URANUS RETURNS: “I am with you always.”

May 20, 2026

In the past month or so, and increasingly, I’ve noticed myself becoming very impatient with how material reality slows me down. Just trying to get a key into a lock and turn it, for example. Or picking up my purse, when it’s underneath something else . . . and then having to zip it closed before everything spills out. Or finding my shoes, sitting down, loosening the laces, so that I can put them on. On and on. All these quotidian examples. Everything in my life, and of course in everyone’s life, here in the material world, takes time. From desire, decision, to execution, drawn out unbearably.

I know I must sound crazy, to talk like this. Why am I speaking of something so obvious? Furthermore, so what?

Well, I do think this has to do with a situation that few people ever live long enough to face. Most people die before they are 84 years old, when unpredictable, volatile Uranus returns to the exact degree and minute it occupied at the hour and minute of birth.

I just checked my natal chart with transits this morning. Might it be that Uranus is now, this very day, occupying that exact degree and minute, 1°35 Gemini?

Oops. No. Not yet. Today Uranus is at 1°24 Gemini. Closing in, but not quite there.

Last summer Uranus got even closer, but then turned to go backwards on September 6 at 1°27 Gemini.

So this coming moment, which happens on May 24, when Uranus will, for the very first and last time, hit 1°35 Gemini, is a day that I will do some kind of personal ceremony, to mark the closing of a cycle so long that most people never get a chance to reach it.

So I should be grateful. Right? Grateful that I have lived long enough to experience this extraordinary completion of a cycle so long that most people die before its done.

Perhaps my extreme noticing of the Uranus cycle today is connected to the fact that transit Mercury today, sits at 6°53 Gemini, pressing in on natal Saturn at 7°37 Gemini.

(For a five part series contemplating the combination of strict, disciplined Saturn conjunct unpredictable, volatile Uranus in Gemini (a conjunction which occurred for everyone born during 1942-1943), see exopermaculture.com.)

Wow.

Noticing (Mercury) just how hemmed in, slowed down (Saturn) I feel on this day.

Ever since Uranus began its reach for completion, back in July last year, when it finally crossed into 0° Gemini for the first time in my life, I’ve been on the lookout, extreme lookout, for car crashes. That would be a very Uranian event, both sudden and devastating. A part of me wonders if I should drive during this time, but then again, I DO feel protected, and have felt so, for many many years.

I think back to the day when I was walking on a Pacific beach in northern California, having sat on a small cliff where the Russian River met the sea for hours, watching the wheeling wild life below, and suddenly, but very very softly, a feminine voice in my left ear: “I am with you always.”

What?

I sluffed it off and kept walking, paying attention to the tide as it receded to and from the shore. After about ten minutes, came to the place where I had made my way down from the parked car, and was about to ascend, when a rogue wave suddenly rose up and crashed over my body up to my chest.

But the wave did not take me down.

I remained standing. (Thank you chikung and taichi!)

I did not get carried out to sea.

I am with you always. 

Not even the keys in my pants pocket were dislodged.

As I made my way up the path, I noticed a sign that I had not noticed on my way down.

“DANGER: ROGUE WAVES.”

This post feels incomplete. Just as the Uranus return is still incomplete. Once it completes, will everything in my entire life snap into place? Will I experience a magnificent, meaningful AHA!— one that echoes on and on?

And what will that have to do with the sense that I want to be done with this material reality; want to fly off, into space. Am I not to begin a new Uranian cycle again?

If I am to begin a new cycle, then what is it for? Who am I? Why am I still here?

 

 

 

MY DENTIST: “Shall we try an experiment?”

May 19, 2026

Note: See last two posts, for which this is a follow-up.

I was wrong. My next dental appointment was today at 9 AM. Tuesday, not Monday. . .

Home now, feeling immensely satisfied.

All weekend long I had been kvetching; should I just cancel it? Should I go and do what he wants to do (clean my teeth)? But Dr. Ellie says teeth need the (slightly slimy) “biofilm” that’s on them, so shouldn’t be cleaned.

Hmmm. Should I go and, hopefully, mostly talk with him?

I didn’t want to just cancel. I’m not into cancel culture. Think it rude. To me, it’s axiomatic: treat others as people, not as functionaries, no matter what their role happens to be which, in this case, involves a financial transaction as well as big philosophical decisions on what dental care I want going into the future.

But I was constantly tempted to cancel! To just forgetaboutit.

And I’m so very glad I did not.

The minute I walked in the door, it was obvious he and his receptionist wife had been undergoing their own transformation. The weird, defensive atmosphere was gone. Instead, welcoming. They were fully prepared for whatever!

I wanted to go and have another, deeper conversation with him, if possible. And to ask just where the tartar buildup was, and do I really need to have it scraped off now?

 

At first I spoke with her, told her how I almost canceled, but didn’t want to, given that we are all human beings. On and on. Said I wanted to continue with Dr. Ellie’s protocol for now, despite the tartar (calculus) build-up — which he told me today, is on front and back of front bottom teeth, the very ones for which he had, probably five years ago, expertly fashioned some kind of a permanent prosthetic, to “fix” the hole where the tooth had fallen out.

It turns out that the bottom front teeth tartar buildup is also where saliva inters the mouth.

He and I did end up deep in conversation, both about my own confusion, and his. My dentist is now 70 years old, and his own dad had also been a dentist, the “old school” kind, he said.

Most of what we talked about had to do with the saliva, and how it’s deeply and complexly interwoven into to the entire bodily ecosystem. Yes, he confirmed, my tartar buildup was caused by too much alkalinity — the opposite, too much acidity, would lead to cavities; how to get it to be slightly less than now? And moreover should I have him scrape off the existing tartar (calculus)?

We talked about the fact, he said, that the blood always wants to be slightly alkaline (just very slightly!), and will go to any lengths to achieve that — including robbing calcium from the bones.

I eat lots of meat. He said maybe change that somewhat.

Hmmm. (Gemini AI)

Okay, it looks like that theory is “old school.” My dentist kind of (and I think he would agree) straddles the line between old and “new.”

It was a fascinating conversation, and I wish I had taped it, to go over it, sentence by sentence. Because truly, this business about the mouth, and how it feeds into everything else, has me hooked. I want to know more, more!

I told him the four-step protocol of Dr. Ellie, and he says he basically agrees with it. Told him also, that it is so weird that I put away all the Dr. Ellie stuff before anyone comes to visit me. (Example: What? you use Crest anti-cavity toothpaste which has fluoride in it?)

We talked for about 35 minutes

To the question of whether or not he should scrape off the tartar on and between the front teeth:

Him: “Should we try an experiment?”

Me, of course: “YES!”

We agreed that I would continue Dr. Ellie’s protocol (and further refine my approach to it) for the next four months, and see him again then. Meanwhile, I would eat slightly less meat and instead, more eggs, cheese, nuts. Because of course, at 83, I need to be pushing protein, to continue to build muscle, which would be wasting away without continuous replenishment.

Oh yeah, he did say that this idea of eating less meat was “old school . . .” And he too confesses to being confused as to what’s really going on.

We briefly discussed the role of genetics in mouth health; his brother, a biochemist, says everything is due to genetics. Both of us disagreed.

What was so cool: this discussion, far deeper than before, and with give and take on both sides, was, to me, deeply satisfying. We ended with a big hug.

I insisted on paying, even though he didn’t touch my mouth.

The charge: $50, though his receptionist wife suggested that I might at least get the tartar scraped off, to make the charge worth it.

Oh no.

It was well worth it.