JANUARY 18TH 2016

CAPRICORN -

Overwrought with scruples you hesitate each time pleasure opens its welcoming wings. You're guilty for a crime you have no memory of committing. The last adjective you'd use when describing yourself would be 'deserving'. This is common with Capricorns but your talents needs to serve a more lenient master.

AQUARIUS -

If you find yourself trembling with desire at odd and inappropriate moments. If these indiscriminate twinges seem haphazard but not unwelcome. If your reveries are filled with downey images of intimacy, warmth and no small measure of guilt then congratulations! ... despite all your efforts to defeat this proposition, you're human. Okay ... now, what next?

PISCES -

A life of custom and regimented habit has never suited your affinity for the extempore. Nonetheless a little bit of discipline may go a long way. Don't panic - we're not talking about the military kind, just some mild, reasonable tweaks. Like flossing.

ARIES -

Creative idleness is the dodge against diligence cited mostly by café riffraff, lazy poets and tenured philosophers. You never hear it from architects and rarely from journalists but painters and prose writers are among its worst offenders. Dilettantes never seek a pardon for their sloth. If you're happiest when you're relaxing does that make you a dilettante?

TAURUS -

Why must we shape our lives after some lofty precedent as if our imaginations are a clogged drain of weak eclecticism? People already think of you as weird (and not merely 'unusual') so what exactly are you afraid of. Start charting an atlas that defies the gravitational pull of rationality. Don't worry, you're an animal and your survival instincts are pretty rugged.

GEMINI -

The air may thin at the top but there's always plenty of room up there. Peel off from the pack and begin your gradual ascension. Those who seek success as if it were a fuller chest or a taller bagpipe are missing the point. Reaching the highest of heights is reaching that place where you longer care.

CANCER -

The fish froth that passes these days for intelligence has you confused and dismayed. Like a a mass of fallen timber, you can't seem to make sense out of all the competing voices. What's wrong with reverting to The Golden Rule? Why not simply retreat into the stale but tested wisdom of your grandparents?

LEO -

You're sleepwalking through your only opportunity to live on this planet. Say what you want, I don't see you making a big wager on reincarnation. You don't have to seize the day - that might be a bit too aggressive - but you can at least politely request or even just borrow the day instead.

VIRGO -

You're a sink of dirty dishes and just because it wasn't you who soiled the ceramic with crusty marinara it doesn't let you off the hook from the scrubbing you so desperately need. Stop acting like an accountant! Who cares if its somebody else's fault (read parents, ex, boss etc.)? And really ... are you truly unassailable?

LIBRA -

If you're feeling friskier than is appropriate, well, you may have yourself a problem. Sometimes the maestro and the orchestra are playing under two different time signatures. Is it time to fire the band? If that's too drastic you may just need to retune your fiddle.

SCORPIO -

Life has the potential of being a steady sequence of fragrant meats and apricot blossoms, provided, of course, that you have a decent job and live in the First World. Stay away from self-help seminars where entitlement and privilege have gift wrapped the discourse with narcissistic claptrap. If you had a four dollar coffee and a fat-free pastry this morning then you've lost the right to claim that you "have issues."

SAGITARIUS -

The crushed glass upon which you tread each day in stocking feet is a martyrdom you suffer in vain. Stop complaining about your lack of love and do what every reasonable person has done before you. Compromise and settle. Give your new romance a chance. Everyone suffers buyer's remorse.