AJAX BELL

Author of the Queen City Boys books

Category Archives: astrologically speaking


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Hooray say the people, it’s the Solstice!

Today in the Northern Hemisphere we round the corner on darkness.  It is the Hibernal solstice when the sun is near its greatest distance from the equatorial plane, standing still as it were.

Today Marduk tamed the monsters of chaos and for one more year we are safe as we move back into the light.

Today we light candles and keep them lit.  Though darkness is already on the run, we must continue to chase it away so spring can come faster.

Today the Oak King is apparently dead, his branches bare and cold.  We thought the Holly King had won, as he remained green,  but long live the Oak King as he returns to rule us into Midsummer!  Go, hang the holly, let it catch bad spirits on it’s tiny horns, protecting us in the months of darkness when the border with the shadowlands is permeable.

Today is the Saturnalia where we eat and dance and decorate the evergreens with red berries.  We will reverse all our roles, switch with our opposites and see the world from the other side, through other eyes.

Today and for the days to come, find joy in each other, celebrate, kiss beneath the mistletoe, feast in the light of candles.  Celebrate the darkness and the joy we have as  it washes away.  Tonight we breathe and meditate on our lives.  We breathe out the things we want gone, we breathe in our wishes for the coming year.  Tomorrow life begins again.


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Summer Begins

Scrolling back through entries here I see I’ve often posted at length on the Winter Solstice, but not for the Summer.

Summer begins at 6:09pm.  In Middle Tennessee, the sun today rose at 5:30am, then sets at 8:07pm, giving us 14.6 hours of sunlight.  The longest day of the year.

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with the Summer Solstice.  Here in Tennessee I feel a little cheated, perhaps because of our latitude.  If I was in Seattle today I’d have a full 16 hours of daylight, being so much further north.  It is one of the glorious delights of the North, the drastic changes in the amount of light make you value the seasons.  It somehow gives you more visible seasonal drama beyond mere temperature changes and plants returning to life.  And yet, even in the Great North I always felt the Summer Solstice to be somewhat bittersweet.

The light diminishes after flaring it’s brightest on this day.  In Tennessee it means less in than it does in the North, as it will never get as dark in winter, so there is less burden to bear on that end.  Indeed, the longest days of summer are still ahead of us, if we are measuring by heat, laziness and availability of good food cooked outside on a grill.  But the light passing has always felt like loss to me.  A downward journey that eventually ends in the darkness of winter.  The beauty of autumn is joy to behold.  As is the desolation of winter in it’s own way.  Still today feel like an ending, a turn we took, walking away from spring. Fortunately spring will return next year, no matter what we do, and on the Winter Solstice we can look longingly at the slow the return of the light,  knowing that spring must come on the heels of the sun’s return.

I don’t know the origins of my dark view of midsummer.  Perhaps growing up so far north, where the loss of the sun means so much darkness.  Perhaps it’s burned in genetic memory from my Scandinavian and Scottish ancestors.  It’s no mystery that the Scandinavian cultures, and for northern European ones, celebrate Midsummer as a massive festival.  Because indeed today feels massive, like the most there is, the best you can have, ALL the sunlight.  And yet it is only today, quickly fleeting, like everything in life.


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April is surely not the cruelest month, everyone knows that’s February

April begins BIRTHDAY MONTH.  I would love to say it’s all a celebration of me, from beginning to end, but indeed many of my most loved friends share this month for their own celebrations.  I’d say a good dozen or so of you are already, or gearing up to celebrate your own births.  Let’s all do it together!  HOORAY!

The April birthstone is diamond and the flower is Sweet Pea. Which seem some how at odds with each other.  Like at what point is someone going to be like, ‘say, baby, I got you some diamonds and this Sweet Pea bouquet’? It seems simultaneously weird and actually just like something I’d want, so maybe it does make sense for April after all.  Though I prefer amethysts to diamonds, partly over the whole blood diamond and hideous over hype of them and mostly because everyone knows anything purple is superior to anything else!

March has wound down being grim and grey, despite some thrilling spring sun there in the middle and I have high hopes for April. A little more sun and fewer days I have to put on gloves in the morning to keep my hands from stiffening up on the drive to work.

April also brings an awesome surprise visit from my cousins at the beginning, a long anticipated visited from good friends at the middle and my birthday at the end, so I surely couldn’t ask for more goodness from this month!  It should be calm, wonderful, joyous friends and family love all the way through!  Everyone should have a month like this occasionally.

