In July I want you to consider the art of sleeping.

No one really knows why we sleep—or, rather, that’s what I learned once on a trip to the Kansas City Science Museum. I was somewhere in elementary school and there had been an exhibition on sleeping and dreams. I remember seeing, at the end of the walkthrough, that—quietly—a text reminded us that no scientist has ever been able to figure out what the purpose of sleeping or dreaming actually is.

Cancer season is for sleeping. Jupiter, that object of wonder, returns backwards and bends itself towards Saturn. Right when the Sun enters its hottest, Venus tucks itself shyly into Virgo.

Things move slowly during summer’s retrograde season even as Mercury runs direct now and bounces into its domicile towards the end of the month. Our thoughts are running quickly but our bodies move slowly. What better time is it than now for dreaming?

When I think about sleep, I think of Usagi, or Sailor Moon, getting scolded by her mom for being too sleepy a teenager. I think of Shinji Ikari huddled in bed with headphones in and unable to communicate to the world. A lot of us remember our teenage years as sleeping problems, I think, since teenagers need so much sleep and yet are so deprived of it. 

When I think about dreams, I think of China Dream by Ma Jian or Paprika by Yasutaka Tsutsui. Paprika is the story of a dream healer who has to protect her technology from those who seek to control others through their dreams. China Dream is a novel about a CCP bureaucrat who hallucinates that he has developed a mechanism for controlling dreams because he cannot find his way out of his own trauma.

There is an escapism to sleep but there is a rebellion also. To sleep is to say no to things that you, simply, don’t want to do. Dreaming is often imagined as a fear around the loss of control. We understand that we are not in control of our dreams and we sometimes wonder who is. The right to dream is also the right to heal. The right to heal is not a privilege. Rather, it is essential. Sleep and dreams are essential.

This July, I want you to let yourself sleep. Let yourself sleep in. Let yourself go to bed early. Let yourself lie in bed with music playing when you can’t go to sleep. Let yourself drift off to sleep without the need for aids. Let yourself sleep during the day. Let yourself sleep like a softened cat—without strategy and slowly, without shame.

Cancer

When you put your head down at night, don’t worry about all of the anxieties of the day coming back to swim around your ears. A lot of your anxieties will look worse at midnight than they do in the morning. Instead of avoiding anxiety by avoiding sleep, let yourself have your worries and then see what happens when you improvise a guilty bedtime story using these worries.

If you are worried about what other people think of you, tell yourself a fairytale about unconditional love and acceptance. If you are worried about getting fired, imagine the most beautiful and generous sugardaddy or mommy taking care of you. If you are hypervigilant about yourself, imagine taking the most luxurious bath possible. Bedtime stories are pleasurable, address fear, and are always simple enough to be repeatable.

Leo

It takes so, so much for you to be able to dream with another person. It sometimes takes more trust to be able to fall asleep next to someone than it does to fuck them. Stop sleeping next to people who you can’t sleep next to.

Go home if you find yourself unable to close your eyes next to a hookup. Sleep in a different room than your partner if you don’t feel right falling unconscious next to them for a week or two. Tell your parents that you would like to see them during the day and not stay over if you don’t want to sleep under their roof. Protect your bed space, your sleep space, and your dream space.

Virgo

You do a lot of your dream work during the day. When you write poetry or manifestos or notes about what you see and witness in the world, you’re practicing the art of dreaming. When you organize thoughts and ideas with friends, you’re practicing the art of dreaming with community. When you talk about your visions and dreams and wonders, you are also telling yourself what you would like to dream.

Dream out loud, in the open, and with other people. Involve other people into your dreams not by scripting them but by sharing images and symbols and meanings. Let yourself believe that dreams become actual when they are understood.

Libra

You need to start to believe in some of your own dreams. If you don’t believe in them, who else will? No one else can see the impressions and memories that you remix in your subconscious by the simple magic of yearning. Believe in what you want, whatever it is you want.

In order to believe in your dreams, you will need to allow yourself to be as naive as possible. You will need to allow yourself to be seen as naive by other people. I know that this can be hard for someone as world weary as you. Don’t sweat it. Just say foolish things loudly until you get the hang of it.

