The other day, while I was walking down the street, passing by the corner of my high school wall, I noticed a man, his hair completely gray, the one I could see there lately sitting alone at a table of the café terrace. While the coldish autumn wind was swirling chestnut leaves all around the place I decided to make an approach to him. A friend of mine, working as a waiter in the same café had already told me that the man, his recent regular guest coming alone every time, was an astrologer on his stay in our town. Having two latter facts on my mind, I approached him eagerly, introducing myself as an astrology enthusiastic amateur.

Despite being so unexpectedly interrupted in his thoughts, he kindly offered me to join him - a gentle smile on his face. Apart from his gray hair in which the playing wind had left a few yellow and red little leaves, the first thing one could notice about the man with words so soft and voice so mild were his eyes reflecting an expression of deep longing. From our conversation I got to know that he'd been born in Pljevlja, and furthermore, spent some years living here - the years when a small town gives a young man the best he can get from it.

While he was talking about his childhood during which he was raised in the most beautiful way not only by his parents but also by his neighbours who protected him in all situations, even when stealing apples from their gardens, or doing anything against the rules and customs of the time, his eyes would frequently get a strange expression as he was seeing all the scenes he was telling me about. Those scenes were the pictures of the vision in his mind. And then when I asked him what the difference between a good and a bad astrologer was, he replied that the one claiming to be a serious astrologer had to be a true believer following his intuition from the deep inside of his being and always have the reflection of the vision in his mind. He made a point that the contemporary astrologers couldn't even tell the roofs of the houses from the street lights, neither could they get closer to the impartial shine of the stars, being more familiar with some cosmic juxtaposition than with a lovely smile on a beautiful face of a young girl in love that attracts the stregth of the brave ones.

He kept on telling me of astrology being a very complex science that requires high education and an innate sense for man, with all his little and big worries. It seemed to him that the Creator was playing games with the poor astrologers demanding upon them to handle equally mathematics, physics, astronomy, geography, as well as psychology, philopsophy, and also to know how to make a difference between intuitive sparkles of a genius and empty talks of a Mister know-it-all. And then when he mentioned God, he said mockingly, that the day He opened the door of the Treasury where the secret dwells, wishing the law of nature be brought back to man's mind, God being a passionate enigmatic Himself scattered the precious load all around so that the place resembled a messy children's room. And, guess what - it turned out to be exactly his way, the wind was given one part of it to be scattered over Amazine jungles, The Pacific rain - another, the animals were presented the third one to take care of it, the fourth part was woven into the mistery of Pyramids in Giza, and finally the man was entitled to make use of this knowledge provided the ultimate secret of life had been discovered by him - the same respective shares of good and evil created the world and keep it going. Having said this, he paused with a sigh and again the look in his eyes seemed to move towards some distant place.

I noticed his slowly passing from telling stories into another world known only to himself. It seemed to me that his face was assuming an expression of a child, going to bed after a long and tiring, yet joyful play. It all took a few seconds until the shrieking voices of school kids brought him back to reality. I used this opportunity to ask him about his start in astrology. Everything this strange old man furher told me, I experienced like a dream and therefore I'm going to continue this story in the first person.

"What did I know when I was eighteen? The most complicated thing I had ever seen was the ornament on my grandmother's sweater. I thought nobody could be as happy especially from the day when I had a rare opportunity to see that girl exactly at that corner, hopping joyfully on her way back home from school. I mean a rare opportunity because I was standing alone at the corner when she appeared, carrying her books. She had a smile on her face, trying to move away the hair the wind was forcing into her eyes. During the few seconds it took I clearly saw the expression of joy on her face - I thought it was meant for me (this picture comes from Uranus in the third house in Libra, the ruler of my horoscope-falling in love at the corner beside the High school when it's windy). And who else could it have been for? The more naive and more innamorate was none to be seen around.

Finally that day I earned a deserved prize. Even though it took a few seconds, as it were, it was completely sufficient to establish a real fairy tale in my imagination just from that one shy glance. And a fairy tale, just like all fairy tales, has neither limits nor strict rules giving us both liberty and power, opening the world unimaginable before, allowing a dreamy folding of a mosaic over and over again? (Moon conjunct Neptune in the fourth house in Sagittarius). The only imperfection of this fairy tale is that it claims too much action for itself and so becomes an individual insisting upon its separate life, ordering a spectacular setting with both castle and thrilling plot, just like evil heroes making tricks on their opponents, forgetting sometimes to thank its existence to the joy of the owner himself. It wanted to increase, to approach the real life (Moon conjunct Neptune opposition Saturn).

What happened next, was meant to be. Since my country was moving more retrograde than usual those days, I found my thoughts hang on to the past. The time was passing by, while I was running away from it in an opposite direction, to the eighteenth maybe nineteenth centery through the fiction of that time. Actually, I started to live the lives of the heroes from the novels I was reading. A few months of useless waiting for a new meeting with a girl who had made a fairy tale, I found myself in a war shaft in the middle of the winter (Saturn, the ruler of the Ascendent transiting my Aquarian Sun).

