CAT---week-2
The 2-hour rule.  All extreme feeling will pass within 2 hours, IF AND ONLY IF you do not obsess, brood, or repetitiously think of the thoughts that are triggered by your bad feeling.  It is useful to think of paranoia, edginess, anger at oneself, despair, self-loathing, etc. as having some sort of biochemical origin and that it is possible to use a cognitive approach to avoid pitfalls precipitated by the biochemical storms.  Examples of negative thought processes include fortune-telling, all-or-nothing thinking, obsessive brooding, blaming, projecting, etc.

DIAMOND RING---week-2
Life is better when you step back and look at things inverted.  There is a certain perverse brilliance in the reversal of reality.  Today, you are looking at the same old pattern, but as you gaze at it, you see yourself going against the grain, turning expectations on their head.  Does anyone really know you?  Step back.  Look at your conception of yourself.  Then, turn it around.  Invert it.  Turn it over and reassemble it.  Metamorphic and polymorphic shapes. You are an amazingly chimerical presence, my dear.  Proteus would be proud. 

SATIN GLOVE---week-2

What kind of day is today?  It is a day of gilt carousel ponies, violin arpeggios, a surreal Victorian atavism.  What happens when realities set in?  How do you possibly deal with that?  You need things that bring you harmony in order to keep your self and psyche malleable enough to do your bidding.  You are your own robot.  You are your own reality-construction machine.  You do this because you miss the one you love.  That’s what unlocks the brocaded little box of dreams you keep in your closet.

DEAD FISH---week-2
You can cook, but you are reluctant to introduce an air of uncomfortable domesticity, with the inevitable awkwardness that follows.  The person you cook for or with will start suspecting you of having some sort of agenda or hidden motives.  Gender does not help.

ROSE OR BEAUTIFUL FLOWER---week-2
You look down upon snow-pocked fields and are reminded of your distrust of winter and everything frozen.  Cold stasis is the one thing you fear.  It is still, immoveable, and filled with quiet deception.  You have miles to go in this life, and you must remind yourself of who you are.  Why are you pushing forward?  Ice is an inadequate surface for a mirror or a crystal ball.  Put your hand on your heart.  It melts.  And still, far below, the snow is uncomfortably affixed to bare rock.  Glacial till is what it is called.  What it represents is a process of millions of years of grinding, scouring, gouging, and slow transport on rafts of ice.  What you see on the surface is an exaggeratedly dramatic and colorful panorama.  What lies underneath is something else altogether.  We can say this about everything, can’t we?

SHOVEL---week-2
Stranger in a strange land.  The mood is a bit odd today.  The person you see in your mind’s eye is slim, quiet, with hints of what is to come.  Wisps of smoke.  Tendrils of hope have already escaped or are in the process of doing so.  You never quite separated from your own parents - perhaps this is what makes the empty nest you now have so absolutely and heart-rendingly empty.  With a bandaged mind, splinted heart, and stitched-together hopes, you’re quite a case.  But look - outside your window you see clouds - bright pink clouds.  Fluffy and absolutely pink - like cotton candy or fiberglass insulation.  Sweet, warm, and probably bad for one’s health, if health matters at all in these issues.