Mercury Retrograde Survival Kit.

A small notebook, sinner. Three of them. The point is this — when Mercury starts doing its little thing and you get the urge at 11:42pm to write a long honest text to somebody who has not earned a long honest anything, you write it in here instead. Pen, paper, the thing leaves your body, the phone stays out of it. By morning the urge is gone and the page is full. Saint Anthony for the things you almost lost, including your dignity.

When Mercury's up to something, my creature, your phone dies. In the parking garage. At the train. Right when the rideshare driver calls. Anker makes the one I'd buy — small, black, weighs a pound, charges your phone twice. Keep it in the bag at the bottom under the receipts and the lipstick. The day you need it you will *truly* need it. Saint Christopher rides with the prepared.

The retrograde takes computers, sweet thing. Always has. Back the laptop up before the station, not after. Two terabytes is enough for the photos, the writing, the tax stuff, and the folder marked *important* you've been meaning to organize since 2019. Plug it in once a month. The little drive hums. Your soul rests easier. Saint Anthony for the files you almost lost when the Genius Bar said *we can try.*

Saint Christopher rides with travelers, pilgrim. The medal is small, silver, the size of a quarter — wear it on a chain or pin it inside the lining of the bag. He doesn't care. The point is that he's *with* you. The Garden State Parkway at 11pm in a rainstorm with one working windshield wiper goes a lot smoother with him riding shotgun. He rode my Cadillac through the years that didn't deserve me.

Florida water, my child. Yellow bottle, smells like a botanica next to a barbershop next to your grandmother's vanity. You splash a little on the back of your neck before you leave the house, sprinkle some on a rag, wipe down the doorknob and the kitchen counter. The whole apartment lifts. *Madonn'*, the smell. It's been around since 1808 and it's still cheaper than therapy. Don't drink it, sinner. We don't drink it.

Steven Forrest's *The Inner Sky* is the astrology book I'd hand somebody who wants to actually *learn* and not just nod along to Instagram captions, sweet thing. He writes about the planets like a person writes about his neighbors. By the time you finish chapter three you'll know what your Mercury is doing and why it goes backward and what it wants from you. Read it slow. Underline things. The book gets better the second time.

Salt, pilgrim. Plain coarse sea salt — the cheap kind, the bulk bag from the cooking aisle. A pinch in each corner of the bedroom. A line across the doorway when somebody you don't trust is coming over. A handful in the bath after a hard week. The weight of salt in the palm is the oldest cleansing on earth — older than the saints, older than the church, older than my Sicilian mother's grudges, and that's saying something.