Taurus 17° (May 6)

I’m going to write for exactly ten minutes because I have to catch a train today from NYC back to Boston, well Dedham, actually where we’ve parked our car. All I can think about is lying down and watching RuPaul, Game of Thrones and Barry. We will likely pick up a piece of fish, an avocado and a box of salad and that will be dinner. These last several days in New York have been exhilirating and exhausting in equal measure. We are so grateful to have stayed mainly at our friends’ house, though we did stay at the Jane Hotel last night, which was very quiet, and from where I am currently writing this. Laurie Litchford’s name was really Jane. I just realized that. Oh well. Anyway…yesterday morning as we were readying to head to Dover Street Market to meet A., I was saying to S. that, if we decide to work with Barneys New York again, I forgot/reminded myself that we not only did product events with their stores in NYC and LA before but we launched our first book with them, Simon Doonan designer the windows and al that. Simon also endorsed the book on it’s back jacket. We walked in the pouring rain from Washington Street to Thirtieth and Lex and sat down at Rose’s Bakery and I blurted all this out to A. No sooner had I done so when Jonathan Adler (Simon Doonan’s husband) walked in with a friend! It keeps happening folks! The synchronicities! Anyway we had a cheery reunion and Jonathan’s mot du jour is now genteel. Last time we saw Jonathan was probably after we came back from working at Wallpaper* in London when we went down to his studio and he met us barefoot covered in clay, fresh from his potter’s wheel. (I always wondered if that wasn’t a little staged, and I actually hope it was because it was an innocent and vivid display. And anyway Jonathan is a Leo so he likes to be found in process, like Tom Sawyer white washing a fence.) At that time his mot du jour was cute. Like: “Isn’t American cute?” Which is what he actually said to us about our impressions on being back from the UK. To this day we say “isn’t America cute?”, a lot, but nowadays, mostly, ironically, cuz shit is anything than cute lately.

After lunch—spicey lentil soup and panisse with tapenade—we headed to the Park Avenue Armory for the TEFAF show. The first thing I thought was it was a fancy version of any kind of fair, the last one I attended being the LA Book Fair in 2013 which is where I last saw Jack Pierson. First we saw Richard Green had a booth with Pissaros and Renoirs. We know him through his wife and her twin sister so we said hello. A. knew the folks at Hemmerle. We were already saying how everything was genteel, picking up on Adler’s expression in a joking way of bonding as one does when one is arrested at the age of (a) fourteen (year-old girl), as we all are. And then who did we behold but, yep, Jack Pierson, looking rather shaky and delicate, being led around by a fellow we believe to be his steady boyfriend. I took the opportunity to break the five year old ice and I followed and said: Jack. He turned around not displeased to see me. We each asked if the other was well with our own special intent. And we both said yes very and that was that. I think I touched his face spontaneously. We will never be the close friends that we were; and obviously something has altered in his life. I can only say I truly hope he is well and just had a sprained ankle or something and I send him every amount of love and peace.

We breezed through Barneys then headed downtown to grab our stuff from R&R’s and headed over to check in at the Jane Street Hotel. The place is creepy but it was fine for one night. R. was already there at a memorial service in the ballroom and the other R. was heading over to meet us as we left the hotel. We tried getting into via Carota but ended up at Buvette. We had a lovely liquid trip through Bandol and conversation was lively and mostly in output mode. We went back to R&R’s and had a little night cap and I ticked the dog’s tummy for an hour on end. The television in the room didn’t work so we planned to get a little off the hotel price; this morning we had a couple of coffees in the restaurant off the lobby which used to be Gitane which was great and now is something called Old Rose which is not. We got ourselves some Sweet Greens and headed up to Penn Station. In the cab I was thinking I should contact Caitlin who lives in Portland as I’ll be there next week. I have yet to read her book but I have the pamplet for the book on me. I get to the station and open my email and I have a note from her sending me a link to a comedian who does bits about the star signs. Another synchronicity. We eat our lunch in the station and then get in line for the train, herded by the porter that performs a comedy act of his own, and has been doing so for decades. In line behind us a woman says “you look so familiar to me” to S. We zero in on the fact that she is Maud, a jewelry designer and one time client who lives on Beacon Hill. Another sign that we are threading through and all is a cosmic go. And now here I am on the Acela. S.’s seat doesn’t work. The tray table won’t come up and her seat won’t recline. She doesn’t care but I’m beside myself as I often am over things like this. It drives me absolutely bonkers. And now I’m going to get back to other work!

