The Last Word On Nothing

This first ran August 21, 2018 — another, earlier, fraught August — but this re-run is earlier in the month. So Mars retrograde isn’t already over. August, will you pleeeease just get it over with please?

The other day at brunch, as two of my friends and I were commiserating about things varied and universal, we agreed about the sluggish pace of our brains. What an injustice, I ventured, that our sluggishness is so out of sync with the blistering pace of this summer and of 2018.

“Someone was telling me that it’s because Mars is in retrograde. What? When is that over?” one of my friends said.

“August 27,” I replied instantly. “Mercury is retrograde right now, too, and actually so are Saturn and Uranus. I know Mercury’s ends on the 18^th but I’m not sure about the giant planets.”

My friends blinked, and asked what this meant, for them and for the cosmos.

“Uh, nothing,” I said. “That’s astrology. Astrology is not based on any real science.” They nodded. They know this. They were still curious.

“Astronomically, it means Mars seems to move backward in the sky from night to night, as viewed from Earth.” I orbited my fists around a coffee cup to demonstrate the apparent motion of the planets. I have patient friends who humor me. “Astrologically, it means … nothing real. But people say it means things are slow, and kind of backward.”

They nodded. This sounded right. It even felt right to say out loud. It’s the dog days of summer; we can blame our sluggishness on the stars. 

Did you know it’s called “the dog days of summer” because of the stars? It is not named for lazy dogs who nap a lot when it’s hot outside. The dog days refer to the heliacal rising of Sirius, the dog star, one of the brightest stars in our sky. “Heliacal rise” marks the morning when a star or cluster returns in the predawn sky, showing up with the sun (Helios).

If you are still reading, and you have read anything else I’ve ever written, you might be wondering why the hell I know any of this, or would write a post about astrology. The truth is that I keep tabs on pretty much everything happening in the sky. I know where Jupiter and Mars are, and when they are retrograde or “direct.” I know where the moon is in its cycle and can tell you where to find it at a given time of night, even if it’s cloudy. I know when to expect the heliacal rise of Venus, when it becomes the morning star instead of the evening star. I even know whether our star has any sunspots, because I bought nice solar binoculars for the eclipse last year and I use them occasionally, because why wouldn’t I look directly at Helios if I could? I know my sun sign and the signs of everyone in my family.

I know none of this holds any actual significance, and that I cannot use the motions of the planets or the constellations to divine any insight about my circumstances. I know astrology is a lark, as my mom might say.

And yet for some reason, I want to know all this detail. When it comes to the moon, I feel like I need to know. I’ve decided that this desire is meaningful on its own. My urge to watch the heavens, absent any oracular significance, is a form of cosmic communion that works for me. I think it’s fine to seek meaning among the stars. Actually, I’ll just come out and say it: I think it’s totally appropriate.

It’s so natural to imbue the skies with meaning. Doing so has been a primary focus of human civilization since time immemorial, since long before we imagined supernatural beings living up there. I happen to believe human civilization owes itself to the night sky. We owe timekeeping and writing and a lot more to the machinations of the moon and other objects. Did you know that the zodiac dates to Babylon? The 12 signs, which each correspond to a month of the solar year (though they don’t line up with the calendar) were invented six millenniums ago. Along with writing.

I finally decided to write about this when I saw an email in my inbox Monday: “Use code RETROGONE for 20% off sitewide!” I laughed and checked the date. Oh, I realized, it’s the 20^th, so Mercury retrograde just ended! Mercury retrograde is over, let’s celebrate by buying yoga pants! I was tempted to shoot back an email asking if the sale would last through next Monday, when Mars goes direct, too. Then I laughed at myself. And then I stopped laughing, because dammit, I like knowing where the planets are, and I like that others want to know, too. I don’t care what their motivations are if it means they look up, and notice, and maybe think about something bigger. Even if it’s just over brunch.

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Photo credit: By Carol M. Highsmith – Library of Congress, Public Domain/via Wikimedia Commons

Our one-year-old strokes his hair when he’s tired, twirling his curls between his fingers. That’s how he puts himself to sleep — eyelids drooping, drooping, down.

Neuroscientists call this lazy, rhythmic caressing “slow touch” or “affective touch.” It moves across the skin at one to 10 centimeters per second — faster than a snail, slower than handwriting — and works best when it’s warm and focused on hairy skin, like the scalp or forearm. That’s where we and other mammals have the highest density of C-fibers: nerves specially tuned to respond to gentle, affectionate contact.

What fascinates me about C-fibers is their dual nature. In addition to a soft caress, these evolutionarily ancient, slow-conducting nerves are also responsible for carrying the sensation of a hot chili pepper, the itch from a poison oak rash, the hellfire of shingles.

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I’ve always wanted a crow friend, and this summer I’ve been making an effort. Each morning I put a handful of dog kibble on a paper plate and set it out on our back-patio table. I also ball up a piece of aluminum foil to add to the plate for decoration, although whether crows and other corvids (birds of the family Corvidae) actually like shiny objects, a common belief, remains to be proven. Then, I do my best rendition of a crow call (something between a caw and a honk, to my ear) to alert them to breakfast service, watching the skies for takers.

Our neighborhood has a resident flock of them—“murder” seems a little dramatic, though I suppose that’s the official, if antiquated, term—and they make themselves known daily. They start out calling from a distance mid-morning, moving closer via a long line of tulip poplars, before swooping down to see what’s what on the ground, chattering amicably (I think) all the while.

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