Releasing Logic and Directness

9.30.07


In the realm of water, nothing happens rationally. Nor does it follow the predictable raceway from gunshot to finish line. How unsentimental would that straight path be, anyway?

This couldn't bear repeating enough, now that both Mercury and Mars have moved into aqueous zones… and are both within shadows of upcoming retrogrades.

Forget about getting it exactly right the first time (as if you'd recognize 'right' when you stumbled into it). If you sped unfettered to each step effortlessly, you'd miss a whole bunch of alternative information—that which connects you, all-compassion-like, with everybody else sputtering through this perpetual self-annihilation treadmill of doing toward glimpses of perfect being, where we're all equal in our fundamental ego-crises.

Yes, you read me correctly: No matter what we're trying to 'do' out here on this gravity-stricken sphere of earthly existence, we're the same simpering messes inside our skins. We may be brilliantly educated, impressively experienced, and/or well-regarded among our community of peers… but underneath, we all still crave that same love we desperately need, all while wondering if we'll ever meet our harsh internal standards of righteousness in time to watch this incarnation's go-around melt mortally back into the soil.

While we're here, we can push away those nagging bodily itches known as emotions… call 'em inconvenient or irrelevant to 'the work at hand' (e.g., numbers in boxes on spreadsheets, commands to subcontractors about repairs, concepts for markets in meetings) and go on as if, as long as we're thinking each step through and progressing in an orderly fashion, everything's kosher.

But beneath the façade purporting all that we create is a product of pure analytic forethought and organized labor, we are confronted with great mystery. Ask any visionary innovator with more than a dribble of self-awareness, and she'll tell you—sometimes, it's all about turning right instead of left only because that's what feels right. The most skilled of writers, no matter how SAT-ready their vocabularies may be, often just sits right down… and has the artful phrasings pour out from the fingertips, as if God-given or otherworldly-channeled. The same goes for painters, sculptors, dancers, inventors, architects, gardeners, and whatever other artisan specialty floats your boat. Honestly, no one knows how it happens.

Try to outsmart the mystery or demand it to follow certain rules of etiquette or efficiency, though, and soon you'll find the magic disappears… replaced by impatience, frustration, or the creative blocks that sound a death-knoll for anyone hoping to conjure something fresh that's never existed before.

In general, when we speak of Mercury retrograde, it's about obstructions to processes of transmission, transportation and communication that hassle our best attempts to pay bills, get to the office on time, or explain ourselves in touchy situations. We're closing in on the latest Mercury retrograde (Oct 12-Nov 1) from the sign of Scorpio, where these sort of hiccups may prove to be more psychologically sharp—mainly because they may stir uncomfortable emotions, perhaps way out of proportion to the actual inconvenience that's occurring, or through whatever deep-but-deeply-unpleasant revelations 'accidentally' make it to the surface.

We might go to investigate where one small error came from… and discover, much to our horror, the whole system is resting on shaky footing (or, more macabre, an ancient burial ground). We might try to backpedal from our strange behaviors, only to get ourselves even further entangled by inadvertently offending somebody who, truth be told, we never really liked or respected that much anyhow, but who we thought we'd be able to fool forever. Oops.

Matters only become embroiled deeper under the water with Mars wading through a near-epic transit across Cancer, where he is altogether clumsy and moody and overly self-apologetic. We usually count on Mars to cut through the bullshit, with a take-it-or-leave-it stance of assertive defiance—we want what we want, and we're going to grab it, hell or high-water. But when the water actually is this high as he travels through Cancer, he can't distinguish his own desires from what he imagines others may need from him… which is very considerate, I guess, if not a bit annoyingly indirect and distracting when it comes to securing his own goals.

From such a situation, we can expect a lot more interpersonal processing than usual… preferably with the understanding that much of what's said won't necessarily address all that isn't being said, whether for reasons of shame or discomfort, or because there simply aren't words that'll adequately describe the complex of emotions that surround even the most supposedly elementary of tasks and topics.

Forget about rushing through anything. And don't get mad at somebody else for their 'special needs', as if you don't also have your own, which just as likely might complicate the next step, though this one we demand should flow rapidly and without roil at their feeble hands.

Chalk much of the rest of the year up to this sort of thing… but do so without resentment. The promise here is to gain much intimacy with those who you have to deal with on a regular basis, folks you'd just as soon never know as well unless this double-water-retrograde madness didn't force you deeper into each other's business than you'd ever intended to go.

Those people who comprise our day-to-day lives, as store clerks or office temps or clients or vendors or cab drivers or 911 operators or legless homeless vets, don't show up by accident. We cross paths for reasons beyond the accidental. Each time we embrace the retrograde slowdown and welcome the water into our consciousness, we receive another opportunity to see ourselves in each other. The lack of differentiation may be emotionally startling, yet bridges the alienation of loneliness we all fall prey to periodically, if not perpetually.

Why get grumpy and curse? You're ultimately talking to yourself that way, in the grand scheme of mysterious things we only get hints of, and you deserve better… as do we all…