Month: March 2019 (page 1 of 4)

Paradoxical Signpost

Aries 5° (March 26)

 

A lot on my mind today. We have two regular clients in the afternoon and it’s always fun and best to see them in person. I will spend the morning getting my head around the quick trip to NYC and what should be accomplished there. The day will end with a lazy elevator down to the restaurant in the building. No strain or stress. Just focus on the work at hand which is way more than enough. I have books on the brain as we sort out the agent situation. After leaving William Morris Endeavor several years ago I swore off approaching or even thinking about agents, and we focused solely on the parts of our consultancy and brand where we had decision-making power; and since then I’ve said to  myself (and aloud to one person) that if I were to work with an agent again that they would have to already know and like our work.

Recently a friend of whom I am very fond decided to make a third-act career change and become an agent as he was familiar and friends with folks who headed an agency—an agency that one of us (not me) had been eyeballing for some time and which, I later learned, had an agent whom (not me) had reached out to contact with no response back which is so typical. Our friend thought of an idea he suggested to his agency for a book on our general subject; and though it was an interesting notion it really wasn’t on brand and I had said what it was I wanted to pursue in book form, next, and that I had this giant proposal that I needed to work through with someone. As this career path is new to my friend and because I’m sure his focus is really on getting something to catch on his end I don’t think the idea we had on deck was something he was super excited about. And then out of the blue another friend said: you should work with so and so, an agent a friend of hers was signed with. An introduction was made and that desired response came back that she knew our work and was a fan and desired to meet us. Funny how the thing you say you’re holding out for can take years to materialize.

And there would be another synchronicity: We had a meeting with a top publisher at a house that would be perfect for us back in September when we were staying at the Lowell. The publisher said they did a book with these witches we know from Salem. It will turn out that the publisher we meet tomorrow will be the representation for this and other books of the same ilk. (But I don’t know that today.) We will have a lovely meal at Uni which is always such a treat and will watch a documentary on the women of Palestine and get some semblance of sleep before heading off in the early a.m.

 

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

 

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

À La Moules

Aries 4° (March 25)

 

Notre petit coin at All Too Human in Boston

Notre petit coin at All Too Human in Boston

We embark on a wee trip today, first to Boston, then to New York, then upstate to visit a friend whose new house we have yet to see. We have an event this evening in Boston at this terribly chic concept store where we will do “quick-n-dirty” astrology readings for the invitees. I actually enjoy these sorts of events as I find it very good exercise for our astrological minds, having to come up with a profile for person after person who sits with us for a few minutes each. I’m feeling this general uptick in interest in the Starsky + Cox brand—we seem to have become something of a “classic” for readers, especially, within the astrological community. There was a recent article in New York magazine where they asked a slew of well-known astrologers to name their top favorite books and we made it onto the list, chosen by our peers, which is extra special. Recently the site Refinery 29 “interviewed” us (and this piece is meant to appear this week). And I just did a search to see if it was posted yet and saw an article from last March pop up in the Guardian (UK) that was about how millenials are turning to astrology. We are not mentioned in the piece per se; however at the very end they list “the (astrological) app”, and “the (astrological) podcast”, and so forth and we, or rather our book Sextrology is labelled “the book” which is fairly fantastic. Anyway it’s just a vibe but I feel that there is a new momentum, resurgence, happening in our astrological world. I mean, we have plans on that score which are self-started but I’m feeling external forces rallying too—I suppose there is a connection between the two. At least that is a long-held belief and one which we proliferate. It would seem I am writing this entry to day in real-time installments—but am I? Hmmmm.

It was an easy drive up from olde Cape Cod with zero traffic and only a one or too zany Boston drivers almost crashing into us which is fewer than usual. It’s nice to have the Longfellow bridge open again so we can zip right across to Cambridge where I typically drop S. for her usual appointment there and then I sneak via Norfolk Street back to Massachusetts Avenue to cross the bridge and swing around to the Eliot aka home away from home (or one of them anyway). I have a great many ideas brewing in any case and, as with cooking, driving always inspires the going off of cartoon lightbulbs above my head, only, unlike when cooking, I can’t exactly jot anything down; so I just hope that I can remember all that’s coming up during this drive. The room was ready when I got there which is always a great boon and I packed in such a rush this morning, taking more than I need (and probably not enough in some cases) that I look forward to seeing exactly what I ended up chucking into my baggage. It will be a long night and I must pace myself today. I don’t have time for a proper meal before the event so I’m hoping that there will be some lovely finger food.

