RETROGRADE

Apparently Mercury is going into retrograde right this very minute and according to my Yoga Journal weekly horoscope email (that I usually ignore) this is a great time to finish projects. The number of times I’ve heard people go on about retrograding Mercury, one would think that I had some sort of clue of what ‘retrograde’ means. I don’t hate physics and earth sciences; I just don’t love them. Anything biological, I’m all in. Quantum physics makes me hyperventilate. Last week on NOVA, I watched as some guy talked about gravity’s effect on time and I had to go throw up. All of that is to say that I now know that retrograde motion has to do with how planets orbit the Sun and the speeds of those orbits. Sometimes, like three or four times a year, Mercury looks like it’s moving backwards. This is Mercury in retrograde.

Every thing is an illusion.

The planet Mercury has a lot in common with the Roman god, Mercury…probably because they named the planet after the god. The god Mercury (or the Greek version, Hermes) does a lot of stuff. He’s a messenger, a guide for the dead, a god of commerce and good fortune and fertility, but I’m pretty sure most of those ancient gods had something to do with fertility. He can be called upon to protect travelers and also known for communication and writing. I’m sure the whole ‘messenger’ thing is part of the communication and if you tend to lean into woo-woo whatever the planet Mercury is doing reflects whatever the god is up to. This, depending on star signs, matters to us humans in a woo-woo kind of way.

I’m some sort of Capricorn-Aquarius hybrid that I don’t understand and my horoscope told the Capricorn me to “schedule more naps”. Isn’t that lovely?!? It also told me to dedicate space and time for my own passions. It told the Aquarius me to figure out my desires. My takeaway is that I should dedicate time and space for figuring out what my passions are and what I truly desire. Actually… the Aquarius horoscope is garbage. The one for Capricorn gave me permission to sleep more and be a hermit crab. The Capricorn me is zip tying up the Aquarius me and hiding her way down deep in the soul basement. Or wherever those things live.

Obviously, I’m not a woo-woo kind of person.

Let’s talk more about how this is a great time to finish projects. Last weekend…was it last weekend?….wreath making day, Salem was talking about diligently working on her novel and I looked at her said “I will never finish writing a book.” They denied that this is true, but they haven’t seen the (growing) list of started writing ideas sitting in my Google Docs. They also, for some weirdo reason, love me and think I’m pretty great, which I’m like ‘okay…whatever’. They’re young with an old soul and super cool. This makes me feel like I am also super cool. I don’t even know where I’m going with this….I guess the tiniest woo-woo version of me really likes the idea of more naps, any naps really, but finishing something I started would be neat too.

This is a very rambley post.

Happy Thanksgiving.

WITCHERY

Thursday night, I dreamt of snow. There was a bunch of other things in that dream that I only remember in a hazy way, but the snowing part I remember clearly. Some time early last week, someone said something about living in Kansas City for at least ten years now and not remembering that it snows in October sometimes. I told that person that it does because I have pictures of my Halloween decorations covered in snow. Yesterday Facebook wanted to share a memory of four years ago where I took a short video of snow falling from the sky. Sometimes it snows in October. I dreamt of snow on Thursday and it snowed on Sunday.

Clearly, I am a witch.

I was thinking of witches and spells while I was in Cape Cod. It’s hard not to considering all the history surrounding that area and witch hunts where in one year fourteen women were hanged for witchcraft. Could you imagine giving someone the death penalty for witch craft today? Can you imagine how completely ridiculous that sounds? Part of me believes the human race has evolved beyond that, but while I was taking pictures of the Founding Fathers National Monument, a woman popped up out of nowhere talking about the need to take this country back to the government of our Founding Fathers, back to a time when she didn’t have the right to vote or have her own bank account.

We are prone to believing ridiculous things.

I was reading some thing recently, it was probably a random meme, about how you shouldn’t dismiss your woo. “Woo” referred to the mystical lala crap that I not only dismiss, but completely ignore. I have many friends who thoroughly embrace woo. They follow the complicated version of star signs where you don’t just know your astrological sign for the month you were born, but the moon phase at the time of their births. Some of them not only know this about themselves, but they know it about others and how to use all of this to understand their relationships. I cannot hold any of that information in my brain. I seriously have to look up my star sign whenever I think to ironically read my horoscope. Even that feels complicated because I’m some sort of Acquires Capricorn blend because January 20th is more than an Inauguration Day. I’m more woo adjacent. Like I’m the one you text when you’re worried about mercury poisoning from your pot because I can tell you if mercury forms a bond with the THC compound. It can because THC is a thiol compound which is also why it smells very much like a skunk. Skunk stink is also a thiol compound.

Organic chemistry is my witchcraft.

I’m just the type of personality that believes there is a scientific explanation for everything. Once someone asked me if ghosts were real. The person didn’t ask me if I thought ghosts were real. They wanted to know if ghosts were real, which felt like a loaded question. Like the person was testing my scientific credibility. I told this person what I tell everybody who asks me about souls and spirits. The Law of Conservation of Energy states that energy can neither be created or destroyed, only converted to another form of energy. Humans contain energy. Sometimes that energy stays close and does weird shit like make the lights flicker and sometimes it goes back into the planet, helping trees grow tall and strong. It goes somewhere and scientists are still working on figuring out the wheres and whys. It is of yet to be explained.

Sort of like this rambling post.

Years ago, while on a trip to Boston, Michael and I took a day trip up to Salem. Salem is pretty much what you’d expect it be. There’s historic witch houses and people walking around in costumes depicting the 1600s. Every other shop is a spells and crystals shop. It feels more like Silver Dollar City without the rides than it does historic despite it being an early European settlement. Any way, we spent the hottest day of a Massachusetts summer there, exploring the town on Bird scooters. I found a lovely journal in one of the shops that reads “Book of Spells” on the cover. I bought it thinking that I would write down ridiculous spell components, but I only wrote one or two before the journal was abandoned along with a stack of other abandoned journals. That’s a Chris thing, to have stacks of journals with only a few pages of written things in them. Another bit of energy I must have absorbed because now I have a similar stack. My book of spells was abandoned because I couldn’t really think of any spells I’d like to cast. I mean really. How many spells does one need to live a happy life? Maybe I should start writing spells for living a content life. Or maybe I should just devote this journal to revisiting organic compounds. As of right now though, that journal’s fate is still yet to be determined or explained.

Like ghosts.