I’m in a hotel room in Borrego Springs after sledding down a 3-hour luge of treacherous freeways, having landed farther south of Coachella than you’d ever care to be without being in Mexico.

I drove in the dark. (Although the 15 South is not a lovable freeway in the light, either, I’m sure.) It was stupid. I should have left much earlier rather than risk that endless 76 South, which reminded me of those scenes in the movie IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS.

Sometimes I have more guts than brains.

I normally love being alone, but here I’ve not felt so keenly lonely before in my life. I suppose that’s part of the pilgrimage. I’m here to see an amazing gentleman whose books have been teaching me astrology for the last 16 years. I’ve decided to have a reading with the master astrologer.

I gave up on readings a long time ago. Too many astrologers looked at my Mars/Neptune conjunction* and babbled on about how I must be addicted to drugs, or alcohol, or sex. Because most modern astrologers don’t know shit about addiction and associate it with “weakness,” which is the supposed domain of Neptune. It’s not that astrology doesn’t work. It’s that their brains don’t work. They know nothing about psychology. Like any tool, astrology is limited in effectiveness by the person doing the reading. So if they’re ignorant about personality, the reading is going to be crap.

When I found out that this man and his wife had moved to California, I knew I’d have to make the pilgrimage because they are the most intelligent, lucid writers and teachers of this esoteric practice. I didn’t know when I booked months in advance that it would land smack in the middle of buying a condo and moving. Ah, life and its challenges!

And now the current challenge: to sleep.

*Since then, another very perceptive UK writer, Bernadette Brady, has written extensively about aspects and more correctly notes that the Mars/Neptune conjunction is the signature of “The Pinup” — someone who glamorizes sex in some way or plays with illusions. I think that is far more accurate for me and others I know with the aspect.

**In my experience with the charts of alcoholics and even the adult children of alcoholics, Pluto is more aptly associated with addiction, as it’s about compulsions and subconscious drives.