Aren’t you tired post eclipse?

Did you know that wackiness is just another word for tenderness?

The word wacky has a violent etymology. It comes from mid-19th century British slang and it refers to someone who is behaving so strangely that they must have gotten beaten in the head too many times. I’m serious. This is where it comes from. This was the Victorian era during which society people obsessed over madness and depictions of madness.

I stopped liking the word tenderness these last few years. It has come to mean a kind of brittle fragility. It shouldn’t. Tenderness isn’t just about sensitivity or impressionability which some people always seem to have access to while other people don’t. Tenderness shouldn’t be exclusive but it has become a word that is traded, sometimes, to mimic exclusion even when it is traded in spaces at the margins of able bodiedness and heteronormativity. Tenderness has begun to refer to the social capital of shelter—of being afforded a type of sensitivity that isn’t very sensitive at all. 

But whatever. Tenderness is about feeling the aliveness of being touched. It’s about being aware of being touched and a refusal of numbness. Tenderness should not be brittle because life is not brittle.

The word wacky offers us another type of post-suffering strategy. Wackiness is not brittle. It’s outspoken and unexpected. It’s incredibly sensitive and it wears its heart out right there in the open but it also asks the supposed rationality of modernity to digest itself. Wackiness is not mere goofiness. That’s too trite and too white. Wackiness is the embrace of lunacy and the refusal of sanity in a world where sanity is the ultimate privilege. It understands that, in order for the wholeness of consciousness to live, rationality must be thwarted or at least tricked.

Wackiness is an expression of pain. It is deeply vulnerable.

Aren’t you tired post eclipse? How weary do your limbs feel? How worn is your head and chest? Isn’t it time to appreciate your wackiness?

Did you know that Gemini season morphs into Cancer season in June? Did you know that we get a Cancer new moon and a Sagittarius full moon?

These are the wackiest signs (Pisces is also wacky). They’re Jupiter’s signs and Jupiter is joyously crazy. The Moon, being luna, is a lunatic.

There’s so many domicile planets in June. Mars is still in Aries and Venus hangs out in Taurus for most of the month. Mercury re-enters Gemini after its retrograde. It turns direct very early in the month. The world becomes a sped up version of itself. We have a lot to get done and to enjoy together. Let’s get moving, our bodies say.

This is a fantastic month for starting and doing things. That’s why I want you to do wacky things. I want you to start things that would be impossible to hold during more difficult times. I want you to use ease to find friction.

Do unexpected things. Act out of character. Stop thinking that you are who you think you are and feel yourself become yourself. You’re fucking weird. Start acting like it.

Gemini

All of your poetry, all of your libraries, and all of your collected quotes that you keep in the dustbin of your mind—these are things that you have chosen, filtered, and stitched together to describe you. They are your words, your libraries, and your poetry. You find these things with a peculiar rhythm that no one can emulate. It’s hard to guess where you are and where you might next appear for this reason. You are just who you are as yourself.

Be alone when too many people call your name. Make friends with the shy and reluctant person who you never thought you would love. Your life is unexpected because you’re unexpected. Find the joy of a word that no one knows on your tongue and write 1000 words about a flower that you once smelled. Ask a friend why they do not sniff you like a flower.

Cancer

The moon just danced through a wringer and, twisted dry, is now hanging on a clothesline. That’s you. You’re the moon on a clothesline. You’re tired, sanctified, and oh so relieved to find what is still intact.

Not all of you needs to survive for you to live intact.

Sleep. You’re tired, so sleep. Sleep in late when you can. Go to bed when the sun sets. Bathe early when possible and masturbate before bed. Do things in bed when you can. You danced through the wringer and you got up when you fell. This is a primal connection to gravity that you will never lose. Trust your pace and your weight—always know how to come down from a buoyant night. Know that the difference between rest and collapse is simply choice.

Leo

There are a great number of things that your strength has forgotten. You often forget what it’s like to remember yourself. Did you know that you can remember that you’ve forgotten something without remembering what it was you forgot?

There is something special about Leo. The Moon rules your place of hiding. Your body, then, is your hiding place and your resting place.

When you hide, did you know that the things you hide behind are also parts of yourself? Did you know that you have been protecting yourself all this time?

Identify with strength, identify with power—but also know your weirdness and your sense of unsafety. It is not enough to feel safe and, yet, you do not have to feel safe to know who you are. You can be with your secret desires with the same presence that you take to a lover.

Virgo

“Be kind to me, or treat me mean, I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine,” sings Fiona Apple. You’re an extraordinary machine. You know how to make the most of almost any situation. You know how to plan ahead. You know how to shrink when it’s needed and you know how to become bigger when presence is needed.