April is also National Poetry Month for which I shall share some of the poems I carry around in my handbag at all times:

Three Crepuscular Poems
Federico García Lorca

[1]
The evening is
penitent,
still dreaming about
noon.
(Red trees & clouds
over the hills.)
The evening, loosening green
lyric hair,
is gently trembling
… vexed
to be the evening having once been
noon.

[2]
Now the evening starts!
Why? Why?
… just now
I watched the day droop down
just like a morning flower.
A day lily
bending its stems
… just now …
the roots of evening
rising through the gloom.

[3]
Adiós, sun!

I know for sure that you’re the moon,
but I
won’t tell nobody,
sun.

You sneak
behind the curtain
& cover your face
with rice powder.

By day, the farmhand’s
guitar,
by night, Pierrot’s
mandolin.

I should care!

Your illusion,
sun, is to make
the garden
turn Technicolor.

Adiós, sun!

And don’t you forget who loves you:
the snail,
the little old lady
on her balcony,
& me …
spinning my heart like a …
top.


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Annual ‘The Solstice is JOY’ post

Today the solstice coincides with a full lunar eclipse, the first total lunar eclipse to occur on the winter solstice since 1638.

Today in the Northern Hemisphere we round the corner on darkness.  It is the Hibernal solstice when the sun is near its greatest distance from the equatorial plane, standing still as it were.

Today Marduk tamed the monsters of chaos and for one more year we are safe as we move back into the light.

Today we light candles and keep them lit.  Though darkness is already on the run, we must continue to chase it away so spring can come faster.

Today the Oak King is apparently dead, his branches bare and cold.  We thought the Holly King had won, as he remained green,  but long live the Oak King as he returns to rule us into Midsummer!  Go, hang the holly, let it catch bad spirits on it’s tiny horns, protecting us in the months of darkness when the border with the shadowlands is permeable.

Today is the Saturnalia where we eat and dance and decorate the evergreens with red berries.  We will reverse all our roles, switch with our opposites and see the world from the other side, through other eyes.

Today and for the days to come, find joy in each other, celebrate, kiss beneath the mistletoe, feast in the light of candles.  Celebrate the darkness and the joy we have as  it washes away.  Tonight we breathe and meditate on our lives.  We breathe out the things we want gone, we breathe in our wishes for the coming year.  Tomorrow life begins again.


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Not from my own head

A few recent things I’m reposting here mostly so I’ll remember, but also a little bit for your edification.

From my mom’s Facebook page this past Monday:

MLK: “I am in _____ because injustice is here… I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in _____ and not be concerned about what happens in _____. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a sin…gle garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

and

MLK, just before midnight: “We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in _____ and justice throughout the developing world — a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who pos…sess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”

—

Seen several places, grabbed from http://www.christyfrink.com

—

Brezsnyscope 2010 forecast for me.  Brezsny is both sensible and, I think, completely out of his mind.  If you aren’t already reading them, his horoscopes give excellent meditation fodder, even if you don’t believe in astrology.

—

Good commentary on the news out of Mass. today.

—

Today’s picture was taken on the Olympic Peninsula in July 2005.  I think it was from inside a cave at the far south end of Ruby beach.


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Everyone rejoice it’s the SOLSTICE!

Because I am on vacation and also not inclined to do work I’ve already done, I will simply re-post last year’s post:

Today in the Northern Hemisphere we round the corner on darkness.  It is the Hibernal solstice when the sun is near its greatest distance from the equatorial plane, standing still as it were.

Today Marduk tamed the monsters of chaos and for one more year we are safe as we move back into the light.

Today we light candles and keep them lit.  Though darkness is already on the run, we must continue to chase it away so spring can come faster.

Today the Oak King is apparently dead, his branches bare and cold.  We thought the Holly King had won, as he remained green,  but long live the Oak King as he returns to rule us into Midsummer!  Go, hang the holly, let it catch bad spirits on it’s tiny horns, protecting us in the months of darkness when the border with the shadowlands is permeable.

Today is the Saturnalia where we eat and dance and decorate the evergreens with red berries.  We will reverse all our roles, switch with our opposites and see the world from the other side, through other eyes.

Today and for the days to come, find joy in each other, celebrate, kiss beneath the mistletoe, feast in the light of candles.  Celebrate the darkness and the joy we have as  it washes away.  Tonight we breathe and meditate on our lives.  We breathe out the things we want gone, we breathe in our wishes for the coming year.  Tomorrow life begins again.