The days were somehow passing by and so were the nights, while I was on the night watch in the unpicked cornfield full of snow, trying to remember my friends, good and bad moments, people and events not so important to me. It took me fifteen days to come to the very end of all interesting things I could recall. Only 15 days were enough to unfold the memories of the last eighteen years, although I was sure that at least the third part of it was spent in my daydreaming. Suddenly I started to feel not only a real coldness but also a metaphysical one. I could never imagine anything resembling that experience. A total mind blockade, a frame of mind with no understanding whatsoever, and all that hapenning to me, although I considered thinking to be the simplest thing ever . Thousand times I tried to find some inspiring theme to make the situation bearable - it was all in vain (Saturn transiting Mercury). I became indifferent, so I fell asleep a couple of times standing in a shaft, completely aware of it being a life risk. And then, one night, just when we started to keep watch shifts for 8 hours, together with coldness and lazy like an afthernoon slumber, she visited my thoughts again into that cold night, accompanied by a peculiar feeling of warmth (finally, the Sun in Aquarius got the idea to illuminate the dearest part of my memory made by sextile with Moon conjunct Neptune).

It struck me that very moment, I simply had to find the way to keep her there, as long as possible. I wanted the happy ending of a fairy tale. The fairy tale had all conditions to establish with its full intensity now, since there was melancholz to abound in, quite enough to create something we like most the power which turns suffering to joy. (The Sun conjunct Mercury trine Saturn residing in cheerful Gemini) It started with the most picturesque events I?d ever encountered - all of them occurring in my head. No matter how desperately I tried to continue dreaming while I was awake, she didn't oppose it like girls usually do when seeing lads with wicked thoughts on their minds. On the contrary she let me believe that one day she'd be mine.

We started to live like a couple. Every night with the first dusk she would come with warm potions and most tasteful pies, keeping my spirits high, telling me it didn't matter matter where I came from and why I was here. If I plunged to a slumber, she would wake me up with the pictures of Partizan's matches, then suddenly, there she was again taking me to the match where Rangers were defeated 4-0, or to the moment of the basketball finals with Vlade Divac and Drazen Petrovic jumping happily towards the sky (Sagittarian Mars in the fifth , sextile Uranus). And then she took me back to my early childhood, to the forest by the village, where grandfather and I were collecting yule-logs for Christmas in a winter morning.

Watching these pictures from the shaft I suddenly remembered myself in a High school wondering why the main character from one of Chehov's stories was crying while arriving to the steppe at dusk, listening to a distant song of ploughmen mingled with a smell of mown grass and calls of animals going to sleep. I couldn't imagine that melancholy can annul a life if it's not supported it by real values. You can go to revolution with an empty stomach but without an idol,well, I wouldn't recommend it.

And my muse would come every night especially when the cold got unbearable, she would entertain me just like Aska did to the wolf, in her attempts not to be eaten by him, employing all her little tricks, until I was forced to promise her not to fall asleep till next watch shift. Once, when she left despite my opposition and requests to stay, she said she had to run off behind the hill and push the Moon to come out as soon as possible, so I could see her in her new gown.

Just when she left, a fiery grenade attack brought me back to reality and I put the fairytale together with her on a safe place. After a general alert, when the grenade attack was over the full Moon came out carrying the silence of the whole world with it. Never more she appeard so clear and talkative to my imagination (Uranus square Venus conjunct Jupiter).

Days were passing by, the spring came with its warmer nights. In the night-watch, I used to fix my eyes upon the Moon, waiting for her to appear just one more time, and having seen the Moon off, I would stay at the same spot, but this time gazing at the stars trying to see her in their reflection. I found myself attributing our moments to the stars, each detail to one of them, just like I attributed or, more precisely, resented the Moon for hiding her on the other side, the one never shown to the Earth.

The war was over. I returned home. The days of peace brought new commitments, other girls came up and I spent my days with them in reality, but the nights were always dedicated to her and the stars, those God's couriers who once assisted by the moon captured me in the enchanting net (Moon conjunct Neptune), from which I rarely pop out my head watching for her to appear.

In the meantime, I'm learning from the stars, sometimes with more, sometimes with less success, feeling that if she is safe and sound above with them, it can't be so bad for me to observe the situation from below, lost in the reverie that a key is hidden somewhere in them, the key that opens the door only to one who sincerely wants it. What did I know when I was eighteen ?! Nothing less than what I know today. The ornament from my grandmother's sweater has steched over the starry sky from above that snowy cornfield straight to this corner beside the High School at which I look with the eyes of a prematurely aged lad. What did I know when I was eighteen ... nothing, exept that I love her."

P.S. With this little story of my heart, I give regards to all my friends and clients from all over the world. They live in my memory with their own piece of the sky, quite often being the only true joy that means something to me in the time when metaphysical coldness tends to rob us of something that can never be grabbed.