Poetic License Horoscopes for Aug 3-? (Last Ones for a While, the Stars Have a New Old Project)

Leo: The mayor’s office is negotiating with our homeless settlements, that’s good. Our city has enough, has MORE than enough (#defundthepolice) to give rooms and doors and beds and windows and Covid-19 testing and dignity and love. We should be a city (a nation, a world) that keeps all of our citizens sheltered and loved. Do what you can to provide shelter and care, both within yourself and without. Stay inside if you’re able, stay close, and care for everything living within and around you. Water the plants. Pet the cats. You’re always within our care.

Virgo: Your word for the coming birthday year is windfall. You wanted abundance but it’s been destroyed by every evil“law of attraction” charlatan. Still, please accept the richness already washing over you, already filling your bookshelves and paint pots and fridge. Your refrain, which you’ll find in almost any given moment is true: I have everything I need. Accept every gift: A stack of graduated-from second-grade games, a smile from the driver next to you at the light, the sunset over your blessed evening swim. The windfall may not be what you’ve expected, but it’s already here.

Libra: There are always houses you’ll want to go back to, more projects to complete, more streets you might someday park in again. It’s okay to let mourning and gratitude wash over you like gently disagreeing waves. The stars can feel the cool wash and magnetism of the paragraphs and paragraphs you’re ready to make, natural and sympathetic as breath. You’re the gentle clockwork of the tides, the moon that hides the brief comet. What you’re building is a telescope that will help us discover, cry, and change. Set a timer for twenty minutes and start your pen moving—we know it will work.

Scorpio: Imagine November! Better yet, join https://postcardstovoters.org/  and practice sharing hope and determination with strangers. You’ve got a built-in excuse to skip Thanksgiving if you need it, but hopefully you won’t need it. Your mantra is peaceful transfer of power. Your mantra is Vice President Harris. Voter suppression is a monument build on blood and fists and billy clubs and centuries; drag it from its pedestal and sink it in a lake. May Fannie Lou Hamer visit you in dreams and teach you how to textbank. May a million righteous angels guard your ballot and the ballots of all the future children. Also, here’s a really cute podcast: https://www.vote.org/podcast/

Sagittarius: When the weekly grocery store roses start to wilt or I just get tired of the cats trying to eat them, the stars like to gently take apart the petals and strew them outside the front door. It’s good to give a welcome even if only neighborhood cats are coming to visit. Give bright welcome to essential workers and their gifts, welcome neighbors with everyday questions, welcome even the landlord, unless that’s not your thing. Sometimes you can’t even help but to welcome the unwelcome lanternflies. See who and what else you can beautifully, delicately, and wholeheartedly welcome this week. Masked and six-feet-apart, of course!

Capricorn: Whatever projects you’ve started (painting a flowered fence, turning vines into blank-limbed sculpture, choosing new carpet, somehow surviving the Zoom age with (mostly) humor and grace, reading a serious book for ten minutes a day, actually getting up when the alarm goes off, weeding the garden, printing out your newest batch of Postcards to Voters addresses, filling out tedious and fruitful forms, reaching the elusive Laundry Zero, writing a poem just for you or for everyone, etc.) will flourish and grow every day, even when it doesn’t seem so. What you’re making, what you’re living, is beautiful and lasting, delicate and precious. Keep going and remember! The stars love you.

Aquarius: The stars are with you in feeling the scramble of September, the seismic Zoom-shudder of “What even IS school anyway?” We will be jangled-ly delighting in college bookstore chitchat soon enough, stacking books, remembering the radio, filling envelopes. It’s tempting to push ourselves for growth, but please be gentle: This is still survival mode. Let your work just keep you alive, occasionally giving you faces to see and tasks to complete. But! Until it’s time for vaccine days and predictable hours, set yourself a timer for 20 minutes. Draw something little, write a verse or two, sing in the car, call Congress, call a friend. Take good care with sleep, except staying up for meteors. We promise, you will have your ease.

Pisces: Holy Jeepers! The Initial Friend! The stars have thought for all these years that Take Offs and Landings aas Rilo Kiley’s first album but no! Guess what!!! There’s a whole other debut! So, like, the stars’ favorite band, long-broken-up, has a whole record I didn’t know about and it’s coming out later this year?! https://nerdist.com/article/rilo-kiley-rereleasing-rare-1999-first-album/ Whaaaaaaaat?!?! Expect more of these kinds of weird windfall miracles! In the coming months, you’ll find long-lost diamonds under the couch cushions. Your garden will overflow with volunteer flowers. And maybe, maybe, MAYBE, our bodies will welcome the glittering magic of a new vaccine, so Jenny and Blake can tour again.

Aries: Miracle of miracles, the stars returned our library books yesterday afternoon! The drop box was right there, unlocked! There’s even, in some places, curbside pickup for reserves! Make your library list long and thorough, everything you’re even flirted with reading. If you can’t library yet, remember it’s still a public service to support your local independent bookstores! (Libro.fm for audiobooks, Bookshop.org for paper books!!!) Now is your time to collect without guilt, even Marie Kondo will bless and approve your shelves.

Taurus: Turn up the sir conditioners and pretend it’s spring cleaning! Change the bedding. Vacuum and mop. Empty the wastebaskets and cross your fingers that the recycling truck will come. (That we’ll treat our essential workers fairly and safely!) Upend the bins that have gotten out of control and sort them meticulously, see what you can reclaim and what you can leave behind. Thank hole-y things for their help and send them on their way. Mend what you can. Glue gems back onto necklaces, ship stray beads away to whoever can use them anew. Save all the glass jars as vases—You’ll never not want to hand out flowers! Make room for the comfort and safety that is surely coming your way some day.

Gemini: Oh, the PUA (Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, not Pick-Up Artist) Stimulus, oh, sweet, sweet Nancy Pelosi money! The stars are grieving it with you. Whether you’ve used it to hang on by a thread or weave an unlikely and precious cushion, we praise it with you. The stars can certainly promise you more stimulae, more soft places, more gently tended paths for what comes next. This isn’t about resumes, not really. For now, sleep is free, peaches are cheap in some places, and evening walks are (sometimes sweatily) possible. The moon is in line with Saturn and Jupiter, and we promise you will always have friends who are just as astronomical.

Cancer: At a certain point, the herb garden just became a flower garden. The stars should really cook something. Look at what you already made that’s free and delicious and not TOO gnawed by baby caterpillars. Pick and smell the sage-y goodness. Chop it up into whatever mix. It’s a fantastic time to make Mojitos with all this mint!