Virgo 6°

We have this expression around here called “collection time” which is a reference to our days in our twenties and early thirties when we worked in fashion. The two weeks leading up to collection time and typically some kind of runway show entailed waking up going to work for sixteen-to-twenty hours, passing out and doing it again, during a solid fortnight. It was a drag but there was no way around it. Many things in our lives have had this dynamic and we still say collection time.

Two weeks from tonight is the first night of performances for the Afterglow Festival, followed the next week by the kick off of the Glowberon series in Cambridge. I know myself and I will kick myself if I leave any stone uncovered in my fundraising efforts. So that becomes the priority now, getting in as much money as possible to ensure I at least break even. I have worked fairly steadily over the last six months, as I do every year leading up to festival, to bring this series of productions to light. Typically I get a terrible head cold just after festival ends. But my cold has come early this year. If I were to listen to my body as I should I would lie down and get some rest. Unfortunately there has been no slow down in the Starsky + Cox work—if anything this is our busiest week in months—and people who have taken all summer to socialize suddenly have to be seen—how I wish I could just not show up for social plans right now but then, you see, I’m not “cultivating my friendships.” Not my words by the way. And anyway, I’m of the mind that I do much of the cultivation in any case in many instances. To be honest, I’m feeling very hell-is-others right about now and don’t really give a shit about socializing. So there.

Case in point: Someone I know well and whom I write often during the course of the year to check in and chat and so forth (who mostly doesn’t reply to emails or goes into some kind of monologue, as people do, about “how busy I am”—we’re all fucking busy, meanwhile) wrote a note that they’re having a little something tomorrow night and could we come. Well from the sound of what this little something is it’s a biggish something and certainly the planning has been going on for ages. I’m all for spontaneity but I hate feeling like an afterthought or worse: Like someone who might see that this event happened and wasn’t invited so I better be invited just as a precautionary measure against censure. Paranoid of me? Probably. But the way I feel these days I’m going to trust my gut, even if my gut is acting gutted.

Now I’m perfectly aware that I run a risk here of spewing negativity—who wants to read that. But sometimes even those of us who work as professional cheerleaders (especially we in this position) need to get all the yuckies out somehow somewhere. So that’s what I’m doing today. I’m venting. I’m releasing. I’m saying I’m fucking tired and pissed off and all I want to do is watch TCM for the next twelve hours. I don’t want to be on. I don’t want to be professional. I don’t want to be wise or in any way all knowing. I don’t want to channel psychic power. I’m effing exhausted (I’m writing this post the same day as the previous one if you’re catching that theme) and I need a major time out.

Why do I always have to be so Johnny on the spot? Why do I always have to have perfect follow through. Don’t other people who haven’t returned professional emails in the last two months feel even the slightest guilt about it? Even if they’re British? Are friends not aware that it’s always me reaching out and that they rarely initiate. Even if they have kids (and I don’t), I feel like that excuse has worn pretty thin. Anyway people my age are no longer young parents. They are becoming grandparents for Chrissake. Anyway, I’m definitely down a hole and I’m not coming out until I feel better and I’m not going to mask my feelings for this fucking Blague today. Today I need to be a fucking whining complaining douchebag.

I’m tired of the uphill battle. I’m tired of doing the same thing everyday, including this stupid thing. I’m tired of other people. I’m tired of rolling this stupid boulder up the mountain with a stick. Mainly I’m just tired of myself.

Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
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Virgo 5°

I guess it’s pretty Virgo to feel disillusioned with the world and with oneself. I am not feeling good today and I don’t know where to place the blame. On myself, yes, I know. But I’m also tired of blaming me. Other people work hard and get breaks. Why have I yet to figure out how to take a break. Even when I’m on a holiday I am playing some kind of catch up or otherwise working between times. It really sucks. I’ve been on my own for so long and I feel like I’m in high-alert mode for survival all the time. I’m not talking about material things although right now I don’t feel much like being around people who have the proverbial all. And I certainly don’t need to watch them perform their own prosperity shows. The only thing I can say fairly definitively is that I still tend to be the smartest person in the room; but I’m tired of also being the most sensitive on so many levels. Hey this is really helping to get this shit out. Because I just got a glimpse of what I might like to do…

