Venus opposed to Pluto, then trine Uranus

This turned out to be the day to paint the shelves in the computer room and kitchen. I bought the paint weeks ago after the Keystone Cops installed the french doors by nailing up two by fours to make the door frame smaller, and had slapped a coat of paint on the unfinished wood soon after they'd finished the work (didn't mark aspects - slipping), but that was as far as I got.

I haven't paid much attention to this apartment for years and it's starting to show. (I did paint the living room magenta when Uranus conjuncted Mars, but that was three years ago.) I have a once-white particle board computer station that I bought at Conran's, which dates it right there, and that was looking particularly dingy. It now looks spanking fresh, even if you can see a few brush marks, and I rack up further evidence that my twelfth house Venus in Aries is much happier slapping semi-gloss white paint around than involving herself in messy relationships with earthlings.

Further evidence of the non-sexual nature of that Venus appeared two days later as she trined Uranus and brought me my first copy of The New Yorker since November 26 (I'm aware of the date as I had to find it to email their subscription service and complain); the generic Celexa I ordered from a Canadian pharmacy three weeks ago, rather than have my 78-year-old neighbor in Silver go to Walmart for me and mail it here; a serious inquiry about the 1957 Chevy truck I've listed on Craigslist for said neighbor, and, as far as I know, the first comment left on this blog by someone I haven't told to read it (and none of them do anyway) saying that he or she enjoys it and thanking me for writing it, bringing the grand total of readers even closer to a two-digit number. Many thanks to whoever that was from me and my twelfth house on the upper east side. 

Solar Eclipse on MC, Part II

The atmosphere around here got pretty charged last Thursday night as the folly of my thinking this event was going to have some kind of benevolent effect on my playwriting career became clearer by the second.  I'd been thinking -- (HOW long have I been studying astrology?) --  that I might get confirmation of a go-ahead from the artistic director interested in producing one of my plays, and instead, after not working for her for about three months, was asked by a friend if I could help out and transcribe a sudden rush job that had come into her agency.

If you're looking for a definition of a solar eclipse on the Midheaven to an Aries (this one, at least), Thursday's is about as literal as it could get; tether yourself to a machine by putting on headphones, complete subsume  your own personality to the requirements of the task at hand, type verbatim whatever it is you hear on the MP3 file and stay tethered until the job is finished, as there's always a deadline.

By the time the file arrived in my mailbox, I'd been on the phone with my friend/boss several times, getting updates on how quickly the uploading was going and, my normal foghorn voice at top pitch, telling her what I had been dopey enough to think might happen.  (She's astrology friendly-- she's the friend who told me to start this blog.)

It was once I'd downloaded the MP3, transferred it to the transcribing software, put the headphones on and started working the foot pedal that the fun started in earnest. The sound on the file was super fast -- so speeded up that it was unintelligible and impossible to understand, let alone transcribe. Slowed it down, using the software - still too fast. Shut the software down, restarted - still too fast. Took several deep breaths, reminded myself I was but a little piece of stardust experiencing the ineffable As Above, So Below workings of the universe and called my boss, telling her the problem.

I got the expected answer - the file was fine when she sent it to me - said I'd try again and call her back.
Tried again, sound still chipmunky. Picked up foot pedal, cleaned off dust, blew on it, clicked the moving pieces once or twice to see that they connected, put it back down on floor, pressed right pedal -- 150 watt light bulb appears over head and strangled moan escapes mouth as I remember this is the foot pedal I'd used the week before when using analog transcribing machine with cassette tapes and the foot pedal I ought to have been using - the one that works with the transcribing software - was in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet.  Changed out foot pedals, called boss, explained lack of brain cells and finally finally finally began to work.

The cats, in the meantime, had picked up on the imminent absence of the three billion megawatts of electromagnetic energy they're used to being bombarded with and had been chasing each other up and down the apartment even more furiously than usual, with Sweet Pea getting braver and braver (or more and more crazed) the more charged the atmosphere got and taking fiercer and fiercer bites at poor old Patches' heels, tail and underbelly.  At one point the skirmishes escalated to such a level I took off the headphones and untethered myself, stood over the two writhing bodies, clapped my hands and said "Stop", which to the amazement of all three of us they did, Sweet Pea skulking away into a corner and Patches standing shaking in shock.  I of course chose this moment to say "poor old boy" and reach my hand out to Patches, but the cotton balls, Peroxide and Neosporin now live handily accessible on a shelf in the bathroom and I've learned you have to squeeze the saliva out of the teeth marks and run water over them.

