CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)

It's a good time to take inventory of all the stories you allow to pour into your beautiful head. Do you absorb a relentless stream of fear-inducing news reports and violent movies and gossipy tales of decline and degeneration? Well, then, guess what: It's the equivalent, for your psyche, of eating rotting bear intestines and crud scraped off a dumpster wall and pitchers full of trans fats from partially hydrogenated oil. But maybe, on the other hand, you tend to expose yourself to comedies that loosen your fixations and poems that stretch your understanding of the human condition and conversations about all the things that are working pretty well. If so, you're taking good care of your precious insides; you're fostering your mental health. Now please drink in this fresh truth from Nigerian writer Ben Okri: "Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world."