I remember in the late eighties I was on a real spiritual trip. I was reading the Vedas and Upanishads and all that jazz (for fun). I really wanted enlightenment. It was a goal. Everything was ahead of me. I might have had that brilliant acting career—for me the chance to express myself via that craft which I loved so much (to be clear I never thought about “making it” in terms of fame or money); perhaps that’s why I never did. It was tough knocking on agents doors and dealing with the constant rejection. I think I buffered myself through all that by reading. I didn’t have a career. I had jobs. I went to them and I left them. I smoked a lot of pot probably. I didn’t drink in those days out of choice–the first, not the last, time I took a break from alcohol for clarity. I didn’t feel I needed to do it as much as I wanted to. All this to say that I feel a bit full circle. Not on the alcohol front although that might be part of it. I’ve been super abstemious as of late, after a year of enjoying some good wines. I take natural breaks. I suppose I always have. And it feels good to clear out. Just as it feels good sometimes to indulge. To everything there is a season.

I feel pretty exhausted lately. Not sure what that’s about. Not fatigues, but exhausted. Like I can barely hold my head up at times. I should probably get my blood pressure checked. It might actually be too low. And, to add to the mix, I woke up with a horrible head cold so there is that. But no rest for the weary as I have a day full of clients and promotion work for the festival. And I should be working on some creative bits on that score but I just can’t find the funny in me right now. It’s all I can do to maintain a positive attitude which is typically quite a cinch. I will admit I’m bummed that not all my expected fundraising came through this year. People love to say they love what I do but when it comes time for even small shows of monetary support these same folks do tend to take a powder. It is particularly irksome in Ptown where people will say they’re strapped but then walk around from bar to restaurant to bar spending loads of dough on crap food and pricey drinks. But what can you do. You can’t berate them for it or even give it much of a second thought. I suppose my only goal today is to take a deep metaphoric inhale that might constitute a second wind, because for the most part I feel as if it’s been knocked out of me.

Also I lost my signature Persol sunglasses as I do every year and it has put me in a mood. I had put them together in a little hug with my cheapo No. 1 readers and left them at a friends house where I was for a dinner party. The readers were still there but the sunglasses had somehow uncoupled from them. I dunno, people. I just don’t know.

Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
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Virgo 4°

Sometimes feelings are overwhelming, especially the wistful sort from the past. I was just writing a fellow who, with his partner, owns a hotel in Asbury Park, along with hotels in Provincetown, where they support my non-profit work. I have not been down the shore in New Jersey since just after my father died and about three years before my mother died. The whole of my childhood and entropy which came to characterize its progression had to be put in a box, behind me, for the sake of my own survival. I got into a giant mess in the wake of this big ball of tragic fiasco. And I don’t think I’ve stepped foot in New Jersey at all, actually, now in nearly fifteen years. Wow. I’m just realizing this as I type here. Truth be told, though, when I saw that these aquaintances of mine had bought and renovated a hotel in Asbury, my first thought was: I do need to go back and come to terms with the magical tragical times for which the shore was a backdrop in my early life. From the time I was seven until the time my parents sold the what was once just our summer house in Belmar prior to their deaths, the length of the shore, from Asbury Park to Sea Girt, was my personal playground and the site of many firsts, and not all of them wholeseom. I’m sure I will write all about this one day. In the meantime I still have very mixed feelings about the whole of my past.

I think I’m too used to things being ripped away from me. My parents increasingly isolated and disassociated from the many, many friends, couples with families, who made up the social fabric of my early life. We were always in groups. We lived in an apartment building with best friend neighbors who were constantly around. In summer we belonged to a “cabana club” with an even wider array of families and bbq’s and group dinners out in summer, late night, en masse, where the plastic booths or chair upholstery would stick to the sunburned backs of ones legs, and where you would fall asleep at the table, being carried to the car, slightly waking, and then back into the apartment. Then when I was eight years old we moved to the suburbs where our world already started to shrink. But still, weekends would entail perfumed couples dressed to the nines showing up in Cadillacs and Lincolns, for drinks before heading out with my parents to some fancy restaurants—or they would have parties that would go into the wee hours; and I would fall asleep to the reassuring sound of adult laughter from far off rooms. And there was always the shore. Our house had seven bedrooms and was always filled with visitors, our wrap around porch, crowded with close revelers, giving the impression our house was some sort of Inn, attracting strangers up to inquire about Vacancy, which opened these poor strangers to some harmless though certainly semi-drunken practical jokes by my Dad and his bravado filled pals.

