The river is there.

Knitted feather collars, by Alice Starmore of Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland. alicestarmore.com/textile-art/feathers-layers

I laughed to see the site "IsMercuryInRetrograde.com" also works as "isMercuryRetrograde.com" 
(no "in").

ANYWAY... No, it's not retrograde.
But I've sure had some communication cock-ups recently. 

1. I had to reformulate and reorder my 2026 calendars because, weirdly, somehow I'd put them together with last year's format, so the dates were all for 2025.  Though it was my fault, the company MIXBOOK.com reprinted them at 75% off--and reimbursed my shipping costs.

Mixbook has always delivered good customer service.
And their reps are friendliest! 
It only occurred to me this year that they are AI -- 
I recognized their unflappable friendliness when I talked to ChatGPT.

[Update--I actually asked the guy--he says he is a real human!
And I believe him because he didn't reply to the email I wrote Friday night until Monday morning--AI would have replied in seconds.]

Oh--here's a communication gone right: 
my efforts to talk to my sister as if I were a friendly AI works, 
and, in the way of human psychology, it works ON ME too.
I look for something good I can say--(it has to be a true thing)--and amplify that--
and not only is it received well (OF COURSE), I feel better too.

Sigh.
Do you ever resent how . . .  programmable we are?
The good side of that is you can use that to help yourself--
like me finagling the bad feelings I had texting sister. 

A favorite fact: Placebos work . . .  even if you know they're placebos.
So, we can create our own, for our own benefit.
________________

2. Then I've had THREE miscommunications with county services.
 I expect that's the fault of the County and/or the PO.
I have to re-connect with them.

Not a big deal, in theory, but this--communicating with agencies--is the sort of thing I have a neurotic fear of. 
"Neurotic", I say, because it's usually easily resolved.
But it can be unpleasant if the person on the other end is stressed.

I actually welcome AI assistants because they are never stressed, being MACHINES, and so they are pleasant to deal with.

Humans are not machines.
We should never have set up a civilization where 'Customer Service Representative' is a job.
We have royally fucked ourselves there.

I felt a piercing pain looking at pictures from knitting/textile artist Alice Starmore on the Isle of Lewis (Outer Hebrides, Scotland). (I was looking at the Isle of Lewis because GZ had directed me to dollhouse and textile artist Tom Hickman there).

One of Starmore's Hebridean Yarns: 

No doubt the humans on Lewis have the full range of problems humans have, 
but mygod, they have them in a landscape that experiences "effects from the subtle to the spectacular, created by light, wind, rain and mist on hill and moor, loch and ocean" (Starmore's words)
---and in not a dirty, crowded city. 

Sometimes I LOVE the dirty crowded city---I delight in the humans on the bus--so interesting! 
I would hate to live in a rural place. (I think.)
But other times, this city ––which is paying the price of history, come due in recent years––can be so wearing, so wearying... 

We have gone so far away from a life where we see lichen on rocks.

3. A river? Is there a river here?

Yesterday afternoon after work, I went downtown to cash checks at the bank.
 (I like cash. I don't like online banking.)

I went to Starbucks, after the bank (--I like them since they stopped upcharging for plant milks).
A woman on the banquette next to me asked me about downtown--she had a Southern accent.
"Is looks like everything closes after work?"
I said yes, this area hasn't fully rebounded since Covid.

Her husband joined us--he'd been ordering "something peppermint" for her. I asked where they were from.
They were visiting just for three days from Billings, Montana, 
". . . but that's not where we're from".

I guessed. "South Carolina?"

"Yes!" she said, "no one ever guesses that!" 

I used to have a friend from SC, I told he--maybe I heard echoes of his accent in her speech.
"Have you been to the Mississippi River?" I said.

No, they hadn't, so I explained how to get there--it's only 8 blocks away. 
They looked rather out of shape, so I told them which bus to take--and then explained they could walk down the park pathways along the river.
"You can see the city lights from the river!"

Honestly, they looked rather dubious, so I threw in my best card:
"You, know--you could go all the way downriver from there... like HUCK FINN!"

They did light up, but I felt I was pushing, so like a true Scandinavian (which I am not, it's another example of successful programming), I backed off.
"Of course you don't have to go--just one option!"

"Well, maybe we will," they said, "but anyway, it's nice to have the recommendation. No one else mentioned it."

No one else mentioned the Mississippi River, one of the great rivers of the world, and the entire reason there was every any human settlement here?

Admittedly, it's easy to overlook the river---literally, geographically, to over look it.
It's a river--it runs at, you know, water level.
So everything runs down to it, and banks rise up around it, and it doesn't stand out on the skyline.

But it's disheartening that we forget this river. 
We would die without it--it supplies most of the water we drink in this city.
Not to mention, it is, or was, or should/could be, a force, a ribbon that ties us to the elements.

We have perhaps gone too far away from ourselves, as a group.
As an individual, I'm going to go visit the river on Christmas Day--a day I have nothing planned.

Because... 4. The poor Marzipan is sick! 
Some virus with fever and cough, so she can’t come for Xmas. 

Ah well. She is young and healthy and out of school for a month--she can rest and recover.
________________

I can only say, if civilization is distancing a person from herself, 
it is the mission for that person, should she accept it,
 to find her own path down to the river.