BEST-LAID PLANS: I fully intended to close out 2023 on a light and larky note for a year that has been anything but. As usual, reality intruded. The plan was to write an ersatz news story reporting how Santa Barbara’s comically beleaguered mayor, Randy Rowse — played to perfection by Spencer Tracy in a yuletide comedy yet to be made — declared a state of astrological emergency because Mercury presently finds itself in retrograde. Accordingly, the mayor would earnestly enjoin residents from driving heavy farm equipment or making major life decisions while he desperately sought emergency federal funding to offset the loss of Christmas revenues local merchants would suffer. Tenant rights activists would push for a freeze on evictions and rent hikes. Restaurant owners would demand more time for their parklets. And the rest of us would continue saying and doing the same thing we always have.
For the record, Mercury has, in fact, been in retrograde since December 13 and will remain so ’til the end of the year. It happens four times a year, each time for 21 days. According to those in the know, retrograde is a treacherous and tricky time when noses are prone to get terminally out of joint, and when things will get taken in the worst of ways. It’s when friends cut each other off and romance curdles. It’s the law of physics Sir Isaac Newton never got around to discovering.
Or maybe he did but kept it under his apple-bonked hat.