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I could definitely use a new set of questions right about now

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning June 18
Copyright 2009 by Rob Brezsny
http://FreeWillAstrology.com

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Your education is about to take a curious and interesting turn. During the coming weeks, I expect that you’ll upgrade your street smarts and explore a whole new meaning for the term “hands- on experience.” You’ll find out about an area of ignorance that was so deep and dark you didn’t even know about it, and you’ll take aggressive steps to get it the teaching it needs. Congratulations in advance for being brave enough to open your mind so wide, Taurus. I’m glad you’ll be hunting for a fresh set of questions.


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come again some other day

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning May 7
Copyright 2009 by Rob Brezsny
http://FreeWillAstrology.com

TAURUS (April 20-May 20):  In recent decades, many British people with unfortunate surnames have changed them. There are now 40 percent fewer Shufflebottoms, while the numbers of Cockshotts and Smellies have also declined precipitously. Meanwhile, back in the U.S., the government has re-branded its notorious Global War on Terror, shifting to the more palatable “Overseas Contingency Operation.” I hold these examples up for your inspiration, Taurus. It’s a good time to alter any name or title you’ve outgrown, as well as any label that no longer fits or any category you’d like to leave behind.

Truly I take my Free Will Astrology way too seriously, but I think this one will require a lot of meditation this week.

Birthday aside, I’ve had an emotionally rough time the past week or so. It isn’t quite past but I’m fine, really, I just need time to adjust yet another change in my worldview.  On the other hand, Libelle really is the best friend ever.  She deserves some sort of award for sitting up with me late at night and making me laugh and laugh when I would otherwise just be sitting around feeling sorry for myself.

The rain isn’t helping.  We’ve broken rainfall records around the area in the past few days, but it’s more than that.  It’s the unrelenting grey.  I’m sure you think I should be able to to take 6+ days of grey, since I am from the PNW, but I’ve lost that skill.  I’m not sure I can remember more than 3 or 4 days in row like this since I moved to TN.  Plus it isn’t just grey, it’s really, seriously raining. And since everyone knows I am from Seattle people keeping saying to me, “hey, this is just like Seattle weather, huh?”  And no, no, no, no it isn’t.  It is grey there.  And wet.  But it just doesn’t rain so consistently hard there.  The temps are different, the air is different.  The sky is different.  There is no marine layer here.  It, in fact, isn’t like Seattle weather at all.  Seattle makes me feel mossy and chilly.  This weather makes me feel like a tropical amphibian. A cranky, lethargic tropical amphibian.


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return of the returns of the past

So I’m sure most of you know about Mercury Retrograde, and the havoc it can cause.  Well right now Venus is in retrograde.  Which is about relationships (of all kinds) and right now it is particularly about dealing with your past in a way that enables you to move forward.  Resolution of conflict, dealing with buried feelings etc.  There’s a bunch of other stuff too.  My ruling planet is Venus and so, as I understand it, this means that potential events of this retrograde are particularly applicable to me (as they are also particularly applicable to Libelle, but in a slightly different was as she is an Aries and the this is Venus Retrograde in Aries). So anyway, given that, to some extent I believe in all of this, you would think that maybe I would brace mayself before I opened my inbox each day.  But no, I sit down, half-caffeinated and blithely click until I am suddenly faced with something that I probably can’t deal with first thing in the morning.

Really Facebook is probably to blame more than anything.  It’s like a bizarre continual online reunion.  Sometimes very welcome, sometimes very awkward, sometimes both at once.

And I suspect that it doesn’t help that my headspace is all wonky today from a series of really conplicated strange, stressful dreams.  In one I was traveling back and forth between my mother’s house and my father’s house.  At each I was trying to plant flowers and maintain gardens and gather things that were mine to take with me, but at every turn something would come up and I’d have to jump in the car, drive through the desert for hours, and go to the other parent’s house to solve a problem or fix something or water something, or search again for some lost object that I was sure belonged only to me.  I also had a dream about ebing with a bunch of friends and being chased through the woods by robot policemen.  Sadly I remember less of that dream, but really each were equally stressful.

Now I need to focus on my external life.  Clearly this will take much more coffee. And maybe so exterior motivation.  Does anyone want to come over today and just around and tell me what to do next until I get everything done?  Because that would be great.


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What a long, strange trip

Facebook has been so weird.  I have reconnected with a good friend from elementary school.  It is odd, like telling a stranger your secrets, but at the same time, more like lost family than a stranger.  I’ve also found a lot of people from high school, most of whom have turned out to be very interesting people.

I feel so stretched thin right now.  Some is my own usual crazy-making internal drama.  Some is just me taking on too much and then being mad at myself for not getting it all done.  But it will get done.  I just need to slow down and take some deep breaths.  And just accept that there are weeks more of winter.  I find it so unbearable, the cold, the lack of long hours of light.  But it is uncontrollable, so I should just move through it and not bear it as a burden.

