Star Struck

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): A misguided swan became infatuated with a pedal boat at a pond in Hamburg, Germany. Apparently mistaking it for his soul mate, the devoted bird guarded the boat jealously and rarely left its side. The human owner of the boat found it amusing at first, but later regarded it as a nuisance, since the enamored swan chased away all potential renters of the vehicle. I propose to make this poignant creature your anti–role model in the coming weeks, Capricorn. May he inspire you to free yourself of all delusions you have entertained over the years about the kind of intimate ally you need in order to be happy.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): "I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us," wrote Franz Kafka in The Blue Octavo Notebooks. "If the book does not shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place?" I suggest you find at least one such book to help you get the most of the current cosmic configurations, Aquarius. More than that, I encourage you to find people and experiences and dreams that have a similar effect. It's that phase of your cycle when you can thrive on fertile uproar.

Stars according to Free Will Astrology in The Village Voice. How very very very apt both of these comments are to my current situation! So...

What kind of intimate ally do I need to be happy? And what delusions do I hold about who this person/s might be?

I think I need someone to play with. I need long talks into the night about nothing in particular but everything important, I need a bushwalking buddy and someone to cook for. I need someone to play totem tennis with on sunny Sundays and who'll help me wrestle the doona cover back on after I've washed the lube off it, who will kiss me until I am dizzy and spit polish boots with me and spit in my face while pinning me to the bed and who doesn't mind hearing the same song fifteen times in one day when I am rehearsing for a show. Someone to eat fish and chips with after skinnydipping, someone to lick the sweat off in summer and warm my cold feet against in winter. Who will pull my hair hard when I am on my knees and gagging, who will wink knowingly at me across the room at boring parties and slap my face when I get too cheeky.
Someone who doesn't need to be intoxicated to drag me off for sexy shenanigans, who will lead me astray by my choke chain and pee in the bath with me. Someone with flesh I can pierce and who enjoys me being on top sometimes, who will let me open the beers but still make me a cuppa, who'll cry on my shoulder and write me mushy magnetic poetry on the fridge. Who will hold my hand in the supermarket and snog me in the backseat of the bus, who'll do up my zip and smudge my makeup. And if zie has an English or German accent, an artistic streak and the ability to blush then so much the better.

As for delusions, what is it that I am chasing that is wrong for me? What are the delusions that I cling to?Hmm. Firstly, I tend to think I need someone bigger than me. Older than me usually, or more experienced and wordly, often physically stronger and quite toppy (in a variety of ways), someone who will take control and tell me what to do and how. In some ways I often seek a parent figure, someone who have their own car and will chastise me when I misbehave and take my temperature when I am sick, who will make me do my homework and who'll rub goanna oil on my growing pains. Someone to guide me and look after me, someone who has the final word on what happens when, who can overpower me if required for my own good. Someone who knows better than me. It could be that this is not a healthy way of thinking. I'm not a child, really, or even an adolescent. I can decide what I'm having for dinner and find my own way to school. And I don't need a parent, I need a partner. Secondly, I have some sort of fucked-up boy/girl delusional gender stereotype thing that often plays a bigger part than I care to admit in my choosing a partner. Part of my still believes I need a strong masculine type to carry my shopping and deal with cockroaches and drive me around and protect me from monsters in the dark. I can remove huntsmans and manage a twenty kilo backpack, open my own jars and put furniture together. I'm not some weak and feeble girly who can't fight her own demons. I don't need a man to keep me in fishnets or pour my champagne or fix the fusebox, I need someone to pass me the pliers and WD40.

And I DO need to be bitten and stung into action! But where do I find this fertile uproar? At parties full of anarchists and freaks slamdancing to 99 Luft Balloons, in performance spaces and art galleries, at seminars and in libraries, in museums and at Uni, watching amateur striptease and short films at The Newtown, standing by backyard bonfires discussing tattoos and wrestling moves, sitting in my lounge room eating cheesy pasta bakes and and blathering on with my housemates. All of this is good, very good. I love my friends, I love being surrounded by creative, talented, energetic, intelligent, articulate, gorgeous, people who are constantly sewing costumes and making pervy photo shoots, writing zines and organising protests, DJing and stencilling and rabblerousing and always leaving the world in a much more interesting state than they found it.Maybe, just maybe, the fertile uproar is around me after all, and I just need to find a way to tune into it? Or perhaps I am tuned into it and just don't realise it. This weekend I did two major dress-up parties and a photo shoot, pretty much wrote a show, about to write a blurb for another one and have done other random productive house things (most of this whilst in various states of hangover and confusion). Its not like I am exactly idle most of the time, but I still don't feel like I have gotten my spark quite back yet. Something is missing, that certain...?But what to do? Just keep on keeping on I suppose...