My parents belonged to a culture. They were New Jersey. My father was from the largest Italian family in Hudson County and my mother from an equally giant Irish clan of cops, chiefs of police and local politicians. My parents were tiny, just over five foot, but they were enormously popular. But slowly, slowly this peopled word became ever vacant, until my parents world shrunk to living in a two-room apartment, smaller even than the one in which they started, filled only with plastic picture frames and encroaching demential.

I’m glad these things are coming up; not that I haven’t written about them before probably. It’s times like these one really appreciates the fact they took Typing in high school Do you remember wondering whether or not you should take a typing class? We didn’t know then that the whole of our adult lives would be spent in front of keyboard. Which it shouldn’t be. But, hey, for better or worse I did end up a writer. That’s how most people know me, anyway. Anyway, I think the creeps feeling I was talking about in the previous post is all about me. I think I give myself the creeps. I think I’ve become aware, and acutely so, of my own shortcomings and incidents in the past where I have contributed to the demise of good relationships or situations that didn’t need to be destoyed. And I think I destroy things because, like so many elements of my childhood, past and even my adulthood, I’ve felt that feeling of things being ripped away. So I think I tear them I knew one before they can be thus ripped. I’m a highly sensitive sort and am easily hurt and really really struggle with (not) taking things personally. I work a lot with clients on this subject, secrety working on myself in the process.

Anyway: Asbury Park. It would be fun to pursue something there. I think I’m ready to see that part of the world again. See what’s still miraculously standing and what is now the property of Lady Mnemosyne.

I am a son of Earth and starry sky. I am parched with thirst and am dying; but quickly grant me cold water from the Lake of Memory to drink.—“instructions for the dead” written on a gold Orphic tablet

Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
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Virgo 3°

It’s 5:55 on a Saturday, late August. I have the creeps, I don’t know why. I’m not anxious. I just have the creeps. It’s sort of ridiculous to. I suppose I feel a bit like something from the past is going to come back to haunt me in some way. Is’t that odd? I don’t know that I’ve felt that way ever in my waking life. I know I have experienced that feeling in dreams, particularly, with one recurring dream in which I may have killed someone and buried their body in the back yard of (it’s always) my house (in Harwichport). I suppose I have to ask myself do I really miss my life in Harwichport. In so many ways I did. But I don’t think I really liked it much. I need a walking town. This is becoming extremely clear to me. It’s why I like Belfast but there really isn’t all that much going on there. But that’s okay too. It could be Portland. I don’t know. I wish I knew. I wish I knew why I was so convinced of things and then I’m not. It makes me wonder if I’m not a bit kooky.

I think of other people of modest to moderate means and what they do. Not all, although many, of my friends are gazillionaires. I have friends who work in New York, maybe they own their apartment there or they rent and own a house elsewhere, something small, on the Island or something. It’s not for me. I am luck in that if nothing truly could-be spectacular on the horizon pans out, I can do what I do from anywhere. I really can. I can get a small house in Sicily or Sardinia or in Gascony or, sure, in Maine somewhere, too, and still have an apartment in Paris or in Boston or both. I like going to New York but I don’t feel I want to have to live there at this time, or probably ever. Anyway, I’m trying to verbalize any thoughts I have about this creepy feeling to try to get to the core of it; though I suspect it isn’t any one thing, but a number of factors contributing to this compounded sensation.

