jogs in the path
Oh what a strange journey life continues to become, never ending, ever changing! Full of zigs and zags and unexpected turnings. Just when I have the near future nicely mapped, it jogs to reveal some new vista, unplanned, a sur-prize.
I had a sweet plan in place to travel down to Seattle this week, pick my sweetie up on the plane, spend some time visiting with a friend… but disaster befell the friend’s son (at whose home we were meant to stay). So, the plan has been ditched and it’s back to business as usual, me at home, he on the bus to find his own winding way, calloo, callay.
Business as usual is a jog in the path, when you are expecting the unexpected. Still, I’m partly relieved to be relieved of the task of all that packing and driving long miles in predicted heavy weather.
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My new classes are proving to be just as much fun as I had hoped; the bright eyes and willing hearts of my students inspire me and re-ignite my passion for this work. All right!
Astrology is so much more than a belief system; in point of fact, belief is not required. One stunned soul said to me after I did an in-depth reading for him as a gift, “I want you to know, I don’t believe in astrology, and that hasn’t changed. But [long pause] I have to admit it was right on.”
Astrology is a well-equipped tool kit, a blueprint, a multidimensional map to an infinitely expandable experience of reality. How could that not be fun?
This next class (which had been meant to be cancelled due to aforesaid thwarted plans) takes place on the Taurus Full Moon, on the Day of the Dead which follows Samhain (pronounced “sah’-win”) aka Halloween.
What a fruitful topic that will be; in fact, Taurus is the sign of fruitfulness, bounty of the senses, abundance of comfort and pleasure. The balance between Taurus and Scorpio shall be the theme of the evening, so do come if you like comfort and want to learn how to manifest more of it.
Taurus is also the sign of music, so I will be taking the opportunity to break out the guitar and inflict song upon my captive audience. I, as you might guess, have many songs to suit the theme of dear old Earth-ruled, fixed-earth Taurus.
Taurus is my area, you might say, so I’m really looking forward to this one. Everything else funnels through the body, the senses, the physical manifestion of self.
Sample Taurus lyric: “She is the stars in the heavens, for she is the eyes I see with” (the Gaia Song).
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I’ve just come off my first trial run of triple horse care, four days of looking after all three horses full time, and this is a first, as so far I’ve only had the full care of the stallion, Dancer. It was an enlightening experience! I know now, much more about horses than I did before.
For example, they are positive geniuses (genii?) when it comes to getting at food. If I let them out the front door of the barn, but leave the back door open enough for them to get through, they’ll circle the barn in no time flat, slip through the crack and be munching hay behind my back.
If there is a wall thin enough to chew through, behind which hides lush green hay, then they’ll rip it right out of there, as Royal did on Friday. I wet to let him out in the morning and his sides were sticking out so far it seemed he’d swallowed a whole haystack.
Terrified that he was going to die (since I’d heard that horses can, literally, eat themselves to death), I called John, and was reassured that too much hay wouldn’t hurt him. But he ate himself a sizable hole in the wall of hay that had formerly been blocked by a plywood wall. He slept in a different stable the next night.
Poor Royal was cursed at birth to be what is called a ‘good keeper’. I myself am a good keeper, and I feel his pain.
He thinks he’s starving because he is given much less food than the other horses, who are not good keepers. They need to be fed more to keep their weight up. Royal cannot see the blessing in this and his life is a constant search for more food.
And he’s smart. A horse genius, in fact. I’m impressed. This guy, Royal, is a character. He can’t be locked into a stall and a fenced-in run like the other horses. If he is, he’ll go nuts trying to dig his way out under the fence, endangering himself in the process. So he gets access to the big run outside. He needs the space; he demands it.
Sadly for Royal, he is low horse in the hierarchy. Top gun is Dancer, the stallion, who never lets anyone forget that he is the King of Horses. Then comes Mystic, who is pushier and more dominant than Royal.
But Royal gets his own back in many small ways; he suspects himself to be secret royalty (perhaps because of the name). He often forgets to behave submissively, getting in trouble (and bitten) in the process. I feel for him.
Starting mid-November, I will have sole care of these three eccentric and very large beings, and I expect to learn a good deal more.
I sleep in a suite within a workshop; I like to keep the outside door open so that my inner door opens directly outside rather than into the cavernous workshop. Better feng shui that way.
The other night Mystic and Royal came to visit me at the workshop door, seeking strokes and nuzzles, and when I bade them goodnight, they made as if to follow me in. Horse hazards abound in the shop, so I reluctantly closed the door.
I felt honoured. It was a visitation, an affirmation that they like me.
Aww! They like me!
And now, assuming all goes well (yes, let’s), my sweetie returns from his journeys this Saturday in time for Samhain snuggles, and that is a Very Good Thing indeed.
Life is exceedingly lovely when it isn’t strange and frightening, and it’s strange and frightening when it’s isn’t exceedingly lovely.
