The transition from summer heat to autumn cool. The light shifts and slants and when Scorpio approaches, regardless the hemisphere you reside in — well, the soul goes orange and crimson — a rich Tibetan red.

Critters rustle around slowly now. There’s lots of deer about, walking right in the middle of the road and then, once spotted, jumping to disappear into thick blackberry vines (I don’t know how the vicious thorns don’t tear their hides). Read more

And yet, though we strain
against the deadening grip
of daily necessity,
I sense there is this mystery:

All life is being lived.

Who is living it then?
Is it the things themselves,
or something waiting inside them,
like an unplayed melody in a flute?

Is it the winds blowing over the waters?
Is it the branches that signal to each other?

Is it flowers
interweaving their fragrances
or streets, as they wind through time?

–Rainer Maria Rilke
 

“Real seriousness in regard to writing is one of two absolute necessities.
The other, unfortunately, is talent.” –Ernest Hemingway

The internet has fostered the madcap idea that — given the collapse of print publishing and the world of editors and agents — everyone should be writing. Something.

Or recording music.

Or painting. Drawing. Doodling.

But — uh oh — so many can’t.

Years ago the author Toni Morrison exclaimed to whomever (whoever?) was listening that everyone in the world had a book inside of him (or her) that was just waiting to be written. Uhm, checkmate! Another author, the gadfly Fran Liebowitz, interrupted Ms. Morrison and said: “This may be true, but please don’t write it.” Read more

What’s greater, Pebble or Pond?
What can be known? The Unknown.
My true self runs toward a Hill
More! O More! visible.

And everything comes to One,
As we dance on, dance on, dance on.

— Theodore Roethke
 

It’s been the most perfect season on the island. Very Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Just the right temperature, light and mood. But my mind’s dissolving trying to wrap around the concept that summer is winding to a close.

But no prob. Music is timeless, so I’ll play this latest mix whenever I wanna feel like it’s that perfect zone right around mid-August — with the Sun hovering over my ascendant.

Like all of my cloudcasts they’re compiled to accompany creative work. Be that in the studio, the office, the garage or down in your mom’s basement if that’s where you’re living right now.

Enjoy!

“Is not every civilization bound to decay as it begins to penetrate the masses?” –Michael Rostovtzeff

Did you ever stop to think about where fortune cookies are created?

Picture a fortune cookie factory. Naturally, there’s the cookie-making division and then, too, there’s a crew that writes the fortunes.

Now, imagine a fortune cookie factory calamity.

Let’s say that the fortune scribes become confused and all of the cookie scripture gets blended together, willy nilly, into streams of nonsense that form an infinitely long strip of paper that stretches from here to Pluto.

That endless ticker tape of gibberish is the equivalent of the massive amount of babble that passes for writing (or talking) on a majority of blogs and websites dedicated to astrology. Gigs of bandwidth are gobbled —  eyeballs scan and scrape — but very little of import or relevance is ever composed, ever consumed.

Consider Google Trends, a service of the search engine where you can choose a topic, enter it into their data mine and see for yourself how interest in astrology has declined over the past fifteen years. (And is projected to continue its glide towards the bottom in the years ahead.)

This is not because astrology has become less interesting as a subject. No, as any professional astrologer will tell you, there has never been a better time to be an astrologer or become interested in the craft, especially as the research and published discoveries of the traditional school dovetail into the psychological and spiritual ethos of modern astrology.

No, the problem, as related to the internet, is threefold:

• The Truth About Mercury Retrograde
• Planetary Ennui: The Nostalgia for Samsara
• How To Make Facebook Your Slave and Preserve Your Creative Drive
• The Power, Beauty, and Wonder of the Horoscope’s 12th House
• Imbeciles at the Gate: How The Internet Destroys Astrology
• How To Escape From the Torture of Self-Help Hell
• Depression and the Solar Consciousness
• Secrets of the Heart: Love is an Action Not A Feeling
• Create Your Own Archetype & Call It You: An Escape from Evolutionary Astrology
• Redefining the Oxymoron of Sex and Marriage
• Death is the New Black
• How To Write About Astrology (Especially How Not To)
• Astrology, Ants, Hives, Essence, and Types: A Gurdjieffian View
• Final Notes About the Life-and-Culture-Changing Uranus-Pluto Square