It’s very possible that the creeps are the release of something that is no longer serving me, therefore the increasing absence of a feeling rather than one creeping in or up on me. I have always been someone who has heaped a lot on his own plate and perhaps, as a result, I haven’t driven far enough into any one direction. I characterize this as a Libra thing, being prismatic in one’s approach to creativity and manfestation. The whole renaissance man thing. And it might serve me well to be more laser as I move forward. I also think I need to accelerate this release of the creeps, as I’m experience them, by forgiving myself for my part in any past disappointments or disassociations. I imagine that would be quite beneficial. I also think that I could be more clever and executive and also throw out a bunch of old possessions I’ve been hanging onto out of fear for survival, or the preservation of some identity or sense of belonging, that have become visual reminders, now, of a past I’ve been long passed out of.

Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
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Virgo 2°

The working out of some bits that I will perform in front of the curtain at Afterglow is now on my to-do list. I have flirted with a few ideas in the past but now I must actually get some thoughts on paper that I can work up into five-minute bits. This first one I’m going to work on we’ve been having so much fun with lately. It all started with this line of comedy that popped into my head which was: We moved to Wellfleet for the Jewish eye candy. And I’ve been working on that a bit—not just the jokes but the notion of doing Jewish jokes at all which can really fall flat.

 So it starts with: We were talking about Provincetown, probably coming off gentrification, but we recently moved to Wellfleet. For the Jewish eye candy. What? Wellfleet? Oh yeah, It’s super intelligentsia, academic, many psychologists, thinkers, which is so sexy. And chic, yes. Gorgeous people, thin, lanky, beautiful JD Salinger Jews, you know. (Am I wrong? No) Eye candy. Of both sexes. Many, many gorgeous couples, walking the beach, gorgeous couples, mostly mothers and sons but gorgeous. On the beach walking. All lean and kibbutzy. Long lanky legs, kicking out in front of them, like this, you know, walking, zero body fat, because they’re weekend eaters, otherwise just a little melon in the morning a little avocado something for lunch and maybe some sushi from Mac’s shack, so to rock a skimpy their little late 1970s looking gymshorts or bikini with an unironic No Nukes tee-shirt. Gorgeous, eye-candy.

I eroticize the Jews. I’m an honorary Jew so I’m allowed. I grew up in a mostly Jewish apartment complex. I went to pre-school at Jewish Community Center in Jersey City. All the boys there, my earliest friends, Jewish—Richard Rosen, Steven Cantor, Jeffrey Finkel—I don’t know where I”m going with this so I think I’ll have to stop…..I think most of the humor is in the above bit anyway. And it’s meant to be sure and I’ll just be fleshing it out.

One of the other bits I was thinking of doing I actually did write about here before. It was on the theme of No Vacancy at B&B’s and so forth. I actually think I can combine them. I think I’ll do a lot of Provincetown style jokes. I don’t think I’m thinking all that clearly today, not sure enough that I can make a compelling comedy attempt today. I think we’ll just let this one go by undetecte, whadya say? You’ll let me slide, right? Anyway, I better quite while I”m ahead lest I really insult someone.

Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
Copyright 2017 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Virgo 1°

So I was telling you the other day that I found out recently, well, a long time ago, but I only recently starting researching the fact that, I am INFJ in Myers-Briggs speak. This is characterized as Introverted, Intuition, Feeling, Judging. Okay fine. One of the characteristics of being INFJ is seeing patterns in things, which speaks to my interest in all things metaphysical, astrology in particular, which is this perfect mandala for existence on so many levels—that is to say that every nook and crannie of experience seems to folow the twelve fold logic of the astrological signs and houses, one through twelve, as they give way to one another, ad infinitum, on what isn’t a static circle of the zodiac but a never ending upward spiraling staircase, something, in its patterning recalls DNA, the base and railing of this imagined stairwel, forming a sort of double helix—Jacob’s ladder also comes to mind as does the song Stairway to Heaven.

