Griffith Park at five-thirty without charts

By Castor Shadowmancer

I set my alarm for 5:12 because I am the kind of person who needs a buffer between waking up and doing anything that resembles courage. Tuesday was not special. My moon was in whatever sign it was in and I did not check, which felt like a small rebellion against my own job description. I pulled on the gray hoodie I wore to Joshua Tree scouting last month, the one with the coffee stain that looks like a nebula if you squint, and drove north on Vermont with the windows cracked because the air still had that thin coolness Los Angeles only offers for about forty minutes at dawn. Griffith Park at 5:30 is a different country. The gates were open. A ranger truck passed me going the opposite direction, headlights off, and I thought about how people who work before sunrise always look like they belong to the land more than the rest of us do. I parked near the Merry-Go-Round lot because the trail

to the clearing is short enough that I cannot talk myself out of it. My thermos held lukewarm green tea. My knees complained on the first incline. Classic water-sign body, all feeling and no apology. The clearing where nobody performs There is a flat patch above the old zoo ruins where a handful of regulars gather for Tai Chi before the hikers arrive with their trekking poles and podcast volume. I found them by accident in March, following a jogger who turned out to be a Pisces sun with excellent boundaries. She did not invite me. She did not need to. I stood at the edge of the circle for three mornings before Mr. Chen, who is seventy-something and has arms like quiet river stone, nodded at an empty space between a woman in hospital scrubs and a guy who always brings his own folding stool. Nobody asked what I do for work. Nobody asked my rising sign. The first time someone did ask, weeks

later, it was the guy with the stool and he said it like he was asking about my knee brace, not like he wanted a performance. I told him I read charts for a living and he said cool, can you tell me why my left shoulder always locks up during ward off left. I said probably you are carrying your mother's opinions in your trapezius. He laughed so hard he had to sit down. That is still the best client testimonial I have never put on my website. We move slow. That is the whole instruction. Cloud hands, brush knee, single whip. Mr. Chen corrects my weight distribution with two fingers on my wrist and I want to cry, not from pain, from relief. My work week is full of people who want the universe to make a decision for them so they do not have to feel responsible for choosing wrong. Out here the only decision is whether your back foot is actually rooted or you are just posing like you are

rooted. The difference shows up immediately in your balance. I wish more things worked that way. Sunrise as documentary, not prophecy The light comes over the Hollywood sign in stages. First a gray lift, then a gold seam, then that LA haze that photographers complain about and I kind of love because it makes everything look like memory instead of proof. I used to come up here to journal about fate. Lately I come up here to shut up and move. There is a version of my life where I am always the interpreter, always translating sky language for someone else's panic. In the clearing I am just a man in worn sneakers trying not to collapse his chest during fair lady works at shuttles. Last week a film student set up a tripod at the ridge line and asked if we minded being background. Mr. Chen said ask the mountain. The student looked confused. I wanted to hand him a clipboard and a broken thermos

just to watch his face, but I did not, because I am learning, slowly, that not every moment needs my commentary. They ran through the form twice while he filmed B-roll. When the sun finally hit the grass, the scrubs woman stopped and stood still with her palms open. Nobody narrated it. That was the shot. I think about my clients who want a big cinematic sign. A crow on a billboard. A number on a receipt. I get it. I have wanted that too. But the thing that has been steadying me these Tuesdays is smaller and harder to post about. Breath in. Weight down. Shoulders dropped. The city noise arrives by degrees, traffic then helicopters then someone's speaker playing oldies too loud near the parking lot. By then we are usually folding the last movement, closing like a book you did not finish reading but still respect. What I carried back down the hill On the walk down my phone buzzed twice. A

client asking if Mercury retrograde was why her ex texted. A vendor thread about sage bundles. I did not answer either one until I was back in the car with both hands on the wheel, because I have learned the hard way that replying from the trail makes me sound like a fortune cookie with a Wi-Fi connection. The answers could wait twenty minutes. The ex text was probably not Mercury. The sage could wait too. My nervous system could not. I am not giving up astrology. Do not worry. I still believe the sky is a map, not a cage. But maps are useless if you will not stand on the actual ground and feel where your feet are. Griffith Park is my ground right now. Sedona was my ground at sixteen when I left my body for the first time and scared myself into a lifelong obsession. LA is my ground at thirty-six, which is messier and less photogenic and involves more parking tickets. Elliot the

consultant can hold space for someone's Saturn return breakdown at two in the afternoon. Elliot the human still cries at sunsets, still overthinks, still forgets to eat when the inbox gets loud. The Tuesday routine does not fix that. It just gives me one hour where the only thing I am trying to read is whether my knee tracks over my toe when I step forward. That is enough for a morning. Maybe that is enough for a season. Closing Reflection If you are in LA and you are tired of being the person who always has the interpretation ready, come find the clearing. Do not bring a deck. Do not bring a pitch. Bring shoes with decent grip and the willingness to be bad at something in front of strangers who will not remember your job title anyway. Mr. Chen does not care if you are a healer or a barista or a skeptic who got dragged uphill by a friend. He cares if you breathe before you move. Stay

cosmic 🌌 — Castor