Yesterday, I went to the Iñaquito market, and came home with my arms full of papaya, mango, tangerines, oranges, pitahayas, strawberries, pears, and roses. Sun colors, female shapes.

Almost all the venders are women, each presiding over a few tables piled high with bright mounds of produce. As I make my choices, they extol the virtues of any fruit I haven’t yet bought. If I seem reluctant, they peel the fruit and hand it over to me for a sample. If it’s a little past ripe, they’ll just give it to me as a ñapa, a little something extra.

When my backpack and my string bag are both full, I go outside, where the flower merchants line the stone steps. I go to the buxom woman who called to me when I first entered the market. I told her, “Fruit first, then flowers,” and so here I am, back again. After I choose roses in pale pink and lavender, the vender mentions that an orchid-like flower has a delectable perfume. I stick my nose into it, and buy some of those too.

There are lots of advantages to living in Quito. The sun pours down on this city, and sometimes in the morning, when I go down to the Surty Market for my newspaper, it feels as heavy as a lion’s paw. I walk slowly at first, heading east, not hot but oppressed by the sun’s ferocity. Then my feet adjust to the angle of the sidewalk, and my lungs start to open up. The sweet mountain air is always cool. And when I walk home again, with the bright blue sky and the sharply delineated peaks in front of me, I feel strong and vital.

The newspaper, El Comercio, also gives me an international viewpoint, especially useful when I read about what’s happening in the US. Sometimes I check the New York Times online, just to see the differences in the reports.

Today’s story is about what the NY Times calls “the detainee bill”. It sounds almost moderate in the US news. No torture allowed, thank goodness. But in El Comercio, it says, “The law permits severe interrogatory practices, although it declares that particularly cruel practices are illegal. In case of doubt, it’s left to President Bush to decide whether to adopt a particular method.” I’m sure, given his past choices, that he’ll be a model of compassion.

El Comercio also notes something that the New York Times doesn’t mention: that Secret Service investigators and military personnel are absolutely protected from international criminal prosecution. No need to worry about the World Court here, folks.

The New York Times does mention the lack of some basic legal rights for the detainees. And it quotes Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan who said that the law is “legally abusive”. These folks don’t get their choice of attorneys. They can be convicted on hearsay evidence. The jury (composed of stiff-backed military officers) does not have to agree.

It’s all about power. Some of this power will be directed at people who really do wish to harm others, sometimes in a big way. Some of it will be directed against people who just happen to be in the wrong place, wearing the wrong kind of headgear, at the wrong time.

In October, there are some powerful forces gathering astrologically as well. Mercury goes into Scorpio on October 1, and spends the rest of the month there, slowing down to go retrograde on October 28. It’s conjunct Jupiter from October 12 on.

Mercury and Jupiter are like the first to arrive at a big party, and the party will be a major Scorpio affair in November. In October, Mercury and Jupiter will put the message out there, and that message will become more intense and dramatic during November’s Scorpio stellium.

What will the message be? Scorpio is a sign of power, manipulation, secrecy, and excess. It’s a fixed sign, and so it shows the fixity of power. When one person or group has too much power, it leads to extremist behavior. The basic problem is that people can’t really control each other, no matter how much they try. This is endlessly frustrating to those who are wedded to a belief in world domination, and so the result is more and more abuse.

All this echoes the transformative power of September’s eclipses. Now, in October, those incipient changes become more emotionally charged. We’re talking about emotions like fear, desire, resentment, paranoia. These are the emotions that drive people to war, no matter how rational their rhetoric. And there will plenty of roiling emotions, starting in October and becoming stronger in November.

At the same time, Scorpio is also the sign of transformation. It’s about going deeper, understanding the roots of things. Beneath all this conflictive duality, the root is always unity. And this is where true power lies, in the power to make change based on self-awareness and understanding for others. No real change is possible unless you own your devils, and recognize them in other people’s eyes.

And so the message of Mercury and Jupiter will be to go inside yourself, inside your society, inside the earth, and see what’s really happening. What old fears and desires are lumbering up from the underworld, seething with hatred and cruelty? What old gods demand worship and blood sacrifice?

Jupiter is the planet of community. It’s like a big marketplace, with all of us gathered together. With Jupiter in Scorpio, the venders are selling power and change. The power is like an onion, and the top layers are tough and not very palatable. Being able to manipulate and control others - that’s not real power. Real power lies in the ability to transform oneself at the center.

And so as we walk around in our own marketplaces, we need to look for the things that will nurture us. We are heading into a time of major change, and we can’t avoid that. But we do have a lot of choices, if we are brave enough to maintain a connection with our inner selves.

It will not always be easy, and there may be some dramatic economic shortfalls in October, since Saturn in Leo will be exactly square the Mercury/Jupiter conjunction. There will be lots of resistance to the deeper changes, and, for those who are already in positions of authority, there will be attempts to grab more power just when things are falling apart most radically.

There will also be an inexorable quality to October, because Mercury moves slower and slower as the month goes on. But going slow is not a bad thing. That way, we can all keep up with each other, as we move towards forms of power that liberate us rather than enslaving us.

And for women, these changes are our natural state of being. After all, we are the ones who usher in each living soul, and we are the ones who close the eyes of the dead. We are old friends with transformation.

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