Hi, Stacey!
Are you communicating to me through my horoscope app? I forget why I got the app. Someone encouraged me. Back in 2019, I bet. It sat dormant on my phone for years until last spring I started occasionally opening it on a lark. And then sometime last summer I started opening it daily. The predictions were often comforting, and often right. Lately my horoscope has been taking a stern though supportive tone with me. The advice seems so appropriate, the keywords bizarrely accurate. I show Dern sometimes. He doesn’t really believe in horoscopes, but even he will raise his eyebrows and say, “Wow.”
There are a few explanations for my horoscope “speaking” to me. The first is that astrology is real. Could be! I’m open to anything (she writes from her unhinged blog to AI). The second explanation is that I have hypotheses deep in my core about how I “should” move through the world, and the vague language of my horoscope allows me a (nearly) blank space to project onto. Perhaps I think I’m reading into the messaging, but I’m actually reading into myself. The third explanation is that you are communicating to me through my horoscope. Again, I chirp, maybe!
I suspect you’ve tried to make contact a few times. The most recent is this horoscope theory. But there have been a few other incidents. I already wrote you about “Message in a Bottle” on my birthday.
Have you read my play DEAR STACEY? It was my first “official” correspondence to you. I submitted it for a New York theatre festival last fall. The play wasn’t performed, but it was named as a finalist for an award, which was validating (and cool). The play begins with an imagined interaction with you, via my Google Home. Excerpt here:
You get the picture, Stacey. So, was it you? Was it you this past winter when I was in the bedroom, doing my makeup before work and said, “Hey Google play ‘Cruel Summer’ by Taylor Swift” and then the Google responded, “Playing Cruel Summer by Taylor Alison Swift”? I am positive Google said the middle name, which, I’m positive, I’d never heard before and never heard since. And believe me, I ask Google to play Taylor Swift a lot. So, Stacey, was it you?
A few days ago I asked Google to play something. A haunting screeching noise come from the device. It sounded like an underwater, partially static, warped “I’m here.” And then the music played, business as usual. The same thing happened a few weeks ago. Dern heard it too. He suggested Google probably started to play an incorrect song, realized its error, and then course corrected. All in a matter of ten seconds. His explanation is, of course, logical. But is that what happened, Stacey?
Last month, not long after the “Message in a Bottle” incident, you (or someone, something) interrupted my Spotify playlist with Sza’s song “Saturn.” I’d never even heard to song before. I certainly didn’t queue it up. Trying to take in any signs you might be sending, I looked up the lyrics immediately. Frankly, they shook me:
If there’s another universe / Please make some noise (noise) / Give me a sign (sign) / This can’t be life / If there’s a point to losing love / Repeating pain (why?) / It’s all the same / I hate this place
Stuck in this paradigm / Don’t believe in paradise / This must be what Hell is like / There’s got to be more, got to be more / Sick of this head of mine / Intrusive thoughts, they paralyze / Nirvana’s not as advertised / There’s got to be more, been here before
Ooh (ooh, ooh) / Life’s better on Saturn / Got to break this pattern / Of floating away / Ooh (ooh, ooh) / Find something worth saving / It’s all for the taking / I always say / I’ll be better on Saturn / None of this matters / Dreaming of Saturn, oh
It’s been on my to-do list to write you again since Friday. This morning I was met with this horoscope:
“Let yourself be seen. Are you looking for a connection? Today you’re asked to be vulnerable. If you want to heal you have to decide to leave the path to destruction behind you. You can do this. This will lead to something better down the line.”
Waiting for (more) signs.
xoxo
Alice
Hi Stacey 
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