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Horoscopes | Week of October 18-24, 2010

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Cracks in the foundation, while obviously producing some cause for alarm, are merely symptoms of natural progress in the unavoidable cycles of life and death. Based upon how long those cracks have been festering there, Aries, you may still be able to salvage a good deal of whatever structure is resting upon 'em—or you might need a total demolition and rebuild. Hard to say from where I'm sitting. In any event, you mustn't be scared off by the inevitable destruction/construction work ahead. Pieces are already falling off. Support beams are being torqued into odd, unsustainable angles. You literally have no choice but to take this on now… and, in a certain way, you can't confidently determine the scope of the necessary efforts until after you've started ripping the rotted parts apart. It is therefore pointless to lament what isn't getting handled because of this emergency retrofitting. What you're presently facing is not 'beside the point', but has instead become the point. If you're still refusing to cope, my dear, then I hope you're wearing a hard hat: This whole thing could full-on collapse if you don't attend to it immediately.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Get outside yourself, Taurus… to gain insight about personal blind-spots, to stretch in compassion toward those with vastly different experiences, to share your nurturing with someone else and, most importantly of all, to improve the quality of your life through not concentrating on the same tired concerns you'd chew over ad infinitum if someone else's fresh input didn't give you other stuff to think and talk about. Let one or more individuals who are presently quite special to you provide entertainment, edification, companionship, support and/or a bit of a challenge, to keep you on your toes. You would be too good at creating a self-sealing existence for yourself, taking care of what needs to be done and then occupying your spare moments with overly familiar indulgences, if it were not for the question-asking and button-pushing and alternative-suggesting influence of your most important relationships. If you're shutting this influence out, you are robbing yourself of that strange joy which comes from putting yourself in somebody else's hands—part risk, part trust, part titillation, part spiritual purpose.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): To live in your head is to ignore the fact that real life is played out through the body, our instrument of actualization. So, no matter the brilliant visions and amazing successes you can currently conceive of, Gemini, you must use your fingers and hands, arms and legs, core strength and balance to put effort behind the concepts. In the immediate sense, then, it's far more worthwhile to expend multiple workdays on only one task of seemingly 'moderate importance' (though it must eventually get done) , in order to produce observable progress, then to mastermind strategies for the entire process while still holding off on doing much of anything. The excessive mental angling will actually paralyze your forward motion, if you're not careful. Meanwhile, if given the choice between spending another couple hours on the computer or hauling your ass to the park, the gym, the yoga studio or the swimming pool, please put the further digital (over-)stimulation on hold and tend to your physical well-being.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Say the thing they'll remember a few weeks from now. Though it may be contextually inappropriate or unlike the type of comments you usually make, the dirty joke or subversive critique that cuts to the heart of the basic struggles we all share is exactly what ought to be unceremoniously aired, Cancer… and all the better coming from you, to shock the shit out of everyone. The hottie you're lusting after, meanwhile, will likely be impressed (or at least intrigued) by this other side to your personality—after all, speaking the language of risqué increases the probability they will respond in the same tongue. Your other option? Giving off a wide-eyed innocence (born from a blushing refusal to acknowledge the transgressive or lascivious undercurrents) could lead 'em to believe you aren't into 'that sort of thing'… and therefore wouldn't be into 'that sort of thing' with them. We're all adults here, right? Injecting a little 'adult humor' or other suggestiveness into the scene will harmlessly up the ante. (The ante on what, again?)

LEO (July 23-August 22): Sometimes, to gain your own peace, you must take an altogether unpeaceful-seeming action to get an unsupportive individual—often a family member or very close 'friend'—off your back. For your sake, Leo, I wish that asserting such a sting is not necessary in your current life-circumstance… but if it is, please don't shy away from giving 'em a palpable sense of the objectionable unsettledness their nagging, criticizing and/or undercutting is creating inside you. Though it may be hard for them to hear (and, in fact, they may refuse to listen), your emotional truth is true, if that's how you're actually feeling. Try not to falsely assume they ought to empathize with you, alas. While it would be great if we all shared a basic human compassion for each other, the reality of our individual wounds and weirdnesses often keep us too caught up in our stories to naturally see it from somebody else's perspective. That's why, unpleasant as the idea may sound, a full explanation on your part of where the lack of peace is stemming from may indeed be in order. As long as you continually phrase your expression in terms of your emotional experiences, they really can't argue with it… at least not with any convincing reason.

VIRGO (August 23-September 22): 'Containing' yourself so as to eliminate any signs of outward disagreement is a recipe for deadening predictability in your interpersonal interactions, Virgo. The absence of obvious difference, divergence or dissention on your part creates a not-necessarily-desirable interchangeability: You could just as soon be 'someone else', or the other person could, and it wouldn't alter the manner in which the proceedings unfold. All parties utter their pre-scripted lines. Mechanical motions are gone through, dutiful cordiality swapped. But where, oh where, is the worthwhile significance? the out-on-a-limb risk of uncensored extemporaneity? the life's-too-short-to-hold-my-tongue bluntness? Where's the beef? The repetition of rightful behavior eventually strips the soul of its pleasures in flipping the table, calling attention to the pink elephant, or having however many extra sips of bubbly it'll take to have you telling 'em what you really think. Polite is reliable and safe; you're good at polite. How about trying casually scandalous?

