Mercury Retrograde March 2005 - An Evaluation

by Robert Wilkinson

Well, I just got back from Texas, and Mercury retrograde showed itself in some very interesting ways. As you know, there were several messed up links in the article I posted just as Mercury hit its station. The day we landed in Houston, within hours we had a furious lightning storm that knocked out power and internet connectivity just after I was able to repair the links in that article. From that point on, there was no connectivity, even though we reset the modem several times. It turns out that the provider had to bring out another box, which also didn't work. Then they had to come out again, and reset the entire system, whatever that means. Retro-grade!

My partner hadn't been to Austin in 26 years, so it seemed like a great time for a return, as per Mercury retrograde. However, we found out that we couldn't go to central Texas when we planned, due to my Italian godfather having to go into the hospital a day early. So we moved everything up a day, and had a great trip on a road I'd never been on before, complete with the glorious array of Texas wildflowers so prominent at this time of year. Ordinarily we'd take another route to the Hill Country than the one we took, but this time the logistics of where we were going forced us to scrap the usual way of getting there from Houston for another route. (As I pointed out in my soon-to-be-republished book, "A New Look At Mercury Retrograde," it's a great time for traveling, if you're flexible!) We got where we were going without any problem whatsoever, except that the route we took involved a lot of twists and turns and double-backs, which describes Mercury retrograde to a T.

I got to Leander hoping to do a post or two on this site, but found out that I had access only to dial-up, which of course meant punting the idea of blogging. After seeing my godfather, it turns out that he isn't in as bad a shape as we thought. (It also turned out that he didn't need to make the trip to the hospital anyway, and that he wasted an entire day for no good reason, another retrograde!) We had intended to reconnect with quite a few friends in Austin, but due to rapidly shifting plans that got punted as well. Having a few hours to re-acquaint ourselves with Austin, in the process we wound up at the same two restaurants twice, (one of them twice within a two-hour span,) due to our friends' desire to go to those establishments, and their centrality to where all of us were coming from. A family of old friends from San Antonio unexpectedly were able to make it to Austin, so it was an interesting reunion we didn't expect. We also tried to caravan from one restaurant to a friend's house, but got lost from each other within blocks, and the cell phone number they used to reach me originally actually belonged to someone in a shop they were in, so I suppose that qualifies as a retrograde. ("Hello, is ___ there?" "Who?" "Well, they called from this number." "Don't know anyone by that name." And so on...)

In the few loose minutes we had, I took my partner by the house I used to own in South Austin (As the bumper sticker sez, "78704 - Not just a zip code, but a way of life"), and unexpectedly found one of the inhabitants hanging outside. He invited us in, and it turns out that recently my former house was the site of a SXSW party for Spin magazine, and that at least a thousand people had partied down to the tunes of Idyllwild, a Scottish band, and the whole thing was written up in Scotland with the house designated formally as "the house of fun." In an interesting twist, they had not been able to blow the fuses, and couldn't figure out why, given the wattage pumped through the system. I explained that I had wired the big room to be a television and sound studio when I lived there, and gave them a little history of the house, south Austin, and the music scene when I was there from 1969-97. Sure sounds like a retrograde event to me! Also found out they have a blog named The Austinist, which seems very Austinish (and they even did a write up on our visit!) Also, on the way to and from Leander where we were staying, we took a very roundabout route, which at the time seemed very retrograde.

Another retrograde: we found that we had lost the pictures of the first half of the trip due to losing the memory sticks for the camera, and so had to buy another when we got back to The Woodlands to try to recreate the pictures from that part of the trip, impossible since some of them were of the talk I gave in a great yoga studio. Then, after dropping off the rental car, we had to double back as I had forgotten my cell phone, giving me the sense of being a hamster in a cage going round and round roads and freeways, since we had to take the identical route twice within a ten minute span. (For my friends who I didn't get to connect with - as der governator sez, "I'll be back." Sooner, not later!)

And in a final curious retrograde, I found out that the TSA's left hand doesn't know what it's right hand is doing. (Oh! That's not retrograde, that's business as usual!) If that seems cryptic, please understand that as a former security consultant in several realms, I find our present airport security STUPID. We have created a monstrous bureaucracy that is arrogant, willful, and rude. In this instance, I was sneered at, yelled at, and insulted in the process of getting on the plane here in LA. I was forced to remove my shoes with no recourse whatsoever, and confronted and screamed at by an illiterate, ignorant neo-fascist who seemed to love her authority more than her humanity. I was told it was MANDATORY to remove my shoes and I MUST have my boarding pass IN MY HAND with my hand above my head as I passed through the machine. Then I came to find out in Houston that it is NOT mandatory but only optional to remove shoes by a very polite security official who was easier to take than the bigmouth peon in LA. And the shoes thing is optional in every other airport I've ever been in except Orlando, but what would you expect from a place that would elect Jeb Bush as governor? For the record, never before have I been screamed at to have my boarding pass in my hand as I walked through the machine, probably because the pass and my ID have always been checked at least twice before I got to the checkpoint in every other airport, just as it was in LA before the latest flight.

It made me remember the "Shoebomber," the ostensible reason for this degrading "requirement," who I believe was a plant by the administration to keep us afraid and strip us of our dignity by forcing us to walk barefoot or in socks through their "security" gantlet. Before you protest how dangerous Mr. Richard Reid was, I will remind you the story changed several times after he was busted. We were originally told that the amount of explosive in his shoe would have blown off his foot and the tush of the poor soul in front of him, but wasn't enough to do any damage to the hull of the plane. Only later did the story change to enough explosive to rip a hole in the hull. Then there's the really stupid part. If he was really trying to blow up a plane, why not go to the toilet, lock himself in, light the fuse, and blow the tail of the plane off? Why try to light a shoe in front of a bunch of people? Seems more crazy than dangerous. It is also obvious that we the people are having a retrograde game played on us where the rules change with the arrogance level of illiterate flunkies.

A final musing; it sure seems retrograde for the media to run pictures of Terry Schiavo as she looked many years ago, NOT as she is today. I guess a smiling young woman is more sympathetic than a human vegetable who can only blink reflexively, even if that smiling young woman has not existed for many years. And you can bet that all punditry included, the entire thing will not amount to much, except for those who will be outed over other matters than the ones discussed at this time. Or that the votes taken at this time are irrelevant, but will be resurrected at another time to be used in other arenas than the ones this whole thing started in. Oh, the joys of retrogrades! Glad to be back. More astrology tomorrow!

© Copyright 2006 Robert Wilkinson. Last update: 8/27/2006; 10:52:54 AM.