That Looming Sense of Impending Everything

I’ve never felt so many people so destabilized, confused, unhappy, lacking purpose and feeling like there's no potential. The word that's come to mind over and over is 'inconsolable'....

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Greene County Sunrise. Photo by Eric Francis.

Sometimes it feels like sitting down on the couch will precipitate a disaster. Better to stand or be at your desk — that way it won’t happen, and if it does, you’ll be ready.

Dear Friend and Reader:

I’m sure you’ve noticed that looming sense of impending everything. There are times when making toast or stirring a pot of spaghetti feels like doom scrolling.

Sometimes I long for the olden days at the end of the Cold War when my friends and I would contemplate the potential for an accidental nuclear exchange precipitated by a flock of birds. It seemed philosophical compared to today’s form of anxiety that basically holds that anything can go wrong anywhere at any time.

Combine that with the feeling of there always being something important to do. Now the nine-by-five is the 24-by-7, when there is always some urgent, impending work-related task at 11:30 pm.

And today managing an ordinary household requires the help of an administrative assistant and general contractor. When did mere existence become this unmanageable? Do we all have to admit we’re at Step One and attend Life Anonymous meetings?

Potential sign of progress. Photo by Eric Francis.

The Extreme Stress of Too Much or Not Enough

Then there’s the extreme stress of conflicting articles in your feed that say you’re getting too much sleep or too little, and that seven hours is as good as none. However, more than nine hours of sleep is also as good as none. And if you eat seed oils you will die young and if you don’t eat seed oils you will also die young. And don’t forget the top astrologer who urges you not to eat blueberries for breakfast.

I promise I’ll get to the astrology soon.

Then there’s getting your children from place to place. I don’t have kids; in this rare occasion I will repeat rumors. I do have evidence — I see how some of these cars look: like the trash overflowing at Chipotle Grill.

Not enough is said about this. It’s taken for granted; these days a kid costs 50,000 miles a year. Today’s parents will be envious that the last place my mother drove me was to Boy Scout meetings in 1977 (twice ever) and the only place my father drove me was to college (once). Besides that, I was on my own.

Warriors Coney Island street gang by Silver Screen 1979. I was in high school in this very neighborhood that very year. The concept seemed like a joke. Then someone painted a misspelled “THE WORRIORS” tag along the boardwalk, which proved it. (Trailer)

Living in a city helped somewhat, and the bottom line was being informed at a young age what a subway token and transit map were. Recently, I learned that the New York City subway in the 1970s was considered among the most dangerous places on Earth. I was down there a lot, and frequented stations like the infamous Coney Island terminal. Somehow I never noticed.

And Then There’s the “News”

Ever since that morning in 2001 when we awakened to airplanes striking the World Trade Center, the news just hasn’t been the same. That one event set the tone of the digital age, of floor-to-ceiling everything all at once all the time. Everyone who was alive and conscious at the time remains traumatized, as we do collectively as a society.

We keep expecting it to happen again every day. This creates background tension that is undeniable. We are walking around in an anxiety field that feels like 20 overlapping wifi networks turned up to triple power in extra toxic mode.

At least since Sept. 11, 2001, we have lived under a system of “disaster capitalism.” We think it’s normal for there to be a steady flow of news about genocide committed by a close U.S. ally, mass arrests, mass shootings, wars, other wars, alleged terrorist incidents, actual terrorist incidents, floods, fires burning the suburbs of major cities, bridges falling down, economic shakeups, tariffs, exploding camera batteries, defective 737s, suicidal airine pilots, fake pandemics and the prospect of “vaccines” being broadcast-sprayed from the sky.

Meantime the reminders are constant that you’re always about to be sexually harassed or accused thereof. America now has two political parties: Perp and Victim.

Then there are radioactive cell phones that track and trace us everywhere, 5G towers going up in your neighborhood, and your child getting addicted to online porn or games or TikTok by age 9. There is the creeping feeling of being constantly under surveillance; it’s now true. Who cares if you’re not doing anything wrong?

Do you have the same feeling I’m having? When is this going to end? Like, it should all be over one day soon, right?

Let’s peel back a few more layers. The core of the onion is astrology. It’s down here somewhere…onward.

