What if we run out of some things?

When I worked on tracking the transits of this month, looking through the ephemeris and looking at past encounters with similar transits and all, I kept thinking about one thing: what if we run out of some things?

What if it’s okay to run out of some things? What if, when we run out of some things, it is perfectly acceptable to not rush to replenish them?

I don’t know about you but when I get very angry about something, I act as though that anger will never run dry. I use it indulgently, pushing it out of my system with forceful turns of phrases and willful antics. I don’t mind if anyone sees me in my anger and thinks that my anger will always be what I am. My anger assumes that it will always be around, can always be around, for me.

But then it disappears. My reason for feeling angry has not dissipated. I still think that I am right (mostly) and that my anger is righteous (mostly). But I can’t hold onto it physically. It just doesn’t work that way.

Anger runs out. So do other things. Sometimes, I run out of ideas. I hate it when that happens even more so than when I run out of anger. It feels like running out of options, like running out of resources. Running out of ideas feels like running out of money while you’re about to get hit with six different bills.

In the book The Cook, The Crook, and The Real Estate Tycoon by Liu Zhenyun, three different characters run around and produce a massive amount of drama by incidentally running into each other. None of these three characters have any money but they all communicate through a similarly massive amount of projected monies, incomes, and debts. In the book, which is a book about people and money, the economy feels like an absurd theater. All of the characters are forced to comply with the absurd theater and their pursuit of dignity turns into pursuits of pride.

April will be the last full month of Jupiter in Aries and the only full month of Mars in Cancer. Mars is actually still out of bound from its time in Gemini this winter and won’t come back within bounds until early May. Venus is abundant in Taurus until the 12th which is when it moves into Gemini. Once in Gemini, Venus’s ruler becomes Mercury which is also peregrine in Taurus. The reception between the two planets is cut because they happen in aversion. Moreover, Mercury retrogrades late April around the same time the Sun also moves into Taurus. Saturn, too, has trouble finding its ruler now. Jupiter in Aries lurks in Saturn’s shadow.

There’s some awkwardness in the transits for April 2023. I imagine them to move around like the characters in Liu Zhenyun’s book—meandering, often worried, and beautifully misaligned.

A lot of our world appears to burn up due to exploitation, extraction, and consumption. It’s possible that my question of what it could mean for us to run out of things is a reasonable question. It’s also possible that it’s the wrong question. Maybe all resources are regenerating. All relationships are repairable. However, sometimes that doesn’t happen. Sometimes, we let bridges burn and we let things run out. We run out of patience when our purpose changes, out of chances when we don’t have enough patience, and out of time itself when we die.

Maybe it’s okay to run out of things. Maybe running out of things is a kind of death and maybe death is normal. When I think about the things that are hardest for me to accept, I hear the words “No more.” No more energy, no more options, no more time—these words create the hardest and more immovable boundary for me. When they are said in sincerity, I have no more choice except to listen.

Aries

The really fucking annoying thing about seeing people from your past is that they can see all of the things that you haven’t had time to become aware of in yourself just yet. They see all of the ways that you haven’t changed. It’s possible to become tongue tied around them, hoping that they see you in a new light but feeling humiliated when they don’t. If people from your past include your family, they also often bring with them questions about things that you’d prefer to not think about to their encounter with you—questions about your plans for life, your income, and whether you have any savings they might also benefit from.

There’s a wealth of knowledge available for you in the past. There are all of your memories, conscious and implicit. There is power and also mystery. There is also humiliation and shame. Guess what? You don’t have to go there. You don’t have to go anywhere you don’t want to go.

Remember—when you see people from your past appear, you are responsible for cultivating your own privacy. You don’t need to prove yourself to anyone. Your growth is not dependent on whether that growth is visible. You don’t need anyone’s permission to simply keep things to yourself. To do so when necessary is not defeat but a simple act of self respect.

Questions for April 2023:
Who were you in the past?
Is there anything you want to return to?
Is there anything you don’t need to return to?

Taurus

Do you know the best way to interrupt your patterns and habits? The best way to learn new things? The best way to integrate doubt so that it becomes a living part of you and not something that needs the distance that anxiety provides?

Aimlessness—in April, I want you to meander. Meander about a bit in life. Waste your time. Do useless things. Do something one way and then realize that you always meant to do it another way so you have to figure out how to start over and begin from scratch. Forget about appointments. Let the things that don’t go through just not go through. You might find that you are okay even when your life isn’t orchestrated perfectly. There are things that aimlessness can do for you that the goals you already know simply cannot.

There’s a city that lives inside of you. That city doesn’t have straight and narrow roads but curled and inconstant ones. These roads are always changing. If you start off taking one and try to follow it to the end, you’ll find yourself on the other end of the city abruptly. Nothing is as it seems in this city inside of you. When you meander through life, you explore that city. Exploring that city is the only way to achieve clarity.

Questions for April 2023:
What if you don’t know where you are going?
What if you don’t know what you want?
What if you don’t know who you are?

