Liminal Space

Today is the last day of 2010. I'm not sorry to see this year go. It's been beyond stressful. I'm ready for something new.

That being said, I tend to push the start of the New Year to the vernal equinox, when Spring begins. It feels like a better start to a year. Rather than having a few months of cold, dead world, it makes more sense for the year to begin when the world wakes up. So, what is to be done with these dark days between the death of one year and the birth of another?

Liminal space! It's my favorite type of space. The places in between are my favorite places to be. Those are the places where anything is possible, and nothing holds you back. So, what is to be done?

I'm changing everything. I'm stepping back from myself and deciding from a distance what needs to be strengthened, and what needs to be weeded out.

I'm realizing how much I love my studies. Despite the pure stress, both physical and emotional, that I've undergone in the past few years thanks to my work, I still can't help but get excited about learning more. Egyptology stays in my life.

The hippy in me is stirring. I'm finding myself more and more interested in herbs and healing, and things that could be considered esoteric. I want to strengthen my knowledge of folklore and magical lore. :-)

I also want to work harder on my creative writing. In 2008 I got inspired to write a novel, but my studies were too demanding. Now, my studies are still demanding, but I would like to work, at least a few minutes a day on my novel. Novels.

Not sure yet what I'm culling. There are still 79 days until the equinox. And besides, it's still 2010!

Horoscope Week 19.August 2010

In one possible scenario I could foresee for you in the coming week, you're sweaty and tearful, enmeshed in an extreme state that causes an internal blockage to dissolve. The sweat is purgative, the tears are cathartic, and you're riding a wave of relief and release that clears out a backlog of emotional congestion. In a second possible future, I could see you as supernaturally relaxed and exuberant, periodically laughing so hard that you break up an internal blockage. The calm is purgative, the laughter is cathartic, and you're riding a wave of relief and release that clears out a backlog of emotional congestion. Which scenario would you prefer?

Meltdowns and Fried Twinkies

This week's picture comes to you from the Wilson County fair. The duck pictured, for those of you who might not know, is my personal traveling companion, Rameses Mack.

But there was plenty going on before the fair. Like, PUPPIES! Well, ok, really just the one. My buddy Justan's dog sired a littler of puppies, and Justan gets to keep one as a stud fee. On Tuesday we were supposed to bring her home for the first time to meet Achilles, the father yorkie. But, the owner wasn't home, so Justan and I started watching a show called V. It's a really great show, actually, about aliens who just show up above earth one day, promising peace. It's surprisingly good. Go watch it.

So, on Thursday, we actually managed to meet up with puppy, who Justan has named Danica. She is really rather painfully cute, very chill, mostly sleeps. Achilles sort of freaked out, and pretty much thinks of her as a new toy, but she was very relaxed. In fact, she curled up on my chest and fell asleep pretty much instantly, and only moved once when she got cold. And then she crawled under my hair! :-p

On Saturday, Brandi, Justan and Jake and I went to the Wilson County fair. It's one of the most popular fairs in Tennessee, and Jake and Justan apparently go every year. It was beautiful (ok, really hot) and sunny all day, but about 10 min after we arrived at the fair, the bottom opened up, and it POURED down rain. Major storm, boom boom, flash flash, soaking wet. It was actually extremely awesome. :-p We managed to get some food, and then stood under an awning and talked for an hour or so until the rain stopped. Or well, stopped enough for us to move around without falling over.

I got my palm read. The woman told me that I'm different from most people. She told me that I'm not the kind of person who likes to be bossed around. She told me I will not cry tears of sorrow, but will cry tears of joy. She said that many men want to be around me, but I only want to be around one man. She told me that I will marry only once, and will have 3 children (two boys, one girl.) :-P Pretty awesome life! :-D

Monday was yet another Farm Dinner Night chez Katie. There were 10 of us this time! (Katie, Justan, Will, Adam, Amy, Anne, Carl, Aaron, Greg (France) and Me.) And another awesome dinner. We had eggplant brushetta, fried potatoes (rosemary and olive oil), fried squash, a chili omelet, wild elk (killed by a local hunter) with pomegranate marinade, and homemade peach cobbler. SO good! Yum!

In thesis news: In the last week I had a major meltdown, and was determined that I would NEVER get anything done, and should probably just give up. Meltdown. And then I felt better.

