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The title of this letter is not a trick. There really is a cure for Mercury Retrograde -- although you know we can't run from the sky. We can't run from the astrology. I couldn't be an astrologer if I didn't believe in its power as well as our own.
And at first I was going to make a list for you: Five Tips for Surviving Mercury Retrograde and then I realized it was really just one thing.
I mean, I was gonna tell you to 1) write down your dreams and 2) read a book and 3) go easy on yourself because there will be misunderstandings during these weeks and 4) don't make any hard and firm and fast decisions that can't be undecided even if those decisions feel super right because you may feel differently once Mercury goes direct.
Nothing absolutely nothing about this time, these weeks, these Mercury Retrograde weeks, is forever. That's the one thing I can promise you.
So. What is this cure for Mercury Retrograde?
Knowing that the miscommunications and misunderstandings and confusions and delusions of RIGHT NOW are just right. We need them. We need Mercury retrograde to get us on track. That's the cure. Now, of course I hate the disruptions as much as you do, but what's beyond the disruption is a whole new way of looking at whatever it is you are looking at.
I went on a date the other evening and the best part of it was talking about poetry, poets we liked, poets we didn't. He mentioned Wallace Stevens and we both remembered Stevens' famous poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.
What do you see? What are you really focusing on? Do you think you're seeing things for how they are? How do you know? What do you really see?
I talk a lot about therapy these days, inspired by the millennials (and younger) on my social media who are so open and chatty about mental health and I find it liberating to talk about it and I think to myself: how do I see him? How do I see this therapy process? I can focus so intensely but what am I actually seeing? Hmm. My therapist, like most therapists, has at least three different levels of "hmm."
It's good to take a step back. It's good to ask ourselves what it is we're looking at. Stevens' poem begins: Among twenty snowy mountains/The only moving thing/Was the eye of the blackbird.
Hmm. Stevens goes on for twelve more sections and maybe it was Mercury retrograde when he wrote this poem and maybe it wasn't, and we'll never know, and it hardly matters, but stanza by stanza, we get thirteen ways of looking at the damn bird. How many ways do you see what you see?
There you have it. That's the cure for Mercury retrograde. And you can write a poem about it too. Thirteen ways of looking at... what? Maybe it's your therapy. Maybe it's the sky. Maybe it's the deep blue sea. Maybe it's your short term goal. Maybe it's your feet. Maybe it's someone sitting in the room with you.
In astrology, Mercury rules perception, among other things. Mercury rules what's right in front of us. And right now it's all messed up, as it should be. So let it be. And write that poem. Here's how Stevens ends his:
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing.
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Much love,
Aliza
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