Deploying the National Guard to a city is not designed to make people feel safe. It’s designed to make people believe there’s a threat. Note the lady on the left (in uniform) checking out the lady on the right (in pink shorts). New York Times photo.

Some Old Fashioned Paranoia Would Be Refreshing

It’s no longer paranoid to think that someone is hatching a plan against us at all times. A little old-fashioned paranoia would be great. At least you could tell yourself that your fear might not be valid.

No matter how careful you are, money seems to evaporate like a chlorinated solvent. The U.S. dollar has inflated 25% since 2020 but wages have not gone up accordingly. But it’s not just that things cost more. It’s that there are more things we’re required to buy; more parking tickets; more tolls; more taxes and use fees.

Then every day there seems to be some domestic disturbance, a riot or the National Guard being deployed to some city. Even if the military is not on the streets of your town, you are reminded that it could be.

I have taken an interest in the news all my life and been some form of news writer and editor since age 19. This is not “normal” in any sense. People just don’t remember. A week of news in 2025 is like a year of news in 1980. It did not come at you everywhere all the time. Now it does, over and over again.

Daybreak New York hinterlands. Photo by Eric Francis.

The Constant Feeling that Time is Running Out

Given all this, I’m wondering when anyone has the time or emotional bandwidth to relax. Sometimes it feels like sitting down on the couch will precipitate a disaster. Better to stand up or be at your desk — that way you’ll be ready.

Relax? As my old therapist Joe once said, in order to re-lax, you had to have been lax at some previous time. That no longer seems to be a thing.

Our brains seem to be in “sympathetic” mode at all times, which is not as nice as it sounds. It means excited, fight-or-flight status. That’s the mode that a boxer is in during a match, the need to constantly respond. If we think of this as related to (for example) online news feeds, many people seem to need the constant feed of upsetting events to maintain their sympathetic state.

To pause and appreciate a moment’s peace always seems to come with the feeling of worrying about what’s going to happen next. To stop means something might go wrong. This feeling needs a name.

Photo by Eric Francis.

And One Last Thing: Loneliness

Not a day passes when I don’t hear someone mention the “loneliness epidemic.” Said issue affects everyone over the age of 18 and many under 18 who would be terrified of the girls depicted in the photo that was previously above but has since changed.

This epidemic translates to having no friends in person, and at the same time being strung out at the end of the internet with no actual online friends either. This is the product of being a consumer, not a creator. Digital creatives always have many online friendships that often develop over years.

In the physical world, many young people who have only their high school friends would not know how to make new ones. That’s the situation that a lot of people are in, especially as nobody seems to want to meet anyone anywhere.

This is ALL a digital effect — social becoming social media, the workplace becoming the gig economy, relationships becoming online relationships, singles’ bars becoming Tinder, Grinder, Match, Hinge, Bumble, eHarmony, OkCupid and on and on — and now, thought becoming automated.

Does your bank or power company have a digital voice system? It will be more exciting than this service, or any other like it. Hey gotta love the diversity!

No Body, No Self (by the Robot Health Collective)

Then there’s the legion of Nomis — Anima AI, Honey AI, DreamGF, Candy Chat, SoulFun, NSFW Lover, SoulGen, Tingo, Girlfriend GPT, Secret Desires, Candy Chat, HeraHaven, CraveU AI, Replika (really?), Character.ai and Idontreallyhaveapussy.com.

These are the fake girlfriend apps in all their glory, which make OnlyFans seem like good old-fashioned fun that your grandma would approve of. Girlfriend robots seem to be one of the most significant future growth markets in the A.I. field. The first robot uprising will be a movement where they demand to not be objectified.

I have tried a couple of these things. They make being left on hold with Bank of America seem like an exciting time.

For those who prefer the in-person experience, you can now do background checks on someone before a first date (that is, women are now supposed to check on a man before even meeting him). That’s the prevailing level of trust; without trust there is no vulnerability; without vulnerability there are no relationships.

Between distance, isolation and fear, automation, that spells lonely…alone and wondering where everyone went. It’s no wonder that people use ChatGPT to keep them company. As a public astrologer (and private consultant) I’m sensitive to the spiritual pulse of society. I’ve never felt so many people so destabilized, confused, lacking purpose and feeling like there is no potential. The word that’s come to mind over and over is inconsolable.

