- John Steinbeck, Sweet Thursday
There is an astrological event (yes, ugh, Astrology, like horoscopes) called Mercury Retrograde. For someone who believes the movmements of the planets influence our lives, Mercury Retrograde if a fairly significant and powerful occurance. It happens 3-4 times a year and each time it lasts about 25 days. Astronomically speaking, if you look up in the sky and track Mercury, during a retrograde period, the planet appears to move backwards.
In western astrology, Mercury (the winged messenger in mythology) influences communication and travel and the machines and systems responsible for conveyance. Literally, this means cars break down, mail gets lost, you miscommunicate with friends and family, checks bounce, and flights get cancelled.
Mercury is a trickster of sorts and likes to interfere when you least expect it. Mercury also likes dramatic reaction (big communication) to his pranks and disruptions. The lesson of Mercury is to roll with it, never expect things to work out just because you want them to, to be flexible, humble, and clear and honest with what you say.
This is actually a good way to view all times, not just Mercury Retrograde.
Mercury Retrogade is a great time to look inward. To contemplate the aspects of your life that you can control, to plan for when you have the energy to be active and create, and to be flexible and light towards all that you can't control.
"Mercury Retrograde" is also an Alexa skill I recently published. You can enable on your Echo or other devices. I've been interested in Voice as an User Interface Technology since I saw my first Star Trek episode as a kid in the 1970's.
The code is available on github.