The older I get, the more I love Van Morrison and realize I need to listen to his music a lot more, like constantly. I have never had too much affinity for the music of my own generation, and the older I get, the more out of touch I am with popular music, such that when I do catch a song I like, I’m fascinated, but not taken, like I’m meeting a handsome yet much younger man: nice, but not my cup of tea. But right now, with Neptune transiting my ascendant, music is becoming so much more important (and for some reason, sounds so much richer), and I need my wild poets to both explain and insulate me from reality.  

It’s Memorial Day, and it’s rainy. Memorial Day is my half-birthday, and around this time, I take a look at my previous solar return and then take a sneak peak at my next one. It’s raining today, and I love rain when it’s warm outside and I love living near Lake Michigan when there’s a storm outside. Sometimes in the summer, we just stand outside on the balcony, soaking wet, watching the lightning twirl and snake along the sky. Some people hate being wet. I don’t understand that. I won’t use an umbrella if I don’t have to, and I air dry in the summer. 

There’s nothing wrong with feeling the rain. But there is something wrong with sitting in the A/C after it rained with your jeans four-pounds heavier from water, trying to work as if something magical isn’t happening in the sky right now and oh shit, it’s getting cold in here.

And summer is coming soon, but for now, I will enjoy my favorite season, spring, for another month or so.

There’s other things happening in my life besides my need to listen to Van Morrison more often and being obsessed with the weather. I will soon start my first job as a real life attorney, and if you think I’m updating sporadically now, just you wait. I’m really going to miss all my friends at my old job, though, and I think that this is the first time in my adult life I have ever been so socially invested in my job or cared so much for or liked so much the people I work with. This could be indicative of my own growth and ability to allow people to like me (Saturn square Venus in Capricorn struggles with this), or that I’m starting to focus less on myself, or that I just lucked out and generally work with a lot of cool people. 

But Saturn has stopped being so relentless, and I can focus on myself more. The Saturn lessons of law school and the summer after have faded away, and now the Saturn/Pluto conjunction in Capricorn isn’t making any harsh aspects to any of my natal planets except…a square to Pluto.

Eureka? Is this transformation? Is this the tide creeping up so slowly that I don’t even realize that I’m drowning, or floating?

I need to explore this.

But I have been transforming. —

I’ve been on a ketogenic diet for about six months now and avoid alcohol (for the most part), and wonderful things have happened. I’ve lost a lot of weight, and my body, hair, face – everything – is starting to look like me again. My blood work is fantastic and my blood pressure is normal. If you recall a failed attempt at blogging an astrological diet (and you probably don’t), you may have assumed that I was getting around to discussing custom diets based on astrology. This is pretty much my custom diet, though the alcohol is largely avoided because, while it can be fun to drink with your friends and have wine with dinner, it wreaks havoc on the body and ages it, and starting a new career at my age means trying to extend my youthful looks as long as possible. It’s easier to start over again in new places, doing new things, if you look the part, and lately, I’ve been much more appreciative of youth and newness in general, honoring my Aries Moon and what that naked warrior woman child really wants.  

I’m also resolving a lot of karma, too, but the good news is that lately, it’s the good kind, when I’m meeting others in my karass or cosmic soul group and giving back to them. So, if you have a question, you’re free to email me, though I will say I’m not the best at answering all my correspondence the very same day, or even the very same week. But I will.

And, no, you’re not bugging me with your questions. I love asking questions and being asked questions. Also, Neptune’s new transit is making it really, really easy to slip into a full-sensory fantasy world, and I welcome interruptions. 

The truth is that I really wanted to write a blog post about interceptions and the 00 and 29^thdegree of signs, and out-of-sign aspects. The problem is that I actually don’t want to do that when I sit down and write. I want to blame the Neptune transit, which is both astrologically huge and perhaps untimely unless I devote myself in service to those in great need (which I am, which will be the subject of a later blog post) as an anonymous face in a large machine (Pisces). And I really would prefer to explore this right now when I write because, by the end of the day, I feel like I’m writing legal briefs at home, too.

But moreover, I think the Pluto transit is the key here, because despite the fact that I’m very ambivalent about social media now, I really want to let out those parts of my personality and my essence that I’ve never really given a forum. I’m experiencing this relatively early, as I am now 6 months shy of 40, which is culturally significant but not astrologically significant, and this transit usually begins at 42-44.

It’s a time of change whether I like it or not, and a time of reckoning. How does it feel right now? I don’t know actually. The trouble is that I’m not seeing straight because of Neptune, so if I am changing dramatically, I’m not seeing it right now. I’m looking at the world through a much different lenses, and I have no idea what I can transform into.

But if I could change into anything, it would be an angel. I don’t mean someone who’s goody-gumdrops all the time. I mean an angel in the actual sense, the messengers of god, the ones that act on the will of the divine and have a station to serve mankind, to answer the prayers of the faithful and to come when summoned or evoked by the witches and the magi. I would want to be as much Azazel as I would want to be Raphael, because I still have a lot of sympathy for The Watchers and the ones that wanted humans to transcend their ignorance.

But for now, I think I’ll see what’s coming up in six months, and what will start to take effect in three. If I stay in Chicago, the solar return sun will be in my first house, and the solar return Moon will be at 29 Sagittarius, with Venus at 3 Sagittarius in the 2nd house. That’s conjunct my natal Venus in the 10th house.

40 may be an interesting year.