ColumnConscious life, hear me roar.

Coming home on a ferry Sunday from Martha’s Vineyard, I pulled out my iPhone and checked emails.

I should have waited until Monday.

A close friend emailed me she’d had the most bizarre weekend ever: running over a stray dildo in a bike lane, a homeless man telling her she’d “dropped her smile” while he pointed at the ground and finally, seeing a guy she’d dated on Match.com while running a half marathon. Thanks to seeing him she’d improved her time trying to run away. There was that.

Another friend had come to the conclusion she was a farmer and a designer and a mother and a whole host of things – wasn’t she? Shouldn’t she be a bee-keeper too?

And what about the straight friend who emailed me early Sunday morning that sure, she’d had a few glasses of wine but, it was for sure, she’d asked a woman out on a date and was planning on following through.

Friends looking for jobs, love, new meaning to life and a restlessness unlike anything I’ve seen in a long time.

What was my status? I’d bought a pin for my jacket on Martha’s Vineyard that read: “The voices in my head don’t like you.”

The cheery driver of our island shuttle bus shouted over the shrill noise coming from a crack in the windshield, “Mercury is in Retrograde until Wednesday!”

Another sign. Later Sunday evening at a concert in Boston, it suddenly occurred to me I was tired of being pushed by hipsters trying to channel David Bowie, who thought they should be closer to the stage than I. So, I decided not to move. To block them from passing as if a backlit Gandalf with staff.

“Is this chick drunk?” I heard one guy say to his female companion.

“No,” I said, turning around, backlit, defiantly staring into his face. “I am not drunk, you asshole, I want to hear the band!”

My husband suggested we move and pulled me by the arm.

Over the years, I’ve had many friends utter the phrase when all seems off in the world, but not until maybe the past two years have I considered planetary disruptions as part of some unsolvable life riddle. That maybe the New Agers I grew up with were right and I should be layering myself in crystals and burning Nag Champa, tattooing prophecies on my arms, reading The Farmer’s Almanac more diligently and meditating on my world energy as armor against planetary strife.

Just so we’re clear here, according to astrally-correct Cafeastrology.com, three, and sometimes four times a year, the planet Mercury does freak out a bit, and appears to be moving backwards in the sky for a period of approximately three weeks. The planet “appears” to do this “simply because the Earth is also orbiting the Sun at a different speed than the other planets.”

The site says thanks to Mercury’s “rulership over such things as speaking, negotiating, buying and selling, listening, formal contracts, documents, travel, the mail and shipping, and so forth,” delays and challenges are more probable with Mercury retrograde.

Which means, three to four times a year, get in fetal position in your closet and hunker down with some bread and water or, do like William Eadon in his vibrant crystal corner.

Continuing on with our investigation, what happens when the full moon is coming right behind Mercury in retrograde, as it is this week? Shouldn’t we all band together and do something like plant a super crop at midnight, weave a magic eco fabric, or build a green home without a plan? I mean, if confusion mixed with peyote-powerful inclinations to challenge and question authority is upon us, maybe there are some inner revelations we could vibrate as a group. We could start a new movement. We would have to tape it, of course, to prove this all happened; certainly there would be some “Oh no you didn’t!” moments but still…we could, at the very least, howl really loud together.

I say we do it.

Between the Lines is a weekly column navigating the sometimes-sharp, sometimes-blurred lines of conscious life and culture between city and country, between inner worlds and outer.

Image: Sweetie187, Williams Crystal Corner, A Selby Film. from the selby on Vimeo.

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