Happy Solstice to ya! The Sun enters Capricorn at 10:08 pm PST on 12/21. The next day 12/22 at 9:56 pm PST brings the Sun conjunct Jupiter all newly fresh in Capricorn. It's the return of the light in the darkest times and all that. Are ya tired of the light/dark game yet? They always come together and never solve anything, ultimately. It's the oldest game in the books and now it is going to be so very, very noisy. To seal the deal archetypally, 12/23 has Full Moon in Cancer/Capricorn at 5:16 pm PST. Also, Mars is retrograde in Cancer and opposes to the Sun on 12/24 at 11:47 am PST. This Solstial polarity just happens to be about Life and Death. Do you think we may be having those things play out in some oh so interesting ways in the years ahead? Life and Death their selves are melting in their definitions. The major religion of our time, Science, will be working those ends over meanly with the weirdest justifications. Send in the Clones! Mars opposes to Jupiter on Kwanzaa 12/26, likewise in Cancer/Capricorn. Perhaps we can finally see that we are eating our way out of house and home in every sense. We may see it, but it looks like it'll still be years before we realize it.

Here's an example: The Death Stars of corporate powerdom are doing everything they can to control/extinguish/homogenize Life. Corporate agriculture now has it all lined up so that in order for you to eat rice at dinner, that rice will be genetically engineered so that the rice grain no longer acts like a seed. It has a genetic time bomb wired into it so that it won't grow a new plant. You'll just have to buy it from the Corporation over and over again. And that genetic material will get more and more brittle and vulnerable to catastrophic failure. Even now, major food crops are at historical lows. We are on the verge of mass starvation of the poor again by dint of no grain for the people cuz we are driving to WalMart on that grain in our crass tank. When are we going to see that it all goes against the grain without a kernel of sense to it?

The remarkable and stable diversity of nature has been gutted and will only be more so. As a result, life itself will now be remarkably unstable; and homosaps are not going to put humpty together again, except frankensteinfully, like Nightmare At Christmas. Do not be sleighed by these santanic tendencies. Your elf esteem is low right now. There are concerns about being on the naughty list with those hidden clauses. After so many candied canings, your head is plum sugared with thoughts that ferry back and forth. You are up a tree unornamented in a tinsel town of wrapped presence. The advent of a new world is taking too long. Missles toe the line, parasitizing hope. The reign of what's dear has perished. We just have lumps of coal in our stalkings, gas from all our consuming. The north pole is melting. We will go with the floe unless we awake and live simple, playful, free lives on a lovely planet. If we try to plan it, the planet suffers. Fixing it all will gore gaia in another way.

Unwrap the dream from your being. Crack the egg in your noggin'. Unwrap your presence. Be frankly incensed and share the myrrhth. Toast the times. Bottoms up and praise the unlording. Hark, the herald angel sings its own tune rather than ours. Oh go all ye faithful and leave the rest of us meek and honest beings here on the planet. O little town of Bethlehem: face your shadows and live in peace. Rudolph with your nose so bright: leave that job where you're hauling all that crap around for the man. We'll never silent the night. Let's play with the night and do some silencing of the day. Joy to the swirled for they spin a web of greed and speed. Roll up your greensleeves. Let's dig in the dirt and see what blooms. Peace be what you are. The world, inside and outside, isn't going to be peace for many years. So go ahead and be the peace that you are. The planet will take care of itself if we take care of our place.

Hugs and love,
Mark