the age of aquarius

a few days ago, i was reading one of my favorite blogs by one of my favorite singer/songwriters, amy rigby. she was talking about her very optimistic horoscope, and helpfully provided a link to the website where she’d seen it. i took the bait and looked up what is in the stars for me in january and february, and basically, it raved on and on about what a fantastic 2 month period lies ahead. jupiter is about to enter my something, and then something else is going to affect my this, and that affects my potential for jobs and money-making. mercury will be in retrograde and something, so be careful not to sign any contracts without reading carefully even though they are going to be really, really fantastic anyway and something else, too. and this will probably never happen again because jupiter only shows up in my whatever once or twice in my life. and something else really great will happen and then some other stuff, and….

oh. did i happen to mention i don’t really believe in this? 

in my early teens i came across a detailed explanation of my sign, taurus. i don’t remember specifically what it said, but i remember it talked about taurus ruling the throat, and taureans tend to be sensitive, perceptive, stubborn, spoiled, shopaholics, impatient, crave dessert, have addictive personalities. okay, it only said some of those things, but i was struck – as only you can be when you are a perceptive, sensitive taurean teenager experiencing the world for the first time. after all, i was a budding singer/songwriter, so the throat thing really did ring true, along with most of the other traits it described. over the next few years i was quickly disappointed by day-to-day horoscope predictions, and somewhere along the line i decided that there was enough truth in astrology to make it interesting, but certainly never enough truth to live my life by. my saturn return year? totally. may 2008 when everything was supposed to turn around and become fabulous? not so much.

still, when i read this gushing account of my next 2 months, i have to admit i was hooked. i even found myself waking up the next day with a whole new attitude. at this point in my life, anything that perks me up and makes me optimistic is not to be taken lightly – and i even started thinking “if all this great stuff is in the stars and just waiting to happen, what do i have to do to help it along?”. so in this way, i guess my astrology chart worked, sort of like a cosmic jump-start. its strange what we grab on to, in spite of ourselves, when that thing is inherently hopeful. yet if it leads us someplace we’ve been wanting to go, what in the world is wrong with that? i don’t know about jupiter, but i’m pretty sure there’s nothing wrong with wishing on a star.