favorite Sun Sign, next to Leo - and Aries, of course.  A fine astrologer I once knew in New York called you Aquarians 'the torch bearers of human dignity.'  (That really startled me, because how can one associate anything dignified with people who go around standing on their heads all the time?) The very wise ancients called you 'the humanitarians of the planet Earth.'  At least one writer has called you 'the last hope for the human race.'  You are called 'brilliant and precognitive, inventive geniuses' by most everyone who studies astrology.  And you have also aptly been called 'the leaders of the New Golden Age.'  Never mind all that.  I call you nitzie, cuckoo, as unpredictable as a comic valentine sent to Quasimodo in the tower room of Notre Dame - with one foot in Heaven, one on Earth, your head in the clouds, and your ears fastened on the wrong way.  In other words, weird.  In addition, you are forever losing your contact lenses in the ice-cube tray of the refrigerator. 

Aside to readers:  Don't worry, Aquarians are immensely flattered by having the foregoing qualities attributed to them.  Strange?  Not really.  You see, Capricorns feel as though, you've awarded them a Nobel Prize when you tell them straight out that they're stuffy.  Taurus folk swell up in pride when you tell them they're as stubborn as glue - Leos smile benignly when you level with them about their insufferable arrogance, and…say, you know what?  Everyone is weird.  I mean, but EVERYONE!  It must depend on the theory or relativity or something.  There are, evidently, twelve groups of us here on the spinning ball, looking at life in twelve different ways.  (Do you suppose that's the tolerance lesson the Water Bearers are here to teach us?)  Of course, the only sensible and true way to look at life is the Mars-Aries way.  Someday that will be proven to be indisputably correct.  Meanwhile, as a Ram myself, I refuse to argue the subject further. 

Many people have written to me to ask why Aquarius is an Air Sign, and yet Aquarius is symbolized by the Water Bearer.  They want to know specifically how a Water Bearer can be said to belong to the Air Element.  I would like to take this opportunity to answer them. 

I don't know. 

Why are you complaining?  That's a typical Aquarian explanation.  As clear as the smog over Los Angeles.  Mixing up the Air and Water elements doesn't surprise me in the least, as an astrologer.  And as you learn more about these off-beat, star-crossed creatures of creative confusion, it won't surprise you either.  Hopefully, the knowledge of the stars and planets will stop you all from writing in to ask something so foolish as an explanation of the why of anything related to the February-born.  (Some Aquarians are born in late January, but most are born during the month of the groundhog… which figures.) 

Now, just image this.  Two Water Bearers have discovered one another, in the playpen, in college, on a basketball team, in a hangar at TWA, or in the audience watching Star Wars.  They are reading this book together.  That is, one of them (excluding the playpen tots) is reading it aloud to the other, who is wandering around the room, watering and talking to the plants (but listening).  The reader stops, about here… turns to the Aquarian with the sprinkling can, wearing the jumpsuit and says, "What in the world does this author mean?  Is there something unusual about us?  You have a Ph.D. in nuclear physics, I'm a brigadier general in the Salvation Army, we are clearly both intelligent, normal, unobtrusive, quiet people.  This book insinuates that we are, in some way, 'queer.'  Astrology can't be accurate if it implies such a thing as that, don't you agree?" 

The second Aquarian stops near the African violets, contemplates carefully, in an attempt to correctly analyze the question, then gazes at the other Aquarian, with a dreamy look, and answers, "All the world is queer, save for me and thee… and sometimes…" (trailing off). 

The first Aquarian interrupts, dreamily too, "…and sometimes thou art a little freaked…" (completing the quote).