Watching Mercury Retrograde
“That I can keep your counsel and not mine own.”
Hamlet IV.ii.10
I’m on my second Apple Watch. I went from thinking it was a useless technical bauble, a status symbol for some, but the device earned my adoration over the years. Took a few tries to understand what it can —and can’t — do, but I’ve gotten accustomed tracking the miles I walk, or the oxygen level in my blood, and what the time plus temperature might be. Texts, while I usually don’t read them, but I like the notification.
On the first watch, a four, I think, the wrist bands took a while to get a comfortable one, but I eventually landed on plain rubber-like band.
So in Austin the other day, a few days in a row? I pulled my watch off the charger one evening, stretched it on, and snapped the wristband in two. Momentary panic, then a quick search of the rental, then a quick search online, and the horrible realization, too late to get one in the hot summer night, at least as far as I could tell. Several chain stores would be open the next morning; it could wait.
I missed the sleep data. Grateful, though, that I walked into a store, and walked out with new band that only cost, like, ten bucks. Ten bucks, ten minutes.
It was my hubris — the astrologer — that I was making it through this mess with relative ease.
That’s not how it works.
Watching Mercury Retrograde
It’s not always big stuff. I think there’s a dead tree in my front yard, in the midst of a copse of Live Oak, a single thin, arched stem that has no leaves. Thought about borrowing a neighbor’s chain saw, and then? When Mercury is retrograde?
What could go wrong?
Really should take my own advice.
“Keep thy own counsel.”
the Portable Mercury Retrograde
