I’m lost for words.

My words have gone.

Not here, and not on my other blog, but in every other way that matters, my words have gone. I wrote about it here.

I’m hoping that with Mercury in Taurus, my words have just been hanging out on the lounge watching re runs of The West Wing and other peoples good writing. I’ve been hoping that they’ve just been taking it a little easy.

I have Neptune wafting around the edges of natal Mercury, but this is more impacting my imagination- which is running overtime- than my words. I’ll write more about this later, but Neptune conjunct (natal) Mercury is sending my dreams well into mini series mode.

It also has me waiting for calls that aren’t coming, and is sending my intuition into overdrive. I’m finding that extremely uncomfortable, as I’m getting messages about others, possibly for others, and I can’t seem to shut it out. And yes, I know that I shouldn’t be, trying to shut it out, but I’m still vainly trying to grasp control of what’s in my head.…I’m rambling now.

My brain is still working well enough to blitz last weeks football trivia night, but I’m finding everything else is seriously Neptunian.

Anyways, Mercury is about to move into Gemini, the sign that it rules. And that’s a Good Thing. I’m hoping that it will kick the arse of the words that are lolling lazily in my brain being fed on comfort food, and will allow them to, if not make their way out of my throat, then at least out of my fingers onto the keyboard.

Want to know more? Check out this post from last year.

I’m on holidays, so here’s one I prepared earlier…

Miss T isn’t the most prolific of readers- unless the subject is something to do with the latest boy band obsession One Direction (1D) or a trivial fact about the Biebster.

I have tried bribery. She is a Twilight fan (very firmly in Camp Jacob…better gunshow and abs and fewer eating disorders) so I offered a Gold Class movie ticket if she read Breaking Dawn. It sort of worked- she read the first 100 pages and then announced that at the rate she was reading, it would take her 3 months to read the book and the movie is “only, like 2 hours…” I can’t really argue with that sort of logic- and it showed that there is nothing wrong with her maths.

Miss T has Mercury in Aries.

From fantasy-land in Pisces, Mercury is moving into Aries ready to put his money where his all too loud mouth is.

After the moody and oh so meaningful silences of Pisces for the last couple of months, Mercury is primed and ready to shout out loud. Mercury needs to be heard, not felt, and unless you happen to have Mercury natally in Pisces or another water sign, you too will no doubt be sick of the hidden messages, double meanings and confusion that comes from Mercury’s longer than usual stay in Pisces.

Theoretically this should have been a time to dream and imagine what could be before putting the ideas to action. And Aries is certainly all about action.

If you have Mercury in Aries, you will be a forceful and confident communicator and certainly will not have the patience to look for hidden meanings…nor may you have the patience to hang around for the rest of this blog, so I will make it as short as possible!

You think quickly, you grab concepts quickly, you jump in to solve problems quickly. You want to be heard, you need to be heard and you need to be heard first. You argue well, you aren’t scared to argue and if you are bored you will pick an argument. If it has been thought before, you aren’t interested; if it has been said before, you aren’t interested; if it has been read before, you’re bored already. If it doesn’t need to be said, why are you wasting my time?

The easiest way to annoy someone with Mercury in Aries is to talk slowly, take your time making a decision or slowly think a concept through. Another way is to ask him to read something all the way through to the end…why bother when the movie is about to come out & the book is 7000000 pages long (or seems it) and you can get to the ending by reading the last page? (According to Miss T that is “soooo not an efficient use of my time.”)

Nor does Mercury in Aries want to be endlessly talking about how you feel. Unless you need him for the answers to whatever problem you have, don’t waste your time- you won’t be wasting his, he will have already tuned out and off… or switched the conversation to be about him (isn’t everything about him?)

Say what you need to say and don’t expect him to guess that you aren’t happy- if you say “fine”, that is what he will hear. If you want him to guess how you feel about him by hints and long soulful looks, forget it- he can’t be faffed. He isn’t interested in “tuning in”. Nor can he be bothered re-hashing something that he considers closed.