There was no food, finger or otherwise at the event. The only thing one might consume is champagne and watermelon juice, both of which will send my spiking and only one of which I will sip sparingly over the course of the evening. I wonder if you can guess for which I opted. We were early and I was wearing the only one “outfit” that I can squeeze into after this rather sedintary winter. Unlike the great S. I have not used the dark months wisely when it comes to the management of one’s weight. Oh well, I am a master illusionist at hiding the one area where all my hibernative intake takes the hit, working proportions via short square cashmere tee shirts and a buttonless, cardiganesque Margiela jacket (so-called) with its distinct non-label label designed to spark notice in the fashionisti that will assemble there, starting with the shopboys, one of whom said “I love your blazer” within the first five minutes of being in the store. Is the word blazer now literally back in fashion? It has been fifteen years at least since I even remotely resembled someone who might have a clue as to what was in vogue.

We saw a great many people all in quick succession and I was struck by how young and successful this particular succession was. It was mostly women which is typical, but there were young business owners and artists and designers and photographers and influencers and it made me realize how much Boston has changed. In our generation anyone with such ambitions wouldn’t have stayed in beantown but have high-tailed it to New York City or, perhaps, Los Angeles the second they finished school. But this group of kids have chosen to stay put here and, in our now virtual workplace, are making waves from this provincial northern perch. It cooked up some creative food for thought that’s for sure. A few of our own clients came to catch our eye, which was pretty much the extent of the interaction we could have with them as there was a queue of folk to flop down in front of us onto a pink cushioned footstool flaked with fuzzy pink pillows. All these prop elements had tags on them which, because I wasn’t thinking, I assumed meant they were for sale; it later dawned on me that they were tags from another store–Target, Marshalls, Nordstrom Rack—where they were likely purchased just hours ago as set pieces for the event and the should-beremoval of the tags was lost in the last minute shuffle. Thinking Edina Monsoon leaving the entire production of a fashion show to the last minute, day of. How fashion. To be fair I think the lovely owner of the shop, who has immaculate taste and has really created something special in Boston where nothing like this any longer exists (since Louis Boston shut down), would have just returned from a whirlwind buying trip in Paris and probably Milan. Anyway the event was triumphant and she did a great job. A tenth (what she offered clients as a discount) was being donated to my non-profit Glow (“A Moveable Festival”) and I know that even the clients of ours that showed made some pricey purchases, so I look forward to seeing what kind of donation will come our way.

We stayed later than expected as people had waited so long to see us. Many people took cards from us and I have a feeling we might have a few new clients coming to see us in the weeks again which would be wonderful. Nearly nine o’clock and thank goodness we made a reservation at La Voille because I was feeling pretty faded walking back up Newbury Street—nothing some moules frîtes couldn’t cure!

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

 

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

How Many de Havilands?

Aries 3° (March 24)

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I was supposed to have known what I was going to say before I sat down. Typically I write early in the day before the bric-o-brac of quotidien life takes it’s toll in distraction; and especially on a day like today, the day before embarking on a trip for which I have neither packed nor prepared. And now we might be singing day is done and I’m just now here, after hitting myriad marks, multiple places, lastly in the kitchen, where, as is always the case, I get my best ideas and breakthroughs, mini or large. I like the word stout because it sounds like what it is. It’s onomatopoetic and that’s always tops with me. And I did get a newsflash while sautéeing oninion and brussel sprouts with chili flakes, anchovy and spanish almonds that I had the perfect entrée into today’s Blague, which has been on my mind writing since I hadn’t done this morning. Yet somehow in the journey up the stairs to my office so-called I lost that entry point and, I know myself, I’m not going to remember what it was. Correction: I”m not going to try to remember what it was. There’s little point in so doing.

Meanwhile, yeah, I’m heading into Boston tomorrow for an event at this terribly chic shop called All Too Human in the Back Bay. It’s the only real fashion and concept store in town and we are doing these “quick-n-dirty” readings for customers who get a discount that gets donated to the newer leg of my non-profit, simply called Glow (tagline: “A Moveable Festival”) that is hinged on creating a circuit (starting) in New England where we can present our “family of artists” so that these talents have more regular gigs in the region and we find and elevate audiences in places where our progressive performers have never gone before. I’m into it! Sorry it’s hard to concentrate because of the (non-) findings of the Mueller probe, also so-called. Oy. One must now completely not give a flying fuck.

I am now in reggae heaven listening to the radio. It strikes me that the men singing, song after song, seem to be so in love with god with whiffs of narcissism; that is to say, knowing how misogynistic the culture is, the primary relationship with men (at least how I interpret their song) is with (what maybe they don’t realize is their own) higher power. Ja.Women are relegated in the culture and one has to wonder why. I think the interpretation of sex by the male has been one of domination because they enter in; when the position of the female is, as the great receptor, the prime mover who needs a second sex as fertilizer. Even a no bull-shit man isn’t wont to define himself as such. Still there is something so special about good reggae that makes it the best mood music in the world. I could really sink deep into miasma of it—very good Pisces word, miasma. I will have to use that later when I’m revisiting some Pisces material I’m working on. Just one of those pin-in-that thoughts that arise and one writes with regularity in this forum.

