A couple of weeks ago, Michelle and I hiked up the most popular “tourist” canyon in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park near where we live. It wasn’t exactly crowded, but we probably crossed tracks with thirty or forty other hikers. Passing someone on the trail, it’s my custom to say hi. Many returned my greeting, but I was struck by how many walked past us stone-faced and silent, as if we weren’t there at all. 

“Ah . . . another sad example of dreaded Late-Stage Capricornosis,” I said to myself. Let me explain . . .

Pluto entered Capricorn back in 2008 and it’ll be criss-crossing back and forth over the Aquarius frontier between March 2023 and November 2024. On April 1, 2022, it’s in 28 degrees 24 minutes of Capricorn – getting into the last degree and a half of the sign . . . hence my reference to the “late stage” of our current disorder. Those late degrees of a sign always have a special intensity. Picture a college dormitory at about 11:00 pm on the night before final exams. Naturally, you’ll be impressed by the scholarly zeal of the students. Every nose is buried in a book and will probably will stay that way until the wee hours. In much the same fashion, there was an Englishman who was going to be hung in the morning. Someone asked him how he felt about that. He said, “it composes the mind most excellently.”