Fast forward to today, and I'm rocking it out. There is just so much more work to be done before I can start writing. I was expecting to be able to write a ton already, and when I couldn't... see above meltdown. And now, I realize most of the work is the organizing. Pre-work. And I'm rocking it out. :-)

In other news: I got a bow! As in, bow and arrow. !!! I'm very pleased. It's a Bear Warrior 2 child's bow. I have to have a kid's bow because I'm too weak to pull a man's bow. :-P There was even a 9 year old boy there when I bought it who very helpfully pointed out that he has the same bow.... And Jake mentioned he had one when he was in cub scouts. Le sigh. I haven't been able to sight it in yet, because it's been too hot for my dad, and I don't know how to do it myself. The plan was to do it today, but it started raining (flooding, in fact.) Oh well.

Maybe next week. :-)

Crazy Girl Does What She Wants

Wow, time flies when your life is completely out of control. Much has happened, my friends, much has happened. Today's picture is me at the library. All dressed up, looking good, to come stare at ancient texts and mutter to myself in dead languages. I call this picture "Crazy Girl Does What She Wants."

So, what has Crazy Girl been wanting to do? Why, go to the beach of course! Completely randomly! My mother has a friend who owns a condo down in Orange Beach, Alabama. The friend was heading down, but mother, alas, had jury duty, and didn't know if she could go. So, on a Monday, I was chilling in the Village with my buddy C-BHR, and mom calls to tell me that her guy plead guilty, so no trial, and whoo hoo, we can go to the beach. I assumed this meant we'd get up and go early the next day, since it was almost 2pm. But, no, she meant "Get home now, let's go to the beach!" So I did and we did! :-)

"Uh, wait," I hear you saying, "Wasn't there a little bit of a MASSIVE oil spill in the Gulf not too horribly long ago? That must have been miserable." Well, about that. Orange Beach has been sort of the showcase beach for the entire region. When Mr. Obama took a trip to the Gulf, Orange Beach was what he got to see. So, we were fortunate. There wasn't any oil to be seen at all until the last day we were there, and the little boats came around and cleaned it all up. We didn't spend much time in the water, just in case, but it was a very enjoyable trip.

And now I'm back, and trying to get my thesis figured out. So, my days are spent in the Brentwood library, reading and rereading, organizing and reorganizing. It's a bit frustrating, because I know I'm on the edge of the breakthrough I need to get it all written in like a day. But it's just not there yet. Grr. It will come, I suppose.

In other news, I've been doing a bit more creative writing, which feels amazing.

Horoscope Week 22.July

In the upcoming science fiction movie The Adjustment Bureau, Matt Damon plays a politician with big ambitions. Everything's going his way until he falls in love with a dancer. Then the representatives of a mysterious group intervene in his life, warning him that he'll never achieve his dreams if he stays with her. "We are the people who make sure things happen according to plan," they say. "We monitor the entire world." I'm happy to inform you, Libra, that this scenario is utterly make-believe. There is no "Adjustment Bureau," on earth or in heaven. It is true, however, that if you don't have a master plan, then your destiny is more likely to be shaped by your conditioning and by other people's master plans. So get working! This is an excellent time to either formulate a master plan or refine the one you have.

www.freewillastrology.com

Blackberry Wine

Looks like this will be a weekly blog. The days of daily updates are on hold for a bit.

It's been a nice week, lots of small pleasures. My parents and I drove down to Fayetteville, a small town on the Tennessee-Alabama border, to buy some fabric. We decided to take a quick trip into Alabama to see a store my dad loves, so we drove south. We put the address into our GPS, but apparently the store hasn't actually been built yet, so it took us to a dead end. Like, through a seedy little town (everyone in town eyed us suspiciously as we drove by,) down a country land, and right up to a fence covered in signs saying "DO NOT ENTER!! DANGER!!" So we went home. Left the house at noon for a short drive, and didn't get home until 8pm. :-)

I also went over to Katie's to make blackberry wine and blueberry cobbler from fresh berries she had picked the day before. The cobbler was out of this world! The wine will have to wait a while, but I have high hopes for it. Katie's mom made this rockin dinner of pita, hummos, sun dried tomato, basil, olive pizza, and pasta. Cobbler for dessert. Then Katie and I sat in the hot tub until all hours of the morning and talked.

At one point an ambulance went by somewhere in the distance, and every dog in the neighborhood started barking at the siren. Including the wild coyotes just feet from where we were sitting. If you've never heard a coyote, it's one of the most terrifying sounds on earth. Because it doesn't sound like it's from this earth. They almost sound human, but at the same time ghostly, otherworldly. And they were right next to us, somewhere, in the dark.