From Boston we will continue on to New York this week, where professional meetings await but, also, where some long overdue social time will be had. Coincidentally a Belgian friend from S’s Dries Van Noten days just emailed her to say any chance you’ll be in town as she and her Italian husband will be visiting without their children and could we possible. Well, yes, indeed we can. We will be staying at our home away from home there and it has a marvelous downstairs lobby bar and restaurant that gets very busy; but we can reserve a space I imagine. And, oh, the Belgian connection. That does bring me back to the top of today’s Blague, reminding me what I was going to lead with: In a sleepless night last night I wanted to turn on the TV. Let me begin again: I’m a sucker for overblown historical drama TV series, the likes of which appear on Starz—”White Princess”, “White Queen”, all the ancient white people, “Pillars of the Earth” and anything with a Merlin or a Louis or a Henry in it—but I’ve run out (and I draw the line at something like Spartacus because it’s really just softcore gay male (or straight women?) porn.

But I did happen upon something called Maximillian which is about the eponymous son of the Holy Roman Emporer and his relationship to Marie de Bourgogne. Anyway it is in French and German and Flemish with English subtitles and so I can watch it with the volume on one or even zero (though I do require at least hint of sound—that goes for porn, too) so as to not disturb the one lying next to me as I binge from two to five a.m. Much of it is set in Ghent, the seat of Marie’s duchy, and the sets are perfectly that breed of ornate, gothic, minutely detailed architecture that one encounters in Flanders and I was brought back to our days in Antwerp at the summation of our youth feeling and sowing our wild Belgian oats. And I was musing on the people we met and thinking about all the friends S brought into our lives from her time at Dries. And then voila, out of the blue, this person wrote this same day, someone we haven’t seen in near exactly twenty years, to say that she will be in NYC then same few days we shall be this week which I love.

The funny thing about time: Olivia de Haviland is 102. So it is really just five Olivia de Havilands ago that, in the 1450s, Maxmillian and Marie were born. And it’s only a score and twenty Olivia de Havilands ago since the advent of the hippy prince of peace. Perspective people.

 

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

 

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Eighteen and Up

Aries 2° (March 23)

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So I went to get my hair cut first thing in the morning which is the only way I can since my barber is open from 8-11 o’clock, only, five mornings a week. The early-bird crowd gets there at 7:45 or even 7:30 sometimes so they can be first in line—the haircutter extraordinaire takes his time—and the early-bird crowd is impatient and can get cranky and besides, like me, they’ve already been up for hours. As a tiny cosmic joke (French: blague) Neil Young’s Old Man was playing as I entered today, as I always do, with notebook or other would-be work in hand to keep me busy during the longer waits. Today there was just a guy in the chair and nobody waiting so it was an unusually speedy affair. I love this place, and the man in charge, and I leave at least a fifty percent tip each time which still means I pay twenty five dollars for a haircut that is the best I’ve ever had. Sometimes he gets phonecalls while I’m in the chair and speaks in an elegant Cuban Spanish to loved ones while looking at me apologetically in the mirror; but he never rushes off the phone either. Time is not this man’s master. And if he has no clients by ten o’clock he is out of there, in the warmer months, heading to the beach to go fishing, presumably for dinner. I have often fantasized about secretly getting a barber’s license and then spending time here sweeping up for free, trying to get my biorhythms to align with his so that when I am in my (I think late) eighties, I might have a steady cash income and every afternoon off to, well, probably not fish but who knows…maybe.

One of the aims of this daily Blague is to illuminate the extraordinary in the ordinary. (When people say life is boring or banal I wonder to what they are comparing it.) It’s all about perspective and surprising moments alone in places such as this with people such as the master barber, going at his signature pace, sweeping up himself between clients who are divided into two distincet categories: those like me who come prepared to work or make some notes or journal or meditate; and those who fidget and audibly sigh and moan or leave without a word. The times that has happened when I’m there, the master will shoot me a smiley look in the mirror as if to say “can you believe this guy” combined with “his loss” and “some people will never understand.” I understand. I love being here. We greet each other when I arrive. We shake hands when its time for me to take the chair. He never asks “so what do you want to do”, so if you don’t want to do the same thing he always does it’s on you to speak up. I can say I want something between a trim and a cut and for some reason that makes him laugh but not in a snarky way. Leon Russell, The Moody Blues, Journey and an otherwise mixed bag of “classic rock” will play on the radio (it used to be a current pop station with “funny” DJs and terribly overproduced current music with tons of trilling and no sustained notes) and I’m grateful for the solid musical choice. There are signs (zoom in on the photo) that tell you all you need to know for this or the next time, like “please come with clean hair.” Taped onto the counter in front of you, or rather diagonal to you—he keeps you at an agle—is his name written in magic marker onto brown craft paper that is taped down with the masking variety.

