Astrological Mid-wifery: Uranus is moving direct ... clues for forward movement from the icy planet on an icy morning

Jack Frost and his family are visiting the Pacific Northwest. The single red rose we have smiled at since our arrival is crisp from the freeze ... beautiful still. An ice cake an inch thick, formed on the top of the kitty's water bowl with a decoration of tiny ice trees in a row. Cold air from the North will stick around for several days. Clear skies save for the plumes of sulfur-rich paper mill smoke. Tucked onto the futon with "Ruby" (i have finally named my old lap-top) Mukilteo and Whidbey Island are clear vantage points from the vardo window. JOTS has grow plump and thick-coated during the weeks since our wee home began the road travels from the Ledge. The frost is not her favorite experience so I know she is relishing the pile of warm clothes that is her inside-the-basement cozy spot.

The month of November has been a heavy one. Plenty of endings and passing, lives have passed from the physical to the spirit. Four people ... family members of our friends' who share this Everett with us ... died in November. Our vardo attaches to the energy of the big house, one after another the deaths affected us. Grief is grief, even with the intent to 'take it easy' this emotion is physical and will require expression and avenue of release. Living with multiple chemical sensitivities during this time of grief and passings has been challenging. Practicing setting and maintaining workable physical and emotional boundaries is a daily attempt ... our friends know we love them and must also remain distanced. We are fragile beings at the core of it all, and that is not a weak descriptive I think. Caring for that fragile part of us makes for such strength. We were blessed with days of time with my son who was here for the Thanksgiving holiday. Heart-warming chats with him to learn of his life back on the Island, hearing how he is navigating and shifting at 37 years; hanging out with him eating left-over turkey sandwiches and hot vegetable soup; receiving healing lomi lomi work to break the frozen muscles of toxics and stress.

Focus on the icy planet: Uranus

December began with the planet Uranus going direct after its retrograde. The influence of the icy planet, seventh planet from the Sun, going direct with the full moon (December 1/2, 2009) feels a welcomed relief. I've been studying the charts during the past week and Uranus lit up as a possible clue to my on-going sorting habit as it relates to my life. These posts with the "Astrological Mid-wifery"tags are part of my passionate view of cosmos as reliable translator and one of my classrooms of choice. I'm a student of the art, using it more and more to aid me with these late life births. I celebrated my 62nd birthday in mid-November so I could officially or unofficially be called an old gal. Uranus and the outer planets have lots to say about the way I work, live, play or struggle with these later years.

Here are a few of the tidbits that are inspiring, encouraging, offering me clues to completing the life climb/journey and make the most of the seen and unseen dunnage on offer.

• Uranus was in retrograde when I was born. Uranus was in your sixth house at the time of birth.

This astrological combination indicates that throughout your existence you will undergo rare organic disturbances which may be caused by a negative reception to environmental influences or by nervous stress.

My mind at work: An MCS marker?

• Uranus trine Sun: Hungry for change End of June 2008 until beginning of February 2010

Sometimes it is very upsetting to make fundamental changes in your life. But at other times you feel that change is creative and exciting, and this is one of those times. You are eager for change and hope it will lead you to a life that is more exciting, interesting and alive. You look to new ideas and new experiences for insights that will make your life more real. Consequently this is an excellent time to begin studying disciplines that will allow you to develop and grow as a human being.

My mind at work and mid-wifery in action: This transit began during the summer of building our wee house. In all ways from belief about what home and house means, how we relate to friends, family and strangers, how we make our way in the way, and how we braid, cobble and express ourselves began to change. "Eager for change and hope ..." is what fueled our choice to leave behind the home that had been our souls' dream (we thought). Six months of living on the road, in a car and on the 'run' led us into the influence of Uranus (planet of change, innovation and sudden transformation) upon my Scorpion Sun. This planetary trine continues through the winter ... we will need this influence to balance us especially now that life will require the human collective to live lean, smart and focused.

• Neptune trine Uranus: Enlightening experience End of February 2009 until mid December 2010: This influence will expose you to ways of looking at the world that are quite different from any you have known before.

My mind at work and mid-wifery in practice: Stumbling upon this information gives me a clue about the positive influences of the otherwise reality-bending and watery Neptune. Astrology offers many bits of information about the planetary aides or obstacles (Neptune is also squaring Mars during much of this time making the two transits a subtle act of balancing what I want to have with pacing things during a time when my energy will be low).