Things calmed down a bit after that. I only got a bit of Neosporin on the keyboard, the cats retired to separate ends of the apartment,  I transcribed the file and was in the middle of spell-checking it when my mailbox pinged and there was the bi-monthly newsletter from the Dramatists Guild, to which I belong. (Another of my unvoiced to the world *predictions* about the eclipse had been that notice of publication of one of my plays in a special edition, with a foreword by me, would appear in the next DG Member News section, not too surprising as I had just sent the notice in myself, a mere four months after the event.)

Of course I had to stop spell-checking to go and see my name - if not in lights, at least on a computer screen and not on an invoice I was sending out - but it was definitely not the night for this little piece of cosmic matter. Not a mention of me and my play appeared, for reasons which became apparent as I read properly for the first time the instructions for submitting material. Future events only were to be sent to the newsletter, past events should be emailed to the webmaster to appear on the website, the eclipse is in Capricorn and that means Saturn and there are rules here that you have to follow....

And there ended the eclipse on my Midheaven. That was more than a week ago. The Leo full Moon at the end of this week sextiles Uranus in Gemini for me, while the Sun trines it. Mars is with the Moon in the sky, Jupiter will be beginning to trine Saturn for me, and I would say it's a pretty sure bet notice of the special edition of my play will be appearing on the Dramatists Guild Website before the week is over. Always assuming, of course, that I remember to email them and tell them.

Solar Eclipse with Venus on the Midheaven

For days now I've been wondering if I dared post a prediction about this. With an email on Monday telling me an amateur theatrical company in the U.K. wanted to produce one of my 9/11 plays and asking about who to contact re rights, etc., (and, of course, with my having immediately passed on the information) I thought, if the confirmation was coming, it may well have come today. I mean, solar eclipse with Venus on the degree of my Midheaven - something has to happen, right? Admittedly, Capricorn isn't the first sign of the Zodiac that comes to mind when you think of someone flinging themself around on a stage, but Saturn is in Libra now and Venus is right up there with the Sun and Moon.

I took myself off to Drama Workshop at the senior center this morning and sat around the table in the library with several other over-60s, stumbling over the words and reading the wrong lines and turning over two pages at once with the best of them, but no one appeared to offer me a Pulitzer or anything and I came home, stopping at the supermarket on the way back, also a place where no one seemed notably impressed by my presence.

The butcher was definitely immune to my supposedly very visible Venusian charms and my request for four ounces of chicken livers, which he took at first to be a request for four pounds and started balancing plastic containers of the stuff on his arm, trying to find some that added up to what he thought I'd asked him for. Once we'd sorted that out and I'd explained what four ounces was and why I wanted it - one of my cats likes the livers but can't eat them quickly enough before the rest of the container goes bad - he was politely regretful and told me he'd like to but his boss wouldn't let him. Recognizing a fruitless cause when I see it, I didn't press the issue. It did make me realize I could buy a pound or so and split it up into little plastic bags and freeze it, defrosting it when I needed it (which would probably have occurred to someone else far sooner than it did it did to me), so all was not lost.

With Jupiter sextiling Venus in two days time I've been in no mood this week to do any of the editorial work which is my bread and butter. Google and Dr. Phil helped me squander the rest of the day and at seven, with no incoming emails confirming my status as an internationally produced playwright, I was all set to watch Jeopardy but picked the phone up when it rang. (It was only 2:00 am in the U.K and the director may have decided to tell me in person.)

It was my friend who runs a transcription agency and as soon as she said "You're going to wish you had Caller ID" I knew what it was about. Yes, I said, I would do the rush job for the morning, just send it to me (thank God for MP3 files) and I'll get it done. I was, of course, forgetting the mysterious ways of television news producers, and it turned out the file had not yet been sent to her but the producer definitely wanted it transcribed for the morning.