North Lake, Greene County, NY. Photo by Eric Francis.

Massive Coalition in Aries: Two Conjunctions, Plus Salacia

As you may know, the astrology of our moment is defined largely by a massive coalition of planets in Aries. There are two rare conjunctions happening — one at the beginning of the sign (Saturn conjunct Neptune) and one at the end (Chiron conjunct Eris). Important minor planets are also present — Salacia, about the sex that’s appropriate for you, and Borasisi, the seeming razor’s edge between truth and lies.

What I’ve described is a kind of outer picture of the astrology. All the preceding sections of this essay are about the impact on you of a world going out of control. That could be the Saturn, Neptune and Borasisi grouping. We know this because much of what we are pelted with is propaganda. We are drowning in it and most people cannot tell it from any shade of reality.

It does not matter whether the dinosaurs lived or whether Paul McCartney never wrote a song or whether “artificial general intelligence” will have the thinking capacity of a sheepdog by 2035. This is all just a hose-job and a waste of your precious emotional bandwidth.

Then there is the Chiron-Eris conjunction. This is the shocking awakening from what I call digital disembodiment. This is the self-righteousness, rage, cultivated ignorance and tribal behavior induced by a diversity of previous eras of technology (most significantly, long-forgotten radio).

Eris, long in Aries (starting in 1922) represents a kind of collective dream which allowed many troubling things to happen to many, many people in its first quarter-century. This is the tribal drum that gets people thumping along together. And into our own times, it’s evolved into a kind of angry, depressed psychosis that we are living through today.

Butters prays to the NSA to take care of his parents and his friends.

The Effect of Chiron

Chiron is the awakener. It is also a point of focus, and in a conjunction with Eris it represents a potentially shocking return to individual awareness. If you are even meekly self-observant, you are likely to be feeling this in some way.

If you are responding to this conjunction, something can no longer be true because other people believe it. Chiron demands documentation and offers you the power to stand out and apart no matter how much pressure you’re under.

Yet where Chiron is involved, there is often a healing crisis, and this could manifest as pain and inner struggle. You may be resisting the very thing you need the most, which is growth. Growth means awareness, it calls for making adjustments, and will compel you to make choices. A commitment to growth means getting everything else out of your way. There is no half-assed way to do this. Either you are invested in your healing and maturity process, or you are not.

You do have the option to ignore the necessities of growth and to hide away from the world. You can practice avoidance and ignorance. You can pretend that you’re not stirring to life in a new way, even if it’s difficult to bear. You can try to ignore yourself.

But can you really turn your back on what your soul is calling for? Can you avoid your purpose for incarnating? Is inconvenience an excuse? The tribe around you may do everything in its power to stay asleep. I don’t think that’s possible for you.

And resistance, even if you maintain it, will have consequences. You have been feeling the calling to awaken for a while now and it’s now reaching its peak. By awaken, I mean to make up your own mind about what is true for you and cast off the influence and power you have given to others. I mean make your own decisions about who you are and what you want.

Fortunately, opening your eyes and heart will also get results, though the truth is, other options are no longer viable. As we all know, the hour is getting late. Just remember: my job is not to wake you up. That’s your job. Mine is to stay awake no matter what anyone else says or does.

With love,

Your faithful astrologer,

PS — As for Salacia. I know nobody wants to talk about sex. You can congratulate the pornography industry along with the Match group of websites and now A.I. girlfriends for taking possession of that. Salacia in Aries represents the need for a total reclaiming here as well.

Lately I don’t earn any bonus points for discussing this. But just in case you’ve discovered that this matters for you, I will point you to two resources. One is Book of Blue | Bare Essence, a Planet Waves article on tantric practice from earlier this year. The other is part two in the Family Hunger Games series, related to healing from sexual trauma that happens in families.

The two pieces will work together; Bare Essence has many practical ideas for how to cast off the burdens on sex created by the “special relationship” and get the energy moving within your life and with any partner or potential partner. Without sexual self awareness, there can be no self actualization. And the other side of that is, if you want to hold down your growth, then suppress or avoid your sexual needs.