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

A man without a country

What was called science fiction, now called modern lit?

“I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.” Page 25.

But to round it out? The original CSI (Las Vegas), the TV show, was also deemed ‘science fiction’ in a then-current literary taxonomy because of the technology used to solve the crimes.

“First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.” Page 29.

I disagree, as witnessed in my own writing. But I admire the sentiment.

A man without a country

I must admit that the writing of Kurt Vonnegut has influenced me over the years. I was an early teen when I first read Slaughterhouse-Five, and the end of the Vietnam conflict punctuated the questions.

A man without a country

I heard him speak, once. Think, it was old Austin, at the university, $5 will-call ticket.

“How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.” Page 52.

Seen that sentiment, that quote in various forms, repeated throughout the memes, mostly writers. However, I think, no proof, it was from on stage, an hour-long presentation to half full auditorium, at the University of Texas, been around the spring/summer ’93. Question mark? But yes, part of the book’s passage was repeated from the podium.

“Humor is a way of holding off how awful life can be, to protect yourself.” Page 90.

Remarkable collection, and I’m sure I’ve read it before, but I couldn’t find any of my own notes. The collection does give pause, first, to what I read when a I was a teenager, the early books, but then, that professor who assigned The Sirens of Titan, and the way it fit with the Kurt Vonnegut oeuvre, and finally, the notation about that book’s first publication with a lurid cover, which hardly depicts anything therein. The slim collection of ramblings from Kurt Vonnegut brought so much careening back.

A man without a country

Vonnegut, Kurt. A man without a country. New York: Seven Stories Press, (c) 2005. Trout, Kilgore. Venus on the Half Shell. New York: Dell Publishing, 1975.