This is no time for refined conversation, pointed lines, or subtleties of transference. This is a time for raucousness, for horselaughs, and for barking.

It’s spring!

In March, Venus and Mars are peregrine. We feel awkward around this time of the year, like we’re emerging from something tedious and have no idea what to do with our hands when we are talking to someone. Mercury spends most of the month in Pisces. We have no idea what to do with our words and we opt for weird noises instead. The Sun goes into Aries, passing over the equinox point.

This is no time for refined conversation, pointed lines, or subtleties of transference. This is a time for raucousness, for horselaughs, and for barking.

Dogs bark but so do owls. Cats will also sometimes bark though this is uncommon behavior. The closest human equivalent to barking is laughter and sobbing. Barking is puppy-like behavior, which dogs retain into adulthood. Wolves do this less. Wolves behave like adults.

If March is a puppy month, then it’s also a month of barking. Barking is immature behavior and we tend to find ways to discourage it from happening. Barking happens when someone is scared, when someone is bored, and—sometimes—it happens when we are having fun.

If February was about softening judgment, then new spring is about practicing playful aggression. Aggression is sometimes physical force, sometimes mischievous trickery, and sometimes social meanness. Aggression doesn’t always feel safe for everyone. Playful, consensual aggression has the ability to shift our bodies out of social anxiety and fear. It is not possible to feel fear when we are in a state of aggression. Sometimes we get trapped in fear. Other times, we find a way to guide ourselves into aggression.

Practicing playful aggression is performing aggression with lowered stakes. Playful aggression is tag, is hide and seek, is riddle telling, and is kink play. We like to play with aggression because it hones our instincts, because it increases our confidence, and—most of all—because it is very, very fun!!!

In March, I want you to toy with playful aggression. The first step is consent. For consensus to be reached, there must be shared imagination about the rules and parameters of play. You must decide whether you are playing tackle tag, whether a tap is enough, and whether there is a home base. You must decide on which insults turn you on. You must decide whether you not you will tell the answer to a baited riddle before giving it over.

The next step is to provoke. Chase each other. Pillow fight. Tell your riddle and smile in secret. Make each other cry. You know what to do. If you don’t right away, do something to loosen your muscles.

And then, after, you must bond. Hug it out. Enjoy the riddle once more by involving a new person. Cuddle. This is the hardest part but perhaps the most crucial of them all. It is maybe the point of all of this.

Pisces

If spring ever makes you most sensitive to your fears of social exclusion, remember this for yourself gently this year. Acknowledge any fear that you might have around not rising to the challenges that you know. Pretend that you are a tiger who is about to pounce. Imagine yourself tackling those challenges in tiger form.

It’s your birthday season. Birthdays are about celebrating life. All of your feelings around what it has meant to survive the past couple years are incredible. You are capable of feeling all of them, even if they appear to contradict themselves and one another. When in doubt, stomp your foot and yell.

Aries

What space do you give yourself to allow immaturity or do you expect yourself to be very mature every moment of every day? Does immaturity feel like an error, a cosmic mistake, and a slip of the usual posture? Who the hell taught you how to be an adult in the first place?

Practice consent and protection around immaturity. Being in a childlike headspace is actually so, so vulnerable. When you whine, beg, and explore do you acknowledge first that you’re practicing childishness? And that you are allowed to practice childishness at least sometimes? That you can respect your childishness with attention? By seeing where it wants to go, guiding it, and giving it notice?

Taurus

Taurus What would you act like, what would you do, and what would you feel like if you believed that you have everything that you need? If you knew that, just by imagining something, that you could realize you have what it takes to make that thing alive with you? What if you are God getting ready to breathe life into stoneware? What kind of intricacies would you animate and what kind of forms would you move through? What if you believed that dreams are not for believing in but for walking with?

Jupiter is in your eleventh house. Jupiter, planet of power, is your friend. Jupiter, who rejoices in helping you, wants you to share his power. Jupiter, who is domicile and has everything that he needs, is where he can know you. God is your friend right now. Wow.

Gemini

Find all of the people who you’ve accidentally left behind over the years. If it is okay to change and to move, then it is also okay to remember. You’ve left your mark on a lot of different people over the years. You’ve asked some very good questions and you’ve changed some lives. This is what friendship is. It’s not the people you are willing to go to the mall with now. It’s all the people who have known of your magic over a lifetime.

You’re most hungry for real friendship these days. I’m talking about real friendship where your ability to know each other also creates real hope. I’m talking about real friendship where you have nothing and everything to prove to each other. I’m talking about real friendship with its three hour phone calls and twin tongues. This is what you are hungry for and, man, what a hunger it is.

Cancer

March is about protection this time. Have you ever fallen in love with protection? Have you ever doubted whether protection could exist for someone like yourself? Have you ever wished for protection for someone who wasn’t afforded any?

