Aries: My fantasy these days is that someone figures out how to plant billions—trillions!—of trees all over the world. Do they shoot them out of drones? Do they air-drop them the way they seed lakes with fish? Do we have to plant each one by hand? And what happens when they fail, as many seedlings do? My attempts to reckon with what the future holds for my sweet kid—the one who did not ask to be born on a hot and thirsty planet—and with what his adulthood will look like without those billions or trillions of trees, is something I grapple with daily. Maybe your homework this quarter is to plant a tree or two?
Taurus: I am constantly on the hunt for great YA stories. Books written with The Youth (tm) in mind are some of my favourites, and if there happens to be magic, great. I have read SO MANY magical-young person books, and I truly enjoy the genre: give me teen feelings, but gimme some stakes where someone might get blown up. If there's a semi-sentient castle or a lively juju bazaar or an alternate history where noted heartthrob John Calvin becomes the Pope instead of creating his own church, all the better! Magic-teen books are now slightly embarrassing, but honestly, you can keep your Elena Ferrantes because I am over here with my TJ Klunes. Anyway, Taurus: stop apologizing for the things that give you joy; in fact, seek out those not-very-cool things that you suspect will make your life much more joyful.
Gemini: The best thing I ever heard about grief came to me via a podcast, during which the guest remarked "grief is not an emotion. It is an attempt to reckon with that which cannot be undone. All kinds of emotions may attend that reckoning." This lands in my soul the way nothing else about grief has. It feels true to me, because my grief is often attended, not just by sadness or loss, but by rage, relief, tenderness, and surprise. Grief is often explained by mechanics or metaphor—the five stages, the ball in the box—but the thing that always startles me about grief is that I can be startled by it. I can read the opening of an article and dissolve into tears; look at a photo and feel my heart squeeze. I can't anticipate it the way I can other emotions, and that is grief's unkindest thing.
Cancer: I recently read this fascinating article about mother trees: mature trees in the forest that send out nutrients to other, less-established trees. Responsible loggers will do their best to find these mother trees and log around them, leaving them to remain in that role as new saplings replace older growth. I find this unbelievably beautiful and unbelievably sad: these trees are powerful givers, but there must be something to give to. I wonder if mother trees get lonely. Humans anthropomorphize everything up to and including electrical outlets, but these trees, alone in a denuded forest, create an ache in me that is hard to reckon with.
Leo: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is my favourite of the Harry Potter books, and let me tell you, that's not a popular choice! (Most people go for books 3-5, if you're curious.) The selling points of HBP are many: the introduction of one of my top-five character, Professor Horace Slughorn, who is a total Slytherin diva and I'm here for it; Harry, high as a kite on liquid-luck potion Felix; and the opening chapter depicting a series of conversations between the actual British PM and the Minister for Magic, the alternate head of state for magical folks. Rufus Scrimgeour (battle-scarred; yellow-eyed) takes over as Minister from Cornelius Fudge (hapless; wears a green bowler hat) and I have long been fascinated with Scrimgeour's portrayal in the books: slightly dangerous, highly experienced, and maybe also kind of a lion? I have no idea and I love it.
Virgo: The only way I can recommend Niagara Falls is if you go to attend a student-housing conference held in a hotel, get absolutely blotto, and then climb into a heart-shaped bathtub, fully clothed, with some of your conference peers. I can recommend Halifax highly if you go with your mother and she drives over a huge cardboard box, wedging it under your rental convertible, forcing you to slither under and de-wedge it. I can recommend Los Angeles if you take the subway while you're there: it's new and beautiful and entirely pointless in a city where 84% of people drive. The best part of anything is often unexpected, slightly deranged, and wholly ridiculous. Dress accordingly, Virgo: you don't want to get shmutz on your outfit.
Libra: "I was bullied in middle school" is a true statement that is also a total failure: I was bullied, it's true, but those six words do not exactly capture the experience of being ostracized and taunted when I was eleven, entirely at the mercy of my classmates and bus-ride peers, ignorant to what I had done to provoke the bullying (nothing) and what I could do to stop it (also nothing). When I did EMDR therapy a couple years ago, that period of bullying, which lasted about two years, was a huge wound, much more massive than I had ever realized. It was also foundational to understanding myself, especially in ways that relate to more recent friendship and relational pain, and the behaviour I do, both healthy and not, to ease it. Seek your wound, Libra.
Scorpio: Yours is the sign I associate the most with gothic lusciousness: you're all velvet bras and pan-fried mushrooms, red wine and black nails, embossed wallpaper and credit card debt. I love you Scorps because you're Morticia Addams in a RHOSLC world, and we need your arched eyebrows and affection for a centre part when things are overly sunny. However, every Scorpio I know is also a high-key ball of stress about what other people need from them, so know when to turn the flame all the way down—no, lower—and just...stop taking care of other people. Put on your velvet bra for yourself, Scorpio.
Sagittarius: When I turned 30, I held a Viking funeral for my 20s. At that point, I was like, "wow, I have been through some stuff," and while that's still technically true, the shit that I, personally, went through in my 20s was like a puddle compared to the emotional hurricane of my 30s. I think perspective is always a key factor in life: things will come in waves, and when you're being buffeted by the tsunami, you're just trying to hold on, to survive. You're not in it like, "ah, one day I will look back at this and marvel at my growth!" You're like, "what the actual living fuck am I cursed or just a bad person. WHAT IS HAPPENING." So, Sag friends, when you find yourself on an island where the water is calmly lapping at the shores, where there are no big waves on the horizon, when you can just sit and reflect? Do it!
Capricorn: One of the greatest gifts of the modern age is how fuckin' good children's television is. The vapid pablum of my youth, designed primarily to sell me merchandise, has been replaced by a modern wave of pure-hearted edutainment: our household flagship is Netflix's Storybots, but there are dozens more: Kid Cosmic, City of Ghosts (a true gem), Hilda, and even dumb shit like Booba and Oddbods. I watch a fair amount of TV with my kid, and this new crop has dispensed with much of the physical and verbal violence that was part of the 1980s-kid-show DNA: it's gentler, funnier, smarter, and more interesting. You, Cap, are on that path as well.
Aquarius: A love letter to my kid, who is being a huge turd for unknown reasons right now: I'm sorry we: let you watch TV; sent you to play with those kids who bullied you; fed you processed food; had so many fights in front of you; gave you a video game console when you were five years old; made you walk everywhere because we didn't have a car; didn't give you a siblings; didn't get you a pet; showed you the trailer for 2016's Ghostbusters and gave you nightmares; didn't enroll you in swimming lessons; didn't let you sleep in the car. We parents, we fuck up constantly. I hope you know you are so loved, even in the depths of turdliness, and we are here for when you surface and become the next version of yourself, as we all do.
Pieces: Did you know that pretty much all of the main characters in Finding Nemo are disabled or chronically ill? From limb difference and PTSD to addiction and memory loss, these are fish who have been through a lot. A lot! And they're not always nice to be around: Marlin is a nightmare, let's be honest. And yet Pixar is so casual about this, as though it's totally normal to populate a movie with characters we might turn away from if they were humans, and then demand that we fall in love with them (to the tune of $940M in box office). This is not wholly unproblematic, but Pixar has done a good job at depicting really complicated physical and mental states, from Carl Fredrickson's use of a walker in Up to Riley's depressive episode in Inside Out. I'm glad that we have these entrypoints for these conversations, for folks to see themselves onscreen, even if it's as a fish. Where do you need to see yourself, Pieces?
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