I was musing on this in the car yesterday. Driving my 85 Mercedes into Provincetown with the top open and the windows down feels fantastic in any sense. And I was already enjoying the previous day’s revelation about rushing, which I’m really fighting against doing even as I can justifiably consider my life to be a never ending series of deadlines. It starts with perishing thoughts along that perception and realizing what the hell are we rushing towards? I think rushing is a symptom of not really doing what you want to do or at least including bits or seeds of that truest dream into your day to day. So I myself need to work on that I realize. I might be best off doing it on a local level for awhile. At least I might as well give it a whirl. And so fresh from that realization I had another one:

The old adage “we really are just passing through” can be taken quite literally. I should contextualize this by saying that I am not one to get very attached to very much—my Aquarian moon (which als makes me something of a cult leader lol) perhaps contributing to my often nuts-and-berries existence of non-material attachment and the fact that, as compared with most people, I could probably pack up my entire house in a matter of days and be on my way somewhere else. At the very least I could lock my front door and walk away with the entire contents of my home left as it is and neither miss or nor need anything from it that isn’t in my suitcase. I travel often. In fact I get very antsy unless I’m in a city, even though I presently have no home in a city—each year we sort of pick a place and just go there, but these last three years Stella has been doing a masters degree so we’ve stayed by, in Boston, which I liked more than I thought I would. Anyway, I’ve always felt “stuck” on the Cape in winter dating back to 1998 when we first bought a house.

But back to my revelation. I got this sense that my time in any home, including the planet, is so terribly fleeting that I’m passing through any place I live, including the one I call home, which for me, is an experience so acute to the degree that I’ve managed to turn it around and gain this new perspective of choosing to visit the Cape when I’m here, as one of my favorite places that I visit frequently year on year. Right now I’m in this house. Next year I will be too. After that who knows. But I’ll still include this in my mix. It’s still up to me. I don’t need to retreat somewhere and be stuck there I have infinite options because I keep giving myself infinite opportunity. Already I feel the adjustment is working; I feel terribly less anxious and as if I’m on a sort of permanent vacation, punctuated with business appointments and meetings. But the truth be told. Stella has finished school; I’ve completed one festival and am about to execute a second; I wrote a book proposal which is now in the hands of a reputable agent; and we have a business plan all but finished and ready to be seen by investing eyes. All this will what is already a creative and rewarding private consultancy, which is the backbone of our work, and the soul of our business.

Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
Copyright 2017 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Leo 30°

So we bid adieu to Leo and say howdy Virgo. Entering Virgo typically makes my heart race, not for any other reason than it means that the Afterglow Festival is drawing nigh. Indeed in just three weeks from tonight plus ninety minutes Phoebe Legere will take to the stage. I love Phoebe she is unique talented and I truly want her to have a good show. I think I’m usually most nervous this time of year because I too must write half an hour of show and have two songs to sing. I’m not doing that this year. No performance from us. Well, not from me. Stella is going to reprise her Birth of the American Baroness show, which will be great, I’m sure; and a good rehearsal for her leading up to doing it at Dixon Place in October. So that’s pretty great. These will be the fourth and fifth venues where she has presented (and I’ve produced) the show.

I’m sad about not performing of course. But I’m looking forward to taking some inventory of my own stage stuff. I need to work on my solo play which will have music. Gosh I hope it’s recorded somewhere. I’m sure it is.* And that I’ll stumble upon it again the moment I most need to. It’s probably sitting in that pile over there on my desk. In the meantime. I do need to inventory songs as well. That’s always fun in any case. I asked myself today if I”m jealous of someone like, oh I dunno, name a person who has a shop, Josh Patner and at his lovely shop, Loveland. Not at all really. I couldn’t stand in a shop all day touching things. But I do like the idea of having ones own world and being surrounded by ones own creations. Being more conceptual rather than tactile a person, I lack the physical representation of taste, order, beauty, grace—but I’m nigh on getting into it. I’m nigh on getting into it all. I just need to stick to a schedule now that I (again) have the chance to be one and the same with words and pictures.

[a day passes]

*So first thing this morning I started puttering and, sure enough, I stumbled on that document I created outlining my solo show. I’m not saying it’s a sign but I’m going to start scripting it sooner than later. I’m sure you’ll see a lot of it. In fact his Blague got a bump back in April when I started writing every day on the boat in Belize. A lot of that material was meant to become the show. I don’t even know if it’s worth mining through all that—what I wrote then was meant to be show material—now I remember: I was going to try and see if I could write the entire show on the boat and if I could I was going to perform it this year Afterglow—how could I have blocked that out? Anyway, the writing didn’t go in that direction and I am not one to keep any writing, particularly my own, go in whatever the fuck direction it wants to. All to say that this Blague was really powered this year by personal story I thought would be show, which may still be show, but in any case has brought me to this spot where, at least, I realize the coming-full-circleness of my performance writing, if not immediately embark upon its execution.

