Prompts for Retrograde Season
8 prompts for April on choosing progress, regression, and alternate routes
From the jump, I know basically nothing about astrology; I prefer to be a kind of selective voyeur in the glittery winds of the cosmos. So my best understanding of “retrograde” is essentially like…it’s a real drag.
From Latin retrogradus, the word itself breaks down to retro (back) + grade (step). Or, to move backward, to regress, to return where we’ve already been.
Three Takes:
One of my husband’s least favorite things is retracing his steps—the hike that is one way up, turn around, take the same exact path down.
Yesterday at dinner an old friend described her perception of life as an eternal circle—the characters and plots shift, the locations change, we pick up new things as we go, discard a bit here and there…but ultimately return to the person we’ve always been.
As a kid I loved this TV show called “Legends of the Hidden Temple.” It was…kind of like Survivor-meets-an escape room for children? Essentially teams of tweens would have to cross fake moats and find clay urns hidden at the bottom of a foam pit and dodge SO many terrifying booby traps and characters dressed like Aztec gods…stay with me…all leading up to this climactic moment of arrival into a very confusing temple with dozens of interconnected rooms. Inevitably 99% of the kids would go absolutely ham and run around aimlessly and get themselves axed by an aforementioned Aztec god. But every once in awhile some sage young soul would realize that the keys (to escape? to win? Clearly the stakes felt really high) were actually already in the room. They didn’t have to go anywhere at all.
Sometimes the route doesn’t matter. And so maybe the question is not about progress vs. its undoing, but about whether it’s possible to be still…even when it comes with feeling stuck or bored or like you’re being left behind.
In consideration of a month of low-key cosmic disfunction, I am thinking about standing my ground, about treading water, about holding the center. I am thinking about saying what I mean (and repeating myself if I have to). I am thinking about the ways stillness can be its own direction.
1. KICKING UP DUST
As we complete the first quarter of the year, what is one thing that is feeling very clear? What is one thing that feels incredibly cloudy or confusing?
2. FAMILIAR FACE
Cite a person from your past who has reemerged with a different relevance (or whose relationship fills a different role) in your present.
3. QUIET THE NOISE
A coworker, a cultural critic, a specific hot take—whose influence is weighing heavily on you?
4. ADDITION BY SUBTRACTION
I got a facial recently and, after begging the esthetician to tell me products I needed to add into the mix to change my life, she replied that until my skin barrier was in better balance, supplementing was a waste.
Identify something you are trying to solve, cure, or progress through addition; now identify something you can move toward solving, curing, or progressing through elimination.
5. HIT THE ROAD
A favorite retrograde season scapegoat is travel—an association as a cosmic disruptor of plans and scrambler of schedules. Indulge yourself with recalling a recent time when the act of locomotion dominated the plot.
6. ANALYSIS PARALYSIS
Where are you presently frozen with indecision or stuck between a couple options?
7. DOWNTEMPO
Admit something you’ve been rushing through.
8. OPTION C
Recall a recent time of choosing the unlikely option—neither lighting it up nor burning it down, but something else. Maybe you surprised yourself.
Legends of the hidden temple!
These are particularly good — thank you!