A year before moving to California - the first time - I wrote this about the Death card in the Tarot:
Sometimes you lose something so essential to your life you think nothing could ever be upright in it. Sometimes this happens for no other reason than you were limited in what you knew or could do at the time. I make and remake my life around these breaks in it.
Every time I remake my life, I can choose to honor the significance of what was lost by finding new ways to incorporate painful knowing. And then anger becomes something I can wrap my hands around to use. I don’t know what stage of grief it is, but there came a time when I looked at my life and could see the influence of the lost thing in every thing that feels good.
The past twelve months has been one of these break and make years. Before the end of August I’ll reach one year living in the San Francisco Bay Area.
My new environment is one of exquisite natural beauty and sickening expense. I’m adapting as best I can: Driving up + down + up + down + up + down + up + down Interstate 580 in my little Honda hybrid, collecting sunset spots along the bay’s eastern shores; I sing and I scream at other drivers and eating my nostalgic treats; I park for hours near the water and write by hand; I ask friends back east how much they’re paying for gas these days to shock myself out of love with California. (Impossible.) The City of Oakland catches me cruising down Broadway on their vast network of candid cameras. The surveillance images display me unaware belting the new Ariana Grande, sunroof ajar, enjoying the Wednesday night air. Their letter warns that my newfound pleasure in driving comes at a cost. Of course it does.
Life transitions are humbling. Whatever prompts the change, you’re confronted with the version of yourself you expect to be and the person you are. New limitations emerge alongside whatever possibilities. An ankle injury I sustained just after my arrival fell through the cross-state health insurance cracks and lingered. It spawned a web of electric pains and aches which simultaneously leveled me and made me marvel at the systemic design of the human body.
I thought I’d have more friends here by now. I hoped I’d be a little more housing secure than I am. I thought I’d have more energy to make my ideas happen. Instead, I’ve developed a more nuanced relationship with my aloneness. I feel it’s gotten nuttier. Surprising and more sophisticated the longer I let it go, like making a brown butter before it burns. I swing from complete embrace to complete embarrassment at feeling so out of practice with other people.
Last summer after the first anniversary of my mother’s death, I started to become exhausted by astrology, specifically its digital presence. Where I had previously found inspiration and community I found I was being met with, well, very very misinformed takes and AI slop. Another death. Rather than dig deep to find the energy to weed through it, I checked out. I kept up with client work here and there, but otherwise downshifted the presence of astrological teaching and learning. For months I went on a dozen and half first dates with new creative interests and hobbies. In all that trying, writing has been the only thing that stuck.
I took Molly Wizenberg’s Memory to Story memoir writing workshop in March. It was only three weeks, but I feel like it helped me unpack a decade’s worth of baggage around my self-esteem as a writer and hang-ups I've amassed about sharing my work. Returning to reading and writing personal narrative and memoir unlocked something missing from my astrological endeavors: emphasis on the life itself as a raw material of our practice.
To focus so much on breaking down individual astrological placements instead of taking in a chart on the whole - which happens a lot when algorithms become the primary distributor of the work - loses the heart and the stakes of what I want to be doing. Distilling what a moment in time feels like to someone just trying to figure out how to live through it. That moment in session of getting into the mess of describing someone’s real life with them is what keeps me excited and grounded as an astrologer. So I’m taking time now to figure out how to keep the life itself at the center of what I make and how I share, even if that means sharing more of my own.
My Death card musings from 2018 presaged this moment in ways I never could have imagined. When it comes to my identity as a diviner, this is something I always want to remember: the way my energy and fascination began to flow toward death and grief a full seven years before my mother got sick and died. The Universe arranged for me to have that education, a few specific people, and language in perfect timing for me to process my own losses. I don’t feel any more powerful than anyone else because I realized this, but I see now that I'm not lost either.
The practice of seeking knowledge about the unknown or the future through symbolic or metaphysical means
(as in horary astrology) The planet charged with representing a specific person, thing, process, or event, typically through house rulership or planetary nature
The branch of astrology where a chart is drawn up in response to a specific question or situation and an astrologer weighs symbolic factors in order to provide an opinion on an answer or outcome
1. The branch of astrology concerned assessing the quality, timing and experiences of an individual life via a birth chart; 2. The zodiacal position of a planet or point at the time of one's birth
The celestial bodies the make up the basis of astrological signification: The luminaries – Sun and Moon; The visible planets– Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn; and the slowest moving outer planets– Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.
The range of zodiacal degrees across which a planet's influence is considered to be effective
May refer to either the Sun or the Moon, the two brightest celestial bodies in Earth’s sky
One of twelve sections of an astrological chart, which carries symbolic associations with specific areas or experiences of the life.
The branch of astrology associated with choosing an auspicious time for beginning something or taking action toward a desired outcome.
The point of an astrological chart indicating the western horizon, symbolically associated with setting, one-to-one relationships, destinations, and death. It is considered to be the 3rd strongest of the four angles.
Houses 2, 6, 8, and 12 of a chart are said to be “dark” because they make no aspect to the Ascendant, a symbolic place of light, life, and power. Without access to the Ascendant’s light, the thematic associations of dark houses tend to be connote material and spiritual experiences involving darkness, corruption, incapacitation, or decay
The point at which any astrological house has the highest degree of potency.
Geometrical angle at which two celestial bodies are configured in relationship to one another. Taken from the Latin, aspectus, meaning “to look at,” an aspect describes the quality by which two distinct planetary functions come together of planetary connection is derived from how directly or not the two bodies may be said to “view” one another. The major Ptolemaic aspect are: the Conjunction (0º), the Opposition (180º), the Square (90º), the Trine (120º), and the Sextile (60º).
The point of an astrological chart indicating the eastern horizon, symbolically associated with light, beginnings, physical and spiritual health and vitality. It is considered to be the strongest of all the houses within an astrological chart.
One of four primary points — Ascendant (Rising, 1st house), Midheaven (Culmination, 10th house), Descendant (Setting, 7th house), and Imum Coeli (Nadir, 4th House) — of an astrological chart. The closer a planet is to an angle, the more overt and effective it is considered to be in expressing its nature.
The point in the chart — often the cusp of the tenth house — where a planet reaches its maximum effectiveness and strength. Symbolically associated with themes of elevation, visibility, and promotion.