I think what I like best about Free Will Astrology horoscopes is not the astrological aspect, in which I do not really believe, at least not in the ways that people who have faith truly believe or that people who think they are right about everything are completely irrefutable when you engage in discourse with them, but in the permission to take a meditative look at some aspect of my life and wonder how the sentence / paragraph / idea fits with what I am doing right now.
For example, this week’s aquarius horoscope says:
What if I told you there will be 13 militantly helpful angels in gossamer armor standing guard around your bed every night, fighting off nightmares and ensuring that your dreams are blessed with floods of sublimely practical revelations? Would you regard what I said as a poetic metaphor, as the hyperbolic fantasy of a kooky astrology writer? Or is there a chance you’d take me literally? That you’d consider my vision to be the prophetic truth about an actual event? If it’s the latter, then I urge you to be aggressive about asking the angels for the very best mojo they can muster. This is one time when you have license to be greedy about tapping into the primal power of supernatural goodness.
What am I doing right now that I might ask for supernatural goodness from angels? Not much. Lately I feel as though I am surviving, dragging my feet from one day into the next, engaging in a routine that is simple and serves its purpose; to get me from day to day. If I were less – or more – tired, it might bother me that I don’t have the emotional time to squeeze in a phone call in the evening or an extra 15 minutes of writing in the morning. But I am aware that life won’t be like this forever and right now, in head-down-keep-slogging mode, I don’t tend to stop and remember any other life. And I can’t miss what I don’t remember.
Only when I actually ask myself the question, baffled, as though I am quizzing myself in metaphysics – the help of 13 angels? The mojo? – do I consider that in a previous life, I would have had an answer. I would have had a ready set of life improvements simmering in my brain for which I needed luck or psychic blessing or the powerful act of articulating just what I wanted from each bubbling pot.
At one time, for example, I would have eagerly asked the angels to support me in the following:
I’m going to publish a short story by the end of this year,
start or join a rock and roll band,
go back to school,
work in radio,
support myself with creativity,
be more political.
None of it ever happened. But I was forever thinking it might. Despite rarely having the courage to take the third step towards any of those goals (first and second steps are no problem) I really believed, to lesser and greater degrees, that someday I would achieve them. That optimism, that hope, that living for the five year plan, THAT I miss. No matter how coated in chickenshit my optimism was and no matter how completely useless it is to have the creative visualization without ever taking a step out of your comfort zone. I am nostalgic for my optimistic self.
What I really lack right now is the ability to look past 12 months from now and imagine a future that is as different as this present is from the future I imagined in 1999. A future where my sentences are less awkward. A future where I look back at this year or two of my life and wonder that I didn’t see what fantastic things I would do.
So, my official request to the mojo angels is: Please, more dreams that are about what fantastic things I will do (in detail, please) and, if possible, fewer dreams about waiting in line for an hour to get into an Italian restaurant (that was last night.) (Unless of course I am meant to be envisioning myself as an Italian restaurant owner? Doubting it.) If it helps, I’ll cut out the cheese before bed.