Shadows, Shadow Play

Toying with a simple pen and ink depiction, I was trying to convey the messages of Mercury in its apparent retrograde pattern, and what that means, how it plays out, and what the future holds by way of looking at the past.

The timing is what interests me. The messages have largely been familiar, and while my earliest teachers talked about how “Mercury in retrograde is bad,” I’ve grown to understand it is a natural time, and can be useful.

The image, I started with a simple line drawing of the alchemical glyph for Mercury, the symbol I associate with the planet. It looks like a Venus — or female — symbol with a little set of horns sprouting from the head. It is supposed to be a winged helmet, associated with Hermes, the messenger of the gods, later known as Mercury. Although somewhat distanced, Loki is similar in form and function. Personally, I like the character Puck from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream as a mercurial fellow. That symbol, though, a simple line drawing, small circles, stick coming out the bottom, a cross bar, then, the little ears on the top, again symbolic of Hermes’ winged helmet. Mercury had wings on his sandals.

“Fly monkeys, fly!”

Sorry, wrong mythos. Anyway, the glyph? Venus with little antenna, for communications.

Shadows, Shadow Play

June 13, Mercury arrived at 16° Cancer. Mercury crawls up to 26° Cancer, turning retrograde on 6/29. Mercury retrogrades back to 16° Cancer on 7/23, staying at 16° until 7/28. Mercury doesn’t arrive back at 26° Cancer until 8/24 (coincidental with the Sun going into Virgo).

Shadows, Shadow Play

I’ve got a pepper plant thriving with my abuse, overwatering, drought, too much attention, no care, and similar inconsistent behaviors. It’s about two feet tall, and the shade in the direct sun is negligible, but as the afternoon light dips lower on the horizon? That plant can cast a shadow up to a few feet long if only for a short time. The shadow is ephemeral yet still exists. It can appear longer, taller than the object causing the shadow itself. The shadow of Mercury can extend well beyond the known limits of the actual, observed retrograde. This Mercury in Retrograde?

the Portable Mercury Retrograde

Just Watch Me

Dark, comedic set-up.

“The line between surveillance and communion is thin but strong: not a knife’s edge but a discernible, navigable border.” Page 22.

Starts with that as a point. The relentless need to bring minutiae of life into focus for everyone, a post-modern spin?

”There’s an intimacy to streaming, like inviting people not into your home but into your brain.” Page 104.

Really, more like false intimacy, implied, but not for real. The short novel is a post-modern spin from inside the head of a 20-something who can’t et it together in NYC. Kicked out of a food-service job, she starts a live stream to help raise money to keep her brain-dead baby-sister alive on life support. Told first-person, peppered with the literary equivalent of screen shots to show what the audience of her live stream thinks.

Just Watch Me

It’s a darkly comic voice that tells a tale of death, redemption, and friendship — real friendship — against the backdrop of the of the post-modern, interconnected world, now streaming live.

Just Watch Me