disclosure: I am a reader of horoscopes. not in the drink-the-koolaid, buy in hook,line & sinker sort of way... not in the superstitous, "lemme check in with the demi-gods of free internet astrology to determine how to chart the course of my life & day" sort of way. more, uh, i dunno. like you pick out what clothes to wear in the morning. how am i feeling today? a blue scarf? maybe a cap? is it a jeans or skirt sort of a morning? and how do we feel about socks? ??? ... some brief little pithy check-in, to help lend my morning a spot of color, a flavor... lime or orange, tobacco or peppermint, please... what shall it be? * and discount shopper that i am, if one does not give me quite the Thang I was looking for.. I'm off in search of another (well, Yes, Mom said no to Tv & ice cream before bed but let's try Dad - he's a sucker- he'll say yes.) from the generic & overly-perfumy words I glean from the peddler of Vagueries app on my phone to the so eerily specific references I get delivered to my daily inbox they make me wonder if Google & the CIA have perhaps joined forces to monitor the daily workings of my life.. to my favorite.. but the one I least turn to because he does not merely dish out empty platitudes and lofty, feel-good pop-psychology wrapped in the satiny tissue of the stars, but rather... this guy... who takes it several steps further and issues warnings, nudgings, commands & directives that are often times hard to swallow in one fell gulp. "Now is not the time to be complacent, dear Pisces.. step up and steer your ship! Be willing to serve as the captain & commander of your own life!" or somesuch thing.... Activist Astrology - commanding you to stop being lazy, get out of your rut, stop clinging to the things that no longer work for you - take charge and step into the protagonist role of your own damn storybook.... or atleast that's what I get from him anyway.. and, so, entreatingly, intrepidly.. after both my aforementioned Sources had failed to supply... "what's on the menu for today? stripes & chenille? polka dots? feathers? a toupee?" No thank you. And off to my last resort - my own personal, psychic manufacturer or these, "the pills that are large & difficult to swallow"... and what should I alight on but this.. these words.. glimmering... poignant.. a song...a lark. "Rob Brezsny says the apocalypse is now, so let's dance." *and a small lightbulb is lit in my head. of course! because it feels like so many things are falling apart... personally, politically, structurally, incredibly... i feel like *( and correct me if i'm wrong)... we are being collectively led to a place whwere the old ways simply will not serve.. beat-up, sullied, stagnant & gentrified ways of conducting business, relating to one another, constructing our worlds.. the car we've been driving thru life all these years - that once was so shiny, new, humming & perfect -now runninglike the beat-up old jalopy that it is.. making strange new sounds, grumbling & sparks... one more trip to the mechanic.. try & sew up the seams of this outworn mode of existence... and it's broken.. and yet we're clinging.. and so says my dime-store prophet, my world-wide-web-soap-box-savior... "Yee-haw!" Let's party. put on your favorite records & boogie. Cuz this is just Life's way of cracking you open.. stripping you down to your essence so you can Breathe.. helping you, oftentimes painfully, repeatedly.. release what is futile, heavy, & leaden & dead in your world... helping you shed all your scales & hook-lined gils & fins .. so that you can swim again - Unbounded - in the deep blue sea of your own Life.. and the last shall be first and the first shall be last... the meek becoming the inheritorsof this - this brand new earth... emerged from the fissures of the past.. cracked wide open by well.. Love - that great leveler of playingfields.. the stuff that melts molecules & shifts substance... so in the maelstrom of your brokenness give Thanks! Take a page from Leonard Cohen or a Sufi poet and breathe a quiet prayer of Yes. ... all right.. I give up.. cuz its only just the Light... bravely, boldly. & sometimes quite painfully!!.. finding its way In.....