One time a chatty customer who was waiting while I was in the chair realized he might have been too verbose and apologized saying, “sorry I don’t want to distract you,” to which the master responded, “I can cut his hair with my eyes closed,” which sent a multiple message that I was a regular, that he was a pro (who could not be distracted) and, mostly, that he had an intimate relationship with my head with its double cow-licks and other idiosyncracies. Angled as one is forty-five degrees counter-clockwise from the mirror, one can sometimes stare out the window in a silent daze. Here there is no compulsion to talk, a rarity in this converted master-slave relationship; the experience is never lacking conversation for us; we like each other all the more because neither of us needs to fill the air with speak which, in this setting, is always so male-posturing and staccato. I will hear other clients ask pointy or rhetorical questions to which he will respond with polite economy. But we don’t need to pretend he and I. If I think about it it makes me laugh just how rough he can be. Maybe rough is the wrong word. Let’s just say he is completely unapologetic in the way that he pushes my head down or side to side, like a parent tiger keeping its young in a desired position, primally letting it be known who, exactly, is the boss in this relationship.

I had been going there for years before I remembered that my paternal grandfather, with to whom I had the most wafer-thin exposure (never mind anything resembling a relationship), was a barber. I remember getting my first haircut ever in his shop in downtown Jersey City in the 1960s, being plopped into the child’s “chair” which was a carved wooden horse of sorts, like a Medici version of the kind of plastic horsey you could ride outside the Food Fair by dropping a thin dime in the pay-mechanism, or the ones on springs you could jolt back and forth on at day camp or at some random park, some of them having lost their tension, causing you to flop too far to and fro and thus, undesirably, also, side to side. I don’t remember getting my hair cut at my grandfather’s shop more than once or twice because I didn’t; my tiny grandfather who was fresh off the boat from Calabria was immaculately tidy and wore a blue (I think) barber coat and had a back room—sort of an apartment really—where I’d rather play. (I have not thought of this since then, until now.) There was a narrow dark hallway leading back from the shop into a room that in my recollection was a sort of kitchen. I only found out this past year from a first cousin of mine, who is always the bearer of bad news, that it was something of a front and that the whole family were each, in their full- or part-time ways, bookies.

A world away, here, is this present operation. A formica and linoleum palace of blissful peace and silent understanding. The cape is unsnapped at the neck, the talcum scented brush does its usual thing, the large oblong hand mirror is stationed behind me with a smile that says I can’t say anything but “perfect(o)” or, preferably, probably, just nod while making the acceptable male version of a yummy sound. Today I said perfect with an almost Oprah affection. These thoughts of acceptability are in my own head. I could probably preen and pucker my lips in the mirror and say “oooh, fabulous” and he wouldn’t bat an eye. Instead his would smile at me as they do each time I enter and depart.

 

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

 

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Teeing Up

Aries 1° (March 22)

 

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You really must read the previous Blague (if you haven’t) before you delve into this one because I am in some ways picking up here where I left off there; also there is a certain energetic set up, I feel, where no matter what I put down here today (and trust me I don’t know where this is going) I literally just wrote the previous one (ironically starting this new astrological year a little late) and so they might end up being, energetically, part of a piece. To be fair, as you’ll see from the previous entry, I had some thinking to do about how I got to the point of embarking on writing a fifth year of this daily Blague, including how I started the first year exploring the Sabian Symbols (the corresponding link to the first year Blague on the Sabian theme will be provided below, all year long). So today is really day two of year five of the Cosmic Blague, and the previous entry also tells you everything you need to know to understand what this thing is, has been, at various intervals, over the past four years, while I try to give focus to what this new year should bring.

I had one thought of reading ten previous Blagues a day which means I would nearly read a full year’s entries in about five weeks a year. This means that it would take about twenty weeks—five months— to catch up to where we are now, today, and then another fortnight to catch up in total. The reason for this being that: Comes a time when I have to have even a vague archival understanding of the body of text four-plus years can create; and to sort of earmark the many entries for various written purposes, heading into the future. There is a wealth of material (along with a lot of slog and drivel) accumulated now in this most Cosmic Blague. And I wouldn’t be (literally) getting the most out of it If weren’t to mind and mine it at some point. This next half a year seems as good a time as any and, here’s the rub, it should inspire the daily writing of the new Blagues moving forward. The gods help us all.

I have to work these things through you see (as little Edie as that might sound).