That was 90 minutes ago and I'm still waiting. Presumably the file will arrive in my mailbox an hour from now when the Sun conjuncts the midheaven exactly, and I'll probably finish the job on the solar eclipse four hours after that after sitting here all that time with headphones on channelling work for someone else's career. Really, with a natal twelfth house Sun (and Venus and Mercury), how could I have expected anything else? Thank God for a sense of humor as well as MP3 files.

Several at Once

Right now I have Jupiter sextile Venus, exact this Saturday, 1/16, Neptune squaring the Ascendant, exact 1/24, Chiron doing the same thing but with a further away date of exactitude, Saturn sitting on Neptune squaring itself and Pluto coming to square Neptune and oppose Saturn. Pardon my obsession with this, but I have been watching the latter aspects approach in the ephemeris for quite some time, usually wanting to throw up as I do so.

It's admittedly very early days but the amazingly wondrous (to me) effect of all the above so far is that I am working, seriously working, on a play that I have been toying with on and off for twelve years. There are index cards and yellow Stickies and sheets of paper all over the apartment, starting with Act One on the kitchen counter and going over the table through the computer room, onto the bed and into the living room, ending up with the end of Act Two on the couch close to the front windows.

For the past three days I've been pacing backwards and forwards muttering to myself - No, Daphne has to say that BEFORE she finds out Doreen knew the meeting was cancelled - scribbling on new Stickies and attaching them to the appropriate (for the moment) piece of paper, shuffling index cards around, rearranging the order of the pieces of paper - THAT'S better, then it makes sense for Dobby to go into the bathroom - running to the computer every now and again to bash out a couple of lines of dialogue, going back to the kitchen whenever I get to the front window and starting all over again, and every once in while wondering if I have gone completely insane to be spending all this time by myself with two cats and three people who exist only in my head.

Mid-day yesterday I got the answer to that question when an email arrived from the artistic director of an amateur theatre company in England who'd emailed me before Christmas about the possibility of producing Soldiering On, one of the plays I wrote about 9/11. The email confirmed not only that, God Willing, SO will be produced at his theater in April of 2011, but that scurrying around mumbling to myself IS a productive use of my time, pardon my shouting.

Of course I want to know the exact dates in April that SO will be produced - I know there'll be seven performances - so I can do a chart, but have so far restrained myself from asking. How long I'll be able to hold out I'm not sure, but in the meantime, Doreen, Daphne and Dobby are calling, and I need to go to Staples to buy some different colored Stickies.

Sun and Venus square Sun

This was the day I chose (?) to begin work on a job transcribing interviews with playwrights and actors -- not great sound, as we say in the business, and a lot of overtalk and laughter, so I'm charging by the hour rather than the usual sweatshop practice of by the page and am keeping careful track of my time.

I'd been working for exactly seven minutes and had managed about four lines of copy when the phone rang -- scarcely as dramatic as a cookbook interpretation of Sun square Sun, which will say something along the lines of it being a time of challenge and crisis with others working at cross-purposes to your aims and goals, with you being forced to prove that what you're doing is worthwhile -- but appropriate enough for everyday astrology.  Of course there's always free will, and I could have let the phone ring, but there's always the possibility Mick Jagger might call so I picked up, had a 15 minute chat (not with Mick Jagger), pointed out that I do work from home, hung up, noted the time again and went back to transcribing.

With Venus square the Sun I wasn't expecting too much of myself in the way of discipline and concentration so was somewhat stunned by mid-afternoon to find I'd finished one of the four tapes of the job. (Presumably the Venusian artistic nature of the interviews worked in my favor.) Such an accomplishment required immediate major reward and I plonked myself down on the couch with a Granny Smith apple and a jar of Skippy Extra-Crunchy Peanut Butter (on sale this week at C-Town for $1.99) to watch Dr. Phil, at which point the invisible, ineffable workings of the universe made themselves manifest to me once more in all their awesome glory and the phone rang again. Life, as Noel Coward was always so fond of saying, had dealt me another blow.

