Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

A week of astrological warfare puts on a show as six planets align in the sky beside a moon on the verge of growing into its fullness. Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Neptune, Uranus and Mercury parade their heavenly bodies as I step into the night air and stand beneath their magnificence. This night is said to be a portal of sorts for personal transformation.

A time of mysticism, never quite grounded in science, works its own kind of magic. Maybe it’s partly real, maybe it’s all a placebo effect – if the end result is rumination, analysis, manifestation and meditation, then let us have the planets align.

In the air, more than a hint of spring. Clouds moving swiftly beneath the sparkling sky. A mystical evening holding fortune or emptiness, likely something between the two.

March is on the wind.

Spring is on the march.

What if all the anti-ICE citizens started dressing up in cosplay nonsense like the actual ICE agents terrorizing our country – the masks and flags and sunglasses and shit? It seems like people who wear that wardrobe can get away with murder – quite literally – so imagine what people on the right side of history might accomplish in similar garb.

We may very well be far past the point of vigilante justice, and I am certainly not proposing any dangerous ideas that might turn their strategies against them, especially in the minds of anyone feeling frustrated and angry at a world with seemingly no accountability for evil actions. How awful that would be! To incite something so violent that it might one day merit a Presidential pardon is practically unthinkable, right?

There is sometimes no greater threat to oppression than an idea, and as long as the mind is free, the ideas will follow.

Mercury returns to wretched retrograde motion today, where it will wreak its undeniable havoc all the way through March 20 – the ultimate uphill battle until we reach the spring (as if the final stretch of winter wasn’t and enough on its own).

There’s also a treacherous full moon appearing March 3 – one said to be especially challenging for Virgos, so if I seem a bit more psychotic than usual, the best thing to do will be to not fuck with me. Forewarned is fair-warned, and I’m not in the mood – because a double-whammy of full moon madness and Mercury in retrograde can make for a diabolical, combustible bit of destruction – a burn-it-all-down possibility on a good week, an absolute monstrosity at such an astrological crux. The intersection of Mercurial influence and lunacy was never going to be pretty. In the words of ‘Mommie Dearest’, “Don’t fuck with me fellas!”

Godspeed, good luck, and don’t forget me when I’m gone.

Somewhere on this website, if you dig down deeply enough, you may find the rest of this photoshoot which reveals more of what certain eyes want to feast upon. For now, it’s a hazy reminder of past and present colliding, and instead of clarity or certainty, there is only more obscurity – a telltale sign of this Winter Obscura – ever-elusive, ever-cloudy, ever-out-of-focus. For all these Evers, never resolution, never completion, never conclusion. Only more Evers… ever after, ever unknown, ever unending…

Chaos contained – a theme that once saved my ass in a literature class where we had to write a paper on Kant, and I could only understand the idea of a canvass containing both the limits of its space, and the limitless idea of anything being painted on it. Two opposing ideas existing at once, forcing the brain to reconcile itself to paradox. Accepting the impossible – at least the impossibility to understand – is a major component of finding peace in one’s head.

Sometimes, I can’t see the canvass through the chaos, cannot find the organization or sense in the madness. And sometimes we have to be ok with existing in that chaos.

Winter was when this picture was taken. Winter – when the world tries to tell us to slow down, to stop, to listen, but we don’t want to listen. We don’t want to stop. We don’t even want to slow down.

That is madness.