I remember back in the early 1980s I went to see a “Music and Lecture by Robert Fripp” at the Paradise on Comm. Ave. in Boston. He was already playing music when you walked in, electric guitar, and recording it. Then he would play back the recording and play over it and record that. I don’t know how many times he looped around adding layers, but surely several. I get it. I do want to write more material every day and yet it is so important to know what I’ve said before, what might be material for books, performance, lecture or entrepreneurial projects. I know I recorded near every thought. So it makes sense to take inventory of, and to react to and thread through the last four years for the riches and the ditches, if you will. I’m sure there are many stories upon which I can improve. And you’re likely not going to read every Blague so someone has to do it.

That said, I want get to this leg of the process for at least till the end of the month. Which was the goal: To finish up loose ends before month’s end. Then starting April 1, start this creative taking of stock, here, with the Blague, but also just, of myself, in general. At the same time, I will begin to institute some daily rituals and such in regard to promoting this pet project, something I’ve yet to do in all the last four years. Otherwise I’m drafting some books and casting some performance festivals and series and otherwise seeking to express my dual nature as thespian priest, blending performance with certain piety of a decidedly pagan variety. Promises, promises. That’s the trick you see: to creat the right kind of structure to inspire the output of your creativity, some scaffolding on which to build a real or metaphoric (as ere the twain shall meet) body of work. Tall orders always in my world; but something about me has to be towering.

 

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague list the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance) while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

 

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Step By Zero

Aries 0° (March 21)

 

 

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Happy First Full Day of Spring (Astrological New Year’s Day). Today begins the fifth year of my writing this daily Blague. The fifth year—can you believe it? Today I want to lead with the feeling of having high expectations (of self and others) and standards for relationships.

I feel myself a symbol of the season as I have a sense of emerging from some kind of gestative fog (mutable-water sign of Pisces) sparking into life in this (cardinal-fire sign of Aries and this..) advent of spring, so aptly named. I am reminded today of the origins of all things and particularly this Blague which has served so many purposes and gone through endless permutations. over the years. And I need to explain some of the past whilst making some projections, affirmations, straight-up plans for this Blague moving forward. To address the past history of this in order to move more mindfully into the future (and to more consciously invite you in.

The past: The Cosmic Blague started in 2015 and was that year hinged on the Sabian Symbols which are expressions of each of the 360° of the astrological year—your time of birth falls within one of these  degrees, which is a whole other thing. It’s the Cosmic Flav-a-flav. Then next two years 2016-18 I didn’t revisit the first year, then just this past year I included, with each new day, a link to the first year’s associative link for that Sabian Symbol “day” (realize there are five or six days more than degrees in the year cycle).

A hominym for this social very media platform, blagueactually means joke in French, so the creative challenge I set for myself here was to explore all possible ways  the cosmic joke manifests; I first wanted to raccount  my own comic/cosmic experiences, the seemingly too synchronistic occurances in life that punctuate it with power and divine order—extraordinary-story telling; secondarily, I wanted to channel my thoughts on how the universe is constantly taking the piss out of us—observational humor on a cosmic theme I suppose; and hopefully a combination of both things. That was the plan. But you can’t really wake up and necessarily do that everyday. So it was very helpful to use the Sabian Symbols as a go-to and perhaps rely on my musings on them to trigger all such entries as would satisfy my creative goals in this. I wanted it to be personal but in a formal way.

But after the first year, when I didn’t have the Sabian Symbols to rely on for creative fodder, or any words at all sometime, I either successfully managed to dredge up a story or two per week that satisfied my artistic mission, otherwise I began to start saying any old shit. It became a journal which is a word to use in this context to lend the endeavor an air of dignity. But that didn’t last long, the noble journal wasn’t always sustainable., and soon it became a diary for me to vent, a croakie book, declarations of hopes and aspirations and whole designs for living and accomplishing the (very Libran) ridiculous number of idealized tasks I set for myself. To that end, the Blague often doubled as a workshop drawing board for anything else I might have to write that day, and I would “throw up” a first draft of something that I would otherwise polish, elsewhere, for publication or distribution.

I didn’t always manage or choose to write everyday. Maybe I was busy doing other things? I would let some days stack up and then spend half a Saturday catching up. And then in 2017 something happened that derailed me and I let whole gulfs go by before sitting down to fill in the blanks—a major project at one point during an upset. Then forget it. You never knew what might characterize a Cosmic Blague entry. Bizarre takes on to-do lists, Dada manifestos assembled from notebooks and a million torn-paper “post-its” I hade made over the previous two years, every idea in my cranial firmament I had plucked from the ether for later purpose.( And in so doing I was also archiving all these ideas and starry notions. You see I never lost my starry notions along the way.

And so the Blague truly began giving me life. Because I was so committed to catching up I got used to showing up again. Not to say I don’t let a few go by (why even now I’m writing today’s Blague tomorrow—not a very functional way of starting this new turn around the wheel but never mind. I’m going to right now write “tomorrow”‘s Blague. And I’ll pick up exactly where I left off, so if you haven’t read this entry before reading the next one—you’ve me to blame—you’ve got it backwards.