Gemini

April is about celebrating endings. I wonder what it could be like to put something fully at rest for you. You don’t have to do it anymore! You don’t have to do or be this thing that you have carried for so, so long. You don’t have to reference it and plan your life around it. There is perfect pleasure, sometimes, in just letting things go.

Unguided—what does your joy at being unguided feel like? I’m thinking of a puppy dog who learns how to walk off leash. I’m thinking of someone who only knows how to walk on sidewalks learning how to walk on a forest floor. I’m thinking of all of the benchmarks and rules that we think we need to live a fully functioning life and that moment during which we discover that we don’t need any of that.

I think that April will feel like a pause in some ways for you. That’s okay. When you don’t know what you are doing and where you are going, the best thing to do is to pause and have a look around. It takes careful observation to place yourself and careful observation takes some amount of time. Let yourself have your own time. Slow down and sniff out not roses but signs.

Questions for April 2023:
What are you ending?
What kind of destination is the end?
What is available at the end that isn’t available anywhere else?

Cancer

This is a pretty powerful time for you. You have something to show the world and you have things that you want to say. You’ve put time and effort into preparing for this moment and it’s your center stage. You know that this thing you’ve about to do will completely exhaust you because it requires all of you and, yet, you’re unflinching and prepared to go on through with it. You’ve got all your chips and you’re prepared to win big or at least go home at the end of the day.

Put it all out there. Let your voice be heard. Do the thing. Your brightness will be observed. You will be listened to and you will receive the attention that you ask for.

Isn’t it thrilling to be celebrated? It can be exhausting too. It can be anxiety producing and exciting to rise. This is because you are challenging yourself. You’re challenging yourself and letting yourself grow. That will always feel a bit uncomfortable. Remember that you never have to be perfect to simply show up. When you show up, 90% of the work is already done.

Questions for April 2023:
What are you showing up to?
What are you showing up for?
Compare your answers to the previous two questions: what do you notice?

Leo

What happens if you run out of possibilities for escape? What happens when you are so terribly bored by any option for escape that you have no choice but to look at the tedium of what your life already looks like right now? What if you don’t have to go anywhere else or specially in order to be the person you were always meant to be?

April is about realism. Realism isn’t really reality. Realism is its own special lens. What realism does is it tries to contain the imagination. It tries to discipline the imagination so that you become less concerned about what could be if the world looked a bit differently as to what it looks like now and more concerned about what you want to bring into reality.

Realism will demand confidence from you. It’s not the most patient of states. It doesn’t fuck around and it doesn’t allow you to make excuses unless those excuses are absolutely necessary. Realism tries to trim your life so that it arrives in a more management state. It wants to know the bottom line. In April, I want you to make some room for realism. It doesn’t need to take over your personality and I know that you’ll never allow it to. However, I want you to find at least a slice of life per day to let your sense of realism tell you exactly what it thinks of you.

Questions for April 2023:
What questions does realism ask you?
What statements does realism tell you?
What concerns does realism want to convey to you?

Virgo

You’re on a journey. When you journey, you’re confronted with the experience of being in the world. This time, imagine that the world isn’t out to get you, unequivocally on your side, or trying to push you in one direction or another. Instead, imagine that the world is simply something that stands by your side.

The world stands at your side. You’re on a journey through something that appears by your side. You’re not looking for friends or enemies or trying to shape your projections through the lens of friends or enemies. You’re just simply appreciating the fact that there is a world that exists alongside you in time.

There are stories that occur alongside yours. There are people whose complicated paths through the world you’ll never understand. That, sometimes, feels like mystery. You glimpse at things that you don’t need to classify and you move past them, fully impacted, without ever knowing their full wisdom. April is about journeys and journeys are about appreciating the things that you don’t yet know.

Questions for April 2023:
If you were an arrow, where would you be going?
What kind of arrow are you? What are you made of?
What is launching you as an arrow?

Libra

In April, I want you to interrogate anything that attempts to masquerade as intelligence. There’s elitism, sure. That one’s easy. What about cynicism? Emotional detachment and distance? The feeling of being uninvolved in the affairs of the living world and analyzing it from a bird’s angle on things when one clearly isn’t a bird but a land animal? What is the difference between intelligence as a masquerade and empathy as a masquerade? Are these things separate, similar, or oppositional to you?

You’re a passionate person. You have passions for things that you then experience in a full bodied way. Part of being a passionate person means that you might care about things that you are kind of reluctant to care about. Sometimes these passions, being aimless, leave you quite spent. You might find that there is a rhythm in this exhausting cycle of living and feeling and being conquered by a passion.

April will be about seeking purpose for you. When you seek purpose, you might not find it. That doesn’t matter. It’s the journey that counts. You don’t need credentials or permission or experience to find purpose. What you do need is a willingness to not act like you’re too smart for needing and wanting purpose. Purpose requires a kind of naivete. It requires that you don’t know anything that you don’t already know.

