which is in Binnewater; which is in Rosendale; which is a little south of the city I now live in many years later, Kingston. The winter of 1995 my life transformed itself into a journey through space, while I lived in a tiny apartment in an old barn; and began practicing a form of Earth worship in an abandoned cement mine up the hill.

That time in a place called The Chironian I credit with activating the Earthy element in my chart, and connecting me with rock and underground water; with the spirit of the physical planet and with some energy critters that inhabited that forest. It was an astonishing time, wherein I was supporting myself as an operator for the Jackie Stallone Psychic Circle – doing tarot readings. But again and again, a connection to the Earth grounded my astrology work.

Tarot has strongly influenced my astrology: a visual medium that morphed ‘meaning’ with visual art. So did some teachers I met in the mid-90s, who gave me a few astrological tools to be able to talk to you every day about astrology. I am using astrology as an energetic bridge between the linear, structured world of time, space and train schedules; with the mental and causal planes, those spaces where time is not such a burden as it can be here, and where concepts are more flexible.

Astrology is a system that stands halfway between language and symbol; these dwellers of the different hemispheres of the brain. It activates both sides, and it requires both sides to be read. It’s a mediation tool, where there is still time but it’s elliptical, or cyclical. Part of what I do with this tool is assess the energy conditions and cycles of any given moment and offer alternative interpretations than those that might arise purely out of fear. It’s also a visioning tool for what is possible.

I do see what is possible, and I do get scared. I am not quite a ‘love and light’, new agey kind of guy. I’m part reporter, part seeker, and I know we live on planet Shit Happens. But so does some really amazing stuff too. Part of my calling as an astrologer is, you could say, to be on the transition team to the future. As is not so difficult to figure out, I also write about sex and relationships, and I advocate sexual literacy and making up your mind consciously about what kind of relationships you want to experience. If you have a few minutes and want to read about what is at the root of my seemingly radical ideas, here is an article called Pass the 7-Up.

In what is supposed by many to be mystical work (that is, bringing astrology to an audience) I try to be practical, I strive for clarity, and I understand that there is something right now about integrating three seemingly different things – sexuality, spirituality and art. I do my best to be fully on the ride, or the journey, however it feels that day.

For tonight, it feels good to remember that life is easier and lots more fun when we team up and help one another out, and that includes potentially any aspect of life or love. Existence is not a competitive sport; it’s not actually football, though many try to make it that. Existence is a cooperative game. Look round where life actually works and you will see that.

I am grateful every day to be working with an awesome, young, heart-centered team: I have good company and loving help in all the writing and art that you see here, and the many business activities that make Planet Waves possible. And I know that people read. I feel you reading and I do my best to speak to you rather than write.

Thus, many dark mornings I sit at the Internet and whisper these words into the night.