Hehk-eht (Old sign: Pisces) You may start your planting early. The frost will not linger long and the shock of the cold ground will make the starts hardier. Grow dwarfs this year. Grow ten dwarves for every one you usually plant. Encumber your shoots with leaden weights. Make your orchard a dense canopy of banzais. Let no plant grow above the others. Individualize your pruning. Let all plants receive equal light. Equal water and equal food. Equal nature and nurture. Name the sproutlings if you must, but don’t play favorites! Your yield will exceed your expectations, and your harvest will be easier to reap. />
Kah-Le (Old sign: Aries) Think how far you’ve come! Literally. How do we measure the distances you’ve traveled? Are you counting only terrestrial travel? What would the map of all of your journeys look like? A thin red line represents all of your movements. Little swirls of movement around your home, crisscrossing your community in a life of days; strands of red strike out to foreign destinations and create more little swirls of activity. Bar Mitzvahs, beach week, weddings, schools, prisons, stores, brothels and temples. Halls of justice and garbage dumps. The crimson strand of a mariner caroms off coasts back into the sea. The line of the bush pilot. The line of the cosmonaut. But how do we really measure your travels? Do we include the celestial movements of our caravan of planets, huddled around the awesome heat of Apollo like frostbitten Arctic Island castaways? Must we then include our galactic motions? Must we include the atoms of our bodies forged in ancient suns? The movements of microscopic denizens of our guts. Make a short list of your journeys, buy a map and start your crimson strand. />
Ah-Naht (Old sign: Taurus) Surrender! Give the sign! You are done. The enemy is on top of you, and whether you become a corpse or a prisoner depends on your conduct in these next frightful moments. Mark the minute on your watch. Tension will cause your teeth to chatter with fear and turn your entrails into a smoldering cauldron. A combination of humility and grace will save your life! Try out that joke. Beg! Barter! Take your life force back from your captors! If you survive this encounter, you will have the chance to escape and steal your body away. Steal your body back to your homestead and take to bed. You have work to do in dreamland. Submit your most elusive dream for interpretation! />
Eh-Shu (Old sign: Gemini) “Now I am become Death, destroyer of Worlds.” Oppenheimer’s recounting of the Trinity Test always rang a bit hollow, didn’t it? He may have been doing the soul searching he implied but he was still a self-satisfied, boy-Prometheus, proud that he had stolen the cookie of ruin from the atomic cookie jar. Can you think of an analogue in your life: where you went on a genuine bear hunt of the soul but were circuitously dragged back to denial by un/conscious biases? I can think of a few. Try to revisit those profound moments when you were maybe a bit too “sorry-not-sorry,” and not sufficiently contrite. May be time for some true apologies. />
Tah-Na (Old sign: Cancer) Do not fight the lichen hanging like green snot beards from your boughs. Fungus-Algae-Fungus triple symbiosis is little known in life but it makes you look to your guts: how many billions of microscopic life have traveled your gastrointestinal highways and byways? Trillions of alien cells flowing through you in one lifetime? Write a brief biography—could be haiku length— of a single alien cell living in your alien infested bowels. Submit! />
Marutuk (Old sign: Leo) Scales are tipping wildly this month. You need to slow down on the treats and the vices. Excess always leads to pain. In India gurus are known to cleanse their body by ingesting a long piece of cloth. I am not suggesting this course. Maybe start with a neti pot. Boil the water! But you must do something to muck out your stable. All of the filth is bad for your wobbly colt’s little hooves. />
Kah-Noom (Old sign: Virgo) Chicken and egg; chicken and egg; chicken and egg. Egg and chicken. As we have prophesied, time tends toward more complexity, never less. I have not yet observed a glass unbreak itself and reassemble on the table in perfect pre-shatter atomic order. I have never seen a public figure unfuck themselves after they are truly fucked. Do not limit yourself to binary systems this month! In the unfolding of time there are infinite solutions! Even a black hole may preserve information in holographic form. Perhaps we will read black holes some day like the geologist reads the banded layers of rock. Think deeply about where you’ve come from. Make three guesses as to where we are headed! Submit! />
Hih-Fes-Tuhs (Old sign: Libra) Will the geese ever leave you in peace? A flock of Canadians found sanctuary near your workshop and set up their own shops. They’ve started to nest, and you fear they may never piss off! How will you get your work done with all these honkers about? With poppy and ambrosias, you try your hand at sleepworking, but, right off the bat, you whang your thumb with a hammer. Over the pain thrumming in your thumb, you still hear the confounded honkers in the Land of Nod. Maybe you should get away and see if the geese will bugger off. You go to the sea side but there’s no quiet there! The crashing surf and the pelicans and the fat middle class and their brood! Farther! Go farther! In the American State of Virginia there is a truly quiet place. Fashion a Faraday cage and strike out for Appalachia! />
Ter (Old sign: Scorpio) Last month knocked ten bells out of you. Go ahead, brag about your red badges of courage! You survived and that’s all that matters. There will be time to heal. There’s ghosts looking for you this month. They will do you no harm but please be polite to them. They may wonder why you have neglected your offerings. It’s so easy to fall off the wagon especially when you’re distracted. Maybe you need more guardrails. />
Shang-Te (Old sign: Sagitarius) Wouldn’t you like to be home this month? They keep telling you, “you can never go home again.” Well, why don’t you try anyway? Snuggle up to your earliest memories. How quickly does remorse start taking bitter bites? Nostalgia is a cruel dominatrix. The quantum of pain rarely succumbs to the quantum of pleasure. Ignore hollow folk with hallowed proverbs! Occam’s Razor only works outside the phonebooth. How long will you make those distant calls? Set a daily timer to remind you of constant flux. See how long you can abide it. />
Gih-Na-Sha (Old sign: Capricorn) Did you take my advice? No? I suspected as much. You thought more than you would have liked, didn’t you? Your sky-like mind was still clouded with zeppelins and whining prop-engine, banner-towing planes and flogos and sky scribbles. Let’s try this again. Wait! Do you see the glowing rose, glowing in the gloom? Do you see only the rose glowing on the snow? Do you hear the song of settlers echo in the traps? Do you hear the jingle jangle of accoutrements? Now turn back to the rose. Do you hear anything anymore? No? Good! If you hear the settlers again, let them pass through. />
Hahp-E (Old sign: Aquarius) The screech of a redtail rends the quiet air. Down in the marsh, every creature is on high alert. That target they feel burning on their backs, you feel it too. We’ve spoken about it before: the sudden erection of your dorsal hairs. Listen to the hairs and make note of their screaming priapism. Do you notice any patterns? I do. />