Sunday, August 28, 2011

New Moon in Virgo









Wednesday, August 24, 2011


bordering on bats for seventeen hours. made a pixie. gave up searching for a reason why. prepared to comfort a friend.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Mystic Medusa has a great astro blog and one of the things I love finding there are her posts of bits of interviews with musicians, actors, artists, designers, writers, etc. in which they discuss their astrological signs and how they feel they express its qualities. What I'm getting at really is the link between being creative and honoring the power of nature.
It's lovely to finally find myself surrounded by people who honor a similar theology to my own.

Saturday, August 20, 2011


It's the turning point of the year. This week I received approval from the unemployment department to continue school while collecting benefits. It's a big deal. This means I'm now (in a way) totally secure. I have a steady income, I can finish school without sneaking around. There have been now so many big deals this year that it rolls off my back pretty quick and I just get on with it all. Happily.

Thursday, August 18, 2011


Ever since the full moon over the weekend I've felt bizarre, something along the lines of mentally/emotionally regressing ten years (approximately). Fully aware of the affliction but seemingly helpless against it I'm tracking the astro weather voraciously. Seems we're on our way to another metamorphic event, this waning moon being the impetus for releasing all the crap that's surfacing. I hate to have to process this but so long as I'm in line with the astro I feel better.


Sunday, August 14, 2011


Oh my gosh look what I did today! This is a chest I've had since I was a kid. My name is written in the lettering of a five year old inside that little cupboard. It was originally painted dark brown (yech!) and then I painted it red maybe ten years ago. Today I sanded it (not the best but well enough) and painted it gold, as you can clearly see. I love it so much I want to paint EVERYTHING gold.
I also started painting the trim in my bedroom ice blue which I'm not sure I love. I was starting to love it until I put the chest back in and now I don't love it so much anymore. It just doesn't go with the warm violet or the gold. I'm seriously considering painting the trim gold now. Seriously.
It still needs new knobs (it has ugly cheap gold or brass tone handles I put on after painting it red) but the ones I want -purple glass- are about $6 each and I need eleven of them (or to fill in those holes, touch up the paint and put on just six, which seems a little more reasonable but still not reasonable enough). We'll see....
Meantime, as my bedroom doesn't get much direct sunlight I'm thinking this might be the spot for my home perfumery. Some shallow shelving or ledges and cubbies on the wall over the chest would be perfect! I had once thought it would be lovely to make this into sort of a vanity with a pretty mirror over it and a small chair or stool but it's in an awkward place to leave a seat and I haven't gotten around to it yet so it must not be all that important to me. Perfumery it is!


Honoring the Full Moon in Aquarius












Though it's a teensy bit after the fact I must, as usual, honor the full moon -especially considering it was in my sign, Aquarius. For whatever reason I felt inclined to offer a little narrative with the usual barrage of imagery so here goes:
This full moon stirred me up plenty. The sun is setting earlier and I know that summer will end soon (though likely not before blasting us with a couple surprise killer heatwaves). Every day has had more insights as to what I'm making of my life and how beautiful and easy it is to keep chasing gut feelings. Weirdly, I'm moved to express that I someday want to spend an incarnation as a little skater boy, sounds heavenly. And finally, even as a season is nearing it's end (not really, we've only recently reached the halfway mark of summer -nonetheless, those halfway points usually do inspire us to think ahead anticipating the next season) and even though the next season is autumn whose color is gold, I was needing something beautiful and vast and green to be my portal into the next beginning.

One of my favorite ways to cheer myself up has been with perfume. The same way a scent from the past can remind me of everything I felt during that time, a new scent can give me a new perspective and hope for the future. For years it's been my practice to order sample sizes of expensive and hard to find perfumes from an online shop based on the the folklore of the power of particular scents. I usually just go for what sounds good after reading reviews and the detailed breakdown of the top, middle and bottom notes of the perfume blends I'm shopping and when I find something I love I do the research on what each scent is intended for.
I have a long term attachment to sandalwood which is said to reconnect us to a primordial state of being ("diminishing the need to overthink"), calm anxiety and help us to sleep better. As I'm naturally prone to insomnia, anxiety in severe times and feel my best when I'm not thinking at all -silly as that may sound, it's no wonder I've always loved it. I truly believe that our senses seek out for us what's most beneficial to us at any particular time and that it's important to pay attention to and honor what our intuition leads us to. 
Stay tuned for new adventures in perfumery. Virtual shopping carts have been filled, alchemy and perfume history books are littering my house, I'm plotting the workspace....

Thursday, August 11, 2011

I really hate waiting for big news and big decisions. I feel like I've been doing just that for years now. Is that what being a grown up is all about? Waiting for announcements and answers? It screws me up because during the whole waiting period I question my instincts and then I question myself. Mini identity crises. What are my priorities again?
In other news of disinterest to all, I've gotten sloppy about my healthy, nourishing eating habits and am developing a small chocolate mousse habit which is making me feel noticeably crappy. Why do I do this to myself?
Here's today's distraction via fashion obsession, plus a poll! What to do with my hair.... Half or full platinum...? (Either way, it goes baby pink at some point.)







Wednesday, August 10, 2011


This is my today. Am currently in a manmade limbo that will either ruin all that I've been working toward (unlikely) or help me to continue all this working to reconstruct my life. It is a difficult thing to rely on the government for a sense of security, in truth it has taught me that what I am truly relying on is blind faith in all that is beyond me which creates and destroys. It's not religion, it's the chaos of nature. It's completely unpredictable and inconstant, you can never be quite certain which way the wind will change. 


