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Horoscopes | Week of March 29-April 4, 2004

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Dragging the box of assemble-yourself furniture into your living room, you're gung-ho about settling in for a couple hours of inserting peg A into groove B. You sit half-cross-legged on the floor, unpacking the pieces, studying each one more carefully than you might expect of yourself. Unfolding the instruction sheet, you notice it is torn and missing the first half of the directions, detailing how to sturdily construct the foundation. Are you so hell-bent on putting it all together now, without interruption and on your terms, that you risk future safety by acting without guidance? Is it possible that, on the way back to the store to get another instruction sheet or on the toll-free customer service hotline, you end up in a completely unrelated chance conversation that might lead to insight in other areas? Is it possible that you simply had something else to do today than you thought you did, and are you patient enough to temporary switch gears and delay plans in order to tinker with your consciousness?

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Seeing the distinct shape from your peripheral vision, you turn to look at it straight-on, to observe its sensuous details, but it has vanished. There's a light on in the next doorway down the hall, but as you get to it, someone has quickly and invisibly darted in before you and turned it off. The light, it seems, is actually on in the next doorway down the hall. Hold the words and the need to pin the reality down with common sense, even thought you are just barely now approaching articulation. You needn't explain your powerful auric allure, justify or deny. You evoke and express the bittersweet of love alchemically produced from past sadness finally willing to compromise with a hopeful future. Soon enough, you will be able to make something out of what you've made. Until then, wander with faith another few weeks.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Lists of names, of friends and people you know, of guests and their lovely dates, of support-network members, of important resources you've been meaning to call, of last-minute-yeses and forgot-about-thems. It's a delicate art of arrangement around tables. Shuffling name-cards, promoting potential love matches or awkward conversational pauses depending on your final logic. I repeat: More people will be showing up than you had planned. You're popular. Before you can achieve the thankfully calming enjoyment-off-your-feet phase, you must finish attending to the entire interlocking cooperation of the system. Maybe thankful calm is nowhere close, but 'thankful' is a righteous aim, while 'calm' isn't all it's cracked up to be and will show up when it's time. 'Enjoyment-off-your-feet', alas, can result from the act of being swept up.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Having recently been actively engaged in carving out a niche for yourself, you're probably raring to test various connection strategies from this new position. You want to spread the message, shoot spidermannish webbing at specified hotspots from the magic spigots in your wrists. Down boy, down girl. Easy on the fervency. I know you're eager to raise the curtain, start the show and show 'em what you've got. But it might be worth another go-around of role definition, explicit discussion and rearticulation of purpose, and whiteboarding a short-list (whiteboarding = erasable ink) of ultimate goals in the venture. Brainstorming has been so productive, why not do it again? (And again?) The people of the world will still be out there when you finally break the meeting with complete mission statement and marketing plan in tow. At moments of déjà-vu doldrum, daydream (and about really outrageous and unrealistic stuff!).

LEO (July 23-August 22): Let's have a warm hand for the fans. Let's support the other nominees, step down from the podium and stand together, with our arms around each other, for a group shot. Provide quirky capsules of sound-byte-sized filler, but don't promote agendas or attempt careful extrapolations on pressing issues in today's mixed-up world. Amped as you are to lend your name to the event or transform endorsement to a new art, straddle the border of taking your belief system public without jumping straight into 'oops-I-said-what?' hell. No one wants to get caught on record trying to undeliver a misdelivered treatise, at its worst resulting in your reputation inextricably linked to a philosophy that you don't even really subscribe to. Enjoy your heightened esteem without letting it trick you into rushing incomplete conclusions into uttered falsehoods. Wait a month before using the press conference as more substantial mouthpiece rather than mere puff-piece.

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): It's okay to let the people in power see you as one of them, to show them the higher value you ascribe yourself and lead them to treat you accordingly. But that doesn't mean you have risen above the imagined fray. No, if such a fray exists, you are very much still in it. Your logical mind might have one foot out the door away from messy psychological situations, on its way to tempered consideration of hypothetical rights and wrongs, but you've forgot something inside. You won't get away that easy. The conversation isn't over. The purported resolution was partial, conditional and still awaiting final approval. You either haven't stated your stand clearly enough for the other parties to catch your drift, or else it just requires reiteration and repetition. Maybe there's one seemingly small needle in the whole haystack of a mess that you've left out, and when you review and reemphasize, it will make its tiny sharp prick felt. Even if you begrudge the need to retrace the steps, retrace 'em anyway, and appreciate the opportunity to clarify the clarity.