When she says she’s fine, she means it. Mercury in Aries is like that. She communicates literally, she learns the same way. If it’s deep and meaningful, she can’t be faffed. If you want to play mind games, she can’t be faffed. If you’re playing for sympathy through long, drawn out silences and brooding looks, try someone else.

But if you want to be energised, entertained, challenged and exhausted spend a few hours with Mercury in Aries- before he tears off on his next mission.

This sound like you? If you are an Aries, you probably think and communicate like this. If you have Mercury in the first house or conjunct Mars, you probably already stopped reading.

There’s this massive belt of garbage floating somewhere in the North Pacific Ocean.

If you wiki it, you’ll get a heap of technical and scientific words, but in essence, it’s mostly plastic crap.

I have this image of all of these bottles floating with messages in each of them. Bottles cast by people sitting on deserted island just hoping someone will pick one up.

This last Mercury retrograde has been a little like that- like casting a message out and hoping that somehow it will get through the garbage, and somehow make it’s way to the right person who will somehow understand the contents.

Hmmmm.

Many of these bottles have contained flashes of brilliance, sparks of inspiration. The only problem is, real life doesn’t involve most of us sitting around on our butts waiting for a bottle to get washed ashore.

This retrograde has involved the usual Mercury mess, and the usual re words. It’s brought more than the usual share of creativity and dissolution, but being Mercury, the trick to recognising this has been slowing down, going within and resisting the call of business as usual.

With the Moon today in social Gemini, with supportive links to Mars, Uranus and Jupiter, the urge to expand is strong. Like now.

The thing is, Mercury might be technically direct, but he’ll be hanging around this point for a few more days yet. And he won’t be out of the shadow phase, ie the point at which he turned retrograde, until April 7, so keep your eyes and ears open for hidden messages until then.

An email was sent home from school on Monday evening.

Miss T has a science experiment/assignment due in the next couple of weeks and the email was worded in such a way to say that she hadn’t yet done something that she should have.

My husband got all worked up over it and did the intensive questioning thing that Scorpios are so good at.  She did the Mars and Mercury in Aries thing. I did the peacemaker thing.

I asked her to dig out the assignment, worked out that she was on track, and asked her to talk to her science teacher to make sure that her understanding was on the same page as theirs. Peace reigned once more.

Last night she told me that the email had gone out to every student, that one girl had been grounded as a result, and that the teacher’s intention had simply been to remind us parents that an assignment was due on the 22^nd. The message had been badly written, but the intention was good.

Whatever. Mixed messages, unclear communication- Mercury is, after all, retrograde in Pisces.

On Tuesday Miss T had an excursion to the Art Gallery. On Tuesday morning I received an SMS from the school advising me that she wasn’t at school. I then received an email from school requesting an explanation for her absence.

As I’d delivered her onto the excursion bus I wasn’t too worried.

Yesterday we received an apology stating they there had been a glitch in the attendance system. The same email and SMS had been sent to every parent whose child was on that excursion.

Mercury is retrograde.

This morning Miss T bought a note back from swimming to advise changes to the coaching staff and timetable. No biggie. 5.30am is still 5.30am. By midday I’ve received emails from the swimming club, the representative of a delegation of parents, and advise regarding a special extraordinary meeting to discuss the changes. Seriously?

Mercury is retrograde.

I’m writing this at a local coffee shop, and when I signed into the free wifi, all of my emails re downloaded. All of them. Twice. I laughed out loud.

Mercury is retrograde.

The thing is, as frustrating as it all is, I’m not that phased. It will all be over in a couple of days. Besides, knowing that Mercury is playing tricks helps me just go with the changes when they occur. Besides, creatively, this has been a great few weeks.

Mercury retrogrades can be like that.

The other thing is, the first few days and the last few days of any retrograde period are always the most unpredictable. With Mars newly energetic in Aries, and the Moon void of course in Aries, the potential for irritability and frustration is seriously high at the moment, so as much as possible try not to let molehills become mountains.

