Scorpio 25° (November 17)

Back to yesterday: Well the train to New York was fine but upon arrival I can once again say I fucking hate it here. I don’t even lament “my New York” and the rest of the lamenteers who still live here and make art about how it isn’t the same should fucking leave just as I have. Taxi ride from hell and then we get to our hotel where we are paying full price for a suite and we are told “heads up” there is a wedding party in the next suite and they may be loud later. I was like well heads up we will be complaining then if there is noise that wakes us up. Which inspired the desk guy (manager?) who I’ve met before and me no like to cop an attitude. I quickly pointed out we have had problems in the past because they are always so understaffed so that when there is noise problem they don’t even have an extra person to come upstairs to check on the noise let alone fix it. And get this he says: Yeah we still have an understaffing problem so….So? So okay you pay the seven hundred dollars it costs to be here then you fucking moron. I’m so pissed right now I could spit. Then on top of it I’m made to feel that this is my fault. You know what fuck everyone. I’m sick to death of this shit. I suppose it’s okay to tell someone that is just checking in that there going to have a lousy night of no sleep and there will be nobody at the desk to help them out. Just checked out Yelp and this place gets totally trashed. Okay I got that all out of my system—shwoooooo—and now I can go on with some happy thoughts and plans. I only need to be bitter long enought o get this out of my system. Not that the crappy hotel manager was ever contrite. He is a dick and that is the long and short of it.

So I went downstairs for a cocktail once S. headed to her