How about that? How does it feel to hear these things? Any anger? Exhaustion? Resentment? All of these are okay. Mercury is domicile this month in your sign. You’re running and you’re doing so so much. It feels great. And, all the same, it’s also okay to stop running when you become empty.

Libra

You’ve become a whole new person these last two years. Did you know that? Did you know that the events of the last two years have changed who you are as a person? That your old identities are no longer as meaningful and that you’ve grown hungry for change?

Uncertainty feels like a tight skin. The future is a loose one that you’ve forced to wear by virtue of being a breathing creature who has a sense of time. You don’t know where you’re going but you put one foot in front of the other and—look mom! I’m walking now!

This is how you learn a new craft. This is how you learn anything that is worth learning. Take it one step, slowly, at a time. You’re learning to walk in your own shoes now.

Scorpio

Oh, the joy of getting things done! The joy of finishing yard work or of returning the keys to someone after you know you’ve done a damn good job! You’re an incredible steward of things, places, and people. There’s pleasure in grinding—pleasure in metabolic activity and pleasure in unearthing something through sheer effort that you thought you had buried forever.

Run before you understand the mechanics of walking. Leap before you know how high. Read the book instead of watching the movie just because you’ve got energy to spare. Burn the things that you no longer want to keep. You can only keep as much as you can carry in your mind at a time right now.

Sagittarius

You feel alive! On fire! You’re horny! You want to take up sewing/dancing/writing/singing again! You want to make babies! You don’t want to make babies! You already have a baby and it’s a miracle and so exhausting! You’re a baby yourself and you’re learning how to laugh and cry!

Let your joy fill you up. Breathe it in like the air is rich with oxygen. Feel it in your legs where you also feel your power. Feel it in your fingers that twirl your tools around. You’ve got a bad case of joy and it’s contagious. Are you alive enough to feel it for yourself? Go start a campfire. Roast some marshmallows with friends. Do some magic shit. Go have fun.

Capricorn

You know what they say about any prediction ever—it will always come true as long as you’re willing to wait. Are you willing to wait for your prediction to become meaningful or do you want to make a new one?

Save your pennies in a jar. Save the tops of carrots for a nice steamed salad. Save the shells of watermelons because you can boil them with bones for the most nourishing and anti-inflammatory soup. Save the bitter almonds (which contain cyanide) in your apricots and make almond oil for fungal infections. Save the outsides of oranges and make air freshener or tea.

Save the things that you can use later. This helps you develop an expertise with the world that will support your breath, your gait, and your slumber.

Aquarius

Did you know that the things you use to hide yourself are also parts of you? If you use silence to hide, then that’s your silence. If you use humor to deflect, then those jokes are still your jokes. If you use rage, that’s your rage. If you use logic, that’s just your logic. The parts of you that you hide behind are also just parts of you.

Do your boundaries, your walls, your masks feel like they are you?

Don’t your walls feel a bit tired? Could that be where you’ve kept your exhaustion all this time? You’re no superhero, you’re just yourself. Don’t jump into savior mode. Recognize your own need for protection. Being apart from other people does not mean that you are no longer connected.

Pisces

What does it feel like to glide? You must have the confidence to assume that you will neither run out of floor nor stumble. You must be practiced with bending your knees and keeping your back at just the right angle. You must find balance, know it when you find it, and keep within its parameters skillfully. You must not hurry and nor can you hesitate.

What does it take to move with confidence through the world? You know how to do miraculous things. It just takes going step by step and then letting it go when it becomes rote and part of your dumb memory. You know what it takes to learn miraculous things. All it takes it just the right amount of stopping, slowing, starting, and speeding.

Aries

No matter what happens, no matter how early or late it is, and no matter what mistakes you’ve made over the years, you’ve got to keep moving because you’ve got to keep being yourself. Moving on from something is compassionate. It is a type of permission. It is permission that only you can give yourself—the permission to keep living.

You don’t have to be anyone but yourself anymore. You can feel scared but you’ve got to fear your own fear as yourself. You can feel joy and you can feel sad. You can feel rageful and you can grieve. But, again, you’ve got to feel all of these things as yourself. These are no one’s emotions but yours. They live in the fibers of your own body.

Taurus

Have you ever wondered how to gaze upon your own beauty? Surely, it can’t be through the lens of a camera or the face of a mirror. Surely, it can’t be so contrived as that. This isn’t how a daisy checks itself out. It’s not how a bumblebee notices its own cuteness. There must be another eye—an internal or sternal way of seeing.

Maybe Beauty has its own set of eyes. Maybe beauty is neither choice nor fate but just another one of those concepts that you wrestle with before it overcomes you and you suddenly find yourself in a different world with a new perspective.

My point it, you are who you are. This month is about connection to self. You’ll rejoice in your beauty and you’ll cry in your perpetuity of self. You know exactly who you are.