Questions for April 2023:
What does your intelligence protect you from?
What are some things you are okay with not knowing?
What are some things that you experience anxiety around not knowing?

Scorpio

It’s really other people who provoke the most change in you this month. What could it be like to need other people? To ask for things from them and to see them show up in all of the ways you weren’t expecting when you do?

Other people never show up in the ways you expect them to. That’s what makes them other people. They show up to do the thing you asked them to do while you watch, bewildered by your own gratitude that they have come through for you at all, and then they fuck everything up. Don’t they? They don’t do things the same way you would do them. They put things back weird. You don’t really want their help or them to be in your space. If only other people could help you the exact same way you would help yourself, wouldn’t that be nice?

Really, April is about challenging your sense of purpose. Do you really need things to be a certain way to end up in the place your purpose tries to bring you to? What if you don’t know or can’t predict your purpose? I want you to grow through other people with the expectation of deconstructing your learned independence. If you need other people, then what does that really say about what you really need?

Questions for April 2023:
What do you need other people for anyway?
What does anyone need other people for anyway?
Where do your answers to the two questions above converge and where do they separate?

Sagittarius

The thing is, you think big. You move big too. This means that you don’t have to worry about some of the things that the rest of us worry about. If you’re thinking about the quickest way to get across the country on roller skates then you can hardly expect yourself to worry about whether the plants have been watered, can you?

I think about fear and about how, sometimes, we feel fear the most when we have suffered an impoverishment of imagination—when we fear the things that we are currently constrained by and expect to always feel constrained by. I don’t think Sagittarius has the same relationship to constraints. I imagine that you nurture your tenacity everyday and that you will continue to nurture it for the month of April.

I want you to express your willingness to grow past your limits, your willingness to grow your imagination, in April. Wear that big dick on your sleeve. Tell everyone in the world about your big and wondrous imagination. When you grow, you take everyone with you.

Questions for April 2023:
What makes you cocky?
How can you have more of that?
What, in your view, needs to get bigger?

Capricorn

You’re getting back in touch with your creativity. There’s times in life when creativity feels like a burden that pulls your energy and power and strength out of you. There’s also going to be times when it feels like loving your creativity is the same thing as loving all of you.

You don’t need to apply for anything to be creative. You don’t need to be celebrated by the right people. You don’t need anyone’s permission. You don’t need to have a plan or an idea of how you might explore that sense of creativity and aliveness. Hell, you don’t even need to be good at the thing that you want to do the most. All you need is the desire to play.

I’m telling you to have some earnest, aimless fun in April. Have fun like no one is watching, like the world isn’t ending. Take your joy and steal it back. That takes some guts. In cartoons about office culture from the 90s, characters always “go fishing” when they are up to no good. Go fishing in April. Get up to no good.

Question for April 2023:
What do you like to fish for?
Really? That?
Why do you like to fish for that?

Aquarius

You don’t have to monetize every single thing that you do. If you did, you would no longer be a real person. You’d just be a worker. I know that you work hard but you don’t need to work that hard. Working is not the only thing in your control.

How does asking for monetary support for something change your relationship to it? Does it make you more cynical? Hardened? Does it bring out your resentment towards capitalism or your resentment of having to ask people for things you need? When are those two things conjoined and when are they separate? Does asking for money make you more grateful? Does it soften your boundaries and make you more cautious when considering all of the ramifications of what it is that you are trying to do?

What about not asking for money? Refusing money for something that you have chosen to do? Sometimes, refusing money can make one feel more powerful. Sometimes, it can make one feel more indebted. It might be joyful for you to build something that takes a shape other than the question of what it means to earn an income. The thing you build can sometimes feel burdensome, like it is a thing that robs from you the way things that need care tend to do.

Questions for April 2023:
What happens when you monetize something?
What happens when you refuse money for something?
What feels like appropriate control?

Pisces

I wonder if the eclipse in your second house is about food.

Let me tell you something about food—it’s not meant to act as a tool of punishment. We can’t control how our bodies absorb or repel food. Almost all types of food will produce discomfort as well as comfort. We need food and we need it consistently. Not having food consistently shrinks our capacity to take in more food and thins the lining of our gut so that we are more impacted by the discomfort of food.

In western imaginations, I sometimes find that food or feeding is associated with disempowerment. We feel taken care of when we are fed and we tend to remember who we were when we were very young when we are fed as well. Food is associated with mothers in western imaginations because cooking is seen to be a woman’s job. I’m not so sure that this is true everywhere and all the time. I’m not sure that all of you might feel that eating is regressive or that the production of food involves gender roles at all. I think that you have other forms of knowing in you and I wonder what it’s like when you remember how empowering it is to eat. I wonder what it’s like to experience the act of asking for resourcing as a powerful act.

Questions for April 2023:
What does it feel like to eat your own food?
What does it feel like to buy your food?
What does it feel like to prepare your own food?