Free Will Astrology

ARIES (March 21-April 19): I did something today that's an apt metaphor for the task you have ahead of you. While driving my 1997 Honda Accord on the streets of San Francisco, I had to drive very slowly and gradually while ascending a steep hill. I kept my foot on the gas pedal just hard enough to keep the vehicle from sliding backward as I inched upward at two miles per hour. It was an exercise in supreme concentration: I had to be delicate and focused while prodding a one and a half ton beast. Just as I pulled off this feat, Aries, I believe you'll be able to accomplish a comparable version of it.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): "Nothing would be done at all," said Cardinal Newman, "if a man waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault with it." Let's forgive his sexist language and concentrate on the truth he articulates, which is profoundly apt for you right now. It's important that you try to do what you can't do very wel—that you not use your lack of mastery as an excuse to avoid practicing an immature skill. Be willing to look foolish as you improve, and paradoxically you will often appear brave and inspired.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Would you please go have a picnic after midnight in a secret garden? Or maybe wander out to the edge of nowhere and throw a birthday party for the sun? Or weave wildflowers in your hair and lead a sweet thing unto temptation with a seduction strategy plucked from a poem by Pablo Neruda? Please, Gemini, tear your eyes away from the terribly obvious and the numbingly familiar. Be willing to be as impractical as you've ever been. The weird probability is that you'll have a piercing insight about the bottom line while you're wandering free in a place that's far from the bottom line.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): "If you want to draw a bird, you must become a bird," counseled the Japanese artist Hokusai. Indian activist Mahatma Gandhi practiced a related strategy: "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." I have yet another perspective to add to the mix: Become more like the people you admire most. Place these three suggestions at the core of your daily rhythm in the coming week, Cancerian.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): I just received a check in the mail for seven cents. It was from the Screen Actors Guild, a residual payment for my tiny role in the Robin Williams' movie Being Human, in which I played a TV psychic who gives readings for pets. Though the 1994 film was a critical and box office failure, it has continued to earn modest revenue through video sales in Third World countries. I decided not to cash my miniscule check, but rather frame it and put it up on my wall as a conversation piece. I predict a similar event will soon occur in your life, Leo: You'll receive a "reward" whose value will consist almost entirely of its power to generate joke and story material. That's not something to be sneezed at.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): It's a good time to work on your moon tan. I suggest you put on a bathing suit and find a place where the moon can beam down on you for a while. As you bask in its glow, periodically turning over to let it saturate every part of your body, imagine that soaking up the lunar vibes will deepen and tone your emotional life, enhance your receptivity, make you a wiser nurturer, and build up your knack for adjusting deftly to change.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): The leaves on the persimmon tree outside my door are growing so fast I swear I can see them expanding right in front of my eyes. Like them, you are in a period of almost maniacal fertility. The ripening process is so elemental that you may feel as if unpredictable forces of nature have been unleashed inside you. As long as you keep your sense of humor about it, however, nothing too out-of-control will happen. At worst, you'll resemble a funny monster with a brilliant future, like an awkward kid destined to grow up to be a cute genius.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Have you ever wondered about the X-ray glasses advertised in comic books and sold by mail? They allegedly allow you to see through people's clothes, maybe even through their skin to the skeleton beneath. You Scorpios now have the next best thing to that cartoon technology. Your eyesight is especially keen—so much so that you'll notice many things that have previously been hidden from you. Not only that. You'll be especially adept at discerning the real stories unfolding beneath the official stories. You'll have the ability to decipher people's unconscious motivations and secret agendas. It's almost like you'll have a psychic version of X-ray specs.