By Mary Wittbold
Written as Part of Arlan Wise’s Writing Track at the 2013 OPA Retreat
R
eserving a seat at the OPA retreat
in Myrtle Beach, for an ocean view
feast on astrology, was a no-brainer
for me. Choosing a track proved far more
challenging. Show me a Taurus woman
content to select a single entree from a
gourmet menu laden with ten mouth water-
ing choices and I’ll show you a woman who
has successfully solved one of the more dif-
ficult, if delicious, riddles in her nature.
Raise the bar on her sensory overload by in-
forming her that each of the entrees is ac-
companied with its own master chef and a
bird’s eye view of their particular technique
for boiling the bones of a theme into a rich
extract of experience, which she can then
take to the bank. I didn’t think it was fair of
OPA to develop such a tantalizing menu
and then expect me to choose “just one
track”. Hungry as I was at the time, any one
of them would have fed me handsomely.
Nearly every description of my Sun sign
says that a practical component comes stan-
dard with my Taurus nature. This may be
true, though I personally don’t use it very
often. The last me (or whoever placed the
O P A
order for this one) must have had their rea-
sons, but the present me wouldn’t have
bothered with the extra expense. I find it
way more fun to fly by the seats of my pants
than to deploy a parachute out my bootie
only to slow me down. But hey, if it came
with the package maybe I could deploy it
now, to help settle me down and start to
narrow my choices. I meditated on “practi-
cal” for a minute and indeed, I did manage
to narrow the choices to two that seemed
most likely to fill my most pressing dietary
voids. As far as I was concerned these tracks
represented two different food groups, a
protein and a carbohydrate if you will, but
both necessary components of a well-
rounded meat and potatoes diet.
Allow me to digress for just a moment
while I feed you a little more background
information about my particular dietary sit-
uation. I love astrology and I want to write.
The beginner’s track was tempting as a
means to fortify my astrological diet, which
so far consisted primarily of books. I needed
to bulk up in other areas to fill out this
rather flaccid approach. The writing track
The Organization for Professional Astrology
4
piqued my interest thanks to a long and un-
requited desire to write. This urge, by now
long repressed, was the excuse I used for de-
viating from my father’s sage advice by
switching my major from business to Eng-
lish. I had long ago paid the karmic career
path debt for that move but had yet to reap
the supposedly forward thinking benefit.
Speaking of forward thinking, when I
take the time to reread anything I have
written I usually wind up rearranging my
sentences. They almost always make better
sense when I place the second sentence that
I have written before the first one. Truth be
told I don’t know if this suggests my think-
ing is forward or backward, or that I am be-
hind or ahead of my thoughts. I do know
that I have a sufficient quantity of hard as-
pects to explain away either scenario. I’ve
determined that this idiosyncrasy, my diffi-
culty determining whether the chicken or
the egg should come first, is a repetitive pat-
tern. I know it should tell me something
about myself, but for the life of me I have
no earthly idea what. In any event, the lazy
in me nuzzled up to the thought of a quick
THE CAREER ASTROLOGER
WINTER 2014