Mercurial Fuqery

People, I am killing it with this Mercury Retrograde. First-up I said that I don’t think it will be that bad – the logic being that it’s broken up between Sagittarius and Capricorn, not the non-stop intensity of staying in just one zodiac sign for months.

Then I wound up in a heated debate with an office supplies superstore because their checkout fuqery took my money but not the order. Mercury Retrograde in Capricorn is a high-class workaholic:* You may have noticed the enhanced biz and vocational perception, along with a heightened awareness of what the rapidly rescaled goals will require on your part.

So I wasn’t expecting a snark offensive when trying to acquire items to facilate s**t getting done but it is totally Mercury Retro with the addition of some Capricornian status anxiety. “My card wasn’t rejected, ” I said to this support person, “the bank confirmed that. Your checkout has the issues…”

“Well,” she replied, “there must have been a good reason for that.” Rationally, I get what she means – there must be a logical error behind this someplace but to the Mercury Retrograde, new office stationery -craving mind, it seemed like an insult. I was going to say that this was the sort of concept that sent medieval women to the stake but decided not to overblow the situation.

Getting clarity from the bank involved a circuitous conversation with a bot that kept throwing out crazy suggested topics that it could help with like “Do you want more information about a loan to buy a boat?” However I did figure out a good short-cut, a frequent feature of Mercury Retro phases.

Basically the bank says it doesn’t have humans available on weekends but I learned that if you call a card company, they have to have people there – I think it’s a legal requirement. Once you get them they transfer you to the bank people who are there, but only if you enter the phone labyrinth via the side entrance.

So many systems are like this now – eg: half the time I do anything on iCloud that works, it’s via a strange hackaround method.

I abandoned my dialogue with the office supplies superstore after recalling that their new A.I. delivery system recently sent me 20x Rhodia pads instead of the one that I ordered and their bot wouldn’t let me pay. I realized I was ahead.

Then I proceeded to leave the house keys outside overnight, visible to any passer-by – a classic Merc Retro stunt. Next I rescued a tree, a baby pine stuck in a pot and presumably destined to be a short-lived Christmas tree. I felt it calling me and purchased it thinking about how cool the scent will be but it’s a Norfolk pine, so no fragrance.

Once the guy at the garden place realized I intend to plant it, he looked concerned – “do you have a lot of space beween the house and where you’ll plant it?

“Yes, of course,” I lied. He said that was good because it has deep and wandering roots (which seemed profoundly Capricorn to me) and explained that they can grow to 65 meters or 210 feet. Norfolk pines are the trees that tower alongside many beaches. “Yup, no worries,” I said.

I’ve since found out that every one of these trees has layers – or ‘floors’ – that grow in perfect pentagons, which is why they’re also called Star Pines. To my mind, this is magic, of course but technically the purchase totally counts as a Mercury Retrograde folly. We’re just five days into this – how are you going?

*Shona Rhimes, the extraordinarily productive, always on-zeitgeist producer/writer was born with it, fyi.

Image: Sofia Sanchez & Mauro Mongiello – Numero Magazine