My son and his wife took off on a plane to Singapore earlier this evening. My lover is in Venezuela, resting up after an evening of marching in the streets. My dad is upstairs, snoozing. This house breathes audibly. I know it's just the central heating, but it sounds human.

This is the timeless part of the night, when eternity seems ordinary. For some reason, the night hours do not imitate the orderly march of day hours. Whether asleep or awake, this is dream time.

I always feel that I operate in two time dimensions simultaneously. One is the time of clocks and calendars, and the other the rhythm of the planets. Sometimes these coincide, but more frequently they operate independently.

The sun's cycle is the point of intersection. Since we live by a solar calendar, each year ends and begins with the sun in the cold, wise, pragmatic sign Capricorn. Capricorn is the sign of time and of mortality, so it makes sense that the year's boundaries are marked by this sign.

As 2003 begins, we have another reminder of time, with Mercury in Capricorn going retrograde on Jan. 2nd. The retrograde Mercury pulls us back into the past, reminding us of unfinished business. We have to come to terms with whatever has gone before.

And so the new business of 2003 will be postponed for a while. New year's resolutions may require us to look first at the loose ends that trail behind us.

For myself, I welcome this. Like many people, there have been many promises made to myself and repeated over and over, in different forms, throughout my life. There are some old projects which embody these well-worn promises, and I want to take them up again. I want to see what has faithfully followed behind me, all these years, waiting to be noticed.

When I think of the three-week period of Mercury retrograde, I think of a tree encased in ice. It's fixed, naked, crystalline, beautiful. Its structure can be seen more clearly than ever before.

This will be January's gift. Like the night hours in which I write this, it will be a time of stillness. We can all touch the bones of our lives, tracing the shapes that are so intimately familiar and so invisible. We can figure out what we owe to our own spirits. We can examine our relationship to time itself.

The full moon on the 18th will bring all this contemplation to a point of acute consciousness. This full moon occurs at 27 degrees of Cancer/Capricorn, so those who have cardinal planets around 27 degrees will be particularly galvanized.

The Cancer/Capricorn full moon is all about the passage of time. Cancer is related to the mother/child experience, the beginning of life, while Capricorn is related to old age and accumulated wisdom.

Cancer is about vulnerability, fertility, and nurturing, while Capricorn is about hierarchy and responsibility to the earth and the collective. The water sign Cancer gives us the vitality and brilliance of flowing emotion. The earth sign Capricorn grounds us by giving a structure - a structure imposed not just by the time/space boundaries of physical existence, but also by the choices we've made in the past.

The Cancer/Capricorn full moon can give us a glimpse of our whole life-cycle, from womb-time to death. It contains the tension that sent us out in the first place, always knowing that our time here is finite. We can see the naked framework of our days, the beauty of their tiny repeating patterns.

A couple of days after the full moon, the sun enters Aquarius, the idealistic and community-oriented air sign. And a couple of days later (on the 22nd), Mercury goes direct, so we can all accomplish more on the practical level.

Mercury stays in Capricorn for the rest of the month, however, and so the mental mind-set will be cautious and conservative throughout January. Mercury in Capricorn gives ambition but it tends to be slow and methodical.

2003 begins with Mercury retrograde in Capricorn, and so it starts with a harkening back to the past. But, to some extent, this is true of every calendar year. It's very different from the astrological year, which begins in the spring with the excitement and spontaneity of fire.

Since every year begins with the sun in Capricorn, we are reminded that calendar time is linear and highly structured. It's based on tradition, which is both limiting and grounding. Much depends on our willingness to recognize what the past has given us and also what it has taken away from us.

What will the year 2003 hold? The most important astrological event of the year will be Uranus changing signs - from Aquarius to Pisces. This happens in March. In September, Uranus moves back to Aquarius and stays there until late December. So it's mainly in the spring and summer that we experience the new energy of Uranus in Pisces.

Uranus is the planet of sudden change and progress, and Pisces, a mutable water sign, is the most spiritual, mystical and imaginative sign in the zodiac. For people with sun or moon in Pisces, the next seven years will be especially turbulent.

For the world in general, these years will bring many emotional ups and downs. There will be dramatic changes based on delusions, illusions, spiritual revelations, and alternate states of consciousness. Pisces is the most impressionable sign in the zodiac, easily carried away by the stimulation of the moment.

The worst-case scenario is that Uranus in Pisces could take religious wars to a further extreme. In this, it echoes Pluto's passage through the passionate cause-driven sign Sagittarius - and Pluto will stay in Sagittarius until 2008.

The best-case scenario is that Uranus in Pisces will increase the level of world compassion. Pisces is the sign of holistic thinking and universal consciousness.

We already see that we are becoming one world, both in positive and negative ways. All the intersections in the U.S. are starting to look alike, and there's a danger that someday the remotest corners of the world might look exactly the same. In many cities around the world, we are all watching the same films and TV shows.

But our awareness of each other increases constantly in positive ways as well. We learn from the mistakes in each other's political experiments. We all know when another country mistreats its people, or exploits people from other nations. We have to come to terms with our responsibility as world citizens.

The lumbering giant, the U.S., with all its raw power and wealth, has a particular obligation to learn to use power wisely. We have to recognize our tendency to arrogance. We must learn to liste to the peoples of the world and offer the help that is actually desired.

Pisces is the sign of blending interests, but this doesn't happen without a struggle. In 2003, we see this struggle in the oppositon between Uranus in Pisces and Jupiter in Virgo.

Pisces is the dreamer, while Virgo is the cynic. 2003 will be about finding the balance between them - between Virgoan realism and attention to detail, and Piscean sensitivity, imagination and benevolent intentions. Virgo also represents the worker, while Pisces represents the religious community, so there will be tension between these social forces.

It's one world, but it's also a world of diversity. For the people of the US, unity can sometimes mean that everyone should be just like us. This is one of the issues that will be raised by the Virgo/Pisces oppositions of 2003.

As Uranus goes through the 12 signs of the zodiac, it makes an 84-year cycle. Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac, and so Uranus' seven-year passage through Pisces will be the culmination of its greater cycle.

When Uranus enters Aries in 2010, it won't just begin a new sign, but a whole new 84-year cycle. And so these next seven years will be a time of resolution. You might see them as the winter months of civilization - and what we do with them will determine the quality of our new beginning, in the springtime year of 2010.

I consider these circles within circles, the larger rhythms that move us through time. And then my mind zooms in, approaching the present moment. I see the new calendar year clicking ever closer. I look at the clock, and see that it's almost 4 a.m.

Dawn will be here in just a few hours. It's inexorable. There are always endings to teach us, always beginnings to leap into. But we are more than just witnesses to the process. We are the shape of our own future.

Index of Jenny Yates' Writings on Lesbian.com