On today’s list to do are putting together folders with visuals of some things I find inspiring. At least I’ll get that ball rolling. And also taking stock of many different projects whereby knowing exactly at what point I stopped and what the steps are moving forward. That’s kind of fun. I’m also up-to-date with this Blague. And am about to embark. Will explain tomorrow.

Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
Copyright 2017 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Leo 29°

We didn’t “watch” the eclipse in the way people with type-A personalities might do. I don’t have a type-A personality per se. I am an INFJ in Myers-Briggs terms, as is Stella. As are some close friends like JK Rowling and Justin Vivian Bond. We are the rarest personality type making up less thatn 1% of the population. We are dreamers, but not idle ones. We do in fact have quite a power of manifestation. So watch out.

Anyway I was talking about the eclipse. Although I have a feeling I’m going to veer into INFJ territory. Who can know. I know I’m going to Paris and London soon and I’m pretty happy about that I must say. So this is so us: We didn’t really know the exact time of the eclipse because we didn’t really care I guess. Also we are not the ones to make lenses or glasses or camera obscura. In fact we were having lunch and spontaneously decided to have a meeting about finances, business plans and dreams. This is something we haven’t done in months due to heavey separate schedules—she finishing school, me legistating the law of diminishing returns in trying to stage yet another festival. Pin in that.

Anyway we thought we’d put on the news—CNN—as a backdrop while we talked just to see what was up with the eclipse. As it turned out we were just about to see the first totality occur on the West Coast and move its way across. We went outside for a brief five minutes when we “felt” things were at getting dark. We could see the reflection of the sun bouncing against our car and could see the reflection grow dim. And the chickens shut their noisy beaks for five minutes. And the birds took to the trees thinking, hmm, should we roost? And then it started getting lighter.

We went inside finished our meeting and just as we did the last totality was being seen off the east coast. It was pretty cool, in the sense that, for us, this was one big new moon ceremony and it felt pretty fun and great to have had a meeting about our plans and dreams during this powerful new moon. It was also super fun to note that in our plans and dreams involve a few trips to old favorite places like Paris and London. In the coming years we hope to visit more environs more exotic to us.

As INFJs we come across as subtle extraverts but the fact is that we suddenly withdraw. I can get stuck in withdrawal mode that’s for sure. My hero Jimmy Carter is a Libra and an INFJ. It strikes me that he is still seen as ineffectual. He was the total opposite. He was preventative and nobody likes Chicken Little, who (weirdly) I now realize as I’m writing this was one of my favorite literary characters growing up.

Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
Copyright 2017 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Leo 28°

I feel that I’m once again getting down to the nitty gritty and that everything else is gravy. How to explain? Life has never felt less dramatic. I’m not sure exactly from what that is resulting. I guess I feel secure emotionally and financially and that I am, for the most part, representing myself in such a way that I feel proud. I feel detached, autonomous and not under any scrutiny. I don’t feel particularly creative perhaps, another reason why forcing me to write these Blagues every day can be a boon. I don’t feel like venturing to far forth. I want to stick with the same territory. Which is why I’m so happy with the trips coming up. I don’t need to go back to Maine as yet. I’m happy to explore the Cape this Fall, but that will be so fast and fleeting. And then away for three weeks. Not only are we staying in our old familar London neighborhood but also in our old familiar Paris one as well, near the Pantheon, in walking distance to Bikram Yoga Rive Gauche and the Luxembourg Gardens and our favorite, and I mean favorite, cafe, probably, of all time, where I plan to eat two meals a day, at the least, every day I’m there. You think I’m kidding but I’m not.

