First Posted: 1/2/2013
The Superfriends seemed to always be on call, just hanging around in their Legion of Honor or Hall of Justice or whatever it was, just waiting for a crisis. It’s difficult to imagine a sense of duty or responsibility so powerful it becomes that consuming. I mean, that place didn’t even have a pool table or anything! I guess that’s how it is when you’re doing something you love. There’s not much point in doing anything else at that point. Don’t waste time with that other bulls–t if you’ve found one of your special callings. If you haven’t – put down the pool cue. You’ve got work to do.
In many of Shakespeare’s plays, the characters enter the woods, the unknown, and the world becomes surreally festive; suddenly people can take on roles or act in ways they’d never touch in ordinary life. Foreign concept for you Aquarians – you’re famously open-minded, and open to trying pretty much anything. Having such an accepting attitude has drawbacks, though – where are the shocks and surprises? Everyone should have his or her own version of the deep, dark woods, where the unknown can lurk and the unexpected can occur. This week, find your unexplored forest of the soul and go there.
Perhaps you’re finally prepared to notice that the connection you’ve been so dutifully nurturing is nothing more than a well-fed illusion. No matter how much you stuff into it, it’ll never be much more than a slaphappy poltergeist. How can you exorcise it from your life? Simply abandon your misguided faith in its existence. Continuing to believe in it at this point is like cuddling up to a blinking neon light for warmth. Quit your unhealthy addiction to your own ideas. The real thing is out there. All you need to do is cut yourself free and go find it.
I so rarely draw up the sharpened portcullis guarding my most vulnerable places. But you have a way of making people lower their drawbridges, extending pathways over their otherwise lethal moats. Don’t underestimate you talent for getting people to climb over or knock down their own walls. It’s your honest enthusiasm and obvious goodwill that opens so many doors for you. This week is no exception. In fact, your smile will open so many gates, windows, and zippers this week you won’t have time to go through them all. Choose wisely, and don’t look back.
Back off. Let the poor victim of your verbal knockout catch his breath. Although it’s tempting to deliver a few extra kicks while your target is laid out gasping for air, maintain some restraint. The cheers onlookers delivered as you administered a righteous beating to a long-time oppressor would quickly turn to jeers if you turned spiteful. The difference between justified revolt and petty meanness can be a subtle one. Begin your newly installed social order with fairness and generosity, the lack of which spurred this confrontation in the first place. This week, be a benevolent enforcer of justice, not a tyrannical dictator of your own will.
Years ago, a couple friends and I went to the pine forest behind our college one full moon night. I got naked and danced around the fields while they got all witchy on me and sang beautifully inharmonious melodies. Meanwhile, the moon set, and in the ensuing darkness I couldn’t find my clothes. I had to go back to campus naked and wandered back through my dorm fantastically exposed. This week you’re quite likely to have a similar experience to mine – magical, but likely to make you lose your shirt (and maybe your pants). That’s hardly a bad thing; a lot of great things can happen with your clothes off, as you know.
When it comes to defending your home turf and the people who preside there, you can get downright nasty. While your ethics have been vacationing in Tahiti or Baja (certainly nowhere near home), you’ve been waltzing on morally precarious ground. You sometimes look at yourself as ruler, defender, and provider for your tiny kingdom. Consider this: What happens when the denizens discover their monarch is tyrannical, their knight-protector amoral, and their nourishment stolen? They revolt. Look to your code of honor this week, and make sure all your actions (not just one or two of them) abide by it, or you’ll be the only one sitting at your round table before long.
Even your mother isn’t returning your calls. It seems like the whole world has turned against you, or at least away from you, during weeks like these. However, would you be willing to believe that the neglect you’ve experienced lately is just a coincidence? You haven’t fallen from grace. Your spotlight hasn’t sputtered into darkness, only been eclipsed by some more immediately pressing events in your loved ones’ lives. Be patient – their distraction is only temporary, and you’re sure to soon resume your role as local beauty queen – as long as you don’t drive everyone away by harping on their momentary lapses.
Let’s say you won a trophy of some kind. Here are two possible options of what you might do with it: display the polished trophy on the mantelpiece, or stick it in a drawer. Each would make a bold statement about your relationship to the win. One would mark it as your crowning achievement, a glorious highlight of your life, and the other would suggest it was merely one of many notable accomplishments. You won either way. What’s your choice? In the end, which really makes you look better? There’s not really a right answer; I’d just advise looking at the big picture before you decide.
Your insistence on unnecessary rules is ridiculously unlike you, something equivalent to posting a sign on your apartment door, saying No rhinos allowed. It’s a bad joke, and worse because you take it so seriously. Relax, babe. No one is going to mess up your rugs with their big, smelly rhino feet, or leave steaming piles of dung next to your bed. Guarding yourself against such unlikelihood is only making you lose some serious street cred. Take a deep breath and open your arms to the stinky rhinoceri of the world. I guarantee you won’t see a single one, at least not this week.
I like to imagine the classes where people learn to compose the orchestral music that provides the soundtrack to virtually every TV commercial or program. Designed specifically to manipulate people’s emotions without calling attention to itself (in fact, if you pay attention specifically to it, it becomes laughably ineffective), it’s a very devious art. Your powers of persuasion could benefit from an application of a similar technique. Since your current agenda’s so challenging, don’t hesitate to use underhanded methods (like an emotionally charged soundtrack, pheromones, or subliminal suggestions) to get your way.
You’re so good at waking up, still drunk, in other people’s bathtubs it’s not funny. The imminent new year might prompt one of those good times – the kind you can’t remember the next day. Don’t waste another morning pulling congealed pizza slices out of your hair. Do things differently this year. I’m not saying don’t go hog-wild – what is a Sag without wild abandon? Just get creative. Come up with a version of fun that might be even more incredible than the types you’re familiar with – all the more so because you can actually remember it.
CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS
Taye Diggs
Jan. 2, 1971
Danica McKellar
Jan. 3, 1975
Michael Stipe
Jan. 4, 1960
JANUARY JONES
(pictured)
Jan. 5, 1978
Rowan Atkinson
Jan. 6, 1955
Katie Couric
Jan. 7, 1957
David Bowie
Jan. 8, 1947
