If I didn't try to see something beautiful in every day--I would soon loose interest in being among the living. It is the active search for wonder, amazement, tranquility, beauty, awe, love, hope, inspiration, friendship, intimacy, understanding, delight -- these are the things that make *my* life worth living. There are little trinkets of absolute sparkling joy everywhere, one only has to have the drive to look for them, seek them out.
That part of me that thrives on life is the part of me I admire in myself, even when other things in my life are not so admirable; it's the part of me that I think makes me most valuable as a human being in this world with other human beings--and without it--I can't imagine liking myself much, let alone anyone else being able to tolerate me.

You... you tease me. You play with me as a cat plays; swatting lazily at a cat-nip filled mouse, interest lasting only moments. Intense interest, yes. But fleeting, so very fleetingly. You want me, you don't. We're on, we're off; I'm amazing, I'm neurotic. I'm just me. It's you who changes his mind -- fickle as an orchid in the wrong climate. I've always just been me. Do I try to incorperate simplifying concepts, practice loving kindness? Absolutely. Am I always on target? No, no more than any other human being faced with such decisions.

We're comming up on two years of this. Will it go on? I do not know. Will I let it? If the past is an indicator at all, then it's likely. Why??? People don't understand why. I think I do.

I let you walk out, and then right back in, with such ease as if you'd never gone; as if you hadn't been absent for days, weeks, months, because each moment I spend in your presence, each second I can feel your heat, I am filled with passionate peace. I am where I belong, where I am comfortable. Where I am meant to be. Sometimes I ache, a true and honest feeling of emptiness grows up from the pit of my stomach and consumes me, fills me with desire to be near you, in your reach, my skin against yours...

When you said the dog and I were just alike, you were probably more right than you know. I am consumed with the need to make you happy, make you smile, make you feel good and forget that the world can be so cruel and evil. All I want is the amazingly fufilling reward that comes when you touch me, when you smile at me, when you tell me how happy I make you, or how good I make you feel. I want your affirmation that I am, indeed, pleasing you. I want your praise; when you touch my hair, grab my ass, rub my shoulders, you tell me that I make you happy, and that you are appreciative; you tell me silently that you approve, and really that is what I seek, your approval, your love. You make love to me so throughly and completely I can't help but be constantly wanting more of you. Exausted, tired muscles, sleepy and baked, you still drive me wild, bring me to a state of crazed madness with your touch, leave me needing you, always wanting more of you.

Each time you leave, I am flooded with heartbreaking agony. Oh it's lessened since that first time... I remember the first time, oh god how I thought I would break...

I remember that time like it was yesterday. I had just delivered you to a destination (of sorts) that you asked me not to reveal. It doesn't really matter, I suppose, if I do so here. You didn't want those who knew you, who would go after you, or who would be in a position to tell others who would, where you were headed. You wanted to be alone, and you didn't want to leave a trail. I could and did respect that. You told me the night before, that you would leave the next day, but you had been saying tomorrow for so many days, I didn't really believe it... quite entirely.

And so, that afternoon, when I dropped you in the foothills of Mount Baker, it was only with a small bit of warning. The day looked terrible that morning, Bellingham was entirely fogged in and I was sure it would rain. We couldn't even see much of the foothills as we took our morning walk that had become such a routine. You said it wouldn't rain, and that the fog would burn off by early afternoon. I didn't think it would. But by dinnertime, indeed, the sky had turned blue and there was hardly a cloud left.

Your oversized hiking backpack held the things you would need to be safe, and warm, I knew this. Two sleeping bags, a tent, rain gear, a hammock, dry foods like rice and beans and peanut butter that would keep your belly full, water bottles and a filter... You could barely get it up on your back. But that wasn't the worst of it, watching you strap a second smaller backpack on backwards, carrying it like new mothers carry their babies strapped to their chests... I looked into your brown eyes and you seemed happy. You don't often. Often you seem troubled and frustrated in your eyes. But at the moment we were to part; where you were to begin your journey in one direction, and I mine in another, you looked at peace in the deep dark windows of your soul. (Later I found out you had a big bag of shrooms with you. Perhaps I mistook your eagerness for peace.)

I watch you go, and call out, "Come home, you know, if you feel like it!" And you say, "Yah, so you can support me?" I say, "Just come home if you want to, my brown-eyed ranger..." and you said, "I will if I feel like it, hon, but only if and when I do." And then I couldn't see you anymore.

So I watched you climb up the steep and slightly overgrown path, and then I couldn't bear it anymore, and I got into the car, and I took off spinning the tires and throwing gravel everywhere, eyes wet, tears streaming. I know it's not wise to drive like that, spinning out because I am upset, but I revel in the way the car sort of slides on the gravel, the way the car feels out of control like my emotions feel out of control. It's an old gravel logging road, running along side of the mountain, and I slow down, realizing how incredibly silly I am behaving. And then I bawl. I cry like a baby. I moan and wail and let it all out. I tell myself, as I get on the freeway headed back toward your house, your room; that it is ok to be so terribly sad, right now. And only right now. Scream, yell, cry, moan, bawl, and then be done with this silliness. And so I stop crying, repeat, pull it together, and repeat it again. Even now I feel the hot salty drops welling up in my eyes, and I know I've lost this round again as they spill down my cheeks and splat on my keyboard. Deep breath. Start again. I have got no right in the world to receive any pity over this. I am not asking for pity, not from myself, not from anyone I know, and not from you, my reader. I have just a very few select friends who knew about my ongoings with him.

Anyway. Needless to say, Im quite sure, my heart was in a gajillion pieces. I wanted to run up into those mountains after you. I wanted to scream your name the whole way; make you come back. I wanted to tell you I am in love with you. I wanted you to be in love with me. Problem is, I think you were, and I think that's part of why you had to go. I know it had to go like this, it's why I didn't beg you to stay.

I said things like, oh it's very cloudy, you prolly shouldn't go today. And... Humm, you can't find the match to your sock? Well, you best not go till we locate that, it's very important you don't leave without it... And so forth. But you said you were afraid if you didnt go now, you never would, and that you needed to. I both wanted you to go, and wanted you to stay--in equal parts. I can't imagine how I would have dealt with things if you had stayed. That was why I knew you had to go, and I couldn't ask you not to.

I know you wouldn't want me to feel this miserable, but I also know how much time I spent feeling so absolutely fucking amazing because of you, so that makes this pain understandable, if not more bearable. For every action an equal and opposite reaction. For all the months since that first February, that I have glowed and thought nothing but warm thoughts about you, walking inches above the ground, now I pay the price. It's expensive. But the journey was so astounding, in the end I'm sure it will be worth the heartache, which eventually, I thought would subside, and I would have softer and easier memories.

But that was just the first time. How many times have you returned, bringing joy and passion and fire and sprite back to my life, only to yank it all away from me, as you wander off into the world again, directionless, timeless, planless.

You've done it more times than I can count, now. The only time worse than that first time was the second, but it was worse for you too, I know it was. You pulled that moving truck away from the house and I saw you, and you were crying as hard as I was. I knew that time it would not be so long before I was in your arms again; but even inside the knowing it was oh so hard.

Why do I let this continue? Because you are the most amazing human being I have ever encountered. Because you always leave before things get too complicated, too real. Because when you come back they are simple and wonderful again. Because I'm lonely. Because I love the way you feel, the way you smell, the way you taste. Because in my life, in my story, you are the hero. (Sometimes long lost hero, albeit, but hero none the less.) Hero's often fail.

**see comment**

The following is a reading of my Moon sign, Moon in Taurus.

Some of it seems relevant, some not so much... But I definately find it interesting.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As far as service - the factors I mentioned before, you have the following in no particular order of severity or importance:

1. Neptune in 12 House
Your fantasies involve pure surrender, giving up ego identity to become one with larger universes within and beyond the ordinary self. When you dream-waking or sleeping-you dissolve into a realm where control and will have no meaning.

2. Saturn in 7th House
You want cooperation deeply, but you fear being abused, and worse, you worry that you actually deserve mistreatment for unknown flaws of character. Why would others want to cooperate with you, especially the powerful father figures to whom you are attracted? There are two pitfalls: first, you may bend so far in accommodation that you harm yourself; or second, you may so fear rejection that you refuse to negotiate with a coldly defensive posture. Remember that just because your partner wins, you don't have to lose. The challenge is to learn that you can be in unresolved negotiations safely. You're correct to be cautious in negotiations, but your ambition to achieve full cooperation won't go away; you just have to work at it.

Moon in 5th House, conscious persona
The 5th house is an area of active radiance and conscious behavior-life as a stage with the ego as star. The Moon is a psychological function of responsive caretaking and habit-oriented behaviors. How can you be the star in what is-by definition-a supporting role? How can you be conscious and unconscious at the same time? You often adopt a role coming from childhood imprints, especially those surrounding protection. The pitfall is overly self-centered nurturing-seeing others as needy when in reality it is you who has the need-the need to give, to feel necessary and important. The challenge is to make these emotions as conscious as possible, and to respond in a way that offers others what they truly require. Give boldly, but only when it is requested.

romance, giving love
You're drawn to courtship like a moth to a flame. It is one of the basic necessities of life, like food and shelter. Love is more automatic than conscious, more a product of habit than an intentional pattern of action. Even desire is to some extent automatic. Characteristically, your romances are based on security-yours, your beloved's, or more likely, both. If there's one pitfall to watch out for, it's the syndrome mentioned above: fostering neediness to create an artificial sense of dependency on your strong, capable shoulders. The challenge is to nourish your beloved, but to do so in a way that promotes healthy, independent adulthood.

sexual performance
This is the placement of "mother-as-lover" (or vice versa), and it carries with it all the complications implied in such a melding of roles. Sexual activity is seen as food to quell inward hungers. But since your sexuality is responsive in nature, you often have to manipulate your beloved to initiate the contact. The sexual tone is emotional, lodged more in feelings than physicality, and you are rarely happier than when sexuality is ongoing. You judge your performance by how "full" your partner feels. Literal fertility is more emphasized here than in other placements. The challenge is to respond in appropriate sexual ways, without creating the pitfalls of co-dependency, and to fulfill your personal needs for security through warm and moist sexual expression.

personal creativity
Creativity is second nature to you. However, it does tend to be somewhat more synthetic than original, in that it emerges out of the stockpile of everything you've ever absorbed. This is not to suggest that there is anything invalid about what you create, but rather to emphasize that the act is aided by processes occurring beneath the level of your conscious awareness. If you have children, much of your creativity will likely be directed toward their upbringing, and while this may be somewhat more emphasized if you are a woman and a mother, it is still a strong likelihood even if you are male.

competition
You need to be competitive, and yet the whole notion of risk is antithetical to the Moon's basic function of security and self-protection. Paradoxically, you can only protect yourself by continuing to risk your ego. The Moon shows how a person stays fluid and well-fed, and here that method involves stepping beyond the ordinary boundaries of self, out into the world, onto fields of battle or play. However, your caretaking can both obscure and complicate the natural competitiveness of the placement. As a result, you often support others by challenging them, and this may or may not succeed.

4. Chiron in Aries
Aries is the sign of selfhood and with Chiron here the sense of self may be weakened. Sometimes the person feels as if they don't exist and have to take their sense of identity from others.

5. Part of Fortune in Virgo
Part of Fortune in Virgo is perfect joy and happiness is found in service.

6. THE NORTH NODE IN THE 11TH HOUSE
This is the quest the Karmic Demand and Urge to learn to serve in humility. You need to let go of all that is possessive and passionate and personal in order to carry out the Command Intention of detached service to humanity

<*smile*> and I could go on :)

Astrology is just a tool.. both we as individuals and the planets
experience the same influences in synchronisity. Astrology just
allows us to exactly place the influences and interactions so we can
see if the myths and itereactions do or do not apply.

You called me precious, your princess, your baby girl... You stroked my hair with gentle and strong hands. I was so at ease, so at peace, sitting on your floor with my head resting in your lap, feeling your heat, your gentle touch, your murmering whispers. With you, though, I was just as comfortable when you used your hard voice, demanding I stop doing the dishes and undress, right there in the kitchen, drop to my knees and fuck you with my face, your hands invariably tangling into my hair...

You saw into my heart and read my soul; brought me home, nurtured me, tended to me, cared for me, offered me the moon, showed me the stars. I loved being your pet. I never once mistook your soft and quiet tenderness for any lack of strength--your dominance is carried in your eyes, as much as anywhere. Bright warm eyes that glisten with a teasing grin, backed by the sheer will and force of an atomic bomb. Intoxicating. A year later now, nearly to the day, as I sit writing this, wondering where you are, how you have fared; remembering your eyes, your touch, your smell...still makes me inhale sharply and sends a cold thin shiver through me.

When we knotted that nylon rope into a nine tail; when you showed me how, and let me pick the length and melt the ends with the flame, when we created it together, it made us one in that space and time. When you touched me with it, it made me one with you, connected us so deeply that the barely swelling pink lines across my skin only hinted at the depth of the bonding that occurred; muted and faded, merely translucent teasing hints of the course and depth of your energy as I felt it stirring across my skin, inside of me, through me; drifting into my head, my heart, my veins, my sex. You made me ache in the most delicious ways.

When you tried to collar me; when I objected and pouted and could not be consoled, and you removed it in exchange for the thin gold chain, I knew you were simply too good to be true. When you petted me and told me it was ok, and that I didn't need a leash, because I stayed at your side all on my own, and that was better anyhow; I glowed in a sence of feeling ok with the way I was. You made me feel comfortable in my own skin. Your atavistic biting, and pulling at my hair; your uninhibited demanding that I pay attention to your stare.

Memories come crashing through me; of riding in your car, the smell of the leather interior, listening to your music and feeling your beat, feeling your hand on my thigh. Memories of the slapping noises of your crops, and oh my god, that pig slapper!... So loud, and such a tease. Warm skin-melting memories that were just enough of a taste to make me know how so terribly much more I wanted... An introductory paragraph to an encyclopedic novel; an appetizer sampling of a menu the length of the bible.

My devious and distrustful nature got the very best of me; I am mischeif, I am joy, I am a whirlwind tragedy, begging on all fours, I am light, and I am trouble with a capital T, I am just a gurl, deep inside of me. I just didn't trust, couldn't trust you. I couldn't close my eyes to the lies that you told to me. Oh, I wanted to look away, but akin to the deer caught in the headlights, I was terrifyingly glued to knowing the truth, seeing the reality in it's cold black and white contrasts. The fantasy was nicer, my ferocious lover; and I'm sorry that I looked at the blueprints, and sorrier that I led you to show them to me... Wishing that we had gone to see the horses before you let me go.