Oh, remember: I am resuming the practice I initiated last year of including year one’s associative Blague entry which was pinioned to the Sabian Symbols associated with the degrees of the Zodiac. Mind you, the degree point for that Blague entry will be one higher than that in today’s Blague entry . The reason for that is that: the degree point for today is the starting point of a degree-period (0°-1° for instance) and the Sabian number for that is 1, so if we were to give you the degree number of 0°, that would pertain to the previous degree-period, not the one in which we are currently, this day, living.

 

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague list the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance) while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

 

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Ciao Baby

Pisces 29° (March 20)

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By day’s end today will begin another turn around the wheel and enter the sign of Aries. It’s Equinox, bitches. And there will also be a Libra Supermoon which means I have more power than you do. Seriously. (Not really). Client day extraordinaire and yet another day of reinforcing the feeling of loving what we do. I am very much internally ritualizing this new start; and, to that end, I am consciously tying up loose ends on the previous year. This is even more a time of change for me to mark than the (winter) Solstice is; and certainly more than the celebrated New Year’s Eve and Day which I always find alarming and depressing, respectively. Still not every marker between the past and the future serves as a clear break. There are lingering bits of information and some blurred lines to define and clean up. Such will be the transition here as I more into my fifth year of writing this daily Blague.

I was free-associating on the following and some point in the recent past and thought it might make for some meandering reading:

The first sign of Aries is all about form (Taurus, which follows Aries, is about content). You can’t have the latter without the former. Form, former. Oh never mind.

So what is the formation of your day. Never mind what is the formation of yourself. We talked about Aries being the framework the other day, now we go a bit further. Take a look at your life. What form does your experience take. How is your experience constructed. Do you have room for what you want—literally and figuratively?

Every so often (and I know I’m not alone in this) I get the urge to create a curriculum for myself. As children we didn’t have much say in how our experience was structured. In grade school we were ushered through different subjects with no say; in high school we were herded from room to room with practically no say. After school sports or piano lessons we didn’t know we wanted or not, for the most part.

In college we had choice but learned that if we didn’t now self-impose these types of structuring we would likely fail. I pretty much got all straight As in college but my one year study abroad—a first year program that wasn’t set up properly coupled with the fact I never went to class but instead traveled around the whole time—I failed Cubism, okay?—completely tanked my four-year average to the point, now, that I feel applying to grad schools would be a rough road to hoe. All these years later!

Form. Structure. The simplest ones work best. First comes the hard wood of the tree then the blossoms then the fruits. I think of Aries as the hard wood. Also as the hardware on which all the other signs run as software. This is why the sign rules the physical body. Your body must be fit and healthy to be an instrument for all the other aspects of self that the ensuing signs express. So it’s the same with circumstance. The physical body of our experience must be fit, sound and simple. The form of our life must be akin to the well-toned body of a warrior. We can not lead a flabby l ife and expect to be happy.

Look at the Aries people around you. (People of a sign are the best “living” examples we have of any sign’s energy.) Those born under the sign of the Ram are ascetic by nature. They don’t have a lot of aptly named stuff. Even if they have every material want, they try to keep it real. Many an Aries person, especially those with a big bank roll, tend to espouse Eastern philosophies or disciplines that stress the fact that materiality is fleeting. Unlike other signs, Aries people tend to struggle with too much fat in their diet, metaphorically speaking of lifestyle.

I don’t know what to do, always with all these random blocks of information that are embedded within the posts of this Blague. I will have to think about that moving forward. At some point I will have to read back, say, ten Blagues a day, dating back to the beginning so that I can make some notes on archiving—like a little legend of what needs to be flagged and for what possible purpose—what possibly finished work might evolve out of these seed beds of potential first drafts. I will ask myself (and answer myself) on this subject in the coming days. (Just another example of how it is these blurry transitions in the Blague, year on year, need clarifying to myself, first, and then to you all second.)

 

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree of the Sabian Symbol may be higher than the one listed here  as the symbols cluminate in the next degree. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 days. 

 

Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Jumble

Pisces 28° (March 19)

 

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I’m lost in a binge of The Man in the High Castle. I know it’s not great (neither to be bingeing nor is the program all that), but there is something unavoidable about it that’s hard to explain. And I know that, before the ritualization I have planned for the Equinox, I might require this final form of escape. I think I really pushed my luck yesterday and I have to remember there are severe consequences for letting my guard slip. There is a certain vigilance that I must, by rights, live with and by every day of my existence. And it is something which, if I choose not to institutionalize it, must be personalized with persistent attention. It’s just too easy when not in the right frame of mind to make bad decisions and the added stresses of situations (albeit, again, of my choosing) can warp ones resolve and understanding.

