From 2007 - Please excuse the tears in this. I left them in because they are Venus / Neptune of course. Stephen Arroyo’s book is linked below. So is Leonard Cohen’s Energy of Slaves. I think my 8th house is also vividly displayed here. I get pregnant… easy.

UPDATE in 2009, I wound up sending the book of poems to the soldier’s son when he was in Iraq…

Person-To-Person Astrology: Energy Factors in Love, Sex and Compatibility by Stephen Arroyo

The Energy Of Slaves by Leonard Cohen

Blogs inspired by the person who gifted me “The Energy Of Slaves”

I got a book over the weekend from one of the regular readers here, Jilly Dybka. Y’all know her, she is always kind.  She has never gotten in a skirmish of any kind on this blog. She’s just nice that’s all so you might imagine my surprise when I opened her book of poetry and found myself in tears reading the very first poem on the very first page.

I felt enormously humbled. I just can’t believe the quality of the group that gathers here. I have Capricorn feelings about it - What do these people see in me?  It’s not that I don’t know the answer to that it’s just that well…

Well check out, Jilly for yourself and maybe you’ll see what I mean. When people who can write like this read your writing it boggles the mind.

Jilly writes:

Continue reading Jilly Dybka - She Boggles The Mind

satori sent me this. Think Venus in Aries, Mars in Libra, Mars in The 7th house, Aries / Libra Nodes etc

The artichoke
With a tender heart
Dressed up like a warrior,
Standing at attention, it built
A small helmet
Under its scales
It remained
Unshakeable,
By its side
The crazy vegetables
Uncurled
Their tendrills and leaf-crowns,
Throbbing bulbs,
In the sub-soil
The carrot
With its red mustaches
Was sleeping,
The grapevine
Hung out to dry its branches
Through which the wine will rise,
The cabbage
Dedicated itself
To trying on skirts,
The oregano
To perfuming the world,
And the sweet
Artichoke
There in the garden,
Dressed like a warrior,
Burnished
Like a proud
Pomegrante.

Continue reading Mars And Love - Ode to the Artichoke by Pablo Neruda

It’s my daughter, she’s ridiculous. She’s 11 years old but in 7th grade so with older kids and today I dyed her hair jet black (it’s usually dark brown) to go with her new emo haircut.

She’s also got her fingernails painted black and she is writing dark poetry… lots of death and knives and suicide in it, however she can’t seem to read it without grinning.

I told her to go ahead with her black eyeliner when she reminded me, “you had fads when you were a kid” so here she is all decked out, stack of suicide poems in her hand, looking as morose as Pluto in Scorpio rising can look which is pretty morose. But it only lasts a few seconds.

Because my daughter has a 9th house (happy) Moon trine Jupiter (happy) in Sagittarius (happy). And I’m sorry but I don’t care how deep your soul is, with a configuration like that you are only going to be able to dip down so far and for so long.

So this morning, she’s got her look together (her costume, because her Moon is in Leo) and I find her in her room with her brother watching this: “Tickle Me Emo” which mocks the whole emo movement. And they’re both laughing their heads off at Elmo, who has gone emo. I watched this with them… it’s funny and clever. He lives on Depress-esame Street.

“Yep, that’s what happened to your sister,” I said to my son. “Tell everyone your sister has gone emo along with Elmo and you’re sure to follow because black hair is just so nice.”

They both roared.

“Okay,” I said as I stood up to leave. “I’ll help you two out of your depression and your suicidal tendencies (my son has the Moon Jupiter opposition… he ain’t going down either) just as soon as you quit laughing. Call me if you need me, I’ll be around. I’ll be here and catch you two right before you hit the grave so if you get close, you just let me know.”

Two snorts.

Isn’t astrology a trip?

satori and I. We’re still talkin’. Well, mostly me. But this is my bent…

“So as far as I am concerned the gal in Leonard Cohen’s poem… well, he just wrote her down, exactly. Which I think is nervy. But think about it. They run into each other - these ex-lovers. And she tells him his eyes are dead. What happened to you, Lover?” I smirked. “Like he’s broken or something. What the hell kind of thing is that to say? Who would to say something like that? It’s awful. It’s awful and it’s arrogant. Isn’t that how it sounds to you? Doesn’t that sound arrogant? You know? Uppity? Pretentious? Oh, your eyes are dead.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I think so. So he goes home and writes a poem about her. He immortalized her in this poem and all it is the truth! It’s not hateful. It’s not vindictive. He says she lost her beauty and in fact she has. Because anyone who could and would say something like that, obviously has no beauty to them. How can make a comment like that and be beautiful, inside or out?” Continue reading Instant Karma, Truth and Violence in General

