The Rob Brezsny Challenge


This is my latest horoscope from Rob Brezsny:fwalogo.red-p.email (2)

Gemini (May 21-June 20)

English model and TV personality Katie Price has been on the planet for just 37 years, but has already written four autobiographies. You Only Live Once, for instance, covers the action-packed time between 2008 and 2010, when she got divorced and then remarried in a romantic Las Vegas ceremony. I propose that we choose this talkative, self-revealing Gemini to be your spirit animal and role model. In the coming weeks, you should go almost to extremes as you express the truth about who you have been, who you are, and who you will become.

I accept the challenge.

I am a tender spirit, fumbling along with equal parts wonder and fear. I am a cranky malcontent, irritated with traffic and people. I am irrefutably human. I have chosen dubious battles and taken errant detours. I have made stupid compromises.  I have fallen in love with the wrong men.  I have created much of my own suffering. But I have also bravely stared down the beast for as long as I can remember. I know the abyss and how to climb out of it. I have endured losses that seemed impossible to recover from. If nothing else, I am a god damn warrior. Hit me baby one more time.

I have messy hair, clunky boots and a little ink here and there. I’m told that I walk with a distinctive shuffle. My body is changing, but yoga eases the wear and tear. Sometimes I get dizzy spells and can’t remember what I’m trying to say. I attribute this to insufficient sleep and overthinking.

I am happy in the most peculiar of ways. My mind is a perpetual circus of inane drivel, entertaining observations and ridiculous speculation. I make up stories about people I see on the street. Thousands of little narratives are running through my mind at any given time.

I am harder than I want to be sometimes and not as patient. But I’m working on it. I have to believe that good humor and a fundamentally gentle heart count for something. My father taught me not to take myself too seriously. Life is easier and more fun when I remember that.

I have learned the limits of resolve and the relief in surrender. I’ve stopped waiting for things that are never going to happen and putting my faith in people who are never going to come through. “It is what it is” is a liberating truth.

I don’t waste time on those who are less enthusiastic than I am.

I still want a lot but also recognize that I may be done. However, there is still much to love and be grateful for in this life:

  • cold, sunny days
  • generosity
  • my kids and all the ways they’ve made me expand
  • deep friendships with strong women
  • jazz, blues and rock & roll
  • Seattle Seahawks
  • beloved family members who dodged the crazy gene
  • dance
  • people fighting for the cure
  • Madden for Play Station
  • any spark of creative inspiration that lights the path
  • dogs that look like Ernest Borgnine
  • the present moment and the potential for grace therein
  • the cactus salsa at El Quetzal
  • the infinite nature of this list

I have an inexplicable and deeply satisfying passion for football. Sometimes, I think of little else. If I were granted a giant life do-over, I would be a sports journalist. It’s probably not in the cards at this point. (Neither is dancing reggaeton at 53, but I still rock that shit hard.) You never know. Life is short. I say read the sports section first. When I die, please scatter my ashes in the end zone.

I have no patience for entitlement and zero tolerance for bullies and bigots. There is never a good reason for choosing hate over love.

I have more good days than bad ones. When I celebrate, I take everyone along with me. Playfulness has served me well over the years.  I can get a rapport with anyone and I can disarm the most rigid of sales clerks or bank tellers. I can also forever change the way you think about interacting with dogs. Those are the good ones, you know.

Winning is in the quirky nuances.

I have failed at more things than I’ve been successful at. The ledger proves this. The challenge is to be cool with myself anyway. Most days, I am.

When I was a kid, I ate dog biscuits (for shock value), made faces in the mirror and hated myself for being fat. I fixated on words that amused me and unleashed them on the world, repeating them again and again and again to whomever was in earshot. If I could not be beautiful, at least I could be jolly.

I will always wonder what it would have been like if she hadn’t been a drunk; if we’d had the baby in the hospital; if I’d stayed. I think about how things may have gone differently if I’d told him to “fuck off” at the very beginning. Instead, it was the last thing I ever said to him.

Every morning, I see a homeless woman doing prostrations under the freeway at James Street. She is the embodiment of devotion. She is also a reminder of everything I still have to learn.

The ones I love the most have no clue. It’s not for a lack of telling. They’re simply spinning off in their own galaxies, oblivious to me. But love is stubborn. It isn’t going anywhere.

For all this traveling, I know very little. All I have is questions:Brezsney

Why are we so afraid of each other?

We do we fight so hard to survive when we’re just going to die anyway?

Why do people walk up the escalator? Aren’t we supposed to enjoy the ride?

Why do so many have an aversion to science? (One way or the other, Mother Nature always wins.)

Have I contributed anything?

Why didn’t they give the ball to Lynch?

There are pros and cons to humanity. I want to believe that our collective compassion will save us all. But I am a weathered realist looking through an Eeyore lens. My solution is to focus on my small corner of the world and to bring whatever good I can.

I have done the best with what I’ve been given to work with. This is my story, at least what I know of it so far. This is me.

Now who are you?