Aquarius
All month the moon is going to be extremely fucked up. Your health bar is blinking yellow. The war is expensive and invisible. Meet these challenges sidelong with a new hobby. Drinks with egg whites in them. Knowing about leather. Legal weed. Bootleg sneakers. Collect snail shells. Wait for stars to die. Pottery is a classic. Nobody actually does capoeira. Except the guidance counselor with the ponytail who thought you’d benefit especially from individual sessions. Took you to teahouses that smelled like wet dog and explained how to unlock your true serenity. This involved facing your shadowself and switching to natural deodorant. Something about aluminum. Fuck that guy. Twice. Run from the consequences. Eat your feelings. Pass out to the menu screen and wake up in a struggling franchise. No one will blame you if you clock out early. After all, February is the cruelest month. Unlucky number ~ 1. No matter what you multiply with it always turns out the same.
Pisces
Jupiter is ascending on demand. Better strap in for a bumpy ride. Like you weren’t already feeling a little et cetera. You are drowning in cardboard boxes. You are overly trusting of skaters. Chipper teens holding clipboards. An investment opportunity is coming your way in the form of a Nigerian prince. Please, my son, he’s very sick. You are the most beautiful babygirl give all the pictures now kindly. Tiki at eight winky-face. Dump your personality. Endure poetry readings. Acquire tastes. Use the l-word too early. Safe words too late. You like that, don’t you? You’re not sure anymore. How does money work, again? Why are kids pretending to like ska? Who even plays trombone? Zines don’t hold the answers, but they fill your shelves. The key to every good relationship is exhaustion. Your color is bruise. It’s Thursday allegedly. Time to forget to call home. Watch your prescription autofill. Actually meditate. You’re trying, that’s what matters. Why can’t you see that?
Aries
Mercury is rising and the snow is black. I bet it’s time to develop a gambling problem. An annual convention is the perfect place to make a new enemy. Offer a squinty smile as they explain hermeneutics and you catalog their faults. Stalk their profile until they grow on you. Find an excuse to be at their opening. Take their horrible art seriously. Take your horrible art seriously. This means war. Anyone driving faster than you is a maniac. Anyone slower is an idiot. It’s so hard being an island. Your parents are visiting again to judge you and your new vocabulary. They’re not wrong. You’d do well to practice a little humility and I’ve got just the subforum for that. Get lost in acronyms. Find yourself a good mask. Take it. It only hurts when it’s over and you need to figure out dinner. There’s always pizza. Not even sorority girls can take that away from us. Not everything is about power or sex or capitalism or performance or whatever you’re reading about this month. Get higher than your horse and write this down ~ this is just a container. Fill it and watch how it fills you.
Taurus
Trigger warning ~ it’s officially sundress season and strangers are jealous of your lifestyle. Your above average height. Your tasteful media consumption. Keep up the good work or don’t. This isn’t the time to quit your job but you’ve got plenty of cortisol saved up. Give someone else a chance to write jazzy copy for dumpy real estate. Start a secret garden. Collect tea kettles. Avoid synthetic fibers. Invent a language with your cat. Everything is self-care. Everyone is doing it. Protip ~ leave your laundry on your bed and you will never sleep alone. Nobody plans to get addicted to gaming. Nobody actually likes deconstructed club. Stop stealing slang from black teens on the internet. Working class is not a look. Go for a run or something, I don’t know. You’re probably fine, but just in case, here are directions to a bridge that’s high enough. On the way home you will pass a billboard with a terrified font. Singles in your area are dying to meet up. You have one (1) new message from a secret admirer. Spoiler alert ~ it’s you.
Gemini
You are emotionally stable for once but getting negative ass. Fix that with a single download and ten-thousand blue hours. Apparently some people are still doing the whole witch thing, but at least they have a thing. You’re either a celebrity or a murderer or both, which means neither, which means what? Be one with your duality, says the barista fucking your ex. You are, if anything, inconsistent. Avoid the song everyone loves saying they love. Get way too high and go on a quest to the scary Walgreens. Martyr yourself on a log of cookie dough. You’re not compatible with any sign so date them all. Experiment with shutting the fuck up for once. Don’t kill the messenger. You can have it all, but it’ll cost you your frontal lobe. All we need is your date of birth and your social and the latitude and longitude of where you invented masturbation. Don’t freak out, numbers aren’t real. Fuck 12. Don’t even get me started on Building 7. It’s not like we have a choice. Pledge loyalty to our reptilian overlords. If you’re lucky they’ll make you an accountant. Admin reveal ~ how do you think I got this job? Your energy animal is a wolf. The woman who ruined her body for you.
