Yall. A few weeks ago a person died. As people do. But this person was a life-long best friend of mine. One of the things about this person is that probably 300-700 people also felt he was their life-long best friend, and the other thing about this person is, he actually was the 300-700 people’s best friend. This person had really crusty, calloused feet. Because his feet touched the actual earth probably every single day. He was best friends with the earth, and he was best friends with 300-700 people at least, and he was, in his truest moments, also best friends with himself.
It still seems fake to me that he died. It probably always will. I still expect him to show up unannounced, as he liked to do, and insist that I leave this computer and go jump in the ocean with him. I comprehend rationally that everyone dies but when the most alive person you know dies instantly one day, it doesn’t register.
I want to write about how his voice sounded like the desert itself. About the messages he left in the form of tiny drawings in secret corners of any house I lived in. His ridiculous voicemail songs, how much more beautiful his face and hair got as they wrinkled and greyed, how even in his bouts of consuming heartache and confusion he still made art, drank coffee with me, and went outside to climb all kinds of trees. How he gave himself fully to whoever he happened to be with in the moment, which was why he was everyone’s best friend. How anyone I told him that I loved, he then loved too, and added to the list of stops on his perpetual migration, kept writing to and drawing for and tattooing. I want to keep writing all the things about him, to linger in the magic of his presence, which I conjure in such an inadequate and incomplete way here. How a life (and goddamn, especially his life) cannot be described or summarized, and yet it’s all I want to write about. At the same time I have not wanted to say anything about him, as an irrational and selfish way of somehow keeping him. But this is not what he would have wanted! He would want his life and anything useful left of it to be shared with everyone. If Tobe were here right now, sitting on my bed, I’d ask him what horoscopes to write this week, because nothing I could say seems important enough to u-load to the internet right now. First he’d make a nasty joke, because he loved the thrill of shocking you and making you laugh in spite of yourself.
Then he’d probably say,
touch your feet to the earth,
remember that your heart is beating,
ask the earth what she’d do if she were you right now, and then do that.
ARIES | March 21-April 19
Question - When do you hide things about yourself for the sake of appearing “together”?
Meditation - unraveled as powerful
Assignment - Notice when you deflect this week. When you feel the need to present something externally that is different from what is present internally. Sometimes, with Aries, this can happen so completely that the internal gets completely obscured, even from you! You don’t have to worry about losing power, in fact as soon as you reveal your own unraveling to yourself, you regain your power. Consider this when / if you set intentions for this coming year during your birthday month.
TAURUS | April 20-May 20
Question - When do you notice your brain gets cloudy?
Meditation - asking the earth questions.
Assignment - Touch the earth, with your feet, with your hands. Don’t bother with metaphors this week, just keep it literal. Tidy up your surroundings. If you’re in your car, touch the car itself. If you’re in a plastic chair, touch that. Ask the earth, in all of its physical forms, questions about your next step. Ask through touch, gently remind your mind to please step aside so you can listen to the answers with your body.
GEMINI | May 21-June 20
Question - What aspect of your life could benefit from more humor?
Meditation - cosmic jokes.
Assignment - Witness the cosmic jokes, expressing themselves in your life and the life around you this week. Write down the jokes you hear. Write down the aspects of your life you wish you could bring humor to, and don’t know how to yet. Say prayers for each of these things, that you will one day be able to tell jokes about them, to laugh. There’s a way that even noticing the things we can’t laugh about as such, can bring a bit of new freedom.
CANCER | June 21-July 22
Question - Are you expecting yourself to be good at everything?
Meditation - the learning process is the most human process.
Assignment - Cancer’s method for learning usually involves a lot of osmosis, so it can be hard for Cancers to identify when and how they are learning. Because this learning process is so intuitive, it can be hard to even realize what has been learned! As a result, you can harbor unrealistic expectations of yourself, that you should be better at something than you are, when maybe this doesn’t make any sense! So take note of if you’re expecting too much this week, and chill. Look at the expectations in front of you, conjure them as words or images. Then imagine lifting a weight off of the words or images. They can still be there, but let them be a bit lighter. The paradox is, the lighter you hold them, the closer you can get to fulfilling them.
LEO | July 23-August 22
Question - What is happening in your heart chakra right now?
Meditation - blooming.
Assignment - Each day this week, focus on your heart chakra. If you don’t know what that is, or ‘believe’ in it, focus on your heart, the front and the back of it. What color is it right now? What is it learning? What is it afraid of? What is it holding that can be shed? What does it want? Ask these questions and any others that arrive by focusing on this area for a few minutes each day. Build a tiny fire of compassion for whatever is present there, as you look.
VIRGO | August 23-September 22
Question - What is happening in your pelvic bowl?
Meditation - pelvis as energy container.
Assignment - Apply your frugality toward your own energy this week. Keep a tally of when you feel energized, and when you feel drained. If you know that an activity is going to drain you and you don’t have to do it, then don’t do it! Apply your own efficiency to how you are dispersing your own precious life force. It’s good for other people, it’s good for you, it’s important. Remember, Beyonce is a Virgo. She dropped Lemonade with no advertisement (no unnecessary energy) and I think it was like the best selling something of all time. That’s a good example of what I’m talking about.
LIBRA | September 23-October 22
Question - When do you get perspective on your situation?
Meditation - sweeping, beautiful vistas.
Assignment - Get yourself to a view of nature. To a location where you can see far into the physical distance away from your body. Let your ideas of yourself and other people become small for a moment. Just look and take pleasure in beauty itself, something you are good at doing.
SCORPIO | October 23-November 21
Question - What are the ways you regularly let yourself experience art?
Meditation - art as embodied transformation.
Assignment - See some art this week, in whatever form you have access to it. Look at your calendar right now, find the time, choose the medium, and commit. Let your deep connection to being human bloom in the center of your body as you experience this art.
SAGITTARIUS | November 22-December 21
Question - When do you experience your body in new ways?
Meditation - proprioception.
Assignment - Get your body into new positions this week. Maybe it’s sex, maybe it’s a new type of movement or sport. Maybe it’s just a position in which to observe yourself. Children spend a lot of time experimenting with the feeling of doing a new thing with their body. This experimentation comes easily to the young - remind yourself of your youthfulness by doing this too. Just let yourself feel what it feels like to exist in a body, which becomes easier to do when you are moving it in a new way!
CAPRICORN | December 22-January 19
Question - When do you embrace things / yourself being a mess?
Meditation - messiness as divine.
Assignment - Capricorn likes order. But order only exists with its cosmic partner, chaos, or in more human every day terms, messiness. The word ‘salty’ keeps coming to mind for you this week. What would it look like if you let yourself be messier, if you let yourself be salty? What assignment arises in order to enact and embody this suggestion? This is about freedom. This is always about freedom and love.
AQUARIUS | January 20 to February 18
Question - What is happening in your legs?
Meditation - lower body.
Assignment - I want you to touch your legs a lot this week. Get someone else to touch them. Bring your awareness into them. Meditate on them. Thank them for all the work they do. Bring your attention from your thoughts down into your body, down down down into these beautiful important limbs. Anytime you notice yourself spinning out, bring the awareness back to the lower body, especially those legs.
PISCES | February 19 to March 20
Question - In what ways are you connecting to / remembering spring?!
Meditation - spring as new life
Assignment - Give yourself some time this week to observe the blooms and dynamic activity of spring. Actually put it on the calendar, give it a designated section of time and a title. Then when you’re in the time you set aside, just let your watery ability connect to the essence of anything / everything, and be full of life, living.