Meanwhile, however, and I’m glad it happens in this order, we have a costume party to attend in Edinburgh on a dystopian theme. I’m confused too. Besides going as a Zombie or some character in 1984, I suppose we could come up with something original. But it’s hard to think costumes while traveling with a medium sized suitcase. One must be clever. I suppose I could just find some proletariat workers jumpsuits or some cast-off costuming from a Janet Jackson video, or do something vagule Mad Max ish. I don’t know. I have a few joke ideas up my sleeve that involve minimal baggage, real or emotional. Anyway that happens in the highlands of Scotland which will be bookended by nights at the Edinburgh Residences. There is quite a good pubby restaurant right in that area, a kind of basement grotto witchy pagan Scottish kind of place with a soupçon of Presbyterianism.

I do plan on being rather thinnish by the time the party rolls around; and then I plan on letting myself completely go. I jest (not really). But, from Edinburgh we will take train to London then Eurostar to Paris all in one day to arrive at our tiny flat in the fifth. Je cannot wait. Well I can. I have to be clear about what I’m taking with me and what I’m not taking with me. I have to have all of my 2018 Haute Astrology Books finished and designed and ready to go. I must also have any Christmas show we’re planning to do at Joe’s Pub all mapped out. We will return mid November to Boston to see Bridget Barkan, whom I’m producing perform at Oberon/American Repertory Theater—I first produce John Kelly in September—as party of an expanded series, now in its third year, that I do there. Which is quite fun, I must say. So we return mid November meaning I should probably have the new Christmas show mapped out if not before, than while, I’m away. If we have a magazine feature to write, as well, I will write that before I go away, between end September to end October.

I know I have to start working on my own solo show this year. And my musicianship and improvisational talent. I think about that time I wrote about here, year one, of the Cosmic Blague, about playing the piano at The Bell Caffe. I have quite a bit of story now, here, under my belt. Several thousand screenplays probably. We will one day unpack it all. But for now I have some entrepreneurial plans to hatch and hatch them I will.

Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
Copyright 2017 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Leo 27°

I want to stay very close to the bone today and rather close to home. My day entails driving into Provincetown and putting up posters and circulating postcards with the wrong information on it. But never mind. I will do this in the afternoon, now as I have other things that have invaded my morning plans. Like talking to the “manager” (I think he’s an accountant) of the first ever individual to break a contract.

That conversation was okay. I sort of knew the guy. Anyway didn’t feel like going to Provincetown, the weather is too iffy. Went into town for the daily pound of fish and fresh vegetable. Really nothing as grand as this place in summer. Well there are other things but this is pretty good. I do love the open ocean and I do love the beaches on Cape Cod. There’s nothing like them anywhere really. So I’ll have to come up with a formula for keeping a strong foothold here. I might just look around for another year-round rental when the time comes. I’m in such a groove here I really am. And in just a matter of hours Stella will be finished with school and we’ll really be on the same page, working together, other than with clients, for the first time in a long time.

We’re going to take a trip. First we’ll go to Boston for a couple nights. Then we’ll hang out in Provincetown for my birthday. Then we head to New York later that week to stay at the Marleton while Stella does her show at Dixon Place. Then back to Wellfleet for Oyster Fest and then off we go to London, with a side trip to Suffolk, Edinburgh and Paris. We’re going to stay at the Portobello Hotel in our old Notting Hill hood. The Cow is still in operation. I wonder if it’s still good. But anyway, that whole area is such a treat to walk around in. We’re going to have such fun there after spending a long weekend in the countryside with close friends, we can see clients and meet on our creative business projects at the Portobello. I definitely need a whole new wardbrobe, but not before I shed a little weight.

On that score I have put us on a diet after our calories debaucle in Maine. So we are eating salad and salmon for lunch everyday, pretty much, and different variations on a celery-soup theme at night. My body is currently playing chicken with me, refusing to show weight loss on the scale, but my clothes are already fitting better and my face is no longer a fully inflated red rubber ball, though still only slightly deflated. It’s all of a piece: This sense of gearing up for something—for preparing for ones good. I’m readying myself for the rentrée, and I do have quite a lot of city hopping to do. For this I must go shoe shopping, which I will, in New York, in October. That’s going to be a bit of indulge. I deserve it that’s for sure. That and weekly massages. But it’s all coming I can feel it.

Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*

Copyright 2017 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2017 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox