Boy, That Universe...

For six weeks, ever since anonymous, a boy I lived with far too briefly many many moons ago and have been trying to find ever since, or at least since there was a Switchboard, contacted me via this blog and then promptly disappeared on vacation to the only place on earth where presumably there is no Internet connection,  I have been walking around in - how to say this -- does "a constant state of arousal" do it?  Wandering around Walmart wondering what I went for and vaguely wishing I'd made a list, driving there or to the few other places here that make up my existence -- the landfill, Gospel Mission Thrift Shop, the tennis courts if I can find someone to play with me -- talking on the phone to whoever might be on the other end, digging up plants that aren't happy and moving them somewhere where they might be -- sex, sex and more sex is all that I've had on my mind, all of it, of course, with anonymous, someone I have not seen for forty-five years, and may well never see again.
That sums it up pretty neatly and avoids mentioning the detailed erotic fantasies that go along with thinking about sex during every waking moment, and of course some of the non-waking moments but we don't need to get into that here, and in the meantime life chugs along and off we go in our beloved 1992 Volvo for a long-planned trip to California to visit best friend in the world, detour to Las Vegas in the middle to win a free buffet for two, back to California and then after a week back to Silver, on back roads as much as possible with only an hour on the 10 between Phoenix and Quartzsite.
This is probably the tenth or so time I've made this trip, each time, back and forth, whizzing past what looks like an interesting bookstore right off the 10 at Quartzsite and never stopping, just as I whizz past Fresh Home-made Jerky in Parker. This time, on my way back to Silver, I was determined to stop at both places, but a gigantic truck between me and Fresh Jerky took paid to that stop and made me extra-determined to check out the bookstore.
No big trucks in Quartzsite, and I was able to pull into the Oasis (great name for a bookstore in the middle of the desert) parking lot with no problems, of course with my mind firmly fixed on one of the afore-mentioned erotic fantasies. The store -- a great big wooden shed half-open to the outside --  seemed to be empty, and I made straight for the Drama Section and started to poke around. It was a real bookstore, an Aladdin's Cave for someone like me, and I was rifling through books when I sensed someone behind me. I turned to see the scrawny naked back of what was obviously a man, even to someone who hadn't had sex for thirty years. He turned towards me, showing an equally naked front except he was wearing, if that's the word, a kind of enclosed hair scrunchie over what my sister would call his bits, and with a friendly smile said "Looking for anything in particular?"
"I wonder if you have a copy of Albee's Zoo Story," I say, Miss Unflappable International Playwright and New Yorker for forty years before I moved somewhere where you have to take your own trash to the dump. "Sure," he says, "I think I have at least one," and for the next ten minutes we discuss books, theater, the importance of hydration in the desert, the gem show and flea market that I learn are held in Quartzsite every January and February, how air-conditioning would cost him $500 a month so instead he offers all his customers free cold drinks -- many many interesting topics except why he's wearing a scrunchie over his bits and nothing else, and why after driving past his store twenty times over eight years I choose the one time I have nothing but sex on my brain to stop, although God knows I think the ten minutes I spent talking to him were probably the longest time I've gone WITHOUT thinking about sex since May 10, not that he wasn't perfectly charming and informative and knowledgeable and all.
I was back in the Volvo and halfway to Phoenix pondering the last paragraph before the obvious struck me -- duh, he's a nudist (!!!!!!!) -- and as soon I got home I googled Quartzsite Bookstores. Naturally (ha ha) everyone in the world except me is aware of him and his bookstore -- 22,600 results in 0.39 seconds -- but I'd still like to know what possessed me to stop there this past time and that time only. Boy, that universe...

Trying to Get Back on Track...

... posting on here, that is. For months all Astrodienst has given as my long-term aspects has been Pluto opposed to Saturn, Pluto square Neptune and Saturn conjunct Chiron, transits I've been looking at for years and dreading. Lora Lake, an extraordinarily gifted astrologer I met here in Silver a couple of years ago and became friends with until she moved away, and to whom I once admitted my dread about the coming Pluto/Saturn/Neptune configuration, told me, not quite in so many words as she's English and polite, that she thought I had nothing to worry about because the Neptune was going to save me, and I shall send her this link as so far she's been spot on.

If Neptune symbolizes art and love and all that stuff, since May 10 when someone I've been trying to find for years contacted me via this blog, I've been dominated by Neptune, (if Neptune is capable of domination), and managed to rewrite Act II of the play I've been writing since 1997. Today, thanks to a neighbor who understands country life, knows my car is in the shop and volunteered to take two envelopes to the Post Office for me, Just For You is on its way to the Royal Court in Sloane Square and The New Group on Theatre Row in New York. Nothing like aiming for the top.

In Thrall to Neptune

I could change this blog's name to once-a-month-astrology, but hope springs eternal and here I am again. It's not that nothing has been happening: line dancing seems to have fallen by the wayside and I haven't done a grocery shop for a week, but a new handyman has been coming and fixing things up and last weekend I went down to the Blues Festival with friends twice and had drinks with other friends. It's just that since the comment on here from anonymous life seems to have taken on another dimension.

The only time I don't think about him is when I'm "gardening" or writing, and thank God I'm doing a lot of both. The weather is finally gorgeous and I'm often outside till 8:30; one night a bit of work on the cactus garden, another transplanting some of the cacti I'm uprooting, another trying to rake the ground in the *backyard*, which results in nothing more than a pile of caliche that I then shovel into a big kitty litter container and take down to Battery Park City by the side of the concrete pad, thinking all the time I'll go down to the barn and bring up the wheelbarrow to make it easier, which I never do.

As for writing, I promised a friend last weekend I'd have Act II done so I could give her the finished script this weekend, and that seems to have propelled me into a frenzy of revision. A deadline - what a concept. Right now I have Mars trine Venus for the next couple of days to help me along with both projects, and all in all I'm so thrilled that the Pluto opposed to Saturn square Neptune that I've been dreading for years has brought nothing more than a friend asking for a loan and anonymous reappearing in my life I'm quite happy to float along  on my Neptunian cloud, work on Just For You in the morning,  throw cornflower seeds left, right and center all afternoon and fall in a heap in front of Turner Classic Movies at the end of the day.