This may be my last column from Quito. Then again, it may not be. My lover and I are at a crossroads in time and space, trying to figure out where in the world we want to live. We may decide to come back here in the fall, but it’s not certain.

And so I’m looking out my window with a certain nostalgia this morning. We’ve had a spate of rainy weather, but today it’s sunny, and I can see far out over the city. I can even see the tall, winged goddess – la Virgen de Quito. She’s standing on her hill, the hill called the Panecillo, in the south side of Quito.

How many times have I shown her to visitors, with as much pride as if I had sculpted her myself? “Isn’t she a gorgeous big woman?” I’d say. How often have I looked down from the Panecillo, locating the familiar plazas and domes? How many times have I heard my lover tell the traditional story that the Virgin’s feet are chained so that she won’t fly down to the Red Light District below, and spend the night partying?

When you live in a place, the air becomes part of your blood. Quito is part of me now. My bones have gathered the patience and stubbornness of these Andean people, their mountains, their skies.

The last month has been eventful for Ecuador. A few Sundays ago, everyone came out to vote for popular reform, for a Constitutional Assembly that will revamp everything. The new president, Rafael Correa, says that it is the only way to root out all the corruption at every level of government.

All this is a long process. It will take six months to finish wrangling about who will be on the Constitutional Assembly, with the people casting the deciding votes, and another six to eight months for these 130 assembly members to forge a new Constitution. So next spring, if all goes well, this seed will blossom. Will it be a new kind of flower? We will have to wait to see.

Whenever anyone writes about Ecuador, they say that the government is unstable, evidence being the many presidents who have been tossed out on their collective ears during the last decade. But couldn’t you also see that as proof of healthy concern on the part of the citizenry? If it’s clearly not working, why wait until the presidential term is over before trying something new?

By that time a new Constitution comes to life in Ecuador, another era will have begun, from an astrological point of view. Pluto will be in Capricorn, where it will stay for a sixteen-year stretch. We will leave behind the Pluto-in-Sagittarius era of religious fervor, but the children born in this era will still be around. They will grow up and turn their passions into a new vision of the world. They will be activists, in a world increasingly dominated by rigidly hierarchical institutions. These people, born between 1995 and 2007, will be firebrands, zealots, preachers, fighters, travelers, adventurers, seekers, and party animals.

These children will grow up while Pluto moves through the pragmatic, business-oriented sign Capricorn, and they will wonder, “Where do I fit in?” They will have a more heroic, mythic consciousness which will sometimes be at odd with the sterility of modern life.

What about the generation before them? The Pluto-in-Scorpio generation comprises people born between 1984 and 1994. This is the generation that has brought us the phenomenon of school shootings. Cho Seung-Hui, who murdered 32 people at Virginia Tech on April 16, was born with Pluto in Scorpio closely conjuncting his Mars (planet of action).

This is not to say that every child born with Pluto in Scorpio is going to commit mayhem. But this generation does have a fascination with death, sex and transformation, and this isn’t always easy to express in socially acceptable ways.

How will these people manage with the business atmosphere of Pluto in Capricorn, during the next sixteen years? Scorpio gives intense focus, and so quite a few of these young people will become extremely rich and powerful. I think there will be some despots and dictators in this group, and there will also be many who will work in the underground, overthrowing the despots and dictators.

Scorpio is a sign of extremes, both in negative and positive ways. And so this is could be the generation that ends life on earth. Or it could be the generation that changes everything utterly, leaving open space for new seeds to grow. Sometimes you do have to wipe out the prevailing structure in order to form something new, as Rafael Correa is doing with his Constitutional Assembly.

And what about the planet herself? What will she be doing while all this going on? Capricorn is a dry, bare-bones sign, and I think Pluto’s passage through Capricorn will be a time when natural resources become scarce. There will be no extra gas or even water, nothing to fuel the passionate religious battles of our current era. The walls will go up, the doors will close.

I expect to live through the Pluto-in-Capricorn years, being a little more careful of everything during this time. I expect we will all learn lots of practical survival skills. I hope to be around, although I’ll be in my 70s, when Pluto enters Aquarius in 2024. By that time, people will be ready to open up more – psychologically, artistically, socially.

So it’s true that I don’t know what country I’ll be living in, six months from now. But I have a strong sense of how history will play itself out during the rest of my lifetime.

And what about the coming month? It’s still quite fiery. At the new moon (May 16), Mars has just entered the combative, impatient sign Aries, and so there’s an element of sudden conflict. In the Washington DC chart for the new moon, Mars has just risen, another indication of a showdown. (I’m still hoping it’s between Congress and the Executive branch.)

The closest aspect at the new moon is the inconjunct between Saturn and Uranus, an aspect that’s been increasing in strength over the last few months. Saturn symbolizes the status quo, and Uranus is about sudden change. The locus of the disruption could be unsafe working conditions, or contaminated water. I am reminded that just recently a hundred thousand people marched in Argentina to protest a giant paper factory which could pollute the Uruguay River.

Uranus in Pisces is about change, but it’s about change that comes from a holistic perception of our connection to the earth, and to each other. In order to create positive change, we have to be willing to trust each other. This is not easy to do, especially since the May new moon in Taurus highlights our security issues and our differing values.

At the center, though, we are all alike. We are all physical beings, sharing the same needs and instincts, the same reliance on the earth. None of us will last as long as that stone goddess that I see from my window. But we can try to live up to her message of love, peace and forgiveness.

I wave across the city to her, wish her luck in this time of change, and return to contemplating my own crossroads.

Index of Jenny Yates' Writings on Lesbian.com