Lelia
Learning from Clichés: The Trite but True in Astrology
In one of Steven Forrest’s books, he mentions that every astrological sign could be reduced to a few clichés. That cliché might be a...
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Lelia
- Sep 10
- 2 min
Pisces/12th House/Neptune
It' seems to me that if Neptune is prominent in your chart, or Pisces or the 12th house, you might find these quotes resonant. Or if...
Lelia
- May 21
- 7 min
Gibbons, Gornick, Hardy, Bauby and Living Your Great Story
Great Story Coaching* outlines the 3 ways we tend to narrate our lives to ourselves. The victim story (similar to Parul Sehgal’s “trauma...
Lelia
- Apr 30
- 7 min
Edmund White, Memoir & Astro Reading
About halfway through reading My Lives by Edmund White, I expected to give it a two-star rating. White spends so much time narrating his...
Lelia
- Apr 2
- 4 min
Megan Marshall and the Art of Biography
As a biographer Megan Marshall plays very close to the vest. She doles out her subject in single words or phrases, holds stories out of...
Lelia
- Mar 14
- 4 min
Uranian Freedom & Vita Sackville-West
Early in Vita Sackville-West's All Passion Spent, the elderly protagonist Lady Slane says, “Besides, I have considered the eyes of the...
Lelia
- Mar 12
- 4 min
Desire in Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
In Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Audre Lorde uses the erotic, or what Mary Karr might call the carnal, to deeply embed herself in her...
Lelia
- Mar 9
- 2 min
Saturn and Your Great Work
Accomplishment is one of the ways we measure our lives, but in terms of what gives meaning to our lives, accomplishments are often merely...
Lelia
- Feb 18
- 6 min
An Imaginary Astrology Reading for Joyce Carol Oates: Part I
Imagine that Joyce Carol Oates*—who does not seem the type to sit with an astrologer, but let’s pretend—came to see me for a New Year’s...
Lelia
- Jan 11
- 10 min
Jane Austen, Joan Didion & Self-respect
Don’t you think Persuasion the best Jane Austen novel ever? It’s by far my favorite. That’s kind of a joke because most characters in...
Lelia
- Jan 2
- 2 min
Endeavoring in 2022
I’ve never been big on making New Year’s Resolutions. In fact, the idea used to annoy me deeply back when I worked out at a gym and...
Lelia
- Dec 26, 2021
- 3 min
Astrology Lessons from Ursula K. Le Guin*
In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about Indigenous Americans’ Original Instructions. “These are not ‘instructions’ like...
Lelia
- Dec 20, 2021
- 3 min
Eudora Welty + Aries + Guilt
I’m entranced by Eudora Welty right now. Reading her short story "Livvie," I’m awed by how much Welty does in just ten pages. In One...
Lelia
- Dec 16, 2021
- 5 min
Memoir, Elderhood & Saturn
Having read Angela’s Ashes and The Liar’s Club in quick succession, I was beginning to think that the only enjoyable memoirs overflow...
Lelia
- Dec 8, 2021
- 3 min
Memoir and the Moon
I used to pay a lot of attention to the first lines in books. I had a notebook where I wrote them down and classified them according to...
Lelia
- Dec 4, 2021
- 2 min
Mary Karr, Memoir and the South Node
Ooph.I was relishing Mary Karr’s delicious language, but didn’t realize that this line I so admired - “Maybe it's wrong to blame the...
Lelia
- Dec 1, 2021
- 2 min
Falling in Love with Penelope Fitzgerald
Penelope Fitzgerald always wanted her children to be well-educated, to study foreign languages, to be employable. In her biography of...
Lelia
- Sep 29, 2021
- 5 min
I Finally Read Eat, Pray, Love
And the most disappointing thing about the book is the way Liz Gilbert seems to suggest that in finding Felipe she’s completed her...
Lelia
- Sep 22, 2021
- 2 min
Soul Vows, Astrology and Bette Midler
Soul Vows is my favorite of Janet Conner’s books. I have gone through it twice and have twice crafted my own set of vows. I think that’s...
Lelia
- Sep 16, 2021
- 4 min
Astrology, the 12th House and Brené Brown
Brené Brown’s natal chart (available at Astro Databank) provides a deeper understanding of the 12th house - that hidden house where...