She's Leaving Home, Bye-Bye (Remembering When)

Today is the 18th anniversary of the first time I left New York City for Another Place: an island that was an extinct volcano, a little-known dot in the Dutch West Indies. Most of my mail was forwarded to Holland.

I had nearly moved to Berlin to be with a not-so-old flame, then chickened out for a few reasons that still make sense to me nearly two decades later, and other reasons that do not. With Sagittarius at my IC, and its ruler, Jupiter, sextile the IC, I could have predicted that I would move far away. However, Pluto exactly square the IC from the Ascendant complicates things. I can run, but Pluto has always pulled me back.

I did not move away because of 9/11, which had happened eight months earlier. I moved to that specific place for all the wrong reasons. I did paint some nice watercolors that the local gallery accepted. (Big fish, little pond.) Two years later, I would joke to my new friends that it took moving out of the country to get me from Manhattan to Brooklyn, which was just beginning its long run as the epicenter of hipsterdom. I would joke about how it was probably the only island on the planet that lacked a beach. I would joke about the two Dutch families that basically owned the island and must have inbred for several generations to ensure their whiteness. Most of the so-called islanders fled for other, slightly more happening islands such as St. Kitts and St. Maarten. There was a second-rate medical school on the island for first-rate students from impoverished countries and third-rate Americans who could not gain admittance to a US medical school. The only fresh produce on the island were mangoes. I would fly to St. Maarten for a day, go to the French side for the beach and shops in Marigot, and pack my rolling suitcase with roast chickens, croissants, a baguette, cheese, and chocolate.

Fifteen years later, I left my fourth apartment in Brooklyn for a basement in New Jersey for all the right reasons. I thought I was going to land in Philadelphia. Two months later, I was back, having secured the ultimate brass ring: a salaried position that paid a living wage. I joked to my few remaining friends that it took leaving the state of New York for me to move from Brooklyn to Queens. Unfortunately, Pluto opposed my natal Sun five times between early 2018 and late 2019, so I paid a heavy price for my financial autonomy: a workplace so unbelievably dysfunctional it could have been the focus of a reality TV show.

There have been more years than not that I have forgotten this day in my personal history. This year, I guess I was destined to remember because I have been fantasizing once again about leaving New York, where I was born and where I finally grew up. It would not be because of COVID-19, but because I have not been able to truly enjoy the city since returning to it on my own terms in the fall of 2017. The city I truly miss was the city of 1998 to 2009. Far too much about me is different now to recapture that decade, and far too much about the city has changed, as well. That is the thing about New York: it keeps changing, both for better and worse. Now that spring is finally here, New Yorkers in my neighborhood are emerging from their apartments after nearly three months of mostly staying in: restless, some masked, as many not, some social distancing, as many not, counting down for the reopening to commence. I am restless, too, but not to go back to the way things were.

I realize there is very little in the way of astrology about this post. I guess I thought back in 2002 that with the Sun trining my Pluto and Ascendant that day, I would land on my feet once the prop plane landed on the shortest commercial runway in the world. Instead, I realized almost immediately (with the Sun inconjunct my Jupiter) what a mistake I had made. I never bothered to fully unpack. But then, that is true of every single place I have lived. Too much stuff (Cancer stellium), too little space (city apartments do not come with attics or basements), too much restlessness (Sagittarius IC).

Perhaps transiting Pluto trine my Pluto will help me find my true home. Pluto turned retrograde about 10' shy of the exact trine this spring, so I guess I will have to wait a while. In the meantime, I will try to be better about living in the moment, as strange as this time has been.

Mayor Bloomberg Obviously Doesn't Have an Astrologer on His Payroll

...for he decided to have the NYPD come down on the OWSers with the Moon in Cancer. In plain English, he gave the order to boot them out of their makeshift home with the Moon (ruling the home and the public) transiting Cancer (the sign that is ruled by the Moon). And under darkest cover of night, with a media blackout, confiscating of personal belongings including the OWS library, and police brutality.

No, no, and no.

Mayor Bloomberg, and any other politicians or 1%ers who may have accidentally stumbled on my humble li'l ole blog, I am offering my astrological services to you (for only 100X as much as my customary fee) so that when the Uranus-Pluto square hits the fan next year, you will not be carted off to the 21st-century version of the guillotine. For the 99%er revolution, which cuts across generational, religious, cultural, and gender lines, has just begun.

Funny, I observed 10 or 15 years back that the next major war in the US was going to be a civil war. At that time, I envisioned the East and West coasts vs. the heartland; now I see it will be less geographical or generational in nature, and more about such Capricorn-ruled institutions as government and banking brought to its knees (the part of the body ruled by Capricorn/Saturn) as Uranus in headstrong, fresh-blood Aries makes the square to Pluto in Capricorn.

The US was born out of revolution (US natal Pluto is 27 degrees of Capricorn; Moon is placed in rebellious Aquarius). It could very well be that the key to its survival is more of the same. In the words of Pluto: Regenerate or die!

R.I.P. East West Books

Yesterday's Winter Solstice (as non-astrologers refer to the Sun's ingress into Capricorn) and Mercury/Jupiter square found me experiencing a sense of loss and auld lang syne: after I left the office (yes, I'm now working in an actual office part-time for the first time in 5 years!) I decided to make my annual pilgrimage to East West Books to pick up Jim Maynard's Celestial Influences wall calendar and datebook. As it was not an overly cold evening, I walked down to 14th St. and 5th Ave. I passed many chichi shops doing brisk business, but when I arrived at where East West was supposed to be...well, it wasn't. Just a vacant space. A woman smack-dab in the middle of middle age was standing right outside, looking so annoyed I decided she was also looking for East West; it turns out she wasn't (looking for East West, that is), but she told me that they'd closed this past summer and that the website was still live and that the owner was still looking for another space.

Back in the mid-nineties, East West Books was my respite from the New School across the street, where I was an unhappy, fish-out-of-water grad student in the teacher trainer program. In that one year, I must've browsed through nine-tenths of the books in East West's astrology section (I did buy some of them, as well as calendars and datebooks). I also admired the crystals, wind chimes, and Eastern trinkets.

I haven't been a "regular" at East West in many years, but would still make a point of visiting a few times a year, mostly when I was in the neighborhood and needed to buy a gift for someone, and once I attended a lecture at the upstairs cafe that was added a few years ago. The fact that East West is no more is another nail in the coffin of Old New York--or at least, the Old New York that I knew, which I realize isn't the same as the Old New York of the '60s, '70s, or '80s. Still, for over 30 years, East West was the go-to place for local astrologers, hippies, New Age lovers, and disenchanted students, and now it's gone, and leases are ridiculously high in the city, and most likely an Applebee's, Starbucks, or Rite Aid will take its place, and that really, really sucks.