Monday, Sept. 19, 2005 With the passing of yesterday's Pisces Full Moon, we are now in the Zone -- or rather, the first of two distinct brief, intense and concentrated phases of cosmic movement associated with the solar eclipse of Oct. 3 (Libra New Moon/annular solar eclipse). We have been living with the eclipse for a while now; such are not one-time events, but exist more like a standing wave pattern that affects everything around it. They are what you might think of as rather significant alterations in space-time. While the effects are more often seen lasting for years after an eclipse, the condition is just as pronounced before, particularly right before; and that's where we're at now. This Full Moon to New Moon is the last little lunar chapter before the eclipse. The next time there is a Moon-Sun conjunction, that's it. We are in new territory. This particular eclipse in Libra is conjunct many planets in charts for the hurricane, NOLA itself, the acting president, and the progressed charts for the above. And we are now days away from the Mars station in Taurus. To say that this portends something intense is ridiculous. Life is nothing now if not intense. Whether you watch TV or not, whether you can stomach the newspaper or not, you and I and all of us have been in the onslaught of a series of changes that have blown through relentlessly. The same astrology that affects the collective affects us as individuals. Let's recap a second -- starting (speaking in rather local terms, just 11 months) we continue with the most recent stolen election. There was an emotional, impassioned windup to that event that many people threw their hearts, minds and souls into all through the summer and early autumn. No sooner did we get used to that than we witnessed the Asian tsunami and all the death and suffering that came with. Then there were the aftershocks 90 days later; then the death of the pope at the last solar eclipse. We can pause there a second for an example of how eclipse energy feels -- it spreads far and wide. And it usually represents something that we could see coming (if we looked) but somehow missed. It brings a lot of people together. In the case of the pope, the gesture was largely symbolic. The spring was relatively quiet, astrologically; but when the astrology of summer came along, there were the London bombings and then New Orleans and its aftermath. In the background of it all has been the televised war in Iraq. I don't blame anyone for feeling overwhelmed and honestly I wonder how we do it, how we get by, particularly the less strong among us. Whatever way we turn, the Libra eclipse seems to represent a point of turning. It could be a point of balancing. Libra has a way of seeming mild mannered, till you plug in the electric guitar. One thing I'm noticing lately is how angry I am. For some reason, it's coming to the surface, and I don't think commentary about how anger is not appropriate or spiritual are in order. We have a lot to be angry about. We are witnessing crimes against humanity. We are having our spirits ground down on a daily basis by fear and negativity. We're watching our country and our world get ripped off in big degrees. And America's leading export is still pain and death in Iraq. That is an outrage.