So we just sank into the hot water a little deeper.

In other news: Justan's yorkie, Achilles, sired a litter of puppies, so we went over to check them out. Awrrr! I'm not a dog person, but I am decidedly a puppy person, especially when they're this age. They haven't even opened their eyes yet! Sigh. So cute.

Justan made chicken parmesan (one of my favorite dishes) and we watched the first three episodes of the Original Series of Star Trek. I was surprised, truthfully, at how much I enjoyed it. Very good show, so far. Though, I do find it amazingly interesting that in every episode I've seen so far, they meet some new strange alien, it turns out to be evil, and they kill it. The end. Hmm, revealing of 1960s American society? Hmmm....

I also got some new lawn furniture, which sounds dull until you realize that I spend most of my time outside, reading. Inside is just too cold for me. So, now I have a comfy couch, and a couple of comfy chairs. Could have a nice party! :-)

And a pink flamingo to accompany me. I named him Frederico.

I Am A Trekkie

A few days ago, Justan and I watched the new Star Trek movie. Though I've never seen the original series, as a devout Trekkie, I know enough about it that the movie was awesome. (Despite Vulcan being destroyed and stuff. I mean, alternate histories are well and good as long as the weird time loop gets fixed. Cause, I've seen TNG and DS9, and so I know the future...) Ahem, anyway, Justan and I have decided that we must remedy the fact that I've never seen the Original Series, and he's never seen Deep Space 9. So, it's a summer of sci-fi for me.

Ideally, I'd like to watch every episode of Doctor Who, but that might have to wait (according to the Wikipedia page, there are approx. 769 episodes.... sigh.)

I downloaded an app for my (ridiculous) new phone that is a tricorder. I was just hoping for something to make Star Trek style blips and boops and stuff, but apparently this this actually does really cool stuff. Like measure the acoustics of a room, or altitude, or magnetic fields, or solar flares on the sun.... Seriously. Wild.

I also now have Worf or the Enterprise's computer telling me when I get a message. :-P

In other news: mom and I went back to the pool today. It tried to thunder and rain on us a little, but the sun kept coming back out. Later on, I sat on the front porch and watched it actually rain until it got dark. Then I watched Doctor Who. :-p

It's the little things, really, that make me smile most.

Horoscope Week 9.July

It's high time to banish the excuses you think you have for not doing your best. There is no longer any valid reason to hide from your true calling or deny yourself more profound happiness. You are ready to see that the supposed "obstacles" to your success are actually instrumental to your success -- prods that will make you so much smarter and stronger that you cannot be defeated by circumstances. Why is this happening now? It's because a force working behind the scenes -- you can imagine it as God or destiny or karma if you like -- is clearing away the illusions that have held you in thrall to false ideas about who you are. If I were you, I'd shout "hallelujah!" as I pinch myself in the butt and pat myself on the head.

The Coming of the Ship

I disappeared, I wandered off, and I stopped writing. But I didn't stop living. Oh no, nothing close to that. It's July now, and it was March last time I wrote. Spring slid away beneath me, Summer crept in. I can't describe the days I left unrecorded. Can only say this: the past few months have been as full as any could hope for. New friends becoming old friends, and meeting old friends anew. I have, yet again, crossed oceans and slipped into different worlds. I have laid in the sun, danced in the rain, and seen the day break more times than I can count.

I was there, and now I'm here. Story of my life, and one I just don't get bored telling. I hope you won't either.

I hope I'll have something good to say in the coming days!

I'm back.

Belgium and Back to Work

Ah, back from Belgium, and feeling much better. I spent all of Saturday playing with Brenda (of the Cario semester) and her boyfriend Guillaume. We wandered the beautiful old city of Gent, and made our way to the Gravensteen. It's a fortified castle, and it is awesome. Lots of old weapons, and armor, and stuff. A real once fully functional (*shudder*) guillotine, and a lot of very inventive torture devices. Definitely a good time. :-P

Add a cozy cafe with hot chocolate and apple pie to a castle complete with torture chamber and freaky deep dungeon, and the three of us had a pretty great day. :-)

Sunday morning brought a great family breakfast with Jen, Sören and Kaja Maus. We went to a sweet little café with tons of bread and croissants and all sorts of jams and chocolate sauces (dark, milk, white, hazelnut.) Then, after a quick play time with Kaja, I headed back to Holland. Rumor on the train was that I caught the last train from Antwerp to Holland, so I think I was lucky.

