Dear Friend and Reader:
I am home safe on the ground in New York. This was my first trip away from the Hudson Valley since returning from nearly four years in Europe last summer, and it was all worth it for the feeling of opening my studio door and walking into my creative space. The odd scent in the air of the semi-industrial building, the roar of the overpowered heater and the familiar faces of my photographs all reminded me that I was home.
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The drive down the Thruway was easy and the cool night air reminded me that I love New York. Cruise control protected me from radar traps, and I glided through the dream of state-of-the-art automotive travel toward home. I got tired of music and listened to skip signals on late-night AM talk radio: picking up a kind of New Age fundamentalist explaining to a guy of 38 that he was an alcoholic and suffered from anxiety because on a deep level he lacked confidence and was spending his life trying to live up to what everyone else thought he should be.
“You’re not a bad person,” he said to the guy. “But you’re not a good person yet either because you lack contact with the source at the core of your being.”
On the second leg of my flight (Chicago to Albany) I was sitting next to a woman from the San Francisco Bay-area who turned out to be a psychotherapist specializing in 8th house themes — sex and money; but specifically money.
She was not an astrologer but she knew her chart; lots of Sagittarius with Venus retrograde in Scorpio. She had some of the most interesting views on sexuality that I’ve ever heard another human being describe, including the awareness that it is shadow material such as jealousy and abandonment that bring us into the deepest erotic feelings we can experience. I have noticed this many times, and it was gratifying to hear someone from another world, a hardwired monogamist as she described herself, and a well-experienced therapist, make some of the same observations I had made as someone exploring a very different path. In my own walk of life, I call it compersion.
I will have more to say about what I learned at UAC, and a number of other audio interviews that will be posted through the rest of the week. Thank you Lion for producing the broadcasts and to Anatoly for maintaining the audio database of conference coverage. I was very happy to fold up my Planet Waves banner and leave the hotel complex in downtown Denver where the conference took place. Nearly a week inside a building is a lot. I got out, but not much — my evenings mainly consisted of writing and photo editing. In addition to providing you with plenty of conference coverage, this had the advantage of making sure I got some of the internal time that I need to keep my creative well full. I went through nearly all 10 pounds of Epsom salts that I bought the first night, comfortably avoiding burnout by keeping an inner focus, avoiding parties and anything not directly associated with what I was writing or photographing.
My best social time was one-on-one, some of it with a mystery Planet Waves reader who picked me up at the airport with a picnic basket, took me to my hotel, did all of the copying of articles that we distributed to give readers a taste of what Planet Waves is about and then showed up with a cooler full of gluten-free food so that I could avoid restaurants. Several times she told me that the reason for this treatment was that for several extremely difficult years of her life, my writing is what got her through. I heard the whole story. They were indeed extremely difficult times, she is a fighter and she is all soul — a fact with which she connected in the process of a struggle being slugged out on one of the top floors of corporate America.
So my friend — for making sure my trips to and from the airport were fun and easy and warm; for enough to eat in a world where Food # 1 is wheat; for all those copies we gave out; for your ideas and brainstorming; and for your faith and encouragement, thank you. This enterprise would in truth have been impossible without you.
I am grateful to a number of other Planet Waves readers who supported me and provided a high-vibe presence at the conference: Renee, Csilla, Jennifer, and Duke, who took the lead on our outreach efforts. Ray Merriman, Madalyn Hillis-Dineen and Shelley Ackerman, three of the key UAC people I worked with, were cooperative and generous with Planet Waves and seemed to genuinely appreciate our presence. Shelley, a New York astrologer who I met when we both appeared in the same article in The Wall Street Journal, served as the UAC publicist and managed to spin-doctor the event into world news. Go figure.
Two of my deepest, most amazing astrological mentors were there — Rick Tarnas and Melanie Reinhart — and I got to spend generous amounts of time with both of them. I’ve become Rick’s personal paparazzo (I am striving for the definitive photo of Mr. Tarnas and I may have succeeded), and Melanie also spent a good half hour in front of my camera outside in the Denver sunshine as she talked with two of my oldest friends from Planet Waves, Denice Taylor and Carol Burkhart.
Then came a real surprise: Keiko Ito appeared at the Planet Waves table. There is no way to explain Keiko except to say that she is a human being of infinite complexity, curiosity and the most subtle humor. She makes her way through the world as a simultaneous interpreter in four languages (Japanese, Italian, French and English) who one night in the winter of 1998 visited me in New Jersey and sat there with the Adobe Pagemill instructions in her lap as I posted the first-ever Planet Waves website. I hadn’t seen her since 2000 at latest and had not heard from her in perhaps seven years.
So — quite a journey. UAC was a most amazing meeting of human spirits, all in the name of astrology — a moment for the ages, as Ray Merriman said with a smile on his face one fine evening over the weekend.
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Scanning the aspect list below, it looks like Wednesday is Jupiter retrograde sextile Uranus — a major alignment that comes with a reminder that great meetings are taking place, and that science and art are gathering their strength for a leap forward.
Mercury is conjunct Ceres, which is giving us the words and the ideas necessary for balance and healthy compromise. Vesta is sextile Nessus — the sexual healer talking with and working with a potential sexual perpetrator. Pallas has entered Taurus and is exactly trine Pluto, picking up the theme of the power of negotiation.
Sounds good to me.
Thanks for tuning in.
Today’s Oracle: Feb. 09, 2007 – PISCES – Weekly
The important thing is this: don’t expect others to go along with your plan 100% all the way right at this moment. You can, though, trust that people know you’re onto something, and reasonably expect them to do a little thinking and catch up. Meanwhile, keep your focus on appreciating life and doing your part to feed your own happiness. No law requires you to be happy, but no law prevents it, either. Some say that the key to contentment is compromise, and I would agree that this is one ingredient; the lock itself is knowing who and what matters to you, and keeping your focus there with no guilt, only love.
Today’s Aspects: Wednesday 21 May 2008
Atlantis (12+ Libra Rx) semisquare Orcus (27+ Leo)
Sun (0+ Gemini) quincunx Pluto (0+ Capricorn Rx)
Mercury (20+ Gemini) conjunct Ceres (20+ Gemini) – Near Miss Only
Jupiter (22+ Capricorn Rx) sextile Uranus (22+ Pisces)
Sun (1+ Gemini) trine M87 (1+ Libra)
Ceres (21+ Gemini) trine Chiron (21+ Aquarius)
Vesta (14+ Aries) quintile Hades (26+ Gemini)
Apollo (29+ Cancer) sextile Arachne (29+ Virgo)
Pallas (0+ Taurus) trine Pluto (0+ Capricorn Rx)
Vesta (14+ Aries) sextile Nessus (14+ Aquarius Rx)