Rerouting
Mercury Retrograde, Shakespeare, and rerouting.
Over the last dozen years or so, I’ve fallen in the habit of attending the University of Texas — Winedale Shakespeare productions. Spirited, lively, hews to the original structure of the performances more so than most, occasionally uncomfortable, but over all, the performances are amazing.
I remember a Julius Caesar (Brutus) speech — wasn’t done the way I think it should be done, but I remember the production. The actor playing Lear, and when it rained during King Lear, that’s easy to recall. Although they flubbed a few of the lines, their production of Comedy of Errors easily moved it to a list of favorites for me. Richard II, the famous monologues, sit on the ground and tell tales of woe. All of brilliant.
The list goes on, Henry V, Much Ado, As You Like it (x2), this last year’s Iago in Othello, and while I don’t recall all of the individual shows, some bits and pieces stick. Well worth my energy to arrange transport, lodging, and a weekend away.
Rerouting
Mercury Retrograde, Shakespeare, and rerouting.
The trip last summer, we stayed in (around) Round Top, TX Pop. 87. This is old farming land, now lots of organic cattle, antiques, and old oil. Some of the older oil wells are played out and lie unused, but the gas scavenging systems seem to be in place, some new, so there’s still a trickle of money flowing upwards from the mineral rights.
Coming back from an afternoon repast, in preparation for the Sunday evening’s show, last summer, our direct route was thwarted by a car crash. Bits of a late-model sedan rested against a tree, and there were numerous emergency vehicles, Fayette County EMS, and a volunteer fire department response, parked across both lanes with no way around.
Looking at the line of traffic, and the vehicles arrayed across the narrow road, I just patiently put it in reverse, and went back, then let the navigation software find an alternative route through the maze of local farm roads. We did take the long way that afternoon, and I checked, with the app, before going over for the evening’s show, roadway was cleared, all that remained was a deep set of angry of furrows in the soft shoulder dirt, and one of the hundred-year old Live Oaks, cracked almost in two, splintered at the apparent point of impact.
Heading home after a good series of shows, the Monday morning, I checked the traffic thing again, say “Hey Siri,” and there was still ongoing road construction blocking the most immediate route as they resurfaced the two-lanes. I headed out, guided by online navigation voices, and a sense that something was amiss. Mercury was heading into a heinous retrograde pattern at the time.
Sidebar note: I’ve fished at the lake there, a few times, Fayette County, it’s a reservoir for a coal-fired power plant. The coal-fired plants tend to leave mercury in greater concentrations. That is mercury the element, quicksilver, rather than the planet named for the Roman god, the messenger, but they are related — mutable, fun, temperamental, dangerous.
A few miles down the road, sort of towards La Grange and I-10, to get back to San Antonio, I was met with a local cop speeding the other direction on a motorcycle. Worried, I checked, I was just a little over the limit, not much, and the road was clear, the day bright, the lush farmland almost pulsing with green from the recent torrential rains. I let off the pedal, though, known, sensing another obstacle.
Crested the next hill, and there was a truck stopped on the road, another motorcycle cop talking to the driver, looking up at me, not commenting or gesturing, so I just stopped. Waited. A few moments tick by but, eventually, the cop saunters over, “I’ve got a ‘wide load’ that is literally ‘grass-to-grass’ coming through, so you have to …”
I smiled, lifted my sunglasses, asked if I could just take the fork in the road, if that was OK, and he said, sure, should go through, to something.
We motored off, in the distance, I could see the stacks of the power plant.
Rerouting
Mercury Retrograde, Shakespeare, and rerouting.
Just past one entrance to the lake’s access point, there’s a big, scary-looking gate covered with warning signs, and the gate was closed, locked shut. The navigation kept suggesting I take a right turn, through the locked gate.
While not totally critical infrastructure, I’m sure there’s a guard someplace, and if I made any attempt to go where I was directed, there would be dire consequences. I know when to turn around and go back — despite what the disembodied computer voice tells me. Backtracking my route, a dozen years later, and there are still signs advertising “water dogs,” a special live bait.
Motored around in a general direction sort of guided by software, sort of watching road signs, and there was third, a portion of an intersection was being paved over, repaired, and the construction crew just signaled me to turn left regardless of the instructions to “Turn right.”
At this point it was comical. Or that’s how I decided to accept it.
Rerouting
Mercury Retrograde, Shakespeare, and rerouting.
It took more than hour to cover maybe 20 miles from Round Top down to the freeway home. I laughed about it, and I allowed, I am an astrologer, allowances for just such unforeseen difficulties.
I’ve spent more than three decades ranging up and down the highways and byways of Texas, and as a metaphor for life, sure, that, too. What it means, and what Mercury currently has in store for us, just up ahead? Each route seems blocked. It’s not “blocked,” but like the first cop, it does suggest a different, or alternative route, or maybe, an alternative to the alternative, to the alternative, and unlike sometimes, I won’t listen to the computer instructions too closely.
Mercury is Retrograde from Nov. 27 10 Dec. 15, 2024 — 22° to 6° Sagittarius. Now you know.
“You know any good guidelines?”
the Portable Mercury Retrograde
Mercury Retrograde Regrets
#Mercury