Back to work today, but man it was great. We went to the antiquities museum to read an actual papyrus. Very exciting stuff. Spells to keep away scorpions. Back to boring tomorrow.

I also rearranged my rooms. I have two of them, you see. The small one is super tiny, and so I've used it mainly for storage. However, I've gotten sort of tired of rolling from bed to desk and back, so I decided separate spaces for sleeping and working would be helpful. It took a lot of shuffling, since I have a bunch of junk. :-p Now I have nice organized piles of books and clothes and things to sell. Let's see how my new bedroom works for me.

25.March.10

Her face is covered

Black cloth can not veil her words

She is not afraid

I'm traveling again, and it feels great. I came to Belgium yesterday with Jennifer, to spend a few days relaxing, and to get a new perspective on my work. So far it has been a wonderful trip. Jennifer and I worked all morning on our own work, the perfect mixture of concentration and distraction.

Around 1pm I decided to head out in to Gent to see what there was to see. It was a beautiful and sunny spring day, and I felt better than I have in months. There's something so relaxing about the warm sun on your shoulders. I wandered through the medieval part of town, and finally found a café where I could drink some fancy coffee (cookie macchiato) and watch the Belgians go by. They seem to smile a lot more than the Dutch. Maybe it was the beautiful weather today.

On the way home from my wanderings, I passed through a great park filled with young people enjoying the day. A group of guys even included me in their football game! And another group waved to me as I took a photo of the park. It's so refreshing to be around open people again. Perhaps I've had a strange experience, but I've never seen such lighthearted people in Holland. Makes me like Belgium even more. Especially the sing-song cadence of the language!

Spent the evening playing games and making up stories with Kaja (using the pictures on an Isis Tarot deck, of all things) and enjoying the energy and magic of a 4 year old girl. Also her incredible mix of languages (English, German, and two dialects of Dutch!!)

In other news: There's a possibility that I might maybe make it back to Egypt again before too long. Maybe. There's a dig coming up that needs helpers, so our group leader from Cairo sent the people in my program an email telling us to apply. I'm absolutely thrilled at the possibility, and I've already started thinking of how to write my Letter of Motivation. Who knows if I'll get a position, but I really really hope I might!!

19.March-20.March.10

Pour another round

The world in a sip of rum

Let's dance until dawn

Friday night was Cocktail Night in the ISN common room. Couldn't have come at a better time. Next week is basically my Spring Break, and there has been entirely too much stress! Had an amazing time drinking cocktails (Cuba Libre for me) with tons of International students. I didn't know a lot of the people there, but by the end of the evening, I knew most of them. There was dancing, of course, since the new common room has a great dance floor. Mostly Latin, Indian and hip-hop music, so just about perfect for me. Met some pretty awesome people from Turkey, Morocco, Italy, China, Croatia, India, Suriname, Afghanistan, St. Martin, and even from Holland! :-p

After the common room closed, we went to the Town Hall for more dancing. Literally, Leiden's city hall becomes a dance club on weekends. I am not making this up. The music was a bit more techno than I tend to enjoy but the (very cute) DJ was good, so the music was decidedly danceable, even for my non-techno body. And we danced and danced. Me and my new friends.

Meant to see the beach

There was more rain than we thought

Watched the boats instead

A big group of us had decided to go to the beach today to celebrate the coming of Spring. It didn't work out. In fact, today was probably the wettest, rainiest day Leiden has seen this year so far. :-P VERY soggy. Fortunately, my book club (consisting of Andrea and Bogdan of Romania, Anna of the UK, Mia from Croatia, Alexandra from Russia, and a Finnish girl whose name I have totally forgotten) met at noon at the public library, so I had a posse to hang out with even though the beach trip got moved to tomorrow.

Mia (Croatia) and Anna (UK) and I decided to check out a little festival happening in the middle of town. Turned out to be a boat and waterway festival. They had a lot of tents set up showing off old ways of making the riggings and the nets and such for old fishing boats. They had an old sailing ship, and men dressed in period (though I admit I have no clue WHICH period) costumes working on it. There was also a stage with the very strangest of performances. When we arrived there was a group of children doing acrobatics, and there was naturally a group of sailors singing sea shanties (one song was an old Southern (as in American South) song about picking cotton and it rather unexpectedly included the 'n' word, and made me blush. The Dutch didn't bat an eye. I was shocked.) but there was also a guy dancing with a watering can over his head, and a few juggling teenagers from the Youth Circus, and women dressed all in green singing about love and the sea.

