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Horoscopes | Week of May 24-30, 2004

ARIES (March 21-April 19): As long as you stay fixated on trying to rearrange details into logic, the worse your view of the forest will be blocked by needles and leaves and branches of trees competing for sunlight. A better bet would be to sit awhile, reason out from your own practical senses what needs to get done (without pesky distraction from others' kind-hearted but likely irrelevant two or three cents), and then close your eyes and perceptively grope your way through the overgrowth. Moving through at your traditional too-quick is likely to throw you off the scent (despite the occasional sign encouraging you to do just that, to move too quickly); explaining yourself is equally flummoxing (though good for a bit of roadside attraction). Find the buried treasure through a disciplined dose of dowsing, blindly tap-tap-tapping your stick in careful survey across each step until you hit water.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Listen between the lines. People may barrage you with words, and, as long as you can empty out the ego-driven need to consciously run a parallel interpretation ticker-tape through your head and simply receive the signal like an inanimate dish, you will hear the more important and interesting messages, which is what they're not saying. They don't even know coded communiqués lie underneath their blather, so don't waste your time trying to determine from where they derive. If you are up to the challenge of excising your personal investments from situations of interpersonal trivia download and letting yourself be a vessel for incoming wisdom, you'll be treated with astonishing truths from the mouths of oblivious babes. But it is a challenge, and not one available to everyone. For those whose inner monologue is ceaseless, you won't discover what I'm talking about because you're too busy silently talking to notice the sounds of pins dropping around you.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): When the madness of Venus's retrograde through your sign threatens to pull you in opposite directions, overwhelm you with stimuli or generally compel you to overthink in the hopes of finally reaching the answer… stop what you're doing (which means: stop what you're saying), temporarily pull out of the fast lane and downshift. Quit worrying so much about what you should do with your collection of associations and assets, and start securing that they are what you think they are and that they aren't going anywhere anytime soon. This is definitely not the time to be counting unhatched chickens, since everyone knows a few eggs in every batch turn out to be rotten. What would a good parent tell her child to do if suddenly his hyperactivity began to interfere with ability to pay rent and save for a future in which he'll unequivocally need all that he has, without a drop to waste? Tell yourself that, but do so without words. Breathe in the calm recentering. Meditate on emotional safety. Then continue to enjoy the ride, for nothing I write is apt to shift you into perpetual quiet time. A moment here and there, though, can be quite restorative.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): strologers usually associate your sign with the nurturing mothering principle, a calm and emotionally available attitude that provides wordless comfort to others when they most need that gentle backrub or home-cooked meal. Over the next couple weeks, with Mars and Saturn uniting in your sign, you're more of the overtly fierce, authoritative and steadfastly unflinching father-figure of the zodiac. (Please overlook the inherent gender trouble in this model.) With everyone flittering around in Venus-retrograde-in-Gemini rhetorical superfluity, it's you and your inalienable emotionality who serve as the rock, who know—through feeling—what's really up. Never mind the accompanying disturbances to your psychic field that occur as a result of the schizophrenic scenarios abounding all around. You're still better equipped to manage than many of the rest, even if it's difficult to verbalize to others how you can be of assistance. Convert that back-rubbing opened hand into a balled-up fist, not necessarily to beat anyone into submission, but more as a warning to those whose momentary madness may lead them to forget the real ramifications of their surface-level outlook. And if you have to assert discipline on those who are getting out of hand, take the requisite action carefully… and for the time being, skip the explanation. Being lured into argumentation will only weaken your stance.

LEO (July 23-August 22): This week, Leo, I urge you to explore what the concept of faith means to you. Whether you are a strict self-reliant materialist who can only truly have faith in yourself, whether you have been touched profoundly enough by mystery and miracle to submit to faith in spirit, whether your version involves intricacies I couldn't begin to access… all these distinctions are mere wordplay, sharing a basic premise: knowing without a doubt that everything will work out as it should, despite any passing glitches or momentary muddlings. Don't worry about who or what you attribute this guarantee of okayness to, just remember that it's there and hang tightly to it. It's not that I sense you are in dire need of it right now. But it's an ideal time to quietly reconnect to it, to cement its meaning in your life as a resource to draw upon when necessary, whether now or later. Faith is also an excellent antidote to the anxiety or confusion that can come at moments like this, when the frenzy of whirligigging minutiae weaves a web around you, temporarily eclipsing your clear sense of self with lots of everyone and everything else. This, like all that you have lived and will live, is a necessary part of things being as they should.

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): Our fates are bound together. Your efforts to effect change (or at least diversification) in your outer-world position are closely tied to the actions and behaviors of at least one other key individual, and you should definitely not count on this person to act and behave in the manner you expect. Perhaps preparing for the unexpected will contain your emotional reaction to his/her out-of-your-control maneuvers at a reasonable level, though you'll be hard-pressed to remain wholly unaffected. But just as your attempt to get where you're going will likely be detoured by surprises in one or more one-to-one encounters, your potential to navigate the detour with minimal stress and maximal success is best reached by resting on the quiet comfort that entire groups of other people understand what you're going through and have experienced similar frustrations. You may or may not be able to connect in literal face-to-face confederation with these comrades, but you'll thrive by opening your heart to the knowledge that you're not alone in this, that just as one person might have pulled you off the road, another will help you back on a few yards down from here.