• Uranus square Uranus: On a pivot Mid April 2009 until mid March 2010: This influence signifies the changes that take place as you approach old age… You must realize that the richness of your life does not come only from your achievements in the outer world of business and society, but also from what you know and understand about life

My mind at work and mid-wifery in practice: This bit of information satisfies my growing comfort with become kupuna. "...richness of your life does not come only from ... achievements ...also from what you know and understand about life. Once again Uranus began playing out the old values I have held dear (worthiness, ability to earn, standing in the community, the face with which I bring to the world, the stability of my resources) and everything continues to change. We arrived on the Ledge in April, the world of fantasy and writing combined in a special way on that magical Ledge. My writing was fed through the dark-sky of muse dust. The words weren't mine, the messages drew from all the experiences I have had, known and felt in ancestral language. How that will continue to translate as Uranus pivots will be an exciting, inspired journey. I'm not afraid of the square and in fact welcome the potential of increasing comfort with what I have come to call 'reassembling.'

This post has wandered through a full day. Completing it in the darkness of a cold night, it has been a day of resting, working, walking and putting together a curry stew that ought to be ripe for eating in the very near while. Our friend Doug brought a lovely wreath of greens to our encampment. Pete and I hung it on the back of the wee golden wagon. I hope we are able to get a picture of that on the blog this winter season, it looks like home ... and that, is a nice feeling.

I am an old woman

Angel From Montgomery

Bonnie Raitt

I am an old woman

named after my mother

an old man is another

child who's grown old

If dreams were thunder

lightning was desire

this old house would've

burned downa long time ago

[Chorus:]

Make me an angel

That flies from montgomery

Make me a poster

Of an old rodeo

Just give me one thing

That i can hold on to

To believe in this livin'

Is just a hard way to go

When i was a young girl

I had me a cowboy

It wasn't much to look at

It was a free ramblin' man

There was a long time

No matter how i tried

The years they just rolled by

Like a broken down dance

[Chorus]

There's flies in the kitchen

I can hear them there buzzin'

And i ain't done nothing since i woke up today

But how the hell can a person

Go on to work in the morning

To come home in the evening

And have nothing to say

Bonnie Raitt has been singing to my soul since we were much younger woman. I think about this song a lot as I am driving behind the dandelion colored wagon or sitting atop the futon inside the vardo. I am that old woman now, and if you know what those lyrics are really about then I suspect you are living a life that is filling up to over-flowing.

I am back in a town where I used to drive the streets as a very young woman, things including the streets have changed a bit or a barrell like the old street that led to the Lowell-district and the Snohomish River Road. When I lived not far from where Pete and I are now encamped, I knew the streets and could get around with the internal map locked in. But, I am an old woman now with a brain and body that are not only aged but affected by the rearranging toxics of a chemicalized world. My brain and my immune system have lost some of their flexibility plus the streets have been changed. Take that to the stock pot and you get a whole different sort of soup, I gotta tell you.

Our first night's sleep in the new parking spot around the back of our friends' home overlooks the Port of Everett, the Weyerhauser mill and the Naval Base. The train tracks run below us and big bright lights remain lit all night. To say we are in another whirl while being on Planet Earth you would have to know all the other whirls we have been in the years since multiple chemical sensitivities have made their marks upon us. We slept rough and I covered up some of the windows to minimize the glaze of the city's need to be lit. Today Pete and I hunted down pairs of ear plugs to wear (inside and outside the vardo). Quiet nights of dark sky sleep on The Ledge were sauves of healing and we never took those hours for granted, appreciating every one of them, every night. Sleep does not store up in the body or mind, I think a being needs sleep regularly to heal. That is in the perfectly balanced world we would have that birthright.

This old woman and old man will be testing their ability to adjust without wearing down the reserves we have accumulated during those seven months on The Ledge. How much does a 700 miles of hard driving and moving about tap away at that reserve? With luck and old people wisdom I pray that Angel from Montgomery soothes us as we make our way to through this return to Everett where city living is filled with challenges..."just give me one thing that i can hold on to ... to believe in this livin is just a hard way to go ..."

Photo Credit: mahboudian.googlepages.com/old-woman.jpg

moments of September

Photo credit: www.martinwgrownick.com/AkThPgl.html

September has begun with ...
fog in earnest, thick and damp
no doubt the summer heat is fleeing

September has begun with ...
bodies that work differently
age has a way of registering its self

September has begun with ...
sober checks on the condition
of humanity's unwillingness to
be kind

September has begun with ...
clotheslines filled with bedding
needing flushing only a Canary
would recognize why

September has begun with ...
adjustments and revisions
once again, the journey
is not yet over

September has begun with ...
a farewell to a servant who
stepped from the rich
making a difference for all others

September has begun with ...
one more challenge:
step up, be heard
step back, be silent
step up be beaten
step back be beaten