Here’s to those who learn about themselves instead of other people—to the cynics to find hope only through action.

To be honest, I’ve been taking a lot of loss as of late. There’s the loss of paying for something that you didn’t need, the loss of cutting a seed off before it pays you, and the loss of misreading something and suffering the consequences. There’s the loss of buying a plane ticket at the wrong time and the loss of buying the wrong equipment for a project only to lose the receipt. There’s the loss of getting held up by a late train. I, too, have been scamming because I bought fake insurance outside of the government marketplace.

But it’s okay. Loss is how I learn. Venus has been in an awkward place.

My hometown is a place that is shaped by loss, not gain. You can clearly tell the difference between a place shaped by loss and a place shaped by gain. In places that are shaped by gain, everyone is trying to assess risk to see whether or not loss will happen. People hire consultants for everything. Everyone trusts due process.

In places that are shaped by loss, you can only learn something by trying to do it. You’re uninterested in consultants and uninterested in proven processes because you’re only interested in trying things that no one else has tried before. You understand that everything else is failure. When you’re from a place shaped by loss, you learn to play as though you have nothing to lose.

Venus exalts in April. Pisces is a sign that treats both benefics well. Benefics are winners. They’re planets that like to do well and, when happy, they’ll make sure you, too, do well. The Sun exalts in April too and, when exalted, the Sun loves to play.

There was a mulberry tree in the golf course near the apartment complex I grew up in. I would sneak in through a hole in the fence and follow a stream. Once you found the tree, you could eat as many berries as you wanted. We would do this kind of thing often—pick chestnuts off trees in the bucket fulls and give them to people at poker games. 

Last summer in Brooklyn, I found a row of mulberry trees near a new construction. No one was eating from the tree. It just sat there, fruiting uselessly. Apparently, there used to be fruits trees all over Prospect Park but they cut them down because people weren’t buying enough fruit during the summers.

I think that people aren’t used to seeing opportunities because we’re too used to advertisement. We’re too used to seeing only what is available to buy or sell. We’re not used to noticing all of the fruit, all of the berries, and all of the resources that are available. There is always more available. No matter what you lose, there is always more out there to eat.

April, with that exalted Venus and exalted Sun, with Saturn at the nodal bendings, is about finally fucking losing the world and noticing the earth. It’s about realizing that reality is what you live and not what you think. It’s about understanding that real losses are almost always less frightening than predicting fears.

Here’s to those who learn about themselves instead of other people—to the cynics to find hope only through action. Here’s to those who can only learn by doing, by taking loss, by messing up, and by starting again.

Aries

Hey, it’s your birthday. You get to cast a spell on yourself this year. This spell must be planned and spontaneous because you of all people understand that you can never predict the weather no matter how faithfully you log its symptoms. This spell must be at least one big effort for you to tell yourself exactly who you are.

You already know what it is that you want even if you don’t have the words to take yourself exactly there. That’s fine. Wanting is about change and not about satisfaction. Are you more willing to pay safe money to buy a class about something you never try or are you more willing to take a loss in order to learn something about yourself that no one else can teach?

Taurus

Taurus

What would you find the audacity to want if you knew that there was nothing to protect you? These days, you’re not sowing. You’re planting. You can plant only as big a plant as you know the names of. What kinds of desire do you already know the name of and what kinds of desire are you willing to tip your fedora in an introduction to?

Shoot big. When you fail, you’ll fall short only of your most enlightened goals. You’ll land somewhere different and that’s all that matters. There’s always wisdom in overshooting and never any in living scared. And don’t just talk the talk. Make the effort to do exactly what you think you are capable of doing.

Gemini

Make your space larger. Move a furniture item so that you open up the floor. Get rid of an extra chair that you don’t use but always trip over. Move if you want to and if it’s time. Get a larger bed and make love bigger. Get brighter lights that make it so that you can no longer avoid the corners.

Whatever it is that you’re doing, you need space. Stop trying to squeeze everything into what you already know. Account for more space than you need right now because you understand that you will grow. Make big paintings on big canvases. Wear big shoes and run. Stand tall in your heels and look up at the sky. You should always know where you need to go when you want to spread your arms and legs out.

Cancer

When you need something—when you need it desperately and frustratingly—try something. Bear with me here. Try, simply, to give the thing you want to someone else. If you need a friend, help two acquaintances get closer to each other. If you want to fall in love, play wingman for a loved one. If you want to be fed, spoon feed a lover.