Cancer
You have it. Just kidding. That’s not for another decade at least. By then the treatment will be bankruptcy, but right now you’re focused on getting past your cousin’s graduation. Invest heavily in edibles. Treat yourself to an afternoon of shoplifting. Browse WebMD for a reason to stay in. A reason to break up. Some of your closest friends are your best patients. Others are starting to look like wallets. Roommates like sex toys. Make the most predictable mistakes. Come out on the other side as a victim. Get a lowercase haircut. Your favorite word is now praxis. All your downstreams agree, this is the right time to start a podcast. Don’t. You have so much to live for. Drive to the coast with your suffering and beg the ocean to take it away. Neptune is in his second house so you’ll have to look up the recipe online. It’s actually pretty simple ~ log off. When you come to your senses you’ll be free of barnacles and scum because your shell is gone. If this seems like a bad joke it’s because it is. Welcome to the precession. There is no punchline or everything is, I only skimmed the reading. Don’t trust anyone who says they have the secret sauce. There is no replacement for pain.
Leo
This month is mostly generative but you’ll publish it anyway. Why does money cost so much money? I’ve read your diary and you’re supposed to be in Nashville right now. Pick up a job delivering dry ice. Sell your beanie baby collection before it’s too late. Accept cookies. Turn down life-altering head. Earn the respect of theoretical dads. Underqualify and overdeliver. Grind like the meme says and then grind some more. Accomplishment is not a ponzi scheme. You’ve got to crack some heads to make a profit. Only animals were harmed in the making of this great nation. That’s just science. Think of all the algorithms counting on you. Think of the current situation. We are at an all-time high and have never been so down. Our enemies are right to hate our freedom. You used to have liberty spikes and throw piss balloons at fur coats. Now you can’t sleep without the whiteness of your air purifier. There is no fighting the exponent, so why not become part of the problem? Delegate your conscience to pundits. Your oxytocin to Manila. Your power number is infinity. You’ll never get there without the right math. One day you might even be king, queen.
Virgo
You’re the worst one. There is no cure, but the symptoms can be managed with constant crisis. Didn’t anyone pay attention during your powerpoint? Try to calm down by trying to calm down. Train for a half-marathon so you can beat your friends but not say anything. Eat a handful of almonds and talk about how filling they are. Work hard and smart and play hard too. Shots are efficient. Shopping has healing properties. Besides, you have to build up your credit. Debt is a lesson. Your grandparents lived off of heels of bread for two wars in the snow uphill both ways all so their grandchild could cry about it to a distant man with mediocre diplomas on his wall. We’re all a little racist, but you’re not, you swear. You walked in the back like the resources said. What else are you supposed to do, give something up? Ideally, yes, everything, but let’s start small. Merge without signalling. Eat straight from the carton. Have seconds. Drive to the grocery store and when you’re in line, don’t think. Grab a trashy magazine and one of those star books. One is medicine and one is placebo, but that’s for you to get wrong. I’m just the help.
Libra
Your hometown is on fire and the rest of the world isn’t doing much better but you’re focused on your houseplants. Your strengths are your eyebrows and your generosity. You ask people what they have planned for the holidays and seem genuinely interested in the responses. You’re okay being the third hottest in your friend group. You don’t even know there’s an order. I honestly can’t relate to you. If you’re still reading this, stop. Do acid. Watch alien autopsy videos. Entertain the material and spiritual realities that might lead someone to do something like that. The bluest states are full of them. Guys with shrapnel still in their legs and the jiu-jitsu gym isn’t enough. Your brother is on this path but you agree with mom he’s just intense. Don’t be surprised when he’s the one in the overlay. Hair grown out, patches of acne still, eyes dead. Tend to your public life. Ride the stationary bike. Accumulate tracking codes. Stress over binaries. If this isn’t enough, find a way to monetize. Your weaknesses are your strengths. You are full of contradictions. The exception and the rule. Not vanilla but vanilla bean. Pure extract. Madagascar. The mine collapses but the canary won’t stop chirping.