I am grateful for the fortune but I cannot waste this grace. I think that is a promise I can make to myself. Confidence, after all is confiding in yourself. I just (again choose to) do so publically. I always want to qualify that by saying something akin to “but nobody here here really reading” but I’ve learned that’s not necessarily true and I have made the mistake of assuming anonymity and have gotten sloppy in not disguising certain people, places and things which might put noses (mostly those stuck up ) out of joint. Let’s just say we don’t need to give people excuses not to like us; because they will take it, making the symptom the cause, and lay all the blame for their dog-eat-doggedness upon. you if you let them. Don’t let them. Oh I also watched that HBO documentary on “the inventor” Elizabeth Holmes. And so I tweeted: Is it me or do you think that Elizabeth Holmes—see HBO’s “The Inventor” had a weird obsession with @MiraSorvino ‘s Romy character?? The voice, the hair, the black “business-woman’s” outfit??…and really is “I invented the Edison” that much different from “I invented Post-Its”??

Anyway I harkened back to this a-musing memory bliss today:

I love Julia Child. Who doesn’t, I know, but she has always held a special fascination for me. When I was a waiter in 1986 at the Harvest in Harvard Square, she and her husband Paul would come in for lunch. You would here “Bonjour Roger” in that booming unmistakeable tenor as she greeted the tiny alcoholic nicotine sodden  maitre d’ whose name she properly prounced in French, ro-jay. Paul, a curled shrimp of a man who had already suffered his series of small strokes, followed hist towering wife into the dining room where she would always order the same thing: a burger, rare, no bun. She is a Leo and I’ve often remarked on the similarity between her choice of lunch and the bloody meat one would throw into a lion cage.

Before the book and movies about her during the last decades, I always thought she would make a great subject for a work of art. I won’t go any further into that thought lest I actually end up pursuing this instinct myself. At the very least I think she and her husband would make great costumes for Stella and me, come Halloween. But, obviously, there’s more to it. Here was a couple who worked together (even though you didn’t know he was behind the scenes), who had no kids and were rather late bloomers. They were also obsessed with France and had an affinity for Cambridge, Massachusetts and Maine. All of this I can relate to.

She described herself “as the cat looking at the king” when she was a student of Le Cordon Bleu—what can be more Leo an expression than that. And what person from any other sign could turn what was for her a personal passion into an entire movement, changing the way Americans cooked, forever. What other sign could see a chef superstar embodied in the form of a fifties something woman. I’m happy I had the few opportunities I did to wait on Mrs. Child whose name couldn’t be more fitting for someone who lived life with a childlike exuberance and who gave so much to the world.

 

 

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree of the Sabian Symbol may be higher than the one listed here  as the symbols cluminate in the next degree. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 days. 

 

Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Open Sesame Seeds

Pisces 27° (March 18)

 

I feel like I’ve been flung off of a carousel run amok. But it was one I wanted to get off of so I’m grateful for the fact despite feeling a bit bruised by the violence of the landing. A typicaly Monday in many ways awaits. Yet I’m finding myself feeling anxious over silly things like getting cars fixed or other banalities of life. I don’t know about you, reader, but for me that is a sign of something underlying.

There comes a day, after a sleepless night, when the anxieties of life morph into purpose. The impetus to express what that is inevitably fades in the attempt. There is the retreating regret that it has taken fifty some odd years for some semblance of revelation to occur. It is alchemical, the shift. And it must be total.

I’ve always suspected that life couldn’t be lived in half measures, though I see others do so, seemingly succesfully, all the time.

For me, on this day marking [nearly] the first third of a year past my [redacted] birthday, I can be filled with recrimination for any so-called waste of time I caused or I can see it as an accumulation of fuel to further myself and “sin no more.” And just plan to live longer.

I glean in myself a dual purpose. A most original but heretofore largely ignored, save in spurts, dedication to the theatre; and one devoted to the continually unfolding discovery of my spiritual self. I enjoy the fact that stage and sacred space, theater and temple, performance and priesthood are historically and culturally linked, once one and the same.

Synchronicity is symptomatic support by the universe of ones realization and pursuit of their individual spark of purpose. [And though I fear I might not be on the same page, now, as I was at the start of this paragraph, I might find that I am, ultimately, with even wider geometric dimensions.]

It is important to be reminded of the connection of the theater-temple connection, to be sure, but I must now also include a new entrepreneurial spirit, and one of aesthetic and design, that has also been ignored. Just as any interest in the written word has been. So now we have more four-pointed intersectionality between the stage and the mage, the artist and the commercialist. All of which is coming together in quite a unique way.

