I have the keys in my pocket. Tonight my lover and I went over to the apartment where we’ll be living, and our landlady and her boyfriend showed us how to open the windows, turn on the fridge, adjust the heat, take out the trash, and hook up the router. All the little techniques that make it possible to live comfortably.

This is the way it’s been done since humans dropped down from the trees. I’m sure if I were moving into a cave, the previous inhabitant would show me where the leaks were, so that I wouldn’t stack my furs in that corner.

I take the keys out of my pocket and look at them. One for the downstairs door to the building, one for the mailbox, one for our front door. They look ordinary, and yet they have the shape of my future in their striations. They show where I’ll walk, where I’ll stare out the window, where I’ll throw myself down on something soft.

I have to admit that we were in an altered state when we rented the apartment. We just looked at it to be polite, but we were under the heady influence of the August new moon, with its opposition to Neptune, planet of illusion. And so, even though we swore there were too many stairs to make this a possibility, we fell in love with the apartment practically as soon as we got to the top of them.

So we will be living in a third-floor walk-up. We’re not young, either. I’m fifty-five, and my lover, who is younger than me, has had two knee operations in the past.

But everything about the place is beautiful, from the flowery balcony to the big slanted windows. And everything about the neighborhood is quaint. It’s the kind of place where you avoid innumerable little old ladies on bicycles as you cross the brick paving stones of the plaza and enter the tea shop.

So yes, the new moon in August was a moon of fantasy and dreams. There was a certain slippage away from concrete reality last month, with the stock market losing ground, and bridges and mines collapsing. It was a powerful moon, an earth-shaking moon, and I’m glad that my lover and I did nothing more drastic than rent an apartment with too many stairs.

In August, there were some definite changes in the power structure.

Alberto Gonzales’ chart shows a stellium in Leo, six planets in the sign of leaders and kings. And yet his ambition led him to be basically a stooge. All his Leo planets are opposed by the moon, so he was brought down by his desire to be safe and secure, to be accepted. It looks like it hurt and puzzled him.

Karl Rove’s situation is very different. There’s no pride on display in his chart, just expediency. The Leo new moon was on top of his Pluto, planet of survival, making hard aspects to his strategically savvy Mercury in Capricorn. So he got out while the getting was good.

As always, I check out George W. Bush’s chart, looking for any sign that he will be impeached any time soon. This is a monthly ritual. And this time, for the first time, I see some possible indications.

Nope, I’m not going out on a limb and predicting it will happen. I realize I’m not objective enough. But the September 11 new moon is a powder-keg, a lightning bolt, a tidal wave, with its opposition to Uranus and its square to Mars in Gemini. And Bush’s Uranus and north node are right next to that Mars in Gemini. This is a new moon that’s full of change for him.

This new moon in Virgo brings a partial solar eclipse, and these always carry the potential for transformation. The moon’s node, which is the eclipse point, is right on top of GWB’s Mars. Everywhere I look, there’s a lot of Mars energy. And Mars is war, and violence, but it’s also a sign that someone’s will is being exercised. Perhaps this time it will be the will of the people.

There’s still some protection for GWB, however, in Jupiter’s aspects to his natal chart. So maybe he will escape impeachment. But for him, this is definitely the trickiest configuration I’ve seen. It looks like at least a little bit of his karma will catch up with him, and maybe the rest won’t be far behind.

The September new moon could take us in a lot of different directions. There are seven planets in mutable signs, and the mutable signs are the ones that are most malleable, flexible, changeable, adaptable. It will be a good time to bend, rather than breaking. But there may be so much bending that everything will be shaped quite differently by the month’s end.

Right at the beginning of the month, Saturn goes into the mutable earth sign Virgo. This is the first of the earth changes that will happen between now and January 2008, and that will have all of us working together to heal our planet. We’ll be in that earthy place, trying to repair damage and insure survival, for the next seventeen years.

We’ve all been living in a furnace for many years now. We’ve been excited, waving flags and shouting slogans, stoking the fires that keep us riled up. The time for that is coming to an end. And Saturn in Virgo is the first new flag to be unfurled. Its message is simple: a tree, an herb garden, a compost pile. For the next two and a half years, as Saturn moves through Virgo, it will be all about living on this planet, living in our bodies, cleaning up after ourselves.

Will this change bring the end of our dynasties? I don’t know that the kings will fall under the new earthy influences, but they may become irrelevant.

For me, I’m not sure I’m ready. It’s true I have the keys in my pocket. And I’ve learned how to open the windows, and turn on the fridge, and adjust the heat, and hook up the router. But am I really ready? What do I really know about survival?

Saturn in Virgo is not about what’s right or wrong, on a theoretical level. It’s not about morals and ideals. It’s about eating, and keeping warm, and staying dry, and mending the things we use, and talking to each other. We can show each other how to do it. We can pass the wisdom along from one person to the next. That’s what we’ve always done, and now it’s the time to teach each other how to save ourselves.

Index of Jenny Yates' Writings on Lesbian.com