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

Taurus 15° (May 5)

Okay so picking up from where we left off yesterday, today being Sunday. On Friday night, after A. left, S. and I went over to Chelsea Market and picked up some Miznom to bring back and eat. We were overstimulated by the strange phenomena of the day and we stayed up talking till midnight. I had asked S. who, if any entity was behind the star incident, who would it have been (having an answer myself ready). She said Laurie and that was exactly what I was thinking. Our friend Laurie died of cancer a month after her thirtieth birthday. It is to her that Sextrologyis dedicated. Through her we met Rob Weisbach who originally bought the book (although his imprint at Morrow was dissolved when Harper Collins bought Morrow and he left before our book was published). Laurie died a decade before, but we stayed close with Rob.

Laurie wrote an unfinished novel which is hinged (see the Dior story from yesterday) on a character who finds a penny on the street and the story unfolds from there—in her manuscript she taped an actual Penny. We have the unfinished manuscript in our possession as her boyfriend, Peter, who took care of her till the end, gave it to us. In the novel there is a couple, inspired by us, who buy a farm. In 1998 we bought a property on Cape Cod that was called Mimosa Farm. IN the first week there we went to the local bookshop and Laurie’s best friend from her creative writing masters program at Binghamton, who we only met once at Laurie’s funeral, had moved to the same town and opened a book shop. That was cosmic kismet enough, no? It really doesn’t end there. It continues. A few years ago S. did a solo show at Joe’s Pub and while backstage waiting to go on she silently, secretly dedicated the show to Laurie. Peter, whom we hadn’t seen in over a decade, was on his way to the train for East Hampton; and suddenly stopped in his tracks. He had seen on Facebook or somewhere that S. was doing a show, and he was overwhelmed by the sudden need to ditch his Hamptons plan and to beeline down to Joe’s Pub. Imagine S.’s reaction when she saw he was in the audience, after dedicating the show to Laurie. So Friday night we spoke all about this the two of us and went over the entire timeline of Laurie’s illness and, S. thinks and I agree, processed the whole thing for the first time in twenty five years. Because it was twenty five years ago.

Yesterday we woke up had breakfast and we were meant to meet Alice at 1030 at Ted Muhling but we checked and the shop didn’t open till later. So we decided we would meet at 1130 instead at de Vera on Howard Street. Fine. We were early and kipped into Rick Owen (A. was also apparently early and was browsing around Open Ceremony). We went into de Vera and had a momentary misunderstanding and snit so I decided to go back outside. The shop is amazing but it has some heavy energy and I think it was messing with me. So I just gave us both a little space. I actually walked around the full city block and came back to the side of the shop–through the window I could see A. and S. were looking at jewels. I sat on one of those water valve things under my umbrella as it was spitting. I was probably sitting there for a minute before I heard “Oh my god.” And, will wonders never cease this weekend, it was Peter! with his daughter Praise (who is twelve and we’ve never met her since we’ve only seen Peter that one time at Joe’s Pub in, like, at least twenty years) and with him was another Rob, not Weisbach but Birnbach whom we hadn’t seen since Laurie’s funeral. Can you imagine the shock. I told Peter through hugs and kisses and welling eyes that we had spent the entire night speaking about him to which he was like: Naaah. I said you’ll see. We went into de Vera (which means “of the truth”) and S. started nearly shouting no, no, no, no, as she rushed toward Peter and hugged him, then Praise then Rob. It was too much. We filled A. in and she was blown away. Turns out Peter knows de Vera—they had had dinner together. So it wasn’t as if he was just walking by. He was headed to de Vera at the exact same time, practically as we planned to arrive. Can You. Dig. It?

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

Taurus 14° (May 4)

Of all the cosmic things that can, would or do happen, yesterday likely proviced the most cosmic of occurances to date in the present writing of this Blague (there have been some freaky experiences from the past that I’ve recalled here as well). The day started out innocently enough. We had gone to L’Artusi for a late anniversary celebration on Thursday evening so we were slow to emerge yesterday but decided that we would stick together and tackle chores and hit marks together. First off, I must say, that the two topics I brought up en route here on the train the other day were: Nicky and Sean from Tea & Sympathy; and my lamenting about Pastis and wondering what happened to it. So last things first: Stella informs me that Pastis is actually reopening early May (hello, when is it now) on Gansevoort Street, literally around the corner as we are on Washington between Gansevoort and Horatio. So we walked by there en route to the bank yesterday morning and saw they are nearly (but not quite) open. Fine. We also spotted a place to grab some lunch salads later. We headed to the bank to send a wire transfer to the UK, then strolled onto Thirteenth Street to see if those criminals were there. They were. I peeked into the shop which wasn’t yet open. We decided as we headed down Greenwich Avenue to send them good wishes despite the pain they once caused us. As we strolled by Tea & Sympathy I casually peered in as best I could against the glare slowing but not stopping; still I could see a figure with wooly hair crouch down and point to outstrecthed arms and index fingers at us with a twisted expression that just screamed: Oy!

Out rushed Nicky whom we likely haven’t seen in a decade in the flesh. And it was as if not a moment had passed in all these years since we were a regular fixture on the block and in the shop. She quickly caught us up on the news of which I’ve had some inkling—about maybe having to close shop due to the greedy owner of the building, well, buildings, plural that make up that side of Greenwich Avenue from Twelfth to Thirteenth. It was a vivid lament as is warranted. We bemoaned the loss of the culture in which we lived in this neighborhood dating back to the late eighties and all through the nineties well into the aughts. And then the conversation swung the complete other way with Nicky rattling off jokes just as she always did back in the day. Then Sean appeared and Nicky exited and he told us all about their house up state and showed us pictures. We said we had to go. And he countered before you do have you heard…I said I think we have and listed the punchlines Nicky had just delivered. Oh, right, he said but I’ve got some more. The jokes were all incredibly funny. We then went our merry way down to our favorite wine shop on Washington south of Morton. In and out. Then back up Washington to the flat when all of a sudden the thing happened…..

We were going to be meeting our designer and so we were need to crack a conundrum in the creative process, an impasse to which we were coming time and again, hopefully before seeing her. The operative word was star, in that we were discussing how to employ the shape vis a vis our own logo which is also something of a star, or what we call the aster. Anyway I don’t want to give anything away. All you need to know is we were conversationally on the star…when…up the street as we were walking we saw what appeared to be a white balloon in the shape of a five-pointed star hovering in the air in the middle of the street, such that I thought it must be attached with a string to a car or a street sign; but it started to float up and fly around and we suddenly realized it wasn’t a balloon at all. As we approached in descended and pretty much landed out our feet. We stared at it, just a foot away, but still couldn’t make out what it was or of what it was made. I reached out to touch it and realized it was foam, bubbles, like that which would have escaped from a washing machine overloaded with detergent. And then it lifted into the air again and flew past us hovering high above the middle of the street before flying past third, fourth floor windows and disappearing over a roof top. It was nothing short of weirdly miraculous. Thankfully S. took a video of the whole thing.

Our designer, A.,who is over from London, arrived and we chit-chatted and started in on the work at hand. And we said to her we have this miraculous thing we have to show you. And she said, “oh, did you have a Christian Dior moment?” And for some reason we just let that comment sail by like a star made of soap suds. I don’t know why we didn’t question what she exactly meant by that. So we worked and talked and got to the impasse we two had gotten to, catching her up in thought to that point, so we could tackle it together and unknot the problem so to make it into an opporunity, when we said. Okay, so, this is where we were in our conversation today walking on Washington Street so we broke out the video that S. took. And A. immediately said what is that white star? It was so obviously a star that even from far away, looking into a tiny iPhone screen, it was a perfect five-pointer. She was as astonished as we were. And then she said well really that was a Christian Dior moment. And we were finally like wait, what does that mean.

Apparently Christian Dior was deciding whether or not to start his own eponymous company and he was walking along the sidewalk when suddenly out of nowhere a brass or bronze star landed at his feet on the sidewalk, le trottoir. He took it as a sign that yes he should start his own eponymous collection and thus did. I will stop there.

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

Taurus 14° (May 3)

Yesterday really was a mad rush to get everything done before we headed to NYC. I managed to catch up on all the financial aspects of the festival for the first quarter and beyond. I am just finishing up a final report to upload to the system for our grant we received. I managed to get all the outreach to returning sponsors drafted. I have another conversation scheduled with Sue at Mass MoCA. I have all our logos in place and I have the website primed to recieve donor visitations this year. On the train, I sent a whole bunch of pleas out and woke up this morning to a goodly amount already raised which is just fantastic. The way things go, I’ve learned, these sorts of early signs can be fleeting. This year I really have to push the agenda and, within the next couple of days, decisions will have to be made about casting and I will get my invoices in and I will make magic, people. This new year will be all about new talent and whatever support the oldies will provide!

I have to look at my schedule and decide when Marthe Svenjørd can start her Instagram magic and reach out to all hotels, inns, restaurants, etc that I have and have not reached out to in the past to become a sponsor. I can write a note to folks after my morning Blague time in May. I’m trying to write this as I watch Joe Scarborough, who I think might be something of a drunk as well as just an Aries blow hard. Anyway I am set up to receive and I will have to ask Brad about East End Market, Cafe Heaven and the entire business landscape at this point in Provincetown. I will ask Mark if he wants to give personally. I will have to be clever about how I send things out to folks in May. In June I plan to keep my bicycle on the premises of the Provincetown Inn and drive in the old Jalopy with the Afterglow signage on top, and spend the day roaming around giving out cards and drumming up business in the afternoon, while having spent the morning writing my show which will be priority one during those 30 days. I will know the enitre roster of the festival by July 1 and if I plan to do my own show well that’s what I’m going to do. If not I will find a someone to slot in. By the same token I could write my show and do it as the finale if I can’t find someone fabulous. I need to circle back to Vivian and see if she is game for this year. And I will ask Taylor because why not. I will also talk to the entire roster of folks and see if I can’t persuade them to do one big benefit for Afterglow Festival, maybe early July? or in September, just after Afterglow and try to fill the room to the brim at Joe’s and see if we can get some love that way.

I have to write to my Advisory Board. Here is what I’ll say:

We are pleased as punch to announce that our friend, colleague and talented theater director Ellie Heyman has joined Afterglow’s Advisory Board. Over the years, Ellie has directed several artists’ pieces that have premiered or been staged at Afterglow (and she will continue to do so this coming September). We couldn’t be more thrilled!

Here at AF HQ we have begun cranking up the machinery once again for Year Nine! We are nearing the end of casting the festival, and fundraising pleas are going out to would-be new and returning sponsors. You might say we are in a third wave of Afterglow artists as we began our journey with well-established performers (more than a few who make up this body;) and a second wave of emerging artists have since gone on to greater successes on stage and in film and television; and now we will be champion a new crop of artists many of whom will be unknown to our audiences. But that has always been the mission!

With the Afterglow Festival, and our successful Afterglow@Oberon series at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge (entering year five!), audiences have learned to trust our curation and eagerly attend shows by performers they’ve probably never heard of. Despite ending that sentence with a preposition it makes the point: Afterglow carves out sacred stage space for artists, in Provincetown—the birthplace of modern American theater and the century-old incubator for live performance—the only way it can be done, which is via a non-profit entity such as ours.

Your presence on and participation as members of Afterglow’s Advisory Board is invaluable. And we are so grateful that you lend your names and provide whatever guidance or input you may to the festival. There is no doubt in our collective mind that our being here nine years since our start is in large part due to your loving support. So thank you.

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

Taurus 12° (May 2)

I’ll be on the train to NYC today, so the first thing I can do a bit of writing of next year’s H.A. books. And also begin the process of coming through all my Blague entries to date to annote and earmark and archive. Four years and four months of daily writing. There is surely a lot of blather in there but I will be mining for nuggets of goodness nonetheless. It has been a very productive week thus far, lots of moving myriad needles, but I can already feel the demons of procrastination gnawing at my psyche with their usual temptations and it’s all I can do not to give them even the tiniest quarter. As a compromise in this solution I have instituted a practice that I call productinating, which is the doing of other tasks which also require time and intention but not so much brain power—or not of the certain kind—that gives rise to whatever form of ADD or ADHD or whatever they’re going to inevitably call it to which I fall victim. So this is actually that. You are witnessing the productinating in process. There is so much to look forward to and that is a result of so much hard work I have already put into what might some day result in reward (which is an illusion—not least of all because, right now, the boon of my existence has been to get the proper resources in order so to create opportunity which is actually going to entail years-long hard work…as it is right now I am gearing up to do some very hard work just to maybe get the go ahead to do some way more heavy lifting, which will last for years and years, before I even get to that illusory place). That needn’t have made sense to you because it does to me and it comes as a relief to say it.

I had a dream last night that I was at a Roches concert and it was Maggie Roche’s birthday so we were all to gather backstage, afterward, to have a little party. The venue was a cross between the old Bottom Line and Joe’s Pub, back in the day, before they made renovations. I awoke at 5:20 and had opened my laptop by 5:40 and the first thing on my FB feed was a posting by Suzzy Roche talking about how she once wrote Mother Teresa to ask for permission to perform a Christmas show and send the proceeds to her and her charity. She didn’t hear back but performed the show anyway. Then months and months later a response from Mother Teresa arrived, delivered without a stamp!!! I could read snippets only of the letter on FB but it talked about the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing and it was very thankful and offered blessings and was signed by M.T.  Then, somehow, Suzzy lost the letter and has been looking for it down through the years—the letter was dated 1988—and had never found it and it haunted her seemingly. And then just the other day Suzzy entered her apartment and there on the floor of her living room was what looked like a folded piece of paper which she almost picked up and absent-mindedly threw away. But she looked at it and—yes, you guessed it—it was the very letter.

I immediately posted about my dream and then directly seeing her post. I mentioned in my comment to her that it was Maggie’s birthday in my dream and in that moment I “realized” (or at least this was my flash) that Maggie, who left us over a year ago, must have had a hand in the rematerialization of that cherished letter from Calcutta all those years ago. Though it’s not my cosmic experience primarily, I felt it perfectly fit one of the original criteria of this Cosmic Blague, which was, is, to relate experiences of inexplicable nature along with the Universe’s “jokes on you/us all.” This is no joke (a phrase I can’t not hear in my brain as spoken by Kate McKinnon in an Australian accent from the movie Rough Night). If you haven’t seen that film, by the way: You should.  Anyway there was a sense of faith being restored upon waking today. What I didn’t tell Suzzy (because she’d think I’m a weirdo) is that she and her sisters have factored into my dreams for decades. I have been a huge fan ever since I first heard the record in my college freshman-year dorm. And I saw them at least a dozen times over the years in various forms and am friendly with Terre whom I love and admire and respect deeply. I don’t know Suzzy personally. The sisters occupy different spheres. But Suzzy is a Libra like me. Terre is the opposite sign of Aries, which isn’t all that opposite to Libra at all. That was the most pleasurable bit of productinating I have ever done! Now to get back to the actual work at hand. Wish me luck 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