Thursday, January 13, 2011

A Substitution for Astrology That Makes Way More Sense



So what? The axis of the earth has betrayed us, oh silly 3000 years of movement and gravity, and now those little scrolls Mom used to buy in the grocery store checkout line are false, though I suspect they aren't going out of business any time. So what? So we no longer need the stars to tell us when to harvest, when to go to war, when to have babies, when to fall in love. All those bibles of books going page by page explaining the various reasons I have yearnings for authority and am obsessed with lighting, burn them all, the ones telling me not to like you because you want loyalty and I want adventure. Buy a map. Because, hey, guess what, we've created our own stars. I've seen them.

The proposition, the substitution then, for our post modern horoscopes is this. Define ourselves by the stars we live in, the ones we've created and spread across the sky that is our land, that used to be dark and now glows with our ideas and energy and love and hate and all of those longstanding lovable awful terrible true traits of humanity. Your city is your constellation. Isn't that so much more telling of who you are? Where you walk every day and what buildings you ride the elevator in every morning, where you shop for food and where you drink and where you fuck? The houses you grew up in, the places you drove to by streetlight, where you fell down in the street and caught the bus and kissed in alleyways. The place you were born or the place you choose to live, or maybe they are one and the same. The dirt and stone you interact with, and all that webbing of wiring surrounding you all the time, no matter where you are. Don't you think that defines who you are so much more accurately than what position a chunk of rock was in somewhere amid the Great Vacuum the day you were expelled from your mother's uterus?

And maybe I'm a Cleveland, and I'm not compatible with a Boston, or an Atlanta, or a Spokane. Maybe my best signs are Chicagos, or Detroits. Maybe Cincinnatis have better sex with Phoenixes. Maybe Charlestons argue all the time and Tampas are worthless fools when it comes to money. Or, if you want to read your charts really specifically, figure out the orientation of your eyelids and the beat of your financial success, pick out the part of the constellation you belong to. The Parma tentacles only get along with other tentacles. The Ohio City hearts partner on projects more effectively with other hearts. People from the river arteries should marry people from other arteries, or possibly smaller veins, but only in regards to the proximity of the bladders.

Anyway, the most important and great part about this is it's your choice, what kind of place you want to belong to.

We could also create constellations out of the darkness too, the uncivilized places. The negative spaces are still shapes. They exist too.

This is a prime business opportunity people, this could be the start of a whole new use for Google Maps. And the world grew just a little bit larger and the men in hats took their hats off and looked at the storefronts and shopping malls around them, and started to think about location less in terms of foot traffic and more in terms of lust and loss and hunger for guidance. Which is what this is really all about, just having something tell us what to do.

9 comments:

  1. All of a sudden, after 3000 years of planetary movement. Suddenly. I honestly don't understand astrology. The most common response I see is "nu-uh, I'm a Scorpio, I don't care what some damn CHART says," which actually almost makes sense? Like-- hey, if your favorite Transformer is Grimlock, go for it. Just...belief. So weird.

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  2. I'm singing along at the top of my lungs. Mildred is annoyed. She's such a Queensian.

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  3. M - Of course that's what those damn scorpios would say. It IS appropriate though.

    Ells - I KNOW. This was me Sunday night, over and over again, even when we got out of the car.

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  4. "hey, guess what, we've created our own stars. I've seen them."

    LOVE this. Love.

    Your city idea is wonderful, aside from the fact that I live in an Uncivilized Land that sounds cool but turns out to be pretty boring.

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  5. No, see, you live in The Cloud. The Cloud is a constellation who's members are all secretly trained weapon experts.

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  6. My daughter sent me here.
    She is wise.

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  7. Tell your daughter thanks for believing in me.

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  8. I totally remember getting those little scrolls at the checkout at Woolwotrh's as a yoot. I loved those things! They were a dime then - what are they now, like $4?

    But astrological star hooey aside, I totally fit the description of a Taurus, and am not at all like an Aries. So I think the 3,000 year old calendar needs to change, not my beloved bull. I refuse to believe that 47 years as a pig-headed jackass were all a mistake on my part. No way, Jose.

    Not sure if I'm truly a Cleveland, but I know I'm not a Dallas. Fuck that noise.

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  9. Apparently the changes only apply to people born after 2009. Who are not actually people yet.

    Also, what's a Woolworths?


    I am joking.

    Sort of.

    A little.

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