#17: Retrograde Shmetrograde

WHERE'S THE IMP???

I started watching House of the Dragon a few weeks ago and giggled at myself because I had never bothered to watch Game of Thrones. I knew the new show to be the prequel to the famous series and liked that I was starting from the true beginning.

But when I realized I couldn’t binge it (the horror) because new episodes only came out once a week, I ended up also starting Game of Thrones. I knew watching both series simultaneously had a high probability of confusion…but as ever, I went ahead anyway.

And yes! I’ve wondered who was fucking whose uncle and where the imp was more than once when I’ve been lost toggling back and forth between the shows…but a weird comfort is repeatedly offered once I can place the plot line I’m in and recognize both the characters’ futures and pasts.

I’m a bit deeper into Game of Thrones now since I can watch as many episodes as I want (thank you!!!), but once a week I watch the new House of the Dragon.

One step forward, two steps back.

This process, one that has bemused my family and now maybe you, too, has given me an empathy that I haven’t felt from television before- knowing what the characters have been through, or what they’re headed towards, in such an intricate way. 

It’s also made me realize that it’s the same empathy I should carry for myself, and for everyone, because it’s not unlike all the winding and sometimes seemingly backwards journeys that we’re all acting out each day.

Despite the calendar reporting that time is always moving forward, suggesting that our lives progress in similarly linear ways, spirituality AND SCIENCE (!!!) remind us that time definitely doesn’t have to move in just one direction. Our lives shouldn’t be expected to either.

While popular culture (and those pesky calendars) would have us believe that pushing ahead is the only way…ahead, we all intuitively know that life, and the growth that defines it, doesn’t work like that.

My trek through fantasy dragon land (and yes, swooning Khaleesi land) isn’t my only flirtation with time hopping lately. I also received the keys to a studio apartment a few weeks ago…in the same city where I first lived alone in 2018.

Found this little gem at a flea market last weekend and proudly hung it in my hallway.

Admittedly, initially, I thought- damn it, how did I get back here? I was disappointed that I somehow seemed to be caught in the exact same loop as years past. That my choices, my plot twists, were somehow not as good as the alternative straight line I imagined other’s lives must chart.

But of course it’s not the exact same loop, and of course no one’s life is without varying directions.

Despite the negative whispers, I knew all it had taken to get those keys in my hands (again), and that crossing the threshold of a place entirely my own had made me feel more alive than I had in a long time.

Even if your path looks “backwards” from the outside (and especially so if the vantage point is a stranger on the Internet)…it rarely feels that way internally.

That’s because we don’t actually go backwards in life, just like planets don’t actually move backwards when they’re retrograde. Moving backwards is an illusion. If you need a more visceral example, I highly recommend taking your car through a car wash! This is my reminder to do the same.

The rest of the year, as I’ve so eloquently named it to friends, family, and clients alike, is likely to be a shit show. Namely November, when in the U.S., midterm elections fall ON THE SAME DAY AS A TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE…WHILE MARS IS RETROGRADE. Whatever people think will happen will be turned upside down.

The six planets that are retrograde right now (Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) seem to be telling us, eloquently, to get our shit together before shit hits the fan.

Maybe we’re being given a chance, dare I say an opportunity (annoying, I know) to look back and pay attention to things we missed the first time. Or second, or third, or hundredth.

If you, too, find your life careening dangerously close to my sTrAnGe ride with HBO- going forward, but then going back, but then going a lot further, but then going back again….Wait. How did you get here? It’s a question worth pondering, and one that is completely, utterly, normal.

You have come so far, and yet, you still have so far to go. If you haven’t already, buckle up buttercup. You’re still en route to your destination, even in reverse.

*Plays Retrograde on Repeat*

Erin River Sunday