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): The words between the two of you are about to get a whole lot deeper, to match the unspoken intensity you both already know is there. 'But, wait,' you suddenly realize at the last possible minute before total immersion, 'does that mean that, once we take that leap into articulation, the simplicity in our togetherness ceases to be so simple?' And with that, you try to jam on the brakes, not because you don't want to go where you're going but because you want just a few more moments of enjoying naked innocence before taking a bite of the apple. I appreciate the romance of your effort, but the stop wasn't neat. The skids drew attention. The first bite is already in your mouth, and spitting it out won't keep those juices already there from dripping down your throat. Use your consciousness to ensure that some degree of lightness remains as the profundity in your conversations builds. Take your time in digesting these early nibbles, so you can accurately gauge your appetite for the main course.

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): Forget that the magnetic force of gravity you transmit is pulling those you encounter ever more intensely into your orbit. Okay, maybe you can't (and shouldn't) forget it, rather enjoy it in its temporary, stay-on-the-surface splendor. However, translating mutual admiration into 'partnerthink' is a couple steps too far too fast, when your mind has its own business to worry about. Just because you have finished certain conceptual tasks, that doesn't mean the whole project has been thought out. Are you really ready to include other voices into your mix, on a parallel-peer level, when your personal work is barely nearing completion? (Incidentally, 'barely nearing completion' isn't the firmest base upon which to rest your half of a new collaboration.) Enjoy people. Just don't mold your own 'daily logical steps to a healthy routine' around them. For the next few weeks, insist on mental independence. That way, you're more likely to get the job done—and to have more to offer later.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): I stand by last week's appeal to express yourself at all costs, letting your pronounced truths hover confidently out there and generate healthy conflict when appropriate. The more—and louder—you do it, the more you'll get noticed. Venus is heading into your seventh house of one-on-one social relating, a place where a couple key moments with another person can lead to thrills and spills, deals and feels, acquaintanceships and partnerships. In this particular instance, thanks to her upcoming retrograde dilly-dallying in Gemini, Venus will be casting her flattering glow over your 7th house through early August, an unusually lengthy time for influencing this conglomeration of characters to vie for your affections. Say what you know to be true, and reap the interpersonal fruits of your directness. Enjoy a full range of people, and no limits on how you creatively choose to convey essential nuggets of you. Plus, conclusions about what you should be doing will be difficult to draw under the light of present-moment enjoyments. No artificial regulations.

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): It's more crucial to their well-being that the children are fed than that they have a chance to play outside with their friends. Eating and having fun are both important, but one certainly comes before the other in base-level priority. Before jumping ahead to romantic and creative satisfaction, make doubly sure that more fundamental needs are met. Any required factor for your emotional calm should be included on your dinner plate or lovingly stuffed into your coat pocket by the warm-hearted mother-figure you conjure to care for yourself. You thought she already sent you skipping along to the park, but she's forgotten to wrap you in mittens and scarves and has called you back to the house for reinforcements. Don't scorn the double-checking. Better safe than sorry. Earn your own trust through willing deference to internalized mother/child self-care, and in the future you'll be allowed to stay out later and play more with others.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): A friend and I intently watched as a pigeon made several consecutive trips to the patch of ground beneath the tree in front of us, searching for twigs with which to build its nest. Over the course of these trips, we developed an affinity for this bird and even tried to predict which well-sized bits of stick it would choose. For a pigeon, it was surprisingly cute. God only knows how the nest turned out because we weren't privy to the final product; we were only included in the preceding 'gathering of materials' phase. As inviting as the comfort of your own nest might seem, Aquarius, you are also not done with flying around the neighborhood, snatching snippets of twine and leaf for later cushioning. The components of your nest have not all been collected yet. You have several more short mental excursions to embark upon—day trips rather than major journeys—before you can settle down atop your tailfeathers and incubate those eggs. Tired though you may be of accumulating tangential experiences without obvious cohesion, you'll have the opportunity to hunker down after a few more quick flights to the twig depot for material-gathering. Also, take a conscious stab at increased small-talk with people you meet along the way. You never know what odd bird you might be gabbing with.

PISCES (February 19-March 20): Don't start running your mouth along renowned pathways of wildfire information dissemination (i.e., gossip) unless you're prepared to welcome a cast of commentators to weigh in on what you have to work with. No, save the feeding frenzy until after you've had a chance to recheck the inventory numbers. Not to mention your need to get settled into not being settled, that feeling of your 'sense of home' pulling you in two or more different directions. Everything you own isn't likely to fit in a backpack, but if you're going to be shuffling from one allegiance to another and back again, you'd better review which ultra-important items belong in the travel kit. You must be ready to pitch your tent at a moment's notice, to establish some degree of core emotional stability no matter where you are or what else is going on around you. No wonder it's better not to say too much to the wrong people (i.e., the blabbermouths) and to direct your mental energy back toward rethinking the practicalities. Being doubly sure about certain things—those involving the material realities of the situation—will help counteract the upcoming unavoidable unsurenesses in all those other areas.