Alison writes on the Pluto Uranus conjunction blog

In the sixties we did see new ways of being; the pill gave sexual liberation, revolutionary art, poetry, music and fashion. However, having observed my fellow peers with Uranus conjunct Pluto in Virgo there is a deep conservatism in this bunch. Like the Virgo is private and this group can keep their radicalness private and not on display. Some friends (of this group) have very mainstream, suburban, straight lives on the surface - but dig a little deeper and there will be an (one ?) aspect of their lives that is very naughty, risque and/or potentially criminal, experimental, creative. Many choose safe lives on the surface whilst being underground mavericks. Would love to hear more from Elsa with her knowledge an experiences with this curious lot.

Alison, you got it. And I agree with your take on this and here’s an example. This is the same friend here. Satori, who is a Pisces with her sun opposite the Pluto Uranus conjunction.

“Listen to this,” I said, reading from Leonard Cohen’s book, Energy Of Slaves:

I left a woman waiting
I met her sometime later
She said, Your eyes are dead
What happened to you, lover

And since she spoke the truth to me
I tried to answer truly
Whatever happened to my eyes
Happened to your beauty

O go to sleep my faithful wife
I told her rather cruelly
Whatever happened to my eyes
Happened to your beauty

“See that! Don’t tell Leonard Cohen his eyes or dead or he’ll write a poem about you! Gah. How would you like to be that gal?” Continue reading Art, Astrology, and the Uranus Transit Through Pisces: Sleep With Her Husband At Your Own Risk

My friend, satori is a Pisces born in the sixties with the Pluto Uranus conjunction in Virgo opposing her Sun. With Uranus transiting Pisces, I have been witnessing her liberation and kickin’ it up a gear whenever I think I can.

“Well I think you should check out some of this stuff that was born when you were. The art, I mean. The creative stuff. And I mean get the purest stuff you can find. Like Leonard Cohen’s poetry from the era. It’s very potent. He writes about taboo sex. He writes this stuff and he does not screw around. He puts it right on the paper, the energy of your generation in just a very few words. And for me it’s one thing. For you it would be another, but I do think it would impact you, because it is you. The poems were born when you were born and you share something with them.” Continue reading Art, Astrology, and the Uranus Transit Through Pisces: Leonard Cohen and the Pluto Uranus Conjunction of the 60’s Generation

*Dirty Word Alert*

I read poetry on the plane which was a first. I read Leonard Cohen’s, "Energy Of Slaves", or bits of it is more accurate. Because it’s the kind of book you have to put down. The words are so powerfully evocative you have to set the thing down and think about what you just read, at least I do. It’s my plane version of turning off the lights and lying down on the couch, I guess. Because I would read a page or two, then set the book in the seat pocket and close my eyes.

And it was not just the words, but the astrology. Many of the poems in that book were written when Uranus and Pluto were conjunct… the late 60’s this is. So the book is like a time capsule on that level. Uranus and Pluto conjunct marked the sexual revolution among other things. And I don’t know about you. But when someone says their music is not merely naked, but open-legged, like a cunt, which Cohen does in this book… well I just have to stop right there, put the book down and think about what I just read. Because, I mean come on. Reading that is like running head on into a train.

And this is one heck of way (recommended) to fly across a country. Because the seat back in front of you is boring and this other is just so consuming.

And in contrast, I was sitting next to a Navy man. He’d just graduated boot camp and was scheduled to leave for Italy on Valentine’s Day. And he was so young. Too young for my book, I thought. He was pimpled.

And I thought it ironic he was leaving Colorado for Italy, sitting next to an Italian woman on what would be his last domestic flight for three years, and I told him so. “I’m here so you can get used to people who look like me,” I said. I noticed a boot drawn on his hand in pen and I am so stupid…

I am so stupid I thought it must have to do with boot camp. You know. Some kind of ritual. They get out of boot camp and draw a boot? Who knows. This stuff is foriegn to me and it was only several days later I realized it was Italy that he’d drawn on his hand. Hah!

But anyway, the Navy man was not alive when Leonard Cohen wrote his brave, dirty poems and sitting on the plane thinking this, Snoopy smiled.

Do you read when you fly? If so, do you have a preference, what?

Skip to May.. The Soldier and P at the Laundromat