The world’s great age begin anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn.

John Davies

    The Shining Grackle Moon, entering its second quarter at 2:46 a.m. on March 4, continues to wax until it is completely full at 9:38 p.m. on March 10. Rising in the afternoon and setting in the morning, this moon is overhead after sundown.
Daylight Savings Time begins at 2:00 a.m. on Sunday, March 8. On the same day, the sun reaches a declination of 4 degrees, 57 minutes, 80 percent of the way to spring. By March 13, the sun reaches 90 percent of the way to spring.
    Venus remains in Pisces throughout March, much lower in the west than it was last month near sunset. Jupiter in Capricorn is the morning star this month. Mars lies in Aquarius, following Jupiter low in the east before sunrise. Saturn keeps its place in Leo, coming up in the evening, setting in the northeast before dawn.
    The Delta Leonid meteors fall after midnight throughout the first week of this month. Look for them in Leo in the middle of the sky.
    The moon may exert less influence on ocean tides and on human and animal behavior when it comes into its 2nd and 4th quarters. Therefore, it might make more sense to perform routine maintenance on yourself, as well as on your flock or herd around March 4 and 18.
    On the other hand, tidal lunar influences have been shown to be greater at full moon and new moon times. You might expect more trouble with your body, your mind and lIvestock, therefore, on or about March 10 and 26. Be especially careful of pregnant animals at full moon (when the moon is overhead between midnight and dawn), the most likely time for abortions in weaker creatures.

THE ARROW OF ARCHIMEDES
   When I am not taking notes or counting something, I often feel disconnected from the tangible world around me; I live projecting or planning, thinking about things I have done or would like to do some day.
Recently, I have been spending an inordinate amount of time in the past, ruminating and regretting. It is no wonder the Buddhist texts I have studied urge mindfulness and focus on the present. The future is more certain than I care to accept, and the past is a perilous place for me, thanks to some of the things I have done or might have done.
    Sometimes I share my thoughts with my older sister, and we reminisce about how stupid we were thirty or forty years ago, how we might have been put away for this or that, how close we came to disaster time after time. And even though we end our talks counting our blessings, thankful for our good fortune and our undeserved prosperity, I come away uneasy. Do people really change? Underneath it all, am I still as stupid as I was? From the past I move to tomorrow: What new idiocy awaits my flawed judgment?
     In the evenings, I have been reading The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. He calls this tendency of mine “anhedonia,” a predisposition to look at the gloomy side of events, as opposed to “healthy-mindedness,” a proactive and positive attitude. I have, according to James, a congenital affliction, and he suggests that unless I experience some dramatic religious conversion, my dwelling on the past and worry about the future will almost certainly remain perennial.
     Spurred on by the promise of spring, I fantasize an antidote: What if I were able to be like the Arrow of Archimedes, which, once sent into flight, traveled first halfway to its destination, then halfway again, then halfway again, ultimately never able to surmount its theoretical barrier to consummation? Balancing forever in passage, I would be completely transitory, safe from both my source and my inevitable entropy.
    After all, April is coming. There will soon be plenty of reasons to forget. Immersed in the present, I will become mindful as a buddha. My dark peripheral vision will fade away in a koan of wildflowers, and I will not only escape healthy-mindedness and anhedonia, but conversion, as well.