The Nation Goes Direct
The Great Depression had WWII, we have this.
A month ago, I spoke on the phone with a wise friend and told her of my many plans for September. I acknowledged massive life shifts, devastating endings and stressful beginnings, but mostly detailed a broad list of the career and creative projects I hoped to tackle. She laughed at me. “Your only goal right now should be sanity”, she told me. “Anything else will be a disaster”. It was good advice. Over the past month, I’ve hardly written, I haven’t applied to grad school, and I dropped no merch. But I did my best to stay sane, and if I hadn’t made that my main objective, I don’t think I would have been able to do so.
As I came out of the haze of displacement, it became clear that everyone I know has struggled as of late. We’re still in the midst of brutal retrogrades, and sanity seems like an increasingly lofty collective goal.
However, despite the Jupiter retrograde, we have been blessed in the strangest of ways. Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift began to date, creating the first complete Venn diagram overlap of citizen interest since WWII ended the Great Depression. Whether you think it’s a good thing or excessive foreign meddling, it’s a news story that can captivate us all.
I respect this pairing, and feel that maybe those who play for stadiums of people should fully be their own dating pool. But before we gain too much national hope one way or the other, I’d like to do a brief compatibility report to assess where this could actually go, and whether it will carry us through the rest of the retrogrades.
Unfortunately, Kelce’s time of birth is unavailable online, although his mom seems like the kind of lady who would divulge that information in response to fan mail.
When I look for compatibility, I always check Moon, Mars, and Venus. Moon signs govern the emotional world and the language of our private selves. Swift’s is a Cancer moon, while Kelce’s moon is in Sagittarius. Already I have my doubts. Since Swift is a Sag sun, there’s a nice little conjunct happening here. However, a Cancer moon individual is incredibly feeling and intuitive, and a Sagittarius moon will find any expression of emotion as way too short a leash.
Mars is the planet of sex and aggression, things that are important for everyone but maybe even more so for pop stars and football players. Swift has her Scorpio in Mars, which definitely made me respect her a little more. It’s a gnarly placement, very sensual and magnetic but also relentless and potentially unhinged. I like knowing that someone with such a controlled public image probably loses it fairly frequently, and I hope that she’s blowing off meticulously planned re-recording sessions to sit in the luxury box. It’s good to see her let go.
I don’t think this works at all with Kelce’s Libra Mars, which is also a sybaritic placement (maybe all Mars placements are), but is very coy and significantly less volatile. I don’t think a Mars in Libra guy could handle the volatility of a Mars in Scorpio, but his even and balanced attitude towards aggression probably makes him a great team player.
Finally, the Venus placements: Kelce is a Venus in Scorpio, and as Venus in Scorpio myself, I accept him. This is definitely one of the most stigmatized placements in the Zodiac, which I think is unjust. That being said, Swift has a better Venus placement. Hers is in Aquarius, which I really think makes love fun. For a Venus in Scorpio, the fun is in the crippling intensity, and that is why the public thinks we are scary. Much like their air-water Moon mismatch, I don’t really know if an air and a water Venus will ever speak the same emotional language. Also, Kelce’s fairly cursed to have the most intense Venus placement alongside the most emotionally unavailable Moon sign. I feel bad for him on a personal level, but he does have an amazing chart for a football player, and I do love the Chiefs. I wouldn’t change him.
By the time the Super Bowl rolls around, the planets will be direct again. I don’t think Kelce and Swift will still be together, unless the Usher thing was just a redirect and she’s doing the half-time show. If that’s the case, I think she’ll stick it out.1 A long term relationship shouldn’t be the goal for them, but that’s too big a goal anyways. I hope they both just focus on sanity.
Here I had written “For now, I hope that they are enjoying being the Gen-Z incarnation of Pearl Harbor.”, but my editor Chat GPT told me it was insensitive and I kind of agreed.
i love your writing.