There was also a free canal tour of Leiden, so we happily jumped on board, and sloshed through the waterways of our cute little town. Very nice day. Got rained on a LOT, but ate a bunch of kibbeling, and watched the shows and learned about boats, and had a grand time.

We sat in De Catwalk and drank coffee, and talked about books some more. Then had dinner at Eazie, and talked even more about books. :-)

I don't mind the rain

If the night is warm enough

I'm so glad it's Spring!

11.March-13.March.10

Freaking out again

My work takes over my life

Breathe Breathe Breathe Breathe Breathe

10.March.10

Cold water dances

Spring sunlight fills me with joy

Holland is transformed

The man becomes one

With the rabbit at his feet

I am changing forms

Ok, I'm sort of proud of this one. There are layers of meaning that only Egyptologists will get! Whoo! It's not perfect, but oh, it's close. I won't explain, fully, but it has to do with hieratic script, and the "verb" (the quotation marks are quite deliberate) for 'to be'. Mmm.

9.March.10

Demotic is hard

I like it despite this but

It's all just squiggles

Back to the graveyard

Taking a break in the sun

Finding peace again

8.March.10: Two for Today

Saw the tea master

In the library today

Talked about Zeshin

The Tea Master is a Surinamese guy I met a week or so ago at a Zen Open House. The local Zen temple had a day of interesting classes and invited everyone to come. So I went! The Tea Master was there to teach us about traditional tea ceremonies. He's a very cool guy, very funny and laid back, and so when I saw him in the library today, I just had to say hi. It turned into a very cool, and rather long conversation. He told me that Zeshin, the monk I met at the Open House, just decided one day to leave his home in Katwijk and go to Japan. He sat on the steps of a monastery there, and just kept sitting there, even after the monks tried to run him off, until they let him in. :-) The last line of today's first haiku was almost Talked about his beard because the Tea Master speaks excellent Chinese, and looks Chinese enough that when he's with Chinese speakers they think he is Chinese. However, once he really gets to talking, his grammar often falls apart, and Chinese people think he's sort of crazy. He says once he grew a beard, they all just assume he's a foreigner, and are thus VERY impressed with his Chinese skills. :-)

In wintertime here

We all wear too much clothing

No one has a neck

Cold and cloudy today, and I observed that most people have to turn their whole bodies just to look around. Who's ready for Spring? Only 12 more days....

Sunday 7.March.10

Talking to the dead

Sunlight pointing out their names

Spring brings life to all

Beautiful day so I decided to go Walkabout. Hung out in the cemetery nearby. The Dutch have one of the coolest relationships to the dead that I've ever seen. Their tombstones are amazing. The newer ones are all unique, and personalized. You often even find pictures of the deceased. The families also leave behind the coolest stuff. Only the really old plots are bare. The rest are filled will little candles and flowers, and adorable statues of birds and other critters. You often find feathers and beads too, and the infant graves are filled with amazing toys, shells, even a windchime now and then. People also sometimes leave letters for the dead. I saw one yesterday, that was a framed picture of a little girl, and the letter was addressed to the deceased, and talked about the little girl (the granddaughter of the dead) and how the mother wishes her mother could be there to see her. Incredible!

Update about Updates

It's been over a month since last I posted. I've been hesitant to write because I feel my life is simply too dull these days. Here's what every entry for the past month would have looked like: "Sat in the library today and translated. Drank a lot of coffee. Listened to some cool podcasts about psychology. Translated some more. Ate food (almost certainly apples and peanut butter.) Went to class. Translated some more. Watched Buffy. Sleep."

I'm having a pretty good time with it, but it's frankly, rather dull. When learning ancient languages, most of your time is spent memorizing verb forms and prepositions, and so it's quite possible to spend HOURS and HOURS working on a text, and only end up with a couple of sentences sort of roughly more or less translated.

And yet, I feel that by not mentioning the various little things that happen in my day to day life, I'm letting a big part of my time in Holland go unrecorded. So, I've come up with a way to battle the boring entries. It mostly means I'm going to write really short entries explaining only the best (or worst, I guess) bits of my days. And I'm gonna do it haiku format as often as possible, just because it's much more fun that way. :-p

Ancient Squiggles

Back on this side of the pond, and this side of the keyboard! I was nervous to come back to Holland. I've spent some pretty radically horrible days and nights in this place. But as it turns out the Amy who left back in October is not the same Amy who showed up in January. And I swear this isn't the same place. I am finally getting to where I can easily see the awesomeness of this place! I win! I win!

