I call my sister, arguably, too often. On the first day of New York’s most recent false spring, we talked for an hour while I paced up and down West 112th Street. The heat excused this. I would occasionally slip in a brief proclamation mid-conversation about how I believed that my depression had been alleviated. For her, the depression was still there. “And so is the anxiety.”
I brought up the mercury retrograde that I had overheard was happening. “Maybe that’s why?” I suggested to her. Of course, I don’t know anything about mercury or its retrograde, and even further, its influence on the less than desirable psychological conditions of our days. When my sister asked me to explain what this meant, I couldn’t. I asked her for her zodiac sign, so I could look up all of the ways this planetary phenomenon would affect her. “I don’t know. How do I find that out?” I asked what time she was born because I already knew the day and place. “I’m not sure but sometime in the morning.”
In personal fashion, I blamed this bit of missing information on why I couldn’t possibly begin to explain how the retrograde would affect her instead of admitting I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about in the first place. I am always attempting to fix something, but when I fail… well…
We each cited our mutual impatience that we had been feeling since the retrograde began. (Coincidence?) This led us to have to parse through this condition as being either natural or seasonal, the two of us agreeing it was both.
There is pleasure in sharing blood and being understood.
b.b.