From Night Light News - an astrology website that the beautiful screenwriting marina hottie boy said was the only astrology website he reads.

Mercury turns retrograde this Saturday at 12:39 pm (PDT) in the sign of relationships (Libra). It will continue its retrograde motion for three weeks, until October 28th, having re-entered Virgo on the 3rd. Mercury will not resume its full direct motion until October 23rd. What does this mean? Other than the usual Mercury retro admonitions, care needs to be taken with communication, no purchasing of large items such as home, appliances, no mechanical repairs, etc,. Mercury retro in Libra means previous relationship issues will resurface, old lovers will reappear, and we will all review what it means to be in the presence of the "other" in our lives. Retrograde motion of any planets means we are in a time of review. Communication will be vital, though not easy.

I'm never sure if astrology is really that accurate, but sometimes it does explain the way I'm feeling. It looks like from now until late October will be an introspective. Like I'm really looking forwards to old boyfriends or friends popping into my life and disturbing my peace of mind, because one always has during a Mercury Retrograde. I wonder who it will be this time, because there is of course, quite a large selection.

Musical selections tonight:
Soundtrack from "The Piano" by Michael Nyman and Debussy - Dreams, Aldo Ciccolini, piano, Erik Satie, Piano Works, Vol. 1

I was going to either start working on the second draft of my screenplay, which I've now renamed to "Going Home Again", or keep working on the second draft of my short story called "Crazy Eddie". But I did neither. I am still feeling pretty burnt out emotionally from yesterday, and when I feel like this, it's hard for me to write. The day went by quite quickly, and I'm grateful for that at least.

Instead, I started on my new book "The Age of Innocence" by Edith Wharton. The novel keeps mentioning what good families do and don't do, and I was reminded of my family. My mother had a big "thing" about what good families do and don't do and especially, what girls from good families do and don't do. My mother always said that one must behave a certain way in public, one must dress a certain way in public, and that the worst thing any of us could do was to embarrass her in public. Parts of Wharton's novel seem very familiar to me: what society expects out of you, how there are unspoken rules that everyone understands as part of that society, and how one should ignore the unpleasantries of life.

I am in such a strange mood tonight. I wanted to hear some Beethoven, but then I kept hearing that line from the movie "A Room with a view where Lucy Honeychurch says, "Mother says Beethoven makes me peevish". And I am already quite peevish, and don't need to further my peevishness.

I started a list in my head yesterday about what I learned from 9/11.

Don't forget to turn the TV on in the morning. Events happens as I'm sleeping, and it's worse hearing about them in my car as I commute to work than it is watching it on TV. In fact, when I do forget to turn my TV on in the morning, I freak out and wonder if another 9/11 incident is taking place.

Don't believe the media hype after any big disaster. I should have learnt this fact from the 1989 earthquake here, but I seem to have forgotten. During the first few hours of 9/11, the media said that they thought the death toll would be in the tens of thousands. That morning a friend who is a native New Yorker now living here, called me and said she didn't think the death toll would be as much as the media was saying.

Unlike California, most New York City businesses she said didn't start work till 9 am, so most of the people who worked at the World Trade Center wouldn't have been at work at the time the first plane hit. The only people who were at work in New York City that early in the morning were the trading firms because of the stock markets. She was so right. Didn't anyone in the media know this fact? And if they did, why didn't they report it? I suppose they were being cautious, but still.

It's okay to be with someone. Unlike like most people after 9/11, I did not feel the urgent need to bond. In fact, I felt the opposite. I thought that if the country was going to war, I was better off on my own. I know how to take care of myself on my own. I didn't know how to take care of myself and another person; another person in my life would be such a burden in a time of war. I was surprised by this feeling, having spent most of my life wanting to be with someone. The thought was then an anathema to me.

That survival instinct of mine kicked into high gear, and it wasn't until yesterday really, that I decided that it would be okay to be with someone. That in fact, having another person around would mean I'd have someone else to help me survive in a time of war. I'm still digesting this new realization.

God is the only person you can count on 100%.. I've been thinking about the issue of support in my life this whole year. I've been looking at all the people in my life and evaluating them in terms of the support I receive from them. The results have been startlng, to say the least. At times I have felt incredibly supported, at other times completely abandoned. I am still trying to reconcile which feelings were genuine. I am resigned to the fact that maybe I'll never know, and that what I realized very early on in my life is still true. The only person I can every really count on 100% is god. Perhaps it is nice to know that some beliefs in my life have never changed.

I'm sure there are more things I learned from 9/11, but this is as far as I've got. I'll have to keep thinking about it, since I think that 9/11 changed not only my life, but everybody else's life forever.