Though it helps immensely, I'm sure, that I wintered in Egypt, and won't have to winter in Holland EVER AGAIN MWAHAHAHAHA! (Inshallah!)

So, here I am, and here Holland is. The week since I've been back has been interesting, weather-wise, from the tradtional rainy-dreary-yuck, to snow, to SUN. I'd say the sun has shone for the majority of the time I've been back (and that it hasn't been night), and that alone has raised my spirits higher. Add to that the fact that I am now certain that I rock the Egyptological world, or at least have the ability to translate ancient texts constantly, and I'm feeling pretty good about being back.

There's also a Starbucks in the train station now, and while I'm typically sort of blasé at best about the Bucks, I am thrilled. Mostly because I miss American style coffee shop (read: cafés) immensely. The hustle, the noise, the hanging out all day. Dutch cafés don't really have any of that. They have coffee, and people sit in little clumps with their friends, and drink their coffee, chat until the coffee's gone, and then leave. There's no hanging out with a computer or a book for hours. No $.50 refills either. Sigh.

So, the coming semester promises to be once again filled with entirely too much work. The master only requires that I take one course: Demotic. I learned in the first course that Demotic script is derived from Hieratic script and is grammatically between Late Egyptian and Coptic. The professor, a very scholarly American, said something like "Well, since you've all had Late Egyptian and Hieratic, Demotic won't be entirely impossible." Point of fact: I have had neither Late Egyptian nor Hieratic. Problem. And as you can see from this lovely picture, Demotic is mostly scribbles.

So I decided to take Late Egyptian and Hieratic in addition to Demotic. Give myself a chance to possibly understand. Besides, Late Egyptian and Hieratic are sorta important for an Egyptologist, and I would feel a bit left out if I didn't grasp the basics at least.

Add to these two languages (New Egyptian and Demotic) and two scripts (Hieratic and Demotic) a 60 page, single spaced masters thesis, and I really don't know that it matters whether the sun shines or doesn't.... But I'm feeling good about it all. :-)

(The picture below is Hieratic. Which is also mostly scribbles, but which is more like hieroglyphs than Demotic, and thus MUCH more legible.)

This One Goes Out To The One I Love

If I had my life to live over again, I doubt I would change a single thing. Sure, if I took a microscope to it, I'd change a few details here and there, the little things that might add up to better karma, or a clearer conscience. But of all the major events, the big things that I worried about, and cried about, and lost sleep over, there's not a single thing I would change. I would walk the same path, if I had it all to do over, and I doubt I'd do more than step over a mud puddle here and there.

I would even go to Holland again, knowing as I do now all the pain, and the awful weather I'd have to suffer there. I'd go right back in again. What I have gained in this strange life of mine has been exactly what I wanted to gain. I've walked the paths I had to walk.

The real reason that I can't seem to update this blog recently is that I've sort of lost the desire to express these things inside. Maybe I've lost the ability too. For now.

I've entered into a liminal space, and I have no idea how long I'll stay here. I've been here for years already. Perhaps longer. Maybe I'm only realizing it now.

There's so much I could say about this, but I think I'll weave those threads into other tapestries.

For My Sisters Sappho, Ingrid, Edna and Sylvia

I see it now, sweet sisters.

I understand your words.

They only see the pain.

They only see you falling

From the heights, sweet sisters,

Into the fire, into the sea.

Last and First: Horoscopes

Horoscope for week of December 31, 2009

Your limitations will be among your greatest assets in 2010. Yes, you heard me right, Libra; I'm not speaking ironically or sarcastically. During the coming months, you will be able to benefit from circumstances that you might otherwise imagine would prevent you from operating with maximum freedom. It might require you to look at the world upside-down, or work in reverse to your habitual thought patterns, but you could actually generate interesting opportunities, vital teachings, and maybe even financial gain by capitalizing on your so-called liabilities.

Horoscope for week of January 7, 2010

I want to tell you about Harj, a character in Douglas Coupland's novel Generation A. He's an enterprising young Sri Lankan man who sells "celebrity room tones" over the Internet. Each hour-long recording purports to convey the sound of the silence that pervades the homes of luminaries like Mick Jagger and Cameron Diaz when they're not there. I think that you Libras are now primed to learn from Harj's example. Like him, you have the power to capitalize on nothingness and absence and emptiness.

(www.freewillastrology.com)