I'd accomplished nothing that anyone found valuable. On the other hand, I had the glorious luxury of doing anything I wanted. I could spend hour after hour writing poems or reading novels or making love or walking in the woods. And it was during that time that I sowed the seeds of the intense work I'm doing now. Because I'm hoping to sell you on the virtues of emptiness and silence and ambitionless hibernation.
Some astrologers imagine that eclipses are bad omens.
They say that when the Moon slips directly between the Sun and the Earth on February 26, a baleful shadow will creep across some part of your life, leading to a crisis. I don't buy that doom-slinging crap. I regard a solar eclipse as the harbinger of a grace period. I see it as ushering in a time akin to what the workplace is like when the boss is on vacation. Or as a period of super-slack, when the glowering critic in your superego is likely to drift off to sleep.