February 26th, 2014

Nostalgia is fickle. Miyazaki, possibly the most beloved animator of our generation, is retiring after his unusually realistic project detailing some of the darker moments of WWII-era Japan. His wind is passing, and another readies its arrival.

Friday morning, Mercury stations direct after a tiresome, challenging, and patient retrograde. My last post chided the relevance of such a time, considering how often retrogrades happen and how quick we are to blame our personal inconsistencies on the planets.

I’d liken this week’s offering to those moments in war when soldiers from both sides sit in their bunkers—saying nothing in particular, maybe playing cards or telling stories in that poignant way that attempts to quiet a room, saving the unsaid truths to remain just so. A heavy silence pervades, and the soldiers don’t tighten, but breathe and pray to their gods, because something is about to happen. Well, that’s how it is in the movies.

We’re looking toward one of those show-stopping moments in April, when cardinal eclipse madness begs for an enormous amount of exaggerated destruction and discord. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This weekend, the moon marks both the final burial of old cycles and the fostering, cleansing rehabilitation of the maddening self-reconstruction that potentially took place during the past few months. If your world has felt cloudy, and weird, and unwarranted, it’s ok—everyone’s has. Secretly, this has all been an effort to make space for the future changes and blessings that want to be a part of your life. Dying petals must be clipped off for flowering new buds to flourish. The catch? You have to do the cutting.

Mars stations retrograde the day of the new moon, one day after Mercury’s station direct. Thus, the last cycle out of this weird 2014 trifecta—Venus in December/January, Mercury in February—begins now. Apart from allowing what wants to happen, traditional seed planting seems arbitrary. There has never been a better time to stick with the shadows and do your primary work either alone or with a select few.

The world is going to “happen” in April and we will likely see dredges of political upheaval continue to escalate as they have been. At the time of this writing, Ukraine and Venezuela are the primary suspects of such structural catastrophe. The sky is so volatile that there’s no telling to what extent the tension will manifest.

In America, we have this fixation on being holed up and safe—like in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, we sit behind screens with buds in our ears, tuning us out of connection and allowing narratives to placate themselves as totally legit.

Unlike prophecies in such highly creative and ominous fictions, however, the transformation of the first world will probably be much less dramatic. Regardless of how ridiculously deconstructive apocalyptic conspiracy theories lead themselves to be, it is because of this world’s constant opposition to itself that even allows them to exist. Argue with me if you want, but I live in New York.

We’re all human, and more people want to be holding hands than not—and that’s an important facet to remember as digressions escalate around us and the media extrapolates stories into elaborated oblivion. And we’ll be watching from ivory towers.

Instead of feigning ignorance in the modern world, surrounded by exceedingly fast technological changes and governmental overthrows and fellow mans murdering each other and stuff, why not face the responsibility that you have, individually, as a person, to be a person? We need to be working together on this one.

Rather than praying for the generalized peace and serenity of all beings during times of strife, help someone in your own backyard. Stop thinking that meditation alone will solve anything.

If we’re truly the “chosen one” generation, then we’ve yet to decide whether that means Harry Potter in the good way, Darth Vader in the bad way, or an alternate universe where Anakin Skywalker is actually the shit and doesn’t become a whiny emotional asshole.

Guess what? The world is different now than it was yesterday. Accept that. Instead of sagging into nostalgia, dreaming about times long past—like unlimited MetroCards under $100, Tower Records, and George Lucas making good movies—forge ahead a new path, and let’s become that “something new” everyone’s been talking about.