I should also spend time reconnecting with the friends I have. I have just been so scattered for the last few months.  Am buckled down now, will get back to list making and checking things off.  On that list is to regularly write to the people I love.

And hey, Mercury is in Retrograde until Valentine’s Day.  So that sucks.  Though apparently the screwed up communications can work both against and for me.  And really what comes out of Mercury Retrograde, even for all it’s frustrations, is unforseen change, and really that isn’t a bad thing, it just is, right?  Just remind me not to make any important desicions and to relax when things don’t go right.

Random things from today’s online adventures:

Futuristic bike lane

Take the moon with you


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preach it

I read this and agree, and yet also think, “oh ho ho, really?” and yet still agreeing.

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning January 15
Copyright 2009 by Rob Brezsny
http://FreeWillAstrology.com

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): This week’s advice comes to you entirely from the great jazz pianist and composer, Thelonious Monk. It all happens to be in perfect alignment with your astrological omens. 1. “Don’t play everything or every time. Let some things go by. What you don’t play can be more important than what you do play.”  2. “A note can be as small as a pin or as big as the world; it depends on your imagination.” 3.”Whatever you think can’t be done, somebody will come along and do it.” 4. “A genius is the one most like himself.”


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rainbows and unicorns

FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning December 4
Copyright 2008 by Rob Brezsny
FreeWillAstrology.com

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In the Broadway play “Passing Strange,” the narrator praises the healing power of mysterious songs, saying: “You know when the music goes right over your head, bypasses your mind, and strengthens the part of you that’s most beautiful?” That’s the kind of nourishment I encourage you to seek out in the coming week, Taurus. You need soul-toning experiences that elude your rational understanding — encounters with wise animals, waking dreams, unpredictable love, exotic music, and twilight whispers that blissfully boggle your imagination.

Yes, see, if I had one complaint about my life right now, it would be that it needs more magic. Seriously. I can take hard work and no money, I can take an endless stream of problems that don’t appear to be mine that end up in my lap, I can take the cold grey days, even the loneliness. But sometimes I get this terrible feeling that I’ve forgotten how to be creative, or rather how to exercise my creativity. And sure, more spare time, less stress, less work, etc. would be helpful, but I can’t help but agree that a nice dose of wonder and magic would go a long way to making my life better. Bring it on, universe.


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random stubborn scatteredness

I am so far behind in the stuff I wish I was getting done.  Like days behind, maybe even weeks.  I need to be doing stuff right now.  Well maybe not right now, as I haven’t had much coffee and I still feel a little sleep woozy and weird.  But soon.  I’m hoping that just by writing about it first thing in the am, I will suddenly be more motivated to work on stuff.

Neck still hurts.  Though it’s a bearable level of pain, which seems like an oxymoron, but there it is.

I had to reformat my iPod yesterday and then had some insane hitches trying to get music back on it.  It is all fine now, except I got frustrated and bored and so it’s only like less than a quarter full, which actually seems better.  20 gigs is too much music for me to carry around, since I usually only have it on shuffle anyway.  Less space makes for more conscious choices about what to include.  But I am loving what’s on there right now.  I really do need to remember to rotate out the music on the old ‘Pod, as I love what is on it, but I forget I have so much more wonderful music.  In that vein, todays’ songs are: Beautiful Girls – Girls, Guns and Glory (click to download) and Gia – Dealership (click to download) and Two Doors Down – Dolly Parton (click to download)

Brezny-scope for me this week:
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): You don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be, Taurus. Please read that last sentence again, drinking it in as if it were an elixir you’ve been longing for since you were 13 years old. Here are some corollaries: You don’t have to live up to anyone’s expectations. There’s no need to strive for a kind of perfection that’s not very interesting to you. You don’t have to believe in ideas that make you sad or tormented, and you don’t have to feel emotions that others try to manipulate you into feeling. In short, you are free to be exactly who you want to be. Celebrate that this Halloween season. Costume yourself as the person you’ve been hiding.

I find that it somehow makes the incredibly stubborn part of me very happy.  Like, Yeah!  I don’t have to be anything you think I am.  Hmm, no, I am not explaining that well, but really, it makes me oddly joyful.

Right now I am going to box up the stuff I should have mailed to my mom a week and half ago, then shower and get to work.  Well, maybe I’ll make a to do list first.  So I can stay on task.  As clearly I am very scattered from the outset today.

(Also anyone who saw the post I made in the middle of the night last night–Sorry, I had to delete as announcing a crush like that makes me feel like such a complete and utter spaz that I couldn’t leave it hanging out there publicly.)