It will be over soon, but Mercury will still be in Pisces for another month, so my advice? Use pencil in your calendar, don’t sweat the small, annoying stuff and as far as you can, let it be.

What about you? Any Mercury war stories to share? Are you over it already?

I knew I loved you before I met you, I think I dreamed you into life…

Venus has just moved into Pisces. This means that (except for the Moon) all personal planets are now swimming happily in the big fish tank that is the Universe.

This news is not being met with dancing girls and hallelujah choruses from everyone though…for fire and air types, it’s a little like having a fog descend across your eyes and your boots covered in mud…or quicksand. You might feel as though you’re treading water when you want to be lapping the opposition. You might feel like you’re driving in the rain and your wipers aren’t working.

For those of us receptive to this energy, it’s absolutely beautiful.

Standing in the customs queue at Sydney Airport on Sunday afternoon I had the best idea for my next manuscript.

Waiting on the Help Line today for my bank, I had an idea for a pitch I can make to a travel magazine.

Yesterday while waiting for the internet to recover from an unscheduled “pause” I called an old friend I hadn’t spoken to for too many months.

Mercury Retrograde brings these little moments of creativity and reconnection. It’s like the Universe is giving us a chance to slow down and revisit those thoughts and ideas and dreams that would otherwise flit right on through your brain.

I know that people are told what not to do in a time of Mercury retrograde, but even these issues can be mitigated if common sense is used. Mercury is a Trickster, but he shouldn’t be blamed for everything bad that happens over the next few weeks- although obviously you can if you wish.

Sure anything to do with appointments, computers, messages, communications, travel, contracts may be upset- this is all Mercury stuff. For anything other than this, I’d suggest looking for something else going on in the chart.

Yesterday here in Australia one of our major banks systems went down- both in branches and online. Given that all customer identity and balance verification is based on the information these systems provide, the result was pure chaos.

It wasn’t an accident- these things never are. I don’t know the details behind this one, but apparently it had something to do with a change that needed to be backed out.

In all of my years as a Change Manager, the one unbreakable rule was unless it can absolutely be avoided, don’t implement an IT based change during a Mercury retrograde. Not because it won’t work, but because often times the procedures, implementation instructions, test plans or operational communication aren’t followed completely by someone. Short cuts are unconsciously taken.

Whilst I would never put “Mercury Retrograde” in the root cause analysis field of any Post Implementation Review, the point is most of us persist in fighting the influence of the retrograde motion and proceed as we normally would- rather than slowing down and ticking the boxes. I get that- we’re all busy.

The thing is, life doesn’t stop a few times a year for Mercury. People get married, buy houses, phones and cars. They book flights, hotels and appointments. They implement software changes.

Strangely not all of these end in disaster. Luggage arrives, mail arrives, planes arrive and changes work.

Although there are always examples where they don’t. Where the messages don’t get through the system properly. Where the appropriate checks and common-sense balances aren’t taken into consideration. Where the procedures aren’t followed. This type of thing tends to be more prevalent when Mercury is in reverse.

This Mercury retrograde is in Pisces, a sign where Mercury is in both his detriment and fall.

Pisces is a sign of illusion, delusion and head in the ground hope for the best. It’s also a sign of great imagination and creativity.

This retrograde, try, if you can, to go with the flow a little- a little how this post started to be about Venus and morphed into something about Mercury. Slow down and employ all those re words we use. Finish unfinished projects. Make notes of creative flashes, reconnect with loves from the past- and leave them there in need.

And, if you need to do any of the things that you’re told not to under a Mercury retrograde, check the fine print- at least a few times over. Or, do nothing…until it’s over- that one’s your call.

Oh and yesterdays Bank debacle? They issued a press release to the newspapers that spun the story from the days chaos that it was into reading like it was a temporary blip. Now that’s Mercury in Pisces at work.

If you want to know how Pisces is in love, check out this post…

And the song is by Savage Garden…check it out and listen to the lyrics here.