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): Don't make much noise about it, but professional challenges you've faced in the recent past are likely to move one step closer to conquered in the next couple weeks, if you put in the work without expecting notice to be taken by anyone else. That's why I'm advising you not to make a fuss—because the fact that it's happening will subconsciously sink into the minds of the stakeholders you seek to please, without them realizing it quite yet. The last thing you need to do now is to march up and start declaring your importance to the project, the organization or the universe. Words will only serve to undo the efforts quietly made. If you insist upon hailing your commitment to excellence (which merely reveals that you lack the faith to believe your commitments will speak for themselves), then do so by sending silent psychic messages out when no one else is around, to eliminate as much of the manipulative potential as possible. Mostly, though, just work towards your goals with the best of intentions, and wait for complete recognition to come at a later point.

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): Your heart might long for compliance with the desires of the larger group, but that doesn't mean that's how the events of your life are evolving. Right now, you want a whole lot from a whole lot of people and situations… perhaps far too much than you are literally able to actualize within the tight confines you've allotted. It would be easy enough for me to espouse the obvious-ism that you can't please everyone all the time. The problem is, it's you and your immeasurable craving for total totality across the board that you're trying (hopelessly, I might add) to please. It may be hard to accept your inability to achieve and maintain your fullest desired intimacies in a holistic schema that realistically functions, particularly since you can't control the explosions of ego-necessary love forcing you to spend large concentrated bursts of energy toward one or two specific people or purposes. Even while tiny unavoidable hurts leave you wondering what you'd be capable of if there were more of you to spread around, the truth is that there isn't. Let guilt go, and put heart-faith into prioritizing the most meaningful expenditures without arguing with yourself about it.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): Forcing yourself to listen will go a long way in helping you master the three-ring relationship circus being performed under your big top. Listen to what is being said. Listen to what isn't being said. To convey your reactions, use few words and hefty amounts of strong underlying emotion, and let your intentions carry themselves to their destination. The more you say, the less you will retain from your communications, and boy will you be surprised when you are reminded later what it was you told them. With multiple main characters involved, you won't recall what you'd said to whom or who you called by which name. But if instead you listen and feel, no one will need to know how you've generalized. A good feeling is a good feeling, regardless of whom it's directed at. Let them fill in the verbal details surrounding the unspoken core of notion, and then everyone will get to be right without anyone having to be wrong.

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): Here's an opportunity long in the making. With humble grace, you can take at least one big step forward in the ongoing 'Capricorns and their Relationship Issues' saga that has been unfolding over the past several months. And the way to do it is certainly not to call up the principal players and tell them that you're ready to process all your relationship issues. (Talk about drawing attention to yourself unnecessarily!) No, all you need to do is send out love vibes in regular measured doses, every day for the next two weeks. Love, incidentally, is not about what you're going to get back; it's about what you have to give. Enjoy it for its own sake, and don't speak too much about it. As for the level of actual social interaction, the best trait that you can emit is flexibility. In fact, flexibility is your highest present duty to your physical well-being and to your development of a more refined work ethic. To summarize, the two-fold key to moving ahead in relationships is (1) silent transmission of egoless love for the joy of giving and (2) surface-level flexibility in all encounters. Follow this formula for two weeks, and you'll feel newly (re)connected by the end.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): Listen to what your body wants. First of all, it wants you to know that it's more sensitive than you'd like to admit. Though you are able to apply your intellectual distancing techniques to so many other areas of your life, when it comes to your physical health, you cannot theorize away the need for temperance, regularity and tender care. Second, it wants you to work a little harder than you've been working, not to discredit all that you've already done, but to increase your general capabilities a teensy bit, so that you can do even more in the next stretch of life. Third, it wants you to quit thinking so much and learn to relax a bit better than you've been doing. There may be other methods for attaining your leisure sensation of choice besides ones that undermine the first two points I made. And finally, it wants you to stop taking my word for everything and stand still long enough to get a special message intended just for you, untranslatable into language but available only in its native tongue of physical sensation. Your body is trying to tell you something.

PISCES (February 19-March 20): It's okay to crave assistance from someone else. Relying on another person, for one thing or another, does not fly in the face of your overarching need to assert independence and take individualistic charge of your own life. It's the 'all or nothing' approach and the 'you should be able to read my mind' mindset that are incompatible with the newly in-the-process-of-being-liberated Piscean soul. In order to get what you need right now from important relationships, you should limit yourself to one or two of the most pressing desires from each player, and request them in specific terms. Here's the hard part: Stay as unattached as possible to the response you get. Just as it is completely reasonable to want your various loved ones to help you with this or that, it is also reasonable for them to tell you that they cannot provide what you want. Don't be angry if that's the case. A little even-tempered willingness on your part to accept an alternative from one person and to seek the original desire from somebody else will help everyone fulfill his/her end of the bargain of relations without feeling compromised, taxed or unheard.