How Mercury Shows !

Mercury is in the news this week, so I offer here my recent real-life experience of how Mercury in one's chart really does show, retrograde or not.

Chatting with He Who Knows last weekend about writing in general, and finding subjects to write about, he suddenly said "This window is dirty".

Somewhat taken aback by such sudden interest in household cleaning I gawped, jaw dropping.

"No", he grinned - "Write about it. Write about those four words".

"Write about a dirty window?"

"Yes, I did it once, a long time ago, to give myself a challenge. Just write whatever comes into your mind on the subject."

"Alright", I said, feeling uninspired, not to mention suspicious as to whether this was a subtle hint for me to get outside and swing the washleather over our windows.

Later, I did scribble down a few lines on the subject matter I'd been challenged with, then I demanded to see his efforts, composed some years earlier.

All of this IS leading to an astrological point. My effort, via my Mercury in Capricorn and his via Mercury in Pisces so typified those two signs that I had to laugh out loud.
To copy both pieces here would tax any passing reader's attention span to the limit. An extract from the lengthy sample written by He Who Knows will suffice, with my own, very brief, effort in full. The difference will be only too apparent! ( I had not seen his version until after I'd written my own, by the way.)

My version (Mercury in Capricorn- Economical, factual, practical, with an eye to work and business.)

"This window is dirty!"
"Of course it is. In Oklahoma there are no window cleaners, and I don't do windows! In England, window-cleaning is a profession. Many a would-be entrepreneur started out with just a ladder, a bucket, a cloth and a van. It's an enterprise I would commend to the young unemployed of Oklahoma. There are dirty windows galore, all over the state. Any likely lad, or lass, could be well on their way to their first million dollars within six months, with or without a ladder!"
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Extract from the longer version written by He Who Knows (Mercury in Pisces - What can I say? Imaginative, sensitive, understanding......Pisces! )

"This window is dirty," Chessie says out loud. It is just a diversion though, just a deliberate vacation from her usual mental employment. She had been thinking about other things.
On the other side of the smudgy glass, November is trying its best to perform a pretty sunset upstage from the colorless props on the residential back street. Orange rays strain through the bare gray limbs of the trees that edge a street of forty-year-old two story homes.
Chessie stands, arms tightly folded across her print dress, staring through the window at an empty spot at the curb. Morgan always parks his car in that spot.

She sighs and closes her eyes. When she opens them again she is looking down at the flowerbed in front of the window. "I think I’ll water the flowers," she says, knowing at once that she will not. The unusually mild November weather had encouraged the mums and pansies to bloom in abundance. But the watering thought was just another mental vacation from a habitual hard labor of thinking about Morgan.

She shivers a bit. It is warm in her room but looking out at the expiring November day gave her a chill. Her clear-nailed fingers flutter and drum-roll where they clutch her arms just below the short sleeve cuffs of her dress. She turns and walks to a chrome and vinyl chair, which was earlier turned out from the almost-matching dining table. She whirls and sits, knees and ankles together, arms still folded. Again a deep breath, again a long sigh. The ruffle-trimmed bodice of the dress tugs at the high neckline for more slack. Her thumbs flick in unison at the starch-white trim on the sleeves.

"He is an hour late," she says to the rose papered walls of the room, reflecting an exaggerated thought. Actually he is not late at all, she admits behind a pouting lip. "If he cared as much for me as he says, he would have been here long before this," she says, and that seems to make it all sensible. Actually she knows that if he arrived right now he would, in reality, be a bit early. And Morgan would never do that.

She might have felt some reassurance by reminding herself that he was always prompt, but then, he never was. He was always late. He was always really late. She scolds herself again for just accepting his poor punctuality after more than thirty dates, for just acclimating to his sliding schedule. His unfailing tardiness stole a bit of femininity from her. She couldn’t be late herself. No matter how slowly she prepared for one of their dates, she was always ready earlier than Morgan. "I don’t deserve this. I deserve better."

And with that quiet admission, that small thought, back in a corner studio in her mind a new version of her world begins to form. Like a drop of raw umber watercolor falling soundlessly on wet handmade paper, the thought spreads indiscriminately in all directions. Slowly, surely, softly the color spreads, claiming the gentle texture of the paper, integrating with the fibers, the earthy color blending with the white expanse" ( There's a lot more).

As for the astrology - I rest my case!