Tah-Na (Old sign: Cancer) That summer thunderstorm arrives out of the blue, and we all take cover. Back to the car lock the doors and speed off into the night. In the rear view mirror you see the storm smolder like the hysterical destruction of a city in a monster movie. Oh no! Make sure you don’t swerve off the road! 10 and 2. Straighten up there’s cops out here. Chew some gum.
Marutuk (Old sign: Leo) Why am I getting this negative vibe? I’ve turned off all my appliances and found my way to the safe room. Faraday Cages inside of Faraday Cages. Tin foil hats upon tin foil hats. Whatever I need to feel safe. I’ll back into the corner of a conch shell and make myself a swine-pearl.
Kah-Noom (Old sign: Virgo) Stop squirrelling away your brain childrens like precious Old Bay Utz! Mix your metaphors! Empty your ideas out like paintpots and let the colors flow along the line of least resistance. Start that website! Teach yourself some languages! You probably don’t need an LLC just yet, that’ll just piss in your spa and shit on your tax bill; so, just play!
Hih-Fes-Tuhs (Old sign: Libra) Montana sounds about right; get as close to such holy land as you can get. Even if it’s the overgrown section of the LA River, or the Zone of Chernobyl, get thee to the bosom of Nature! Try not to look at brutalist human contrivances for a whole day! No right angles, no perfect plumb, no parallel lines. Can you do it? I have faith in you. Squint if you must imagine a world without power lines and explicit connectivity. Do not allow the human world to force-cuddle you today.
Ter (Old sign: Scorpio) Poor leadership has ruined your heroes. They all lie in sackcloth in the ashes doing their best Pompeii pose. You’ve already told that joke, sang that song, shot that opium, driven that jalopy, walked that railroad, eyed that ham, cleaned those gutters, mammonied that mammary gland, holted the heath, brokered that peace, beat that cancer, sullied that whore, broke that dam, paddled that beaver, fueled that nightmare, suckled the phrasing: new new new everything new! Make a rock garden or an altar or some shit; be a wet blanket in the wet winter.
Shang-Te (Old sign: Sagittarius) Part 2: Think of all you’ve done! Stand at attention on my carpetbag! Don’t look at me when I talk to you! Now! Slap me like the villain in black of noir! I don’t deserve any of this! Give me a potato sack, and I’ll lie down in the cold hearthstones and ashes and make myself the kindling of your next flame. TBC…
Gih-Na-Sha (Old sign: Capricorn) Slip away from work and let the car do the driving. Find a secluded place to fish or read or nap. During your nap you remember a friend who had your same name but was very different from you in every way. How did you make the distinction? How did others?
Hahp-E (Old sign: Aquarius) You feel far away from your lunar month and you’re not wrong. Jupiter has been pounding out the parsecs and tidally locking up the bits of astral bric-a-brac. They say you can see the moons with a pair of binoculars. Take a gander if you must, however, it may not be as satisfying as staring at the entirety of the starry sea. You lose a lot when you only look through a scope. Always remember that astronomy was something you did on the way to doing something more important.
Hehk-Eht (Old sign: Pisces) Monuments, monuments everywhere lying in ruins. Aged and chipped. Marble drums lying about like discarded vertebrae. They may be ruins, but, the sacred stuffs are still there in the smell of the dust and loam. Add your own flare! Spell out a wish out in pebbles upon the site but don’t disturb the ruins!
Kah-Le (Old sign: Aries) PART 3: You are fighting the wyrms and the griffins this month. The axe hangs heavy over your head, but you needn’t find your fate just yet. The peril lies coiled in the green summer grass, but, somehow you feel emboldened. A fresh wind of bravery billows your sails, and all you can do is fight everything you find to the death. To be continued…
Ah-Naht (Old sign: Taurus) Everyone is throwing haymakers and draining their muscles of blood. A sharp, probing jab on the chin makes you shudder. You taste the metals of sweetmeats in your mouth. The liver is tastiest but also the most poisonous. You need to pace yourself. You wish you had another thimbleful of beef stew; it wouldn’t have mattered had it been a ladleful. You must fight back with all you’ve got, instead of distracting yourself with what you wished you might have had.
Eh-Shu (Old sign: Gemini) PART 2: Deeper! We must go deeper into the cracks at the bottom of the ocean. I have a second wind now with the blubbery and mermaid kisses. Can we parachute into these cracks? Fuck yeah, we can! Pack your chute with songs of doom and neutron star goo and take the pep pills and antacids issued to you. We will need the universal translator, but, as usual you forgot it at the last bar. The cracks open up into a new and infinitely dense atmosphere of preternatural brine. I will slip along through the salty clouds and see a new rock bottom. The new rock bottom runs straight to the rim of a land of gorges. A rain of brine rends our tender rinds, and we slip on the buffalo hide slickers. The gorges open up to wide, sprawling valleys. We drift slowly down and start to make out the seacows grazing and mermilkmaids milking. Can we slip over to that bar yonder? Fuck yea, we can! The bar is a roadhouse, naturally, with a living roof, a biomat of black mosses, lichens and algae. The only signage is a dark splotch of octopus ink. We do not understand the tongues at this depth. The creatures here communicate in deep, guttural groans, but we hear hearty laughter from within the bar. That distinct smack of the festiveness of the macabre. Then the band roars into existence, and the wave of sound changes the flow of time: if you have ever been slammed against the enormity of a PA’s pounding bass cabinets and bracketed by the crush of the mob, you will have about as much an idea of bass moving through brine as pricking your finger would give you a taste of dying the death by a thousand cuts. Final Part Next Month…