Horoscope

Capybara

       My son once told me that capybara, the world’s largest rodent, eat circles in the grass during the full moon. He told me this unequivocally, his eyes shining, his smile radiant, inflated with the confidence only a 10-year-old can have. And I believed him with the innocence of an Amish child watching bears arabesque at the circus.

        With all our technology, I contacted a capybara expert that very day. The scientist swiftly responded and said that, though this South American animal has other remarkable abilities, including sleeping underwater, they were not believed to eat circles in the grass during a full moon.
       I was disappointed. I think the animal biologist was, too. But sometimes you have to lie to evoke deep beauty. Who doesn’t ache to discover worlds, brimming with animals that create art by eating reflections of the moon in the grass?
       You do, Taurus. And this is your year, baby.
       You writhe toward the call of creative freedom. But something is in your way. You have been burning to lighten your load, longing to donate your stuff that has seemed so vital. Yet, you’ve learned lately that this meaning it is only slightly so.
       Let’s not mince words: It is time to leave your home, so bloated with memories it is empty of the here and now. Even the lies of the past that once so aggravated you have been enshrined in sentimentalism. You’ve been held captive by the hollow hope that the past will somehow appear differently, that your adorable young children will come back to you, miraculously unscratched. But once you walk, you never crawl again. That is the law of nature. For them, and for you.
       Don’t let the snow and the shovels fool you. It has been a long, dark winter. But there is a purpose: to dream of a deep blue daisy or a capybara eating circles to reflect the full moon; to remember how soul food tasted in another life. As you’ve hunkered down, stuck in the past, almost accidentally you’ve been mining your imagination. You have sometimes stealthily, sometimes dramatically, moved mountains already. You are done digging out.
       Hear the cock crow! Yank the zipper down! The flowers are reaching for the sun, generously turning their heads toward that lustrous light of spring. So drink your kombucha from a Styrofoam cup. You are smartly on the move.
       What matters most is who you are: inimitably you. Your sense of home is beneath your skin. The Samarai Mizuta Masahide wrote in the 1600s: “Since my house burned down, I now own a better view of the rising moon.”
       Let the magic begin. Dance circles beneath the full moon, languidly or spastically. With pencil in hand and bells on your feet, you can go anywhere. Go gregariously, but lightly, too. Keep your eyes wide open like an Amish child at the circus. And don’t be afraid to lie. Tell beautiful lies. 

(This is the result of a writing exercise offered up in a writing salon. The words in bold were all the words we had to include, based on a list we compiled as a group: http://elephantrockretreats.com)