To Heal, I Need the Victories

 

If you need science and not just feels (though science gives me ALL the feels!) go here: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/fully-vaccinated.html

It’s been a long year. A long five years. As I move (I hope) out of survival mode and start to process the multifaceted trove of traumas these Trump/Bernie/Russia/Covid years have wrought, I think it’s important to pause here and be in awe at what we (And by WE I mean those of us who believe in justice, empathy, and science!) have just accomplished.

Thursday before last, I was having a generically shitty day. After all of the put-aside-in-order-to-live claustrophobia of quarantine, I was snappish with my neighbors and ready to drive one million miles away. I was having another round of seemingly insurmountable Zoom issues at work without the grace of my calm-down-we’re-in-an-emergency tend-and-befriend vibes.

After too-numerous calls to my BFF, I did what I often do when I’m trying to motivate myself enough to get ready for bed: I put on Nicole Wallace’s podcast. (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deadline-white-house/id1367201919)

(It used to be Joy Reid but she gets too Franken-y sometimes! Cry emoji!)

President Biden’s remarks on the newest CDC regulations lead the show: https://www.c-span.org/video/?511762-1/president-biden-speaks-rose-garden-cdc-eases-mask-wearing-guidelines He was speaking in the rose garden and a purple finch was singing its heart out in the background. A finch-size ray of sunshine-hope shined in and melted my crabby heart just a little bit.

The president said something like “You’ve earned the right to smile at each other” and that felt exactly, exactly right. I made going-to-the-movies plans. I bought (GASP!) concert tickets! (Wilco (ok) with Sleater Kinney (OMG!)

And then I felt completely overwhelmed.

But it’s a good idea to stop for a second and acknowledge what science (what humanity!) has accomplished. Miracle doesn’t seem like the right word, but that’s how this new whole-face life hits me. I’m in awe that I get to elbow-high-five my students! I get to feel the simple joy of handing a kid a book after more than a year of reading through screens.

Yes, the depression-machine that is facebook (and also the depression-machine that is my brain) will always remind us, there’s so far to go from here, so much work to do. We vaccinated lucky ducks may not be ready to let go of masks for any number of reasons. It’ll take stages and steps. It feels vulnerable for my face to be exposed, and maybe I’ll even be mistaken for predatory. But smiling at my neighbors and getting the HECK out of the neighborhood sometimes both feel like such momentous things!

2020 In Protest Art! (Most Mine, Some the Neighborhood's)

 

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!

Poetic License Horoscopes for July 6-12

Cancer: Get all of your advice this week from Carly Rae Jepsen! Cut through the clouds, break the ceiling! Wake up in tangles, oh! You don’t have to avoid dizzy love or a hope-comedown, Cancer, just get some pretty craft scissors, the kind with fancy scalloped edges, and cut to the feeling.

Leo: “That strange feeling of being there and not being there came back. One line led to another and a story slowly formed under my hands.”—Lynda Barry in the amazing magical creativity book What It Is. Set a timer for 20 minutes and do the thing. Let the interruptions of your inner censors fall to the ground like seeds. Disregard their voices until the vines grow up though your feet, grow up your arms, and move whatever you make to (your) nature’s own whims.

Virgo:  Get you somebody who looks at you the way Christian Cooper listens to birds. Take everything else you need, heart, soul, and song, from this best piece of video ever recorded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qd2XyGFTzk

Libra: You’ve dedicated your art to helping repair the world, good! As you go into new clarity and purpose, take care of your best resource: you! What new flair can you bring to sleep? A couch nap for no reason? A dadlike snooze in the chair with the TV on? You must be able to get the sound of baseball somewhere! Practice hearing the thrum of the fan, the conversations of the birds, the dispatches from your very own overflowing heart. (See also: Leo)

Scorpio: Undistracted by footprints, the waves leave a beautiful, studied, regular pattern on the sand. With prisms in all the windows, the order of all things becomes clear: the rainbows swim and dance all around like a cosmic clock. (Because that’s what they are.) The angle of the sun is dependable. So are the tides! And so are you.

