Tuesday, April 18 | Focus THE astrology I described yesterday is pretty much in exact focus now. It's about 1 pm CET and it's just at the peak. Venus is conjunct Uranus (hmmm, sounds interesting) and Mercury is square Mars, basically simultaneously. The whole setup in involves the Aries Point and the lunar nodes, which are basically amplifying things enormously. Strong aspects like this are experienced different ways by different people and there's no way to say, for sure, whether they're bad or good. What's possible to say is these are intense, and represent movement, a shift of some kind. As an astrologer, it's fair enough to 'predict' progress, which is another way of saying that we have some leverage available, or that they are going to move us along one way or another. The Moon is also approaching Pluto in Sagittarius. I saw that and had a bit of foreboding, particularly as I was hearing news reports all morning of Iran and the U.S. seeming to ramp up their little pretend nuclear crisis (Sagittarius is about international stuff, Pluto adds the level of obsession and religious fanaticism). I no longer use television where I live (my cable card in Paris ran out about two days before Parallel Worlds went to press, and I didn't bother getting a new one) so I gave up on BBC World and I only see TV when I'm traveling. I have been shocked at the nonstop tirade of violence in every imaginable form, and how unless you click it off, it just keeps coming. Honestly, I don't miss it. When I moved to my new apartment, I moved the TV into a closet and put an altar in that space. I would rather get my news from writers and commentators I trust personally and support consciously. Planet Waves gives $1,000 a year to truthout.org. I like doing this a lot better than paying a cable bill, which is not so much less. I woke up this morning thinking that based on my perception of our current level of social instability, the rate of change, the feeling of restlessness and sense of uncertainty, we've left the 1960s in an antique shop. What is only starting to ferment is the sense that all this can lead to progress, that we can grow as a result, that we have at our disposal a power we can harness and start to bring about some of the changes we know we want to see, and that we know we need desperately (ideas about energy, for one). The history of the 1950s through the 1970s is fascinating this way, as one subculture after another, and then finally a large swath of the mainstream population -- that is, people who did not associate with being part of any special group -- began to devote themselves to progress, often individual, sometimes for a community, and often for both. It pretty much always came down to the feeling that there's noting left to lose, so we may as well try something. I've noticed that it often comes down to that one factor in my life. I can cling to stability for a long time, knowing I need to make a change. I can identify the factors that are blocking the change, or which I'm not prepared to give up. Then one day I recognize that basically, I have only to gain by making an adjustment, or only to lose by not doing so. Suddenly the sense of sacrifice can just evaporate, though usually what I find is that I need to be willing to embrace instability and not having a sense of what my future holds -- I've noticed that both of these seem necessary to actually be in the present. Hmm, and as the future comes rushing on, that's always a challenge. But it tends to keep me awake.