We had chosen CarmelValleyVillage as destination of our planned Great Escape from the ModocPlateau, a concrete location to visualize living in and so create an energy to follow out. Lightning can't strike unless the stricken object first sends up a little tendril of request, and we imagined that's what our picturings were, in the energetic scheme of things.

It made sense, because Husband's siblings and mother all live in nearby Monterey, and his children from former marriage live or visit nearby. It would make it easier to keep in contact. And I had grown up in Southern California (when I wasn't exiled to the Iowa farm of my grandparents) and could easily imagine the environment there, familiar enough.

But the picture wouldn't hold, much as I loved the hot smell of baked earth and manzanita I conjured, and the sensation of dappled shade.

Next we chose Chicago, where Husband grew up and lived and worked for many years. He misses it often, I think, and still has friends there. I had no sense imagery to put with it - my only contact with Chicago was a 30-minute airport layover en route to New York in 1982 - but we collected photographs and websites and I was getting to know its layout pretty well.

Although it never felt quite right.

New York might never have occurred to us if we hadn't played around one day with location astrology to see where our planets and asteroids were best aspected. And there it was, New York City, shining like a great beacon across the basins and ranges and plains between here and there. As though made for us.

So here's a street map of Manhattan on the corkboard at the foot of my bed, and this week a promising series of dreams located there, in which I always get an apartment easily and easily afford it.

I think it could be the place for us to stay, for a while. That's what the stars say, anyway. Now to do something to make that lightning strike ...