brezsny-on-the-blog

PDX at sunrise

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): "To have more, desire less." I urge you to make that your motto in the coming days, Capricorn. You're in a phase that's ideal for expanding your horizons by cutting back on your attachments. Your wealth will grow if you renounce any greed you may be harboring. Your power will intensify if you give up your longing for control over things you can't control. So be brave. Be nervy. Have fun. As you shed insubstantial wishes and barely-relevant obsessions, you may come to resemble a monarch.


this reminds me of that advertising campaign years ago, with the whole "less is more" theme. but then i think about it a little deeper, and it makes total sense. expand my horizons by cutting my attachments.

how else am i to be free to soar straight towards those horizons?

the karmic insinuations of growing wealth (i assume in the ways that count, and not monetary or material) if i let go of greed, as well as gaining power by renouncing control, are tied to the same thing. and it's just in time for summer, where the old, bulky, dust-covered trappings of winter are being shed --like that spare tire around your waist-- for the lithe, light, and billowy freedom of warmth, sunshine, and an abundance of the wild, growing things. with the Feast of Midsummer drawing nigh, it's the perfect time for shedding insecurities, illusions of control, spiritual and emotional baggage. the perfect time to give them to the Funk for recycling. the perfect time to stretch and dance and sing, to revel in body and heart, and water the soul garden of those things that are truly important...

truth, beauty, freedom, and love.

ah, the clarion call of the revolutionary freedom fighter: be brave, be nervy, have fun! as i was telling someone last night (this morning?), there are those people who protect themselves by being closed to new experiences, by embracing all things cynical and cold, peering into the mouths of gift horses everywhere, and assuming bad and hostile things while keeping their ears closed. and they succeed in their protection. very well.

and then there are those who choose to remain open, who are soft and vulnerable, a little closer to the surface than is probably wise. their hearts shine on their sleeves. and while they might be a little frayed at the edges, battered and reeling sometimes, and with a multitude of battle scars hiding beneath their clothing, they wake up every day and polish the heart on their sleeves. the violence, hostility, and cruelty of the world baffles them at times, but they're still there, eager to find the silver lining, eager to turn over every single rock and find laughter hiding beneath.

it's a sacred uproar.

and that's exactly what i've been working toward. i mentioned here a little bit ago, on one of my sunday scribblings entries, that i was dragged kicking and screaming up to the portland area, but now that i love it so much here, i'd have to be dragged away --kicking and screaming. here is food for thought, i suppose. i'm in a phase that's ideal for expanding my horizons by cutting back on my attachments. so what keeps me here? what keeps me in this (joking) refusal to leave my home and love?

i've given this a lot of thought over the past few months, actually. the only answer i can give is, "my family." i love my parents, i love our sunday afternoons together. i love my sister *cc* and *mj*, and *ds*, *ks*, and *kas*. i wouldn't want to leave my job not because i couldn't find the same position elsewhere, but because i adore the people there. i even love my customers and their dogs. yes, even the high-strung huskies. i love the scenery, the gorgeous, breathtaking, riotously colorful world i live in. i live minutes away from unique geological wonders of the world. portland and the pacific northwest saturate my cells, every molecule, every breath i take and glass of water i drink. portland nourishes me at the most fundamental level, and i am a part of it as much as it is a part of me.

and yet...if i left, it would still be a part of me, a mark on my heart and soul like the rings of a tree. and the love i share with the people in my life wouldn't fade simply for distance. is my love for li'l *c* any less with him 576 miles away? if anything, it grows daily. it would almost increase the wonder of it, the miracle of love being a connection that encompasses the world. people spanning the breadth of the land, connected by love.

so i suppose it wouldn't be so hard to leave here, and certainly not kicking and screaming. not if the connection and love remain. not if it means embracing adventure, expanding my horizons, by shedding the needless everything that holds me grounded.

and have you ever heard of a revolutionary freedom fighter who wasn't free? ha!

forget those barely-relevant obsessions. give me true passions to lose myself in. truth. beauty. freedom.

love!


wonder. miracles. did you know that, to make a pound of honey, bees have to gather nectar from about two million flowers? to produce a single pound of the spice saffron, humans have to handpick and process 80,000 flowers. in delivering the single survivor necessary to fertilize an ovum, a man releases 500 million sperm.

dude! hold a pound of honey in your hand, and you hold two million arias of vibrant color and heavenly perfume all at once. one pound of saffron is eighty thousand crocus flowers in a single moment. make love once, just once, and you will exist in the presence of 500 million possibilities of love made manifest into a living, breathing human being.

it's, like, miracle concentrate. and it's happening all around us every single day.

what does this have to do with this week's horoscope, capricorn? only this:
how can we travel to the furthest reaches of our own horizons if we insist on holding onto the heavy, drab attachments that keep us running in place? to see more, to have more, we have to be open to more without inflicting our own expectations on the world. we have to let those go.

welcome to twenty-two minutes of world orgasm, baby.