And this is the advice I'm following today. To be less cryptic, I've just been through my second appeal to  unemployment, this one to continue my benefits while I'm attending school and still looking for work. They want me to sit around all day at home bored out of my mind and isolated, becoming socially retarded so that when I finally do have an interview somewhere I no longer have the social skills to handle it.
I have to believe in the best possible outcome and have been plotting my celebration of the pending ruling. I think it's going to look something like this.


It's time for a change. 


Sunday, August 7, 2011

Astro Lessons


I love when I can clearly see the connection between my mood and experience to that of astrological transits. This, in fact, is what really got me to learn about astrology: it's an amazing tool for better understanding yourself. I love today's little lesson to me as I'm feeling particularly proud of what it says about me. First let me tell you a little about my day and how it was somewhat different than others. First of all, it was my first day off. That in itself lends to me being lazier than usual and more frivolous with my time and money. It's like a little celebration for getting through the week (no matter how easy or challenging a week it was). Anyway, this can be anything (or everything) from sleeping really late to sitting around in my pj's too long to thrift store shopping.... Basically just how many normal people spend their weekend. It's just when one of these indulgences seems out of balance with the rest that I guess I don't like it. But that's kind of what my lesson was today.
Today, in my personal transits, I had Venus opposing my Sun, Saturn trine my Sun, Moon in my 10th house conjunct my Midheaven and trine my Saturn. I'm sure that sounds like a bunch of gibberish to you, it seems incredibly ridiculous to me to read that long string of aspects and map them out. But here's the thing: I did. Totally naturally. I understood that and I did it by mapping it out in my head and drawing the lines and recalling attributes of all those aspects. Without even trying too hard, without looking anything up elsewhere. That's freaking amazing. I kind of thought I'd given up trying to "learn" astrology. I just read when I wanted to to and what I wanted to -which is what I always claim to be the best method of study anyway.
I'm not going to give you the long drawn out breakdown but here's the gist of it: lot's of focus on work and career and creating stability for a creative lifestyle in the realm of focusing on the future -near and far- with a fairly practical and very positive attitude, feeling incredibly relaxed and grounded and productive, managed my time fairly well and balanced it between relaxation, making art, doing responsible things, doing fun things. No self punishment for taking a day to myself: I didn't not leave the house at all until 5:30 pm, did not return a single phone call, did not even speak to another person until then, or for opting not to take the dogs for a walk today. And for acknowledging but working away from the little bead of fear in my tummy. I actually think it's entirely appropriate because it tells me at once that I know for certain everything is going in my favor these days but am aware that it would be unhealthy of me not to feel a tiny bit worried or unnerved by life.
And being honest with myself. I think it's still a little bit hard for me to believe that I'll get through school really fast, get my license and be working and making money and all of that so quickly. Some part of me believes that I'll be forced to get a full time, exhausting job in a boring, anxiety inducing office with unflattering lighting.
I had this bizarre dream last night that made absolutely no sense to me until now. It was a series of vignettes of me -often in situations similar to my past spending time with specific groups of friends from certain periods of my life in surroundings the were clearly representative of places we spent a lot of time but with crazy twists. (Also, I seemed to know all that I know now.)


For example, a group of girls I used to hang out with a lot in bars and at parties: I dreamed that we were all sitting in a vinyl booth like a bar booth but we were in a really large building surround by really large windows on one wall looking out over hills and the ocean, it seemed to be dusk. But along the wall the booths were lined up at it seemed we had late afternoon sunshine. Everyone seemed to be having fun (or it was implied, at least, that we all should be having fun) but I was a little bored by it all and restless, as I would assume I would feel if I were in exactly the same situation but today, myself as I am now. It wasn't as if it were an exciting party, but more as if we were in an airport terminal with lot's of other bored people, not actually traveling but just hanging out there trying to entertain themselves. What a freaking metaphor for my mid-late twenties! I leave them.
Next vignette (I don't know if I remember the actual order but I think so...): I wander away and am standing in front of the huge windows on the dusky side of the room. It seems to be a little overcast in the distance, but beautifully -almost romantically so, with a beautiful lightening storm which is not at all obscured by clouds and I stand and watch the lightening bolts strike.
Next vignette: I'm driving a car and my passenger is an older man (maybe in his fifties or early sixties) it's bright out, maybe midday. I feel like we don't know each other well. He's giving me directions but they're all like this "pass the fork in the road and make a left when you see the yellow bird" (I think that is exactly what he said, in fact!) but we're in a city and it doesn't make any sense but for some reason I hear it and have no abnormal reaction. When I reach something which, I decide upon arriving at, must be the fork there are more than two options and I get a little confused/frustrated and ask for clarification but refer to the bird (which technically we wouldn't be looking for yet) instead of the fork. The answer is something like "you'll know the way as you go" -but it seemed more prophetic/gibberish-like. By the way, it seems not to be a close personal relationship and not as if we might be employer/employee but I feel as if even though he's much older I have to be the one who knows the way and as if he is somehow reliant on me. But anyway, after he says this, instead of sitting there looking at the three ways to go I just keep driving with a feeling of total confidence, absolutely no knowledge whatsoever, it seems a tiny bit tedious and monotonous. I think I also suspected he had no idea what he was talking about and that he had tricked me into believing that he did and now I felt burdened. Now I've got the perfect fake story line for that part: an old man needs a ride home and I offer to drive him out of kindness. As we go I'm asking directions and at first he seems to know the way but then seems to not know the rest of it anymore. I'm left of my own to find the route to this strangers house and am stuck with him until I do.
What the hell.
And that concludes my astro and dreaming story. Whew!

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Nothing tells me I'm doing the right thing for myself like the peaceful feeling of having just finished a haircut. Something about working with your hands is just right for me. The only thoughts I have time to notice are the encouraging ones I've learned how to play in my head while I work and other than that it's all peace and hands and eyes.
Here's my new card...