LIBRA (September 23-October 22): When it comes to overseeing your responsibilities and economic realities, Libra, this is no time for abstractions. While it's good to uphold idealistic notions of who you want to be when you 'grow up' (when?!?), you can't ignore the several necessary (and not especially exciting) steps that must be taken between here and there, if you hope to arrive at your desired destination ready to make the most of it. Turning a blind eye to that escalating incompatibility between what you say you want and what you're actually devoting time, money and/or energy to… well, let's just say it's not an approach I'd advocate, especially considering the longer you deny the existence of real constraints, the worse this mismanaged asset-allocation situation will become. Presuming it's necessary, please plan on making at least one tough call during the upcoming weeks that'll reroute your resources to a more meaningful purpose or endeavor. This will signal to the universe what your highest priorities ultimately are.

SCORPIO (October 23-November 21): For a brief power-moment of robust all-about-me-ness, the Sun and Mercury will be joining Venus (retrograde, of course) and Mars in a super-Scorpionic front of personal mojo, for a delicious capping-off to these past several weeks of rediscovering your gung-ho spirit. Mercury enters your sign on Wednesday (Oct 20), followed by the Sun on Saturday (Oct 23)… though, with Mars leaving Scorpio next week, that leaves you with only a scarce few days (Oct 23-27) teeming with an intense concentration of self-serving assertiveness for you to take advantage of. Since I've already been jamming your recent horoscopes full of encouragements and incitements to consciously exercise your will, there's not necessarily 'new news' to report—merely a crescendo of this beneficial energy-injection toward these climactic few days, during which you should plan your statement-punctuating grandstand to hit its intended target-audience. Whatever everything's been building toward, allow it to outwardly manifest in the next week-and-a-half. Yank the curtain wide, exposing the backstage machinations. Let the pot boil over. Throw the friggin' shit at that fan… and when it does hit, carefully read everyone else's reactions, and accordingly follow the cues.

SAGITTARIUS (November 22-December 21): I advise taking one more week to escape notice, hovering unobtrusively in less well-lit spots, providing relatively non-committal answers to direct questions, postponing significant actions while others do as they are going to do, without interruption from you. By mid-next-week, once Mars hits your sign, Sagittarius, you'll finally be ready to initiate some fast-paced catch-up. But before that happens, a tad more 'watch and wait' will allow certain question-marks about a key player to resolve themselves into periods. This week's lineup of planets in one sector of the sky, once jump-started into near-irresistible externalization by the Aries full moon, will almost certainly lead plenty of folks to proceed with a glaring lack of subtlety. Oops! Looks like they couldn't help themselves… which is why I strongly recommend that you do resist any temptation to follow suit. Should you let unbridled emotion power your outward responses, you're liable to say or do nearly anything. Wait a couple weeks, however, and you can wield a similar tone—only stripped of the residual resentments and red-herring irrelevancies—to make a much more evenly-controlled, and thus clearer, point.

CAPRICORN (December 22-January 19): You are not alone in this, whatever your 'this' may happen to be… and it's an especially important sentiment to remind you Capricorns of, since you're a sign who typically loads enormous burdens atop your lone shoulders and then wonders why you're the only one feeling sore the next day. Think, then, about which groups you belong to (whether of your choosing or not)—social-identity communities, long-time friend circles, sports teams, arts enthusiasts, participants in that special activity, political believers, do-gooders for a certain cause, loyalists of one persuasion or another—and ponder what you might do on behalf of your fellow group-members. While you're at it, consider whether another member of your group might possess the expertise you require, and ask 'em for some assistance. Your week, with an unusually strong 11th-house astro-signature, will be best utilized if (1) you make at least one contribution to the well-being of a larger whole and (2) you receive at least one helping hand from a friend or colleague in your network. You give, you receive: interpersonal balance in action.

AQUARIUS (January 20-February 18): Show 'em who's boss, Aquarius. They don't need one more self-impressed loudmouth pontificating about best practices and mission statements while collecting one more catered lunch from the Entitled Executive Strategists' Club's private chef. They're earnestly expecting their next great leader to be a 'man/woman of the people'… somebody who does their best motivational magic while working alongside their 'underlings' (icky word) as peers and equals, shirt sweat-stained, fingernails dirty, amenable to putting in the same hard labor to earn their keep as anybody else in the organization. You obviously possess the fair heart and collective thinking to serve this role. What'll distinguish you from your comrades—and secure your position as a 'boss', whether official or not—is the audacity with which you're willing to call out the weak links, ineffective habits and underperforming individuals holding back the team. And nothing says 'credibility' more clearly than critical observations reaped from actual participatory experience, which is why you've got to do the job before you can insist it be done differently. Don't be surprised, though, if certain co-workers won't buy you as just another one of 'the people'. After all, they may not want you drawing attention to their apathetic preservation of a cushy status-quo… and, if you're accepting this duty seriously, they should feel threatened.

PISCES (February 19-March 20): Boredom is what happens when you refuse to try something different. And how wonderful is it, actually, to become so reliable a master of your domain—because said 'domain' is equivalent to a six-by-six holding cell, which, by nature of its small size and bounded condition, you've confidently surveyed every last inch of—that you're not likely to glean any additional insights from the role? Who needs mastery, when looking at each day with untrained virgin eyes provides far more fodder for insight and inspiration? Bust out, Pisces, with full awareness of your glaring lack of knowledge about that strange frontier up ahead… and full permission to pursue it anyway. If you already know what to expect, there's little reason to bother going. However, if the very act of heading that way immediately raises additional questions you cannot immediately answer (based on your current experience, at least), I suspect that's where you ought to direct yourself. A little bit of anticipatory anxiety (otherwise known as 'excitement!') is no excuse to dilly-dally.