Scorpio
Pluto is a planet again and you’re in need of a heavy indica. Your roommate will spend all day every day listening to reggaetón, which means you will too. Your other roommate will come to you with a peace offering. Accept it to buy time for your next move. You can punish everyone at karaoke, but in this economy? Congrats on being a millionaire, says the letter you wrote in middle school to your future self. Assigned by the sad librarian who died of ovarian cancer right before graduation. You and your friends knew to whisper lesbian when she passed, but only years later did you realize the wig. Her name was Helen. Good job. Now your serotonin is gone, but at least your engagement metrics are robust. Are things getting worse or is it just me? The thermostat in your head is busted and you’ll do anything not to answer the phone. Download ancient video games. Own in the comments. Fail to cum without visuals. Science is for people who haven’t had to feel like this. Fiction is for people who want to learn how. And here I am, offering the same pill in each hand.
Ophiuchus
You don’t even exist, but don’t let that stop you from finding happiness. Live más. Wear white after Labor Day. Shoot the moon. Open multiple lines of credit. Meet up with your stalker. Do hard drugs. Replace the remote batteries with batteries from the other remote. Anything to feel something. Apparently the answer is amphetamines. Soon you’ll be finishing puzzles left and right. Scrubbing your sink religiously. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, but you’ll never get over the wine stain on the carpet. You’d brought your coworker home because you hated your job and more than that you hated yourself. Hated in ways your therapist will never understand and neither will you and you can’t imagine how anyone could feel differently because you were not yet this gleaming statue in the mirror, smiling at the clean edges of the new world. Enjoying the silence where headlines once lobbied for a controlling interest in your amygdala. Progress is a myth. People are dying over decimals. There is always someone older and richer to blame. Everywhere machines and the little men who program them. Future textbooks are going to get this all wrong. There is nobody at the wheel.
Sagittarius
You’re the wild one. Your phone full of first names. Your friends are their friends are your friends. Find an excuse to go out on Wednesday. Sneak onto the roof. Fuck in a closet at after hours. Dance until it’s time to watch the sun rise over the chemical factory. Wake up in a waterbed, a stairwell, a relationship, pain. Your cells are revolting. You need a reheated samosa but the kitchen is across state lines. How did your roommates get their hands on a jackhammer? They’re becoming hoarders but are too nice to confront. The scene is getting old. Stay in and rediscover anime. Date someone easy. Browse indefinitely. Buy books that look good on the shelf. Date someone with the same mental illness. Tip the delivery guy extra out of misplaced guilt. Are you still watching this? What if I told you the bodega knows you as Blue Gatorade. That aliens are in fact ancient. They are us, returned from the gray future to make sure we fuck it up the same way. This time, try to stick the landing. Go out for the first time since Venus was being a little bitch and meet someone. Someone with their own problems. Someone quick to joke and slow to love. Slow and strong. Grow dumb together with your two dumb dogs. No kids though, they’ve suffered enough. Only when it’s over will you realize it wasn’t suffering at all.
Capricorn
Will this year ever end? The spectacle is gruesome and you don’t even have to leave bed. Order sushi for the second time this week. Spend half of your imaginary paycheck on a new look. Dark loungewear. The nouveau bitch. Cyberdawg. Fresh off the wagon. Country dads. You could keep going, but you’ve got a hot date with a frozen pizza. Post about the senator with the quaint sex addiction. Sounds messy to be honest, like that’s ever stopped you. You appreciate quality craftsmanship but will settle for an imitation so long as you can complain about it. People who wait in lines to take pictures of food. Unearned celebrity. There are only three melodies now. The kids. Astrology is bullshit, but what isn’t. The question is rhetorical. Trust me, I’m a glitch and you’re exhausted. We could be a lucky number, but you’re busy feeding the machine. Even poetry gets a cubicle. What better mask than the promise of skin. It’s not my place to say, but I’m doing my best here. We all are, which isn’t saying much. All we ever wanted was a strong, caring voice to tell us what to want. Someone to speak slowly and clearly as they reconnect the feed. It’s going to be okay.
Nick Greer is a writer from Berkeley. This is probably a mistake.