Sagittarius:  The stars chose “Truth Hurts” by Lizzo as our handwashing song and we sincerely regret it—it’s sad that such a good song just reminds us of soap! But on the other hand, let’s consider the MIRACLE of soap! What a gift that 20 seconds is! To have warm running water and a clean towel. Even in this new wave of pandemic, there are new ways to find the luxury! Unless today’s just not that kind of day for you, then fuck it!

Capricorn:  Remember your breath and praise it! Give it every reward for continuing to keep you alive. Guided meditations about rainbow chakras! (Trigger warning for pseudoscience though!) Smell the sweet smells of strawberries, lake water, green grass, and wine. Breathe the rhythm of the waves, the angle of the sun, the sound of your feet on the pavement and your fast songs turned all the way up and the sweat pouring down—your breath deserves every gift and luxury, every pretty, embroidered mask.

Aquarius:  After you’re done helping the stars throw all of the confederate statues in the river, let’s get the founding fathers next! One of the reasons the colonies declared independence was that they felt like England was getting too abolotiony! Be VERY abolitiony this week, Aquarius, both within and without. What symbols of terrifying old structures can you dismantle? Who is the real protagonist in the story? Not George Washington! Not Benjamin Franklin! Not even Alexander Hamilton! But probably Lin Manuel Miranda.

Pisces: Today is a good day to arrest the cops who murdered Breonna Taylor. Today’s a good day to say all the names. Write them on every light post, every dusty window, ever breath of condensation, ever sparkler trail, on every chalk-decorated sidewalk, across your own face. It won’t bring them back but it will honor them. Today’s a good day to honor them.

Aries: Duolingo, if you get behind on your language practice, will change all of your Level Five badges into golden little broken mirrors. It’s very sad. You have to fix them by practicing, but you don’t have to start all the way over, so that’s good! Take your time, Aries, but start repairing gently whatever it is you let fall away. A little green owl in a yellow tracksuit will praise you for your effort, and so will the stars.

Taurus: It’s a good week for mending. If you can’t figure out how to patch a given tear, sew on a little silk flower. Stitch the petals as much as you need and save a few extra, the way you might save the extra buttons that came with your favorite clothes. Give them their own little box marked “Special little things for mending.” Thread your needle, join an enriching Zoom, and get to work.

Gemini: “Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.” sings George Washington as he gets ready to resign in Hamilton. Give it a listen and think about saying goodbye, about peaceful transfer of power, and about what you can do today to teach the current monster-in-chief to say goodbye. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEqnXNsAFL8

Poetic License Horoscope June 29-July 5

Cancer: As Pete and Frank sing on 30 Rock, “It’s never too late for now.” Still wishing you’d started a quarantine hobby? Go ahead! Need to re-fall in love with the One that Got Away and get all Sliding Doors-y? Why not, as long as you have your unfollow button handy! We all need muses. Even if your Shiny New Thing is extreme napping, go for it with your entire heart! It’s not like we can go to the movies. (I mean, we can, but there’s that whole not-wanting-to-die thing.)

Leo: No matter WHAT claustrophobia or commentary comes your way, the stars think you’re doing GREAT! How can a person with an entire apron collection possibly do any wrong?! Your family is well-loved, if not always well-slept. There’s sunshine coming in all the windows all the time. I assume your ceiling fans have been installed against the insidious humidity. If you can, fix up a gentle drink and go read outside for a while. Or just look at leaves and listen for birdsong. Do yourself one favor after another. You’ve been doing a WONDERFUL job.

Virgo: The stars keep dreaming roadtrips home from California, even though we’ve been gone for sixteen years. We know what it means. Random visitors keep joining the trip—a problematic aunt, a student and her family, a dear former massage therapist who once came with us on a hunt for fairy houses. The dreams are like The Muppet Movie in reverse—retracing our steps, dropping off friends, forgetting to say goodbye. It’s okay, other adventures await you. For now, rest and write.

Libra: “We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers. Our power is in our ability to make things unworkable.”—Bayard Rustin. Listen to the unsung king who planned the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom! Fly in the way of every racism you see. Carry every policeman (literal and metaphorical) away into the clouds. Sing and scream glitter and blessings at every pedestal until all the bad statues are in the sea where Aquaman can punch them.

Scorpio: “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”—Angela Davis in 2014. You don’t have to steal vibranium artifacts from museums, but you can if you want to! Whatever is glowing around the purple edges of possibility, smash the glass and take it. The stars have been told by therapists that we have to work on our locus of control, but it really is up to every one of us to reorder the world and make it glowing, make it just.

Sagittarius: We’ve been too sheepish to Google it yet, but the stars are in the market for a beautiful fly swatter in rose gold. This is because we are tired of taking off a shoe every time we see a spotted lanterfly nymph getting ready to eat the garden. What beautiful and absolute solution can you find to an invasive, ravenous annoyance? How can you decorate unpleasant necessity?

Capricorn: There are lots of different theories about the too-many-fireworks-lately. It’s even been suggested that they’re provided by the government and meant to deprive activists of sleep! Maybe! More likely, fireworks are fun and sparkly, a loud and mostly safe release. Either way, either way, don’t call the police! Find a way to gaze up in wonder, even now that the the surge and spark is commonplace. You’re alive, after all, if you’re reading this! I hope you’re reading this!

Aquarius:  THE STARS WANT TO SEE MORE PICTURES OF YOUR QUARANTINE OUTFITS!  We CANNOT get enough of fancy-for-no-reason or of pajamas outside! Go for both at once, why not?! We’re a little freakish and ghoulish for enjoying this magical moment in fashion history, but nonetheless: You are soft, sweet, ruffled, and comfy, trimmed with tiny bows. You never, ever have to wear shows that hurt. Sure, get wistful for eye makeup and showing your whole face, but make up for it in mask style and Zoom glamour. This is a time, as all times should be, of making beautiful room for ourselves.

Pisces: Season Two of Homecoming stars Janelle Monáe! Who would you be if you woke up on a boat having forgotten your own name? What friends would you make to save you or be saved? What hotel-key spoilers? What surprising reveals. Check your “Previously ons” and see what might be next!

Aries: Maybe, I hope, things have calmed down enough in your heart and mind that you might be able to catch up on Welcome to Night Vale! (Remember how chilling it was in that one episode when the sirens had stopped?) Listen to Cecil calm and gaslight, spin suspicion into peace.  Find out and follow the proverb of the day. Listen on the way home from the beach where DEFINTELY not enough people wear masks or just while you’re home folding your mask collection into neat little Marie Kondo tubes. Sometimes there’s order, even just in a story that rings in your ears.

Taurus: This week, the stars returned to Longwood Gardens, wearing a dress that made it look like we should be hitting on Duckie at the prom. (Though you know we’re a Blaine girl…) There were so, so many new flowers, new angles, new light—it was like guided meditation in a dream. In the waterlily garden, a blue dragonfly had alit on nearly every lily’s metal nameplate. Find something that steady, that sustaining, and rest.

Gemini: OMG the Hamilton movie comes out on Friday!!! We’ll be watching with my sister’s family who live five and a half hours away, linked by a group text and five years of car-singing. Y’all! We will get to watch David Diggs play Lafayette AND Jefferson, at least one of whose statues should be taken down and thrown into the sea. Remember “Tomorrow, there’ll be more of us.” At the March for Our Lives? Remember “Love is love is love is love’? In a hundred years if there’s still an America, it will be 80 percent because of Hamilton. It’s better than we deserve.

Say Her Name Street Art! (Abolish the Police! And ICE!)