There’s a certain generosity of spirit that hangs around you in April. This spirit is a good spirit. It will show you that you have and are capable of becoming more than you had assumed to be true. However, this good spirit demands payment done in good faith before it is willing to give. When it gives, it gives forever. All it asks for is your sweet trust.

Leo

There is no reason to feel bogged down by what it is that you are already known for. You can and will always be known for something else tomorrow. If you were to start doing what you do again, knowing all that you know and with the tools you have, how would you fandangle this?

Put away that old pride and start cultivating the new. You must always have pride but you must never allow the things that you praise yourself for to grow stale in vision. To do so means that you have forgotten to grow. You are already good at the things you are good at. So what? What now?

Virgo

You have more people than you can account for. It’s when you try to account that certain faces and certain names drop off. You are more meaningful than you know. There are people whose lives you’ve changed and there are those who’ve touched you and turned you. You have chosen kin, you have hidden ancestors, you have animals who watch you everyday, and you have those who think of you when they are in a certain mood.

There’s a lot of you to go around. You get larger in spirit the more you disclose. This isn’t the time for secrets and subtleties. This is the time for big flirtations and explicit invitations. Remember that you always have more people that you think you do and act accordingly with that self assuredness in mind.

Libra

What if life were not a simulation? What if nothing that must be conveyed through print was actually real? What if you lived not to prove something to an algorithm but to feel the wind on your skin? What if there weren’t nearly as many consequences as you were brought up to think there are? What would your life look like then?

There is no super intelligent apparatus that records your every move and notes it down. Most of what you do is a mystery even when you do not try to hide it. No one is keeping track of you. You can do whatever it is that you want to do. April is about permission. You have it and you’re the only one who can possibly give it back to yourself.

Scorpio

You’re already going through one of the horniest transits with Jupiter in your fifth house. When Venus and Mars enter in April? Well—play safe and play well. Understand how to build pleasure up slowly, how to catharsis it fast. Know when you want to delay and yearn and when you are ready for satisfaction. You can give yourself anything that you want.

You can give yourself anything that you want. What does that mean to you? What kind of world does that open up for you? What makes you into pleasure’s most fervent advocate? There’s so much in a single choice when that choice means that you can touch someone else. April is about erotic power. Have fun.

Sagittarius

You’re going to have so much time this spring. All you have to figure out is how to say no to plans you don’t want to do so that you have the time to do things you do want to do. You know whether or not you do something by hunch. When you agree to go somewhere and don’t want to, you don’t show up. This is why the people you don’t like think that you are unreliable.

Stop saying yes to things that you don’t want to do. Go exactly where you want even if that means going on your own. You can always do anything that you tend to do with a friend by yourself. It never takes away from your enjoyment and it’s your joy that draws those around you close.

Capricorn

Now that you are no longer who you thought you had to be, go out and stake a bet. Staking a bet might look like learning how to actually plant a tree with your weekend because you never learned as a kid. It might look like spending the time needed to make a new friend before you know whether or not you really like each other. It might look like buying a camera before you know whether you will like photography or not.

Life is short and for the living. What that means is that you can’t possibly waste the miracle of life doing things that you hate doing. Your time is the most precious thing out there. When you spend time for a purpose, that’s the biggest risk you’ll ever take.

Aquarius

For once in your life, you’re calling the shots. You’re unused to this and this means that you either hesitate and dilly dally when you need to move fast or that you get pushed into things when it would have benefitted you to wait. It’s okay. You are learning the importance of holding onto your own timing.

Holding onto your own timing is everything. Holding onto your own timing means that you do not compare yourself to people who are older or younger than you are. It means that you understand that you will always have enough time to live your life. It means that you do not fear making people wait for you when you need more time. Holding onto your own timing means that you respect the pace of your own growth.

Pisces

Remember all of that shit that used to make you angry as a kid? How much of that would you still say you disagree with and how much of it, in hindsight, seems revelatory? There have been times in your life in which you heard things that you needed but didn’t want to or weren’t willing to hear. Those times are not lost to you. Everything that you learn pays off eventually, even if you realize their meanings years down the line.

That’s right—everything that you have ever learned pays off eventually not when you learn it but when you turn that learning into action. It’s when you act, whether that leads to suffering first or celebration first, that you begin to see your education pay off. Make your education pay off yourself.