Somehow, calling on all my inner strength and powers of recuperation, I made it through the rest of the day unopposed, managing to watch the last half of Dr. Phil uninterrupted and then, wonder of wonders, going back to work and finishing another tape, typing "End of Tape Two" just as the Venus square the Sun aspect perfected. I made myself a big bowl of no-fat Fage yoghurt with brown sugar sprinkled on top and settled in to watch Jeopardy. It's a hard life.  

My Year At a Glance - Serious Astrologers Only

I've been watching the approach of this year for a while now with something resembling apprehension, if not dread. It's the year Pluto will oppose natal Saturn for me and square Neptune, while at the same time, because of a natal Saturn/Neptune square, Saturn will conjunct Neptune and square itself. An astrologer friend once told me she thought I'd be spared the worst of the Pluto/Saturn opposition precisely because of the Neptune placement, and while it's ridiculously early days right now, I can only say so far so good.

Of course, as Pluto moves so slowly, the opposition to Saturn continues way into 2011 when Pluto stations opposite the Lord of Karma for August, September and October, but by then Saturn will have moved off natal Neptune and be doing much more funner things like opposing the Sun, while transiting Neptune will be sextiling natal Venus, but even I have to draw a line somewhere and I'll get back to this year and cope with that first.

The thing I most hope doesn't happen is that someone close to me will die and leave me money, as transiting Pluto is currently in my eighth house. As Pluto inches forward to oppose Saturn for me, money is, to put it mildly, tight - not surprisingly, as I have an apartment in New York and a house (and car) in New Mexico and a total income of  $1,000 a month from my taken-early Social Security. I think I made about $5,000 last year from free-lance work, so I'm living on what is supposed to be my retirement fund, which I'm ever-lastingly grateful to have and which will get me through another three years or so.

If I stopped eating, wearing clothes, taking the subway, feeding the cats, buying them kitty litter, having electric light and gas to cook with, using the Internet, paying taxes and paying property taxes and insurance, the money would last much longer, but somehow that doesn't seem like too viable an option.

As much as I would dare to make a prediction, I'd say the house will have to go, astrology or not, although as always the astrology backs it up. Saturn square Saturn will bring up something that happened seven years ago or so, and we bought the house in 2002. My second Saturn Return was in 2003. Natal Pluto is in four. Natal Saturn is at the end of two. When transiting Saturn conjuncted natal Pluto in 2006, I felt forced into buying out the man I originally bought the house with rather than sell it - not a time I would ever like to repeat - so with Pluto opposing Saturn, resources, er, dwindling and structures in my life passing away (friend who lived on floor above me for 30 years moved in November) it does seem like a bit of a no-brainer.

Enough of this obsessing over what is really nothing but a waste of time -- attempting to predict the future. What will happen will happen, without being too fatalistic, and looking on the bright side, I get my bus pass in April when I'm 65 and will have health insurance as well. Can't be all bad.

Venus Sextile Mars

Talk about a balance in my life between self-assertion and the need to relate to others: with this aspect perfecting at 5:00 am this morning, a great deal of yesterday was spent on the phone and/or online attempting to coordinate three of my friends so all four of us could go to the same movie at the same time in the same location - two Upper-East-Siders, one Hell's Kitchener and one Washington Heightser, each, of course, with her own ideas on whether the film would be sold out or not, whether buying tickets online and paying the surcharge is worth it or a waste of money, how soon we should get to the theater to buy the tickets if we decide to go that route, whether the window person would sell me senior tickets without the other seniors being there, how soon we should go back to the theater to start to wait in line in case there are crowds, whether we should eat before or after, whether we shouldn't eat at all but just have a cup of tea - a truly astonishing set of differing opinions, although maybe not too astonishing as we're all women of a certain age who have been living alone for close to a century, if you add all the years up, which makes it even more of a miracle that it all seems to have worked itself out.

God willing, Deo Volente and all that, in less than 30 minutes the four of us will start assembling in the Barnes & Noble on 86th Street, with or without tickets, with or without food (or knots) in our stomachs, and 30 minutes after that, assuming we all find each other ha ha, be making our way to Loews on 86th and Third for the 4 o'clock showing of Up in the Air.

With this kind of start to the new year, anything is possible, even surviving Pluto opposed to Saturn square Neptune, with Saturn squaring itself and sitting on Neptune at the same time.