Try this: make your body as big as possible. Then, slowly, get very small. Make yourself big again. I want you to fight for your right to protection, not from other people, but to demand it from yourself. I want you to walk around knowing that self protection is always an option. I want you to practice kicking and yelling. I want your footsteps to become louder in March so that, when you walk down a hallway, no one doubts that it is you.

Leo

It’s time to…wake up!! You’ve been pressed into a slumber for quite some time. It’s time for up regulation. Stand on the balls of your feet and bounce. Jostle your shoulders and stretch as high as you can possibly go. Winter is over now. It’s time to fall back in love with being awake.

Go to the beach earlier than everyone else is willing to go. Ride your bike down a hill. Start germinating any seeds that you can to sprout. Everyone still feels awkward from the winter but you’re the king of awkwardness. It doesn’t phase you. You know exactly how to induce a belly laugh and you don’t give a shit whether it’s the right moment or not.

Virgo

Hang out with a non-human animal sometime in March. With this non-human animal, play a game of performing aggression and fear. Crouch down low and pretend to snarl, tapping your play partner lightly on the head. Put your paws out to communicate that you are in a play state. Dangle a toy and let your play partner chase you. Squeal together.

When you play, pay attention to whether your play partner notices whether you are in a state of fear or aggression. Take notice of which they react most strongly to. Do they ask you what is going on when they see that you are about to pounce or when they notice that you’re trying to cower and hide?

Libra

When in doubt, pretend that you’re a clown. Paint your nose red in the mirror and put on your big shoes. When in doubt, have some fun instead. Doubt is an emotion that allows you to check in with all of your muscles. Lingering in doubt means that you are treating your nervous system the way a helicopter parent treats a teenager. When in doubt, strike a silly pose and do a hilariously embarrassing party trick.

March is about your goofiness. It’s about exploring, expressing, and indulging in this goofiness at all costs. You may have grown up at some point, started paying bills on time and created some kind of resume. But, your goofiness survives. It wants your attention. When you neglect this goofiness for too long, that’s when it starts arriving via tantrum and in meanness. When you remember that you’re just a clown in real person clothes, then you start having fun.

Scorpio

Have you been very angry at work as of late? Perhaps it’s not any essential wrongness but a consequence of the everyday tragedy of missing sunlight. At some point this month, even if it is just for a day, I want you to play hooky. Call it a mental health day, say you’re sick, or whatever. Walk out and say that you have a doctor’s appointment. Somehow, in some way, steal a piece of your time back for yourself.

Notice what you suddenly have the appetite to do when you feel a tiny bit bad about having free time. Do you suddenly want to go to a museum or a park? Are you suddenly at the ocean collecting pebbles? Are you making a big painting in your room? It’s amazing. You may never have the energy to do these things on proper weekends or scheduled days off but, when you play hooky, you get the chance to figure out all the inappropriate things that you might actually want to do.

Sagittarius

Look at that body of yours. Which parts feel like they are worthy of your time and consideration? Worthy of worship, of seduction, and of praise? What parts of yourself do you practice like a trumpet and which parts staccato like a beat? Which parts help you dance? What parts of your body help you find laughter when you are confronted with the surprising and the beautiful?

Which parts feel like they are unworthy of being loved? Are there any that have become forgotten? Do you trust that your funny pinky toe, your scarred right butt cheek, and your smiling eye wrinkle are all moments of you that are worthy of being beloved? How might these funny pieces of you beg for affection? Do they need a soliloquy or are they happiest with a mere tickle?

Capricorn

Metabolize loss through action. You might always feel some regret or fear around past or future loss. That’s fine. It’s an important emotion. What do you do with these emotions? You metabolize them through action. You do things in response to regret or to fear and you watch yourself make snap decisions, observe your messes, and learn about what it is that you really want by feeling the push and the pull of getting some of the things that you like and some of the things that you dislike.

You’ll never know exactly what you are doing every step of the way. Stop trying to procrastinate under the guide of preparation. You might actually start to convince yourself there. If you are lost, you can find your way. If you are cold, you can build a fire. Just start moving.

Aquarius

Do some kind of creative work for free. Choose this creative work well since you are seldom able to afford working for free. Do something that you would do for yourself. Do something quick and fast, that you can’t possibly waste too much time on. Do something that you will not be able to leave for many years. Do it so that you are able to practice the joyful act of doing something with almost no stakes at all.

Sometimes, labor is drudgery. Often, labor is not consensual. Sometimes, labor is also a calling. It’s spiritual. Sometimes, labor is a work of service towards the things that keep you alive. Sometimes, you may want to work for free. This isn’t a diminishment of your value. It’s not a character flaw. It’s something that will happen from time to time. Your agency in choosing to work for free, aside from a mark of power, is also a reminder that you might choose to live when you are not forced to earn a living.