Cy Twombly “Notes From Salalah”

“The time has come,” the walrus said, “to talk of many things.” Of Time and Truth and Talking Heads, as Mercury prepares for its first underworld journey of this year, through a pair of frenemy signs. Let us embrace the non-linear, ride the new wave, and Stop Making Sense. Words are funny things, and images are worth a thousand words. Both have the ability to flash and morph, to convince or confuse, especially in retrograde periods. A walrus and a carpenter, to my mind, could just as well be a water-bearer and a sea-goat. Why not?

I see the 6 of swords reversed, with Mercury as the ferryman. We are leaving old ways behind and transitioning in ways we can’t fully understand yet. Back to the future we go, and onward to the past. 

I see melting clocks and soft watches. The Persistence of Memory is strong and strange. Is this dreamlike tableau a grand metaphor for the theory of relativity, or, as Dalí himself said, born of a Camembert melting in the Sun?

I see the akashic records spinning the soundtrack of our lives. There are many revolutions per minute, per month, per year. Our divine DJ starts out with an Aquarian tune, and then reverses the record back into the last degrees of Capricorn. The needle scratches in the grooves of the mind, and the grooves in the heart, putting a finer point on the lessons of the past year, and of the coming year. We feel the funk. We are given the gift of hindsight. Is there a hidden message to be found in playing it backwards? Or is it just noise?

What can I say? Mercury can be a trickster, as well as a friend. The mind’s eye can be a real trip. What does it all mean? No one knows for sure. Truth is in the mind of the believer. This retrograde is a dance with loneliness and oneness, with electricity and eccentricity. It will likely bring stories of redirection, and resurrection; of disruption and disconnection; of rebellion and retreat. But it will also present moments of genius, and light the divine spark within, if we listen closely. More Saturn-Uranus work, in other words. I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.