The last month, month and a half have been quite a doozy. I havent blogged here since right after the fire because I have had no internet at home (i know, I *KNOW*), been crunched at work with work, sick with a never-ending cold, moving stuff from one place to another with my precious free time, and been generally physically and emotionally spent. When you go out to surf on a big day, you jump in the water with the knowledge that at some point the waves are going to toss your fragile little ant-like body around like a pit bull with a kitten in its mouth. And when that happens you can fight against the current and forces of nature holding you under the surface, or you can do what they call "rag dolling" while you're under. You let your body go completely limp until you find yourself at the surface. By not letting your muscles tense up in the fight for air, you actually become more buoyant. That's been my survival strategy this month.
Whenever life makes me rag-doll, which is not very often, but has definetely become more frequent as I get older (or maybe I was just too dumb to rag-doll when I was younger), I always look to the cosmic forces for explanations. And this one has had "Mercury in retrograde" written all over it. For those of you who have never had the privelige of hearing one of my tirades about this phenomenon, here you go.
Mercury, the planet that rules communication, travel, thinking and perception, appears to move backward in the sky (and therefore, the zodiac) about 3 times a year. This retrograde movement is actually an optical illusion due to our vantage point on Earth. The way the glitches it causes manifest themselves differs, depending on what sign Mercury goes retrograde in. The period is often seen by astrologers as times when fated events, over which we seemingly have no control, will occur. This time Mercury went retrograde in Pisces, the watery fishes swimming in opposite directions. Mercury has a shadow period both before and after it goes retrograde, as the planet slows and gets ready to move in the opposite direction, backwards and then forwards.
From my favorite site about MIR (
link):
A retrograde period is best seen as a cycle, beginning when the planet begins to slow to a halt before travelling backwards through the zodiac and ending when the planet returns to the point where it first paused. However, during the cycle, the planet's energy is most powerful (and more likely to generate critical events of universal importance) when the planet makes a station, appearing motionless in the sky.
Mercury, Divine Messenger
These stationary periods occur near the beginning of the cycle (when the planet first halts as it prepares to move backwards) and midway through the cycle when the retrograde planet slows to a stop before moving forward again. The "direct station" (when the planet halts before moving forward again) is the most powerful and can be used for maximum benefit.
Here in the Bay Area, much of the general confusion it has wreaked this time around has been centered around water (it has not stopped raining and/or SNOWING here for the last month). The snow caused the biggest traffic accident in Marin county history a few weeks ago, a 28-car pile up that closed Highway 1 down overnight. The same weekend of the fire in our building (which resulted in the fire department filling the house with water that is now becoming mold in the walls), CC's parents' (who own our building that burnt), their car broke down the same weekend. When I moved into my new place 6 weeks ago after the fire, I found that my cell which I use as my only phone, didnt work at all here - even though I am still in the middle of the city about 6 blocks from where I lived before. When I went to get internet at the house, they told me this house wasnt even in their database and that they couldnt help me because my house didnt exist... then once we got that straightened out they told me that the cable was still under the previous tenant's name and that I would have to fax them a lease (which I didnt have at the time), all in all resulting in another 2 weeks of internet and tv delays. The mail server at the ISP where my client's business in Hawaii is hosted spontaneously combusted about two weeks ago. There was a fire in the transbay tunnel on BART, resulting in a trainload of passengers having to walk back to Oakland in the tube under the bay. Then there was a bomb scare at the West oakland station which brought the commute to a standstill a few days ago when two mystery men exited a train yelling "there's a bomb on board" at the 12th Street station. Meanwhile, BART is also doing an "upgrade" to its software, but instead of hiring a contractor to do it, they elected to do it themselves to save money and ended up with 3 days of glitches which resulted in tens of thousands of commuters stranded during morning this week. (
link)
Another curious by-product I have noticed during MIR is the seeming frequency of pre-cognitive experiences. Most of them are minor and are usually shrugged off as minor coincidences, but taken collectively they present a pattern. The usual order of operations here on Earth is that you see somebody or experience something, then you think about it or even dream about it... but during MIR it seems to work the other way around. Friends will tell me when they see me, "Hey I was just thinking about you and here you are! That's so wierd!" Or you will dream about something and then the next day it will happen. A friend of a friend was just telling me that she dreamt the front page of the Entertainment section of the paper the next day, twice. I even started playing a game with myself where I don't look at the dates for coming mercury in retrograde periods. Instead, I wait until I feel the cosmic shift. And now after a couple of years of practice, am usually right. The first time I tried the game, I waited... I saw my friend at the grocery store and he said he had a dream with me in it the night before and that it was wierd we ran into each other. And then later in the day my roommates boyfriend came over and said he dreamt something the previous night that came true during the day. The lightbulb went off and I said to myself, hey, mercury just went retrograde. And it did.
About two years ago, I realized that that all of these things, ranging from petty annoyances to cataclysmic life-changing events actually presented an opportunity. When everything in the outside world seems to come screeching to a halt, it actually gives us the chance to do nothing but sit and reflect. "What, no TV, no internet, no phone? You better sit your ass down and think about what's going on" the universe seems to say to us.
More from the article before:
Mercury's retro phase tends to bring unforeseen changes and blockages, but the aggravation and frustration that many of us experience during these periods is often due to our own inability to roll with the punches. Is this due to our ego-fixation? Mercury sets out to restructure our thinking processes and for many of us this is painful and frustrating. Moreover, these experiences reveal flaws in our internal organisation as well as our external planning, which can make us feel foolish and inadequate.
So the moral of the story is that I havent been blogging and if you keep coming here looking to read some shit and you ain't gettin' none, it's because I've been sitting in my house with the lights off and shades drawn. Mercury went direct on March 25 and completely returns to normal on April 14th. I have been feeling somewhat better since last weekend's direct station and feel like its ok to write again, but if I'm wrong I guarantee you won't hear about it for a couple of weeks. So no promises, but I think I'm back, God willing.
Quote of the Day:
"I'm tighter than JLo in her jeans." -M.I.A.
