The Next Step?

Where do I begin? I kind of feel like I'm sitting down to write a "what I did on my summer vacation" essay, since I've made no entry here since last May. I started this blog a couple of years ago with Pluto trining my Sun/Pluto in Virgo, but for most of this year Pluto has been riding over my 5th House Moon in Capricorn and, as I write this, it's making it's final pass and working on making a friendly aspect to the retrograde Jupiter as it shoves off my Moon for the last time.

My last post laid out my summer journey and I'm only now beginning to feel comfortable with the new tools offered and the new landmarks identified.  Essentially, it took me all of the summer to face up to the questions posed by the Pluto transit.  Based on my experiences with Pluto, the question always comes down to a simple "what do you want?"  I know that most of the focus on Pluto transits is about what it seems to take away - how it strips away all that's familiar, and that's true too. My father died just about a year ago. I had been his primary care-giver for more than four years. He lived with me and was the major focus of my life.

Hello, Pluto.

All that was familiar was striped away. But that just left me with the question, "Now what?" Over the course of the last eleven months, the question ringing in my ears has been, "what do you want to do now?" And that is the question I recognize as Pluto's question. I've had a veritable parade of tempting mirages to observe passing before me: "Is this what you want?" "How about this?" "You've always liked this."

Pluto IS about death, decay and destruction but always leaves the essential kernel, sometimes unrecognizable,  to begin the process of creating something new - hence, the question, "What do you want?" The problem, though, is that there really isn't anything easily recognizable to help answer the question.

"What would you like?"

"I'd like a burger, please."

"I'm sorry, that item is no longer on the menu."

The question, "what do you want?"  is increasingly coming into focus everywhere as the Uranus/Pluto square builds towards it's first exact aspect next summer. It is fascinating that the question is currently being asked repeatedly of those involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement. The decay and corruption is obvious to just about everyone with a pulse. But the current protests and those of the so-called Arab Spring are simply the first step to a complicated process. The first step is just to say, "hey, there's a problem here."

Then, "Yeah, okay, so. . . What do you want to do about it?"

What's next?  The old will fall away.  The change will come.  That's inevitable. But then what?  When Uranus pushes back against the weight of oppression and Pluto strips away the rot and decay, we can easily feel profound disorientation and confusion as we confront an unrecognizable world.  And then comes the question: "What do you want?" It can just as easily sound like a threat rather than an offer. It's an opportunity only if we can deal with our fear and calm our confusion.

"There must be some kind of way out of here, said the Joker to the Thief."