What a beautiful sight - the Pride march in New York City.

It's the new moon weekend, the last weekend in June. My lover and I are sweating in the sun at 5th Avenue and 34th St. We cheer at the Pflag moms, rock with the samba dancers, and get choked up at the fierce and gorgeous dykes on bikes.

Ah, New York, the prototype city, one of our favorite places in the world. A city where each person seems uniquely herself and entirely different from everyone around her. (And I include men in the generic "her", of course.) A city where you can see the whole range of human emotion enacted around you in the space of a few hours.

"We are as colorful and complicated as a rainbow", announces a sign held by someone in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center contingent. All of us. But those of us who identify as queer as especially ready to own it.

I love the buildings in New York City too. There's a reason why churches and temples and mosques point upwards. Like them, the buildings in NYC take all the masses of human energy on the street and fling it into the sky - turning it into hope, ambition, fantasy, and spirit.

And all these things are part of the Pride march. Especially, there's lots of spirit. The atmosphere is charged, with everyone elated about the Supreme Court decision. Hey, they recognized that we have lives, not just sex!

I would've expected a decision like that to happen when the astrological influences were mostly airy - that is, idealistic, progressive, humanitarian. But we have entered a watery phase, and it seems to be working out pretty well for us (except for all that flooding in Louisiana).

The water signs are about empathy, compassion, and sensitivity to particular human suffering. And so this Supreme Court decision is the first time in which our humanity has been recognized on this level of government. In the past, we've been seen as a moral failure. Now we can be seen as a collection of ordinary people who just want to live our lives.

So what are all these water-signs that are affecting us now? At the full moon in July, the sun will be joined by Venus, Mercury and Saturn, all in Cancer. And Mars and Uranus will be conjunct in Pisces.

Anyone with a strong watery influence - two or more planets in Cancer, Scorpio or Pisces - will feel a surge of emotion in July. And perhaps we will all finally look at each other and understand all the ways that our feelings mesh.

Mars and Uranus have been in conjunction since mid-June, and will stay close to each other throughout July. Around the middle of June, you may have started having accidents, mechanical break-downs, or technological problems, and this is why. I've never heard so many people ask each other, "What, is Mercury retrograde?"

Mars is about action, and Uranus is about change, so this aspect is about sudden changes. It is quite accident-prone, and I urge everyone with planets in the first ten degrees of mutable signs (Pisces, Virgo, Gemini and Sagittarius) to be careful. Throughout July, watch especially for dangerous situations involving water.

However, there is a calming influence for Mars/Uranus. These volatile planets have an ongoing trine (a harmonious aspect) to the staid, structured, responsible planet Saturn. Saturn grounds the electricity of Mars/Uranus. Saturn channels it into useful and realistic action.

For all humans - radical activists and wealthy conservatives, peace-lovers and bomb-builders - this is a chance to do something constructive with our energies. We can take the creative spark of Mars/Uranus, and use it to achieve some definite and immediate goals. And because all this is happening in water signs, these goals will have to do with our mutual humanity.

If a goal isn't rooted in a sense of compassion for humanity, it will fail. This is not a good time for waging war. And so there may continue to be skirmishes in Iraq - the flaring and sparking of the Mars/Uranus conjunction - but there will also be constant attempts to build a community.

Saturn is an earthy planet in a water sign, and so it can feel like mud. Trying to build something without basic human compassion is like trying to build a house on a mud foundation. Saturn in Cancer is only good for structures that are more organic, more fluid, that contain emotion rather than excluding it.

A planetary configuration tells us what people are trying to learn at a particular point in history. We are learning to be true to our feelings, since this is what makes us at home in our bodies, our communities, our cities, and in the world.

Talk to any New Yorker, and you'll find that she owns her city. Its richness, excitement and density is part of her being. And so there's something here that she can build on, work with, use.

The US has arrogantly inserted itself into the lives of a people on the other side of the world. It's already done what it knows best to do, and that's bomb the hell out of everybody and everything. And now it has to do something else. Mainly take that emotional energy, that empathy, that awareness of the ordinary lives of other human beings, and rebuild, reorganize.

Will it be able to do this? Will it recognize the range of more uncomfortable emotions? Will it see the fertility of all that mud? Or is it a country that can only see three colors - red, white and blue?

I love watching the rainbow flags whip around the streets of New York. Our spaces are defined by our feelings, and the variety of feelings only makes for more vital and colorful spaces.

There are people who've learned to despise emotion, and they will be like strangers in a deserted city. But no condition is permanent. I hold no grudges, I have no enemies, and I am ready to welcome everyone into the parade.

Index of Jenny Yates' Writings on Lesbian.com