Scorpio

It is your nostalgia that buffers your edges from the world. It is your memories that you see time through. It is through the things you know that you see the things that you could know. There is no logic or room for wit in memory keeping. There is only sadness and deep, side splitting humor.

Sleep is for getting to know yourself, deeper, and in more ways that you thought you ever could. Sleep is for the unbothered and the battered. Sleep is for you when you’re feeling blue and it is for you when you bounce off the walls. You don’t really understand yourself until you know how you sleep. Get to know yourself.

Sagittarius

I know that you don’t want to sleep until you’re not allowed to do it. That’s why you fall asleep anywhere but your bed—on the couch, in the train, and across a friend’s lap. You sleep at work and you work deep into the night, eyes wide and fingers busy doing something very important. Your sleep is a protest and it’s the richest one that you know. It’s how you say “no” to the world.

Structure your “no.” Plan for it. Allow yourself the ability to say it and to fall asleep when you are worn out and not just when you feel too frustrated to work anymore. Sleep at night and rise in the morning. Set an alarm for when you want to be out of bed and not when you need to instead of a bedtime.

Capricorn

You can’t control who you dream about. Notice who is willing to show up to you when you are unconscious. Notice the things they do and the things that they say. Don’t be freaked out by it. The people who show up in your dreams are all only just versions of yourself. How they interact with you reveals your relationships to your own versions of you.

Sleep well and deep enough to support a rich dream life. Have sprawling conversations in your dreams. Make out with people who you wouldn’t make out with in real life in your dreams. Talk to people who have passed on and listen to what they have to say. Give yourself enough time, upon waking, remember all of the shenanigans you got up to that night.

Aquarius

Set a bedtime. No more “just one more episode” or “just until I finish the climax of this delicious book.” Set a time when you stop looking on your screens and fretting about your day. Factor in an hour for yourself to wind down, clean yourself, and moisturize before bed. Plan enough time between putting your head down and actually falling asleep that you have plenty of time to ponder your pillow thoughts.

Planning a bedtime is about demonstrating your mastery over your own routine. You are allowed to let yourself go to bed whenever you are tired. You are allowed to recognize that you are tired whenever you like. You are allowed to dream whenever you want. Stop working at the same hour everyday and tuck yourself into bed as if you are your own baby.

Pisces

Get romantic about sleep. It’s such a romantic activity, isn’t it? I mean, you put on the most beautiful clothing you own (pajamas), you surround yourself with soft and warm things, and you get to think about whatever it is that you want to think about for more than eight hours.

Sleep is as precious as your romanticism. Treat it that way. Protect it and cherish it the way that you protect and cherish yourself. Brag about how much sleep you have been getting and about how sexy you feel when you get to sleep as much as you do. Dress up for sleep. Sigh into it. Close your eyes and become helpless to it.

Aries

Tire yourself out enough that you are able to sleep well at night. The secret to sleeping well is to do all of the things that you wanted to do that day, without apology, so that you lay in bed fully satisfied and without regret.

Go and see the friends who live kind of faraway and scrub your bathroom down when you need to and not when you finally feel like it. Get all of your chores done early. Wake up early and journal while your rice for the day cooks in the cooker. Enjoy your life and you will sleep well. Don’t hoard your energy but spend it relentlessly, knowing that you will recuperate whenever it is that you need.

Taurus

Read an analog book before bed—not articles on your phone and not your Twitter feed. Read a book with printed words on a printed page with no blue light that you can put away without hurry. Choose good bedtime reading materials that make you think of what it is that you need to think about before falling unconscious.

What you want, when you hit your sweet spot of inspiration, is when your pillow thoughts build coherently enough over the days that you don’t need to put sober influence upon them during the day but you also don’t let go of them upon interruption. You want smooth thoughts and change just enough every night. You want special night time to think your night thoughts.

Gemini

Dream work isn’t about trying to control your dreams. It’s about noticing the totality of what it is that you dream about. There will be words and slogans and conversations that make sense to dream-you that don’t make sense to awake-you. There will be feelings that your dream-body experience that you will be unable to keep with you when you awaken.

Don’t wake up so abruptly. Spend some time meandering out of your dreamworld and into the waking world. These gray zones are where you do your cataloguing—where you decide what was significant enough to be brought back. You feel most alive when in gray zones. Let yourself have some time in this one.