RESISTING RETROGRADES, DISMANTLING LAND’S CHRONIC ILLNESS

MOTHER HAS BECOME BONE-THIN from a chronic illness. For the longest time, it has leeched off her, rendering her incapable of nursing her weeping children. What was once a body that nourishes became a body that crumbles; healing seems improbable, for the illness is deeply-rooted. Her children are left in hunger day and night, hearts igniting in anger.

“What is the nature of this consuming illness? Not even the experts are able to treat her!” her children cry. They need to know what is ailing their mother. Why could she no longer nourish them with her fresh produce? Her arable lands could grow a bountiful supply of crops when they coexisted in harmony, but the illness consumed her.

People claim her body to be something they can possess and they turn this into a lifeless array of infrastructure while sucking out her resources. While her children, left in poverty and hunger, are left with no choice but to consult the skies that accompanied them through cruel nights.

The zodiac signs across the sky have lived through eras, and so the children consulted them. Together, they unearthed the celestial bodies that conspired against their mother. The pattern of failed treatments and abuses have occurred too many times, and there could only be one culprit behind this: the planetary retrogrades.

The zodiacs cleared the sky, and three prominent planetary retrogrades appeared. Three major planets are moving backward when observed from Earth, a foretelling sign of stagnation.

JUPITER RETROGRADE: GREED FOR EXPANSION

“Jupiter, planet of expansion

With its greed and overindulgence

Left them bound to chains of poverty”

Jupiter, the largest planet, desires nothing but expansion for its own sake. Bathing in hedonism, he sucked the life out of mother just to bathe in her riches. His methods of expansion are two sides of the same coin: either he owns the land and milks it off, or seizes it and converts it for industrial use.

The first method is rather traditional, a practice that has been tormenting the mother and children for centuries. He breaks the harmony between them. He forges a shackle that forever binds the land to him, one that only breaks when another man purchases it. The shackle also binds the children into eternal debt and suffering, where they pay soaring prices of land rent and loans and break their backs under the sun, only earning a few coins to their name.

The other method is modern, where Jupiter dances in sync with the sly Mercury in order to orchestrate their plan. He forges yet another shackle, where he repurposes the land from agricultural to industrial. He stomps over fields with towering buildings or expansive factories and power plants. Fresh air is replaced by suffocating fumes; gone were the days when the children would sustainably plow and harvest from the fields. Now they’re bound to a life so gray within the shackles of unfair working conditions.

Jupiter’s retrograde motion has entrapped the mother and her children into a slow and backward life, a dark tunnel with no sunlight.

MARS RETROGRADE: BASTION OF BRUTALITY

“Mars craves aggression and power Tear stains of the banished children Bring joy to his corrupted heart”

Mars, the planet of aggression, thirsts for power and bloodshed, which he gains by being the loyal guard dog of Jupiter. He has adopted both the trickiness of Mercury and the power greed of Jupiter, which he does in a sneaky manner into the children’s lives by planting fake pieces of evidence, and framing them into trumped-up charges. He has been the active force that hijacks mother’s treatment, for Mars retrograde harshly pushes back any sort of progress made—may it be at the picket lines, at the agricultural fields, or at the gates of his beloved master. He has fully functional ears that spy over the poor children, yet it fails to listen to their pleas. He claims to hear nothing as he brutally hits progressives with his evil-marred bat and shield. Sometimes he shoots them dead with a gun—all of their cries falling on deaf ears when Jupiter’s men build large infrastructures over the children’s beloved home. His hands are soiled with the blood of the innocent and the poor, yet however he may try to wash his hands, blood still reeks from his skin. He serves and protects not the people, but his one and only true master.

MERCURY RETROGRADE: TOWER OF BUREAUCRACY

“Mercury opts for tricky routes Mastermind of the plan, serving painfully slow, and with malice”

The planet with a natural talent for agility, Mercury, works slowly when it comes to serving the people he has chosen to enchant. As a magician, he spends too much time orchestrating the best ruse while pretending to be at their service. His purported job of spreading cheer to the populace is nothing more than a series of tricks to siphon off their few resources, diverting their attention away from the very theft of his brothers. The children cannot help but ask the land grabber for help as their mother endures day-today suffering from the illness that barred them from making ends meet. As Mercury moves in retrograde, misfortunes further hamper her recovery.

Despite Mercury and Jupiter’s promises to supply funds for the family, little help actually reached them. It took them a long time and a number of processes to amass the necessary funds to purchase a small dose of medicine for their mother, which didn’t work anyway. Mercury is cunning, the way he made the family beg for money they should have already been receiving from the land taken. It was yet another part of his tricky plan to exacerbate the family’s suffering by continuously importing rice and collecting tariffs on it.

Anything in excess could have been used for the mother’s medication. However, the family continued to struggle for food and medicine.

The planetary retrogrades work together to roll out their grand masterplan: to continuously profit off of the motherland, barring the poor from living sustainably. These planets high up in the sky seem unreachable, but the children’s hands stretch high, the desire to reach the planets to topple them over reverberating. These planets live high up in the sky, seemingly unreachable, and yet, the children’s hearts still beat in sync. These planets are millions of miles away, far from the reality they live in. Reality has real monsters high up the social ladder that bring nightmares to the land and its tillers.

While power remains to the few who remind them of these retrogrades, the children shall choose to resist gigantic, cosmic forces. That is the real remedy against the illness of the land. ▼