I thus feel that I am zeroing in on something more complex but no less essential a design for living. And it is rather through the elimination of obstacles, not the adding of new thoughts and influences, that the doors of my future self-perception, from this present perspection, shall open.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree of the Sabian Symbol may be higher than the one listed here  as the symbols cluminate in the next degree. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 days. 

 

Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Getting Plowed

Pisces 26° (March 17)

 

I find myself waking up in Boston on Saint Patrick’s Day, gods help me. The trick is to get out of here before a mob of paradiers make it impossible. The good news is: the parade happens in South Boston (imaginitvely a/k/a “Southie”) so looks like we’ll be okay leaving. I think I have some kind of inflammation thing happening in my ears as my balance feels a bit off—I am chaulking this up to the pendulum swings in temperature; surely it is not do to any lack of sleep as I have been conscious only little more than half the time this weekend. I got an clover emoji from an Italian cousin who was/ is obsessed with my late mother of Irish descent. I love these people from your past who never took a moment to give a hoot about you all the while you were growing up (in this case we are talking from adolescence up til now) only to do so from a decidedly nariccistic approach. An emoji to say that I still obsess over your mom for my own sick and selfish reasons—no thanks. Some relationships are just too long on the shelf to rekindle. That might sound selfish of me but I’m afraid it is how I feel. Anyway I want to revist something I’ve previously written to how I feel about it.:

Since as long as I can remember we have always called synchronicity: sign posts. A string of which one wants to characterize the majority of ones circumstance if possible. Sign posts are instant communion with the infinite/eternity. They say you’re on the right track, keep going. We’re always try to help clients open up to them. The night before last Penny Arcade participated in an art show and addressed the audience, touching on the subject of synchronicity. And how ones life should be all about it. The way she deliverd it was hysterical. I can only paraphrase: something like: If you’re not experiencing synchronicity with some regularity by the time you’re fifty you’re pretty much fucked. I could feel Stella mentally raising the roof and silently offering amen, as I was. So yesterday I found a journal from 1992 and thereabouts. I hadn’t opened it since. I had decided in the morning I was “going to do nothing all day” which, I find, can be a recipe for a) doing more than usual; while b) letting things happen to you. So I sat and went through this journal for a few hours and of course there were phrases I still write in journals. You know those. When you’re like, holy merde, I was saying that to myself all the way back then?…

The physical journal itself came to me in a magical way. It was an empty book, blank white paper, hard red cover; the only thing in it was a title of sorts cursively written on the overleaf, in pencil—to be revealed at a later date!—and the price of 50¢ in the same pencilled hand. I wrote in it during a difficult chapter in all our lives. So many of the loving lights in our lives were being snuffed out by AIDS. The pain was palpable. And its all over the journal. As is synchronicity which suffused my Sunday, yesterday. In real time the journal chronicled the years I worked with Tony Randall’s National Actors Theater. My first year I was an intern and something of a costume-changing live prop in the Feydeau farce, A Little Hotel on the Side, at the Belasco. The second year I understudied three parts, and went on for a run in one of them, in The Seagull, directed by Marshall Mason, at the Lyceum. Marshall was also directing Larry Kramer’s The Destiny of Me, downtown, starring John Cameron Mitchell. Marshall took us all to see it and that’s how I first met JCM.

The journal is this double helix of absolute elation at being on Broadway as a young actor in New York and of utter sadness, fear, dread, horror and surpassing anger. Finding and reading this journal brought me right back. As did, of course, Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart last night on HBO. Then an actor I hadn’t seen since she too appeared in A Little Hotel on the Side: Daniele Ferland, who was already a great actress as a teen when I first met her, appeared in the cast. More Proustian waves. And, in a particularly poignant moment in The Normal Heart, the mention of Wellfleet from whence I watched. Then Mad Men was waiting on demand. Robert Morse. That same Seagull year at NAT we performed a benefit for the company and I got to share the stage with that genius. I watch Mad Men religiously. But last night, as it began, I thought I’ve loved Robert Morse since I was a baby. (I remember thinking it was a weird-glorious synchronity meeting him at the time—but, as it was, I had been working on a Tony Randall impersonation at Gotham City improv when I first met him, so I wouldn’t say I was getting the feeling I was conjuring people to me, but I wasn’t going to discount the possibility either). So last night watching Mad Men I thought, I’m going to take to social networking today singing Robert Morse’s praises. And then a prescient flash. I have an inkling: this is going to Robert Morse’s episode. And so it was. And in such I way—I won’t spoil it—that makes the hair on the back of my beyond still stand on end. Yesterday was potent and affirming and fun…..

 

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree of the Sabian Symbol may be higher than the one listed here  as the symbols cluminate in the next degree. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 days. 

 

Typos happen—I don’t have time or an intern to edit.*
Copyright 2019 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2019 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

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