Rob Brezsny's Astrology Newsletter
MAY 12, 2010
FreeWillAstrology.com
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How is the revised and expanded version of my book PRONOIA
IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA different from the original
edition?
The revised and expanded version has over 63,500 new words and
73 new illustrations. That's 55% additional material beyond what
the first edition had.
There are 2 extra chapters, 18 completely new pieces, plus 14
new Sacred Advertisements. Twenty-one of the original pieces of
the book have been revised and expanded, as well.
The book is available at Amazon: bit.ly/Pronoia
and also at Powells: bit.ly/PronoiaPowells
Below is an excerpt.
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THE LITERARY EQUIVALENT OF A SEX-CHANGE
(To read the entire text of this piece, go here: bit.ly/SexChange)
When I was 19, while other man-boys my age were dreaming of becoming
doctors and lawyers and rock stars, a curious ambition overtook
me: I decided I wanted to be a feminist when I grew up. As I pursued
that goal over the years, I devoted many meditations to imagining
what it's like to be a woman. While writing my second book, The
Televisionary Oracle, I lived part-time inside the psyche
of the heroine for five years.
But I have always been perfectly happy to be a heterosexual man.
The prospect of dressing in women's clothes, for costume parties
or any other reason, has never appealed to me. I'm mildly interested
in the stories of those who have decided to change their sex with
the intervention of surgery and drugs, but the fantasy of becoming
a transgender person has never flitted across my mind's eye.
My identity as an author, on the other hand, has not been as
clear-cut. I have sometimes felt like a storyteller trapped in
the body of a journalist. On other occasions, it's more the reverse.
I imagine I'm an essayist stuck inside the persona of a poet,
or else maybe a scholar lurking within the form of a wacky visionary.
The confusion doesn't stop there. My heart tells me I'm a mystical
seeker who was born to explore spiritual themes, even as my head
says I'm an artistic intellectual whose task it is to illuminate
the mysteries of concrete reality here on the material plane.
So while I've never dreamed of being a transgender person, I
have sometimes fantasized about getting a mythical trans-genre
operation -- a procedure that would cure me of the nagging sense
that I'm not the writer I'm supposed to be.
My wish was finally fulfilled during the four and a half years
I worked on my new book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia.
It taught me not to struggle against my contradictions, but rather
to celebrate them. It didn't give me the literary equivalent of
a sex-change, but rather bestowed on me a poetic license to be
the authorial equivalent of a hermaphrodite …
TO READ THE REST OF THIS ESSAY, GO HERE: http://bit.ly/SexChange
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There's a new release from the soundtrack for my book PRONOIA
IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA.
It's called "Moon Lodge"
You can access it here: bit.ly/MoonLodge
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MORE PRONOIA RESOURCES:
THE POWER AND THE GLORY REVEALED!
Raw beauty
tinyurl.com/y5mypy8
WHO'S TO SAY THIS ISN'T PRONOIAC?
The Kid's Smiling!
tinyurl.com/yyj7ak5
WE CAN'T IMAGINE THE WONDERS TO COME
An Italian inventor has developed a huge three-dimensional printer
that can print entire buildings out of sand and an inorganic binder.
tinyurl.com/y4bl2k4
(Note: I endorse these because I like them. They are not advertisements,
and I get no kickbacks.)
Please tell me your own personal nominations for PRONOIA RESOURCES.
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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Week beginning May 13
Copyright 2010 by Rob Brezsny
FreeWillAstrology.com
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
"I can't live the button-down life," says cartoon character
Homer Simpson. "I want it all: the terrifying lows, the dizzying
highs, the creamy middles." Born May 10, Homer is unusual
for a Taurus. Many of your tribe love the creamy middles but are
quite content to live without the terrifying lows, even if that
means being deprived of your fair share of dizzying highs. While
that may sometimes seem like a boring limitation, I don't expect
it to be any time soon. The creamy middles that are looming for
you are the lushest, plushest creamy middles I've seen in a long
time. Terrifying lows and dizzying highs will be irrelevant.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
Spanish painter Francisco Goya created an etching entitled "El
Sue–o de la Raz—n Produce Monstruos." Its two
possible translations have very different meanings: "The
sleep of reason produces monsters" or "The dream of
reason produces monsters." The first version suggests that
when our reasoning faculties go dormant, we're susceptible to
doing dumb and crazy things. The second version implies that if
we rely excessively on our reasoning faculty, it acquires a lunatic
hubris that devalues our emotions and distorts our imagination.
You're more susceptible to the former than the latter right now,
Gemini, but it's crucial that you avoid both. A way out of your
pain is available if you use your reason just right -- neither
too little nor too much.
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
Some of your illusions seeped into you before you learned to
talk. Others sneaked into you later, while you were busy figuring
out how to become yourself. Eventually, you even made conscious
choices to adopt certain illusions because they provided you with
comfort and consolation. There's no need to be ashamed of this.
It's a natural part of being a human being. Having said that,
I'm happy to announce that you're entering a phase when you will
have the power to shed at least some of your illusions -- especially
the ones you consciously chose -- in ways that don't hurt you.
To begin the process, declare this intention: "I have the
courage to see life as it really is."
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
According to a statute in the state of Indiana, you may not use
your bare hands to catch a fish from a lake. In Fairbanks, Alaska,
you're breaking the law if you let a moose slurp an alcoholic
drink. In Flowery Branch, Georgia, you may be arrested if you
shout out "Snake!" Arizona doesn't permit you to let
a donkey sleep in your bathtub. And yet I've got to say that you
Leos could probably get away with all of these acts and more in
the coming weeks. The omens suggest that your levels of freedom
are extremely high, as is your amount of slack. You'll have clearance
to do many things you wouldn't normally be able to do.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
I didn't think it was possible, but paranoid visions of doom
and gloom have become even more popular in the past few years
than ever before. Apocalypse-watching is no longer a fringe hobby
reserved for conspiracy fetishists; it has gone mainstream. And
yet here I am in the midst of the supposed mayhem, babbling my
eccentric ideas about how we are living in the single most wonderful
time in the history of civilization. So let me ask you a crucial
question, especially if you're one of the millions of normal people
who believes that cynicism is a supreme sign of intelligence:
Do you really want to be getting your fortune told by a rebel
optimist like me? You should know that all my horoscopes are rooted
in the hypothesis that expecting the best makes you happier, safer,
kinder, wilder, stronger, and smarter. What happens in the coming
weeks will, in my opinion, be dramatic proof of that.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
The bad news is that climate change is really underway. That's
why Purbasha Island in the Bay of Bengal has sunk beneath the
waves, swallowed up by rising sea levels and shifts in monsoon
patterns. The good news is that its disappearance has ended a
dispute between India and Bangladesh, both of which claimed it
as their own. There's nothing left to fight over. I foresee a
metaphorically comparable scenario coming to your life, Libra:
an act of nature that will render a conflict irrelevant.
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LISTEN TO AN EXPANDED HOROSCOPE
In addition to the horoscopes you're reading here, I create more
in-depth audio horoscopes for your inspiration. Find out more
at RealAstrology.com.
The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at 1-877-873-4888
or 1-900-950-7700.
"Your expanded horoscopes get more personal and intimate
with me than some of my closest friends. Thanks for the loving
reflections."
- Ari S., Ann Arbor, MI
"Your audio 'scopes have a knack for waking me up from whatever
random dream has sneaked into my brain and rendered me half-blind."
- Teresa F., Boston, MA
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SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
Some experts say methamphetamine is more addictive than any other
drug. Here's one reason why, according to "Mothers Against
Methamphetamines" founder Dr. Mary Holley: "The effect
of an IV hit of methamphetamine is the equivalent of 10 orgasms
all on top of each other lasting for 30 minutes to an hour, with
a feeling of arousal that lasts for another day and a half."
At least that's what it's like in the early stages of using the
drug. After a while, hell sets in and the body is no longer happy.
Luckily, you Scorpios won't be tempted to fall victim to meth
splurges any time soon. Without relying on anything more than
your natural powers, your capacity for experiencing erotic pleasure
will be substantial.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
Your eyes can discriminate between about 500 various shades
of gray. Let's hope your moral compass is as precise in its power
to distinguish subtle differences. Why? Because there will be
no easy black-versus-white decisions to make in the near future;
no simple, foolproof way to determine the distinctions between
good and bad. I recommend that for now you give up hope of achieving
utter certainty, and instead celebrate the refined pleasures of
nuanced, complicated truth.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
These days you have an extraordinary capacity to perform magic.
And when I use that word "magic," I mean it in a very
specific sense: causing practical changes to occur in accordance
with your most noble and beautiful desires. I'm not talking about
the kind of "magic" that helps you gratify mediocre
wishes or tawdry fantasies. I'm not saying you should go on an
acquisitive binge as you gather up booty and bragging points.
Rather I'm letting you know that you have the power to create
inspiring transformations in the way your life works.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
Do you want to know where all the power lies for you right now?
It's nowhere. Do you want to know what the nature of that power
is? It's nothing. But before you jump to conclusions about the
meaning of what I just said, read this passage from Lao Tzu's
Tao Te Ching, translated by Stephen Mitchell: "We
join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that
makes the wagon move. We shape clay into a pot, but it is the
emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. We hammer wood for
a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable."
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
A Pisces woman I know was harried by ant swarms invading her
kitchen. She could have run out to the drug store and brought
home loads of poisonous little ant hotels. Instead, she gave her
imagination the go-ahead to brainstorm. Soon she'd come up with
a solution. She scooped up a host of ants and threw them in a
blender with the other ingredients of her smoothie, then drank
it all down. The next day, all the ants had departed, as if scared
off by the Great Devourer. I suggest you learn from her example,
both in the sense of being open to outlandish possibilities and
in the sense of finding alternate ways to deal with adversaries.
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
What happens when someone "sells out"? Typically, it
refers to a person who overrides her highest artistic standards
or her soul's mandates in order to make a bundle of money. But
I want to enlarge the definition to encompass any behavior that
seeks popular appeal at the expense of authenticity, or any action
that sacrifices integrity for the sake of gaining power. I think
you have to be especially on guard against this lapse in the coming
days, Aries -- not only in yourself but also in those you're close
to.
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HOMEWORK:
For help in reinterpreting your problems as opportunities, go
here: bit.ly/ShadowBless.
Send testimony to Truthrooster@gmail.com.
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WANT TO GET YOUR CHART DONE?
I'm not doing personal charts, but I highly recommend my astrological
colleague, RO LOUGHRAN. Her approach closely matches my own. In
our many discussions about astrology over the years, we've had
a major influence on each other's work.
Ro utilizes a blend of well-trained
intuition, emotional warmth, and
a high
degree of technical proficiency
in horoscope interpretation; she
is skilled
at exploring the mysteries of your
life's purpose and nurturing your
connection with your own inner
wisdom.
Ro is based in California, but
can do phone consultations and
otherwise
work with you regardless of geographic
boundaries.
Ro's website is at YourSoulJourney.com
She can also be reached at roloughran@comcast.net
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Contents of the Free Will Astrology Newsletter are Copyright
2010 Rob Brezsny
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