Leo 13° (August 4)

We took the one o’clock ferry from the dock in Boston and settled in. I decided I would do something I never do which was to have a hot dog and some beer on the boat. It is the end of holiday officially after all and when I get back on the Cape I will also get back on my diet…with a few days transition to drink the lovely wine I’ve brought with me. Still, the amount of work and requisite focus I need to do it is going to require a forgoing of all such earthy delights as one allows during off times. We got to the bus easily although my bags are so heavy and the driver was terrible; in fact, he seemed to want to be a bit reckless such that the passengers flung about. And (this makes no sense) there are of course no seat belts on that wonky local bus. We got home in one piece in any case and S. went to town to pick up some sushi. Neither one of us want to cook. I got most of my unpacking accomplished. I know I’ve wrenched my back and I also know that, now that I can get sick, I will get sick, having nursed a bad cold the whole time I was away. I’m also aware that I’m about to get very down (depressed); the truth is I hate being here. Even though it’s so-called paradise and there is supposedly every reason in the world to love being in so idyllic a setting, the truth is that this is still this country which is frought with hate and rage and I feel sick when I am here. At this point in my life I need to make some real effort toward exit strategy, which is going to entail figuring out a way to be autonomous with my work. I don’t care if one definition of being insane is feeling everyone else is—everyone else is. With really no exceptions. We live in a venal country where the topic of money is frontloaded in every situation and robs us of life. Right now I’m tempted to Google: how to join a monastery and disappear and never be heard from again.

Years ago, when we first moved to Provincetown, a friend with three initials came to visit us. This sycophantic new musical friend whose initials are B. H. was already all over us but when he realized we had “cool” or “fame-ish” friends he was so sickeningly blatant in his attempts to stepping stone us to them. Well twelve years later, guess what? It worked. And it’s only one example of this. And who is to blame? The narcissist who needs this kind of blatant worship or the sycophant who will throw their whole self at people for their ironic own gain. I want to part of any of this equation. The first time B.H. met our friend he offered them cocaine. Our friend was so appalled and grossed out by the guy. Then a few years later B.H. offered our friend heroin and they took it. Thank god that didn’t turn into a drug problem and instead just an anecdote in a performance; but the fact remains that I am certainly not friends myself with B.H. for many reasons, including not just this on incident of drug pushing, nor am I really that close with my friend for whom I’ve lost a great deal of respect. We are always the conduit (read stepping stone) and we are always the ones who are so easily discarded; and I have struggled with the pain of this for a very long time. But I have to say it no longer has an emotional hold on me. I am following the signs and they keep leading me to a very definitive off-ramp.

I need to let go of the Brian situation too. I have tried for months and months to collaborate with him but it has been a total joke. I will find out too that the MassMoCA people have sent me a letter. They will be getting one in return. That S.K. character is one of the world’s worst I’ve ever encountered in all my many years producing shows. I definitely need to stick to the University circuit, I think, because that’s where the money is. I know that’s what I will need to do this coming year as well. I can hire a surrogate to intro the shows in Boston, maybe someone younger and cooler than myself at this point anyway. Why not hire an assistant artistic director, someone (anyone) who can be my proxy. I need to start thinking about myself and my needs. I am always putting others first and it hasn’t much contributed to my own well-being. People (artists especially) have come to take advantage of the fact. Once upon a time people were so grateful for the opportunity to perform in Provincetown and thought it amazing how much we offered them. Now that same offer is seemed like the least one can do by a new generation of artist-ingrates. Sorry but there it is. I am going to have to figure out a plan for more solo success here. I cannot rely on everything being a shared experience. I have completely cut myself off from my own singular path in an effort to frontload shared experience.

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

Leo 12° (August 3)

Only slept from ten to two then I was up until five. S. went out to grab some coffees while I did a little writing. Then again for some overnight oats and a salad we could have at break time, as we have two clients (among our faves) today. I’m still in something of a fog and am feeling that same old anxiety I feel in my “real life”returning. I know there is a way to combat it and I will do so for sure. It will take today and tomorrow to get my brain completely around what is required over the next five weeks. I’m not in terrible shape but I could be in a much better position. It really has a lot to do with coordination or even, you might say, choreography. I am on my way. I just need some rest. When the first appointment leaves I will have a little of that corn and cabbage salad. Then when the second appointment is through we will underachieve and walk over to Select and have some oysters and crudo and cauliflower and grilled octopus and beet salad with some nice wine and then go for a little walk—to Eataly for some stuff to have in the room this evening. I will be asleep before long and then awake again at 11am and stay up until 3—this jet lag is really kicking my butt right now.

Tomorrow I will wake early and we will go to Flour for breakfast and I’ll continue to Insta on my private but also get the ball rolling on the festival social media as well. There are a great many moving parts as I keep saying but I have to project such a positive attitude now if we are going to bring this baby home. And home we shall bring it. I will take a little walk and the go back to Eataly and get some of that pricey white La Stoppa. It will be a transition (and that means TV) night. We might think about getting a car from Ptown but if not the bus will surely do I need to get four singles for that. S. came back from her appointment and I was all about the Afterglow (and still am). I shoved all my stuff into suitcases which wasn’t the easiest thing to do in the end; and took a shower and just put my dirty clothes back on. We left the room and went down for what was a bit of an emotional goodbye to Arthur. He has been such a bright light in my life for so long now it is hard to imagine being at the Eliot without him. S. has his information and I’m sure we’ll stay in touch. I did grab his hands and say “son we will miss you” and I think he understand fully the depth of feeling in this expression. All the usual P-town fixtures are pretty much null to me at this point. That DD is a thief and so blatant a one I refuse to disguise his name here. Karmically, I can and will do nothing, and I feel such compassion because I know it will not end well for him. I feel that way about EM too. And to a lesser degree LR. These people are all horrible and that is the truth. And so-called best friends have been demoted to vague aquaintances. I’m sick to death of the sycophants. I have to stop focusing on the detractors and look to those who celebrate. I will need to assume that resonance. It is the truth. I am among the brightest lights for a reason. Those who don’t appreciate me cannot be allowed access to me; that has been my fatal flaw—trying to be liked—which was set up by dynamics in my family, namely, with my tyrrannical father and sister who is the worse person on the planet and little wonder shares the same birthday with the imposter preseident.  The kind people that I meet, the political journalists and teachers and chefs and directors react to S. and me the way people should.

I  know that in order to be happy I have to forgo everything. Everyone must go. All the glam and the stuff and the privilege. I have tried to tell the people what and how I feel but my words are lost on them. I will be making a major sacrifice because I will not be the one who ends up with everything. Yet I do have it all. I am not good with glut. I only feel truly myself when in Spartan mode; and because of that I can enjoy all the excess when it is happening. I have to have my “familiars”, my touch stones.

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

Leo 11° (August 2)

Yesterday does feel like something of a dream having gone into Rome, and hour by car, each, there and back (after doing the same thing the night before to eat at La Pergola (and now this monring we will head into Rome for the third time in a span of thirty-six hours. I don’t know how people feel rested. Well I do, actually. It’s because they don’t really have the same stresses as we do. I’m sure they have their own which are just as real and challenging; and, truly, I don’t want anybody else’s problems but my own really. I could easily never have white wine again, nearly, for the rest of my life. Although the first two whites at La Pergola the other night were probably some of the best wines I have ever had in my entire lifetime. Anyway, the alarm went off. I definitely kept S. up a bit. I tried to go sleep in the salon but when I did so I realized that everyone was still up and I could here J. and others still in the throes of conversation. So it wasn’t really an option. The alarm went off at four and S. was already in the bathroom; then what I thought was a second alarm went off, but it was the crew calling. We finished packing, got a couple Americanos brought up to us; then we were ready to go. J. and N. got up to say goodbye which they really didn’t have to do. Otherwise it was Al, Alex and Paula and the taxi driver packing our bags into the trunk and we were off. It was a shorter drive than suspected this morning and check in was relatively painless. The lounge always makes things easier; however they really weren’t set up and they weren’t in the least apologetic about that. I am not a big BA fan to be honest. I’m on the plane and there is this total blowhard sitting behind me talking none too interesting about gods know what.

The reset needs to be the real point of all of this. I was saying to S. that, in light of the people who now populate my life, I can’t for the life of me understand why I allowed myself to be surrounded by such judgy people in the past. Why would I do that. Both J.D.s fall into this category. Who the fuck are they. I am so done giving a shit about what folks like this feel or do. There are still forty days left until festival and I am determined to bring in a thousand dollars a day. I also need to frontload the work needing doing on the Margie Ella Jacket side of things. I have big fish to fry and I am going to fry it. We are going to create an excellent product. We are going to get this podcast recorded, up and running. If we are indeed in a nearly six weeks scenario, I’m also going to spend the next fornight reducing because who needs all this extra, not I. In a week’s time, too, is the deposition. And I have to make sure that we sail through that without any stress. The people on this plane are talking so loud behind me it’s really getting annoying. I sent Harrison a note this morning asking him to reserve us a table for tonight. I love the way our cozy little world works, I really do. It would be ideal if I could take a little walk this afternoon to clear my head. I will try to make that happen, perhaps, if S. takes a little nap. I could use a little something like that today for sure. The last time I had a moment to stroll around on my own for an hour was in London which was more like half an hour really. We will be solving the living situation soon in any case and I will be able to enjoy some more city time in the coming year. I am capable of pulling out all stops these next several weeks for sure, giving it my all being something I owe to myself really. I’ll never know why certain people stopped donating to the cause. I may never know the reason why. I can only hope that I have other, new, means of making it all come together.

There is this totally annoying family behind me on this plane from Rome to London. They are taking up two full rows, both sides, and they keep changing places and pulling on my seat and then, when there are kids in it, they kick the back of it. I am trying not to lose my cool because that always ends badly but they need to fuck the fuck off. I can only hope they are reading this.

I dream a world and I’m going to make it happen. I am going to be ever more expansive and go for the jugular when it comes to this fundraising jazz. I see no good reason why not to pull out all stops on that score and all the others. We have an opportunity now to make some real magic and I have to use the festival work as a springboard, actually for the larger Glow work. We are met at the exit from the plane by Jenny who looks like what I’d imagine J. will look like in twenty years. She used to work for the airline and knows everybody. Obviously retired now, she plays this kind of role as an expeditor. We really couldn’t have negotiated this transition without her. She powered us through every point and still we had time to hit the lounge for twenty minutes. She has two grown children a teacher and a doctor. She had her gallbladder removed and wishes she hadn’t. She has fairly thinning hair dyed blondy red. She cured herself of a hernia and of acid reflux by doing a daily morning ritual of drinking water and jumping up and down as if on a trampoline. Anyway she took us to another terminal and all the way to the gate where the giant plane was loading with a mass of people. She recognized the voice of the person at the gate and said something to the effect of: Ah, that’s my friend, we are going to go right through. Then she parted the people like the red sea and we sailed through and were one of the first people to board the plane.

The flight was the best ever of our lives probably. The food was great. I watched the same movie over and over—Tolkien—between naps, meals, drinks; and the staff were very kind and there was no amount of snark that can characterize B.A.. We sailed right through customs and passport control, though I barely remember it I was so tired and wined and dined. We called a Lyft and this incredible young Chinese guy showed up with all sorts of paraphenalia in his car along with candies and cookies from his homeland. It was a wonderful ride. Then back at the Eliot, our home away from home, we napped for nearly four hours before going downstairs to Uni for dinner. The only bummer, and it is a miniscule one, is that we were seated at the one table I despise in the restaurant—the one smack against a column with an overhead light that feels a little too much like an interrogation lamp. There was obviously some kind of sports event in town because there were lots of overindulged children in the restaurant—allowed to drum with their chopsticks for instance—so I moved to sit on the banquette with S. and just had cocktails with my tuna tartare (she had salmon sashimi) then we shared brussel sprouts, fried rice with shrimp, wagu dumplings. They brought us himachi and some kind of sorbet-y dessert. And some saki based cocktails. S. had ordered bottle of Riesling but I never even had any. Fell asleep to PBS American Masters about Ursula K. Leguin.

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

Leo 10° (August 1)

Needless to say, sleeping wasn’t a feature. S. had to go to the top deck to get some peace. It’s nigh on nine o’clock now and I’ve been up for a couple hours getting some work done. Somehow I have to pack and have breakfast and be in the car within the next two hours.

We did just that and vanned it into Rome where we all went our separate ways—it felt like the great race. S. and I immediately found the Hotel Locarno and went to the desk to ask for a map. We got a lunch spot recommendation which was called La Buca di Ripetta. She had caccio e pepe and I had carbonara followed by a salad and saltimbocca with a delicious red from Puglia. It was amazing. After coffees we walked to the Villa Borghese or rather in that direction. It was obvious that we were not going to be able to walk the distance in the heat to actually get to the museum so we just strolled down around and got a little lost and a little sunstroked and ultimately found our way back to the hotel where we had some sparkling water and I had a proper negroni. Then we met back up with the peeps and came back to the boat. I fell asleep on the bus. I love Rome and we will definitely come back and spend a full month. We lucked out in terms of hotel and restaurant and we will pick up there where we left off. People seemed not to do very much with their time but shop and drink. We ended up walking four miles after lunch. I got back to my computer and Finley had wrote to say that you have to pre-book the Villa Borghese so good thing we didn’t try to go there. Dowd could have mentioned that. But it doesn’t matter. I’m pretty much all picaked now and might actually take another cool shower before drinks just so I feel refreshed. The plan is to definitely hit the hay early tonight no doubt about it. I’m not caught up on work by any stretch of the imagination but I’m not in such terrible shape either. My biggest fear is the baggage not arriving again. But I’ll get over that.

We had such a lovely time talking to J.T. again today and we really should do something together at some point I feel. We talked about “burp” and “musical chairs” and he had interesting slash funny things to say about  the kinds of projects he gets offered. J. had a really interesting way of articulating the expressoin of creativity; the whole lake and shed thing was really, really helpful. Especially the notion of trusting the lake to yield. I had come down stairs on the early side and the stews had made such an effort to set up the salon for canapés but I saw everyone was outside sitting and so I opened the door and did a little disapproving act which met with laughter I wasn’t expecting. It was quite soupy out I must say. Folks were already cocktailing it. I had taken a cool shower when I arrived back on the boat, but I was tempted to take another one. As a compromise I ran a face cloth under cool water and put it on my head to bring my temperature down. I do feel I had a little bit of sun stroke from our scorching walk through the park at Villa Borghese. I had two in quick succession and then it was time for dinner, which was a warm lobster salad with baby carrots, beets, sunchokes and peas; dessert was a cheese cake supposedly only it didn’t have the slightest resemblance to one. The night was getting on and we had to get up at four o’clock aas our car was coming at five; still none of us really wanted to go to sleep. We sort of played a game based on the fact that I am Erika Badu’s opposite type. It was kind of fun to go down a list of who was whose opposite. D. still seemed a bit shaken that I had a mutual friend in Austin with J.T.; I didn’t quite understand what that was about until I did: I guess there was a romantic involvement of sorts at some point. That would explain the sudden shift in tone. Anyway we pulled the plug around midnight and thus were destined to only get a couple hours shut eye if that. Meanwhile the last week as been one late night after another while waking, still, quite early. I know it sounds cliché but I’m going to need a vacation from my vaction for sure.

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