Notes from an astrology reading with writer/artist/filmmaker Antero Alli (bio/astro) yesterday afternoon.

In his Berkeley home, cat scratching at the door, partner Sylvi practicing music downstairs. Forgot to take a picture. Note: I've never met this fellow before. We know Eve and Erik Davis in common, that's about it.

He looks over a printout showing the planets at the time of my birth. The placement of something called a "south node" tells him that I am quick to grasp things conceptually, and I have a tendency towards conceptual overkill. Too much information gathering at times, hesistant to commit to things I don't know. Moving with faith, he says, should activate my sense of meaning. I should consider moving from the conceptual towards the perceptual, following hunches.

Gazing over at Pluto and Uranus in my seventh house, he declares that I have quite a bit of intensity in my one on one relationships. I'm attracted to people with power and independence. Then I tend to project massively on those people, he muses, probably overwhelming them. I seek too much from them.

About a month ago, I was looking over my life. Broke up with my partner Jane. Not living in Japan. Not writing a book. Just writing a few articles. I had a sense that I was clearing out my life, by accident. Or it was being cleared out for me - a cosmic control-alt-delete. I'm nearly 29 years old. In astrological terms, that's about how long it takes Saturn to complete a full cycle around the galaxy. The "Saturn Return" is reputed to be a time of come-uppance - either you've been disciplining yourself and growing as a person, or something out of balance tips you over.

Alli looked at Saturn in my fourth house and mused: this is an orphan planet, he said. This placement often signifies the death of a parent when you were young, or the feeling of being raised without parents. Does that ring true? I nodded.

Saturn also suggests that my task now is to identify and meet my own needs. Alli pointed out that I would be less likely to overwhelm my partners that way. This, he suggested, would be a good barometer of my emotional health. Otherwise, success for me is subjective; I should meditate on my goals and dreams apart from my engagement with other people.

He gazed at the top of my chart packed with Sagittarius and tempered slightly by Capricorn, and said that my career would be based on developing my philosophy in public. As I summarized his remarks at the time, "The search is my future, sharing that search is my value." He foresaw? advised? movement towards higher learning and respect for the unknown. Expanding consciousness by investing faith in the unity of the existence.

What does that mean? Less analysis, more meditation. In the last few months I've heard this message from many quarters. Nice to have it affirmed by this artist. I underlined in my mind a valuable sentiment for this time: be comfortable with not knowing what I'm doing. But continue cleaning up.

This is a time of the unknown for me. An enormous amount of my productive energy was invested in my relationship with Jane. We still talk and work together on a few things. But now that I'm spending my days staring at myself, I've been unsure what to do. I have work with TheFeature and Chanpon. There are other wonderful side-projects. But I don't wake up in the morning and run to the keyboard to get tapping away on something I'm passionate about! And I'm used to that.

So when people ask me what's going on, or how I'm doing, I don't have much to say. I don't have a barometer. For a while I had shingles. Now I'm working and visiting astrologers, taking aikido, writing, cleaning up for the next incarnation.

I saw Howard yesterday after all this. After listening to me prattle on about planets and intensity, he declared "you're a young man without a dream!" And I think he's right. I have a great list of to-do items. But nothing I'm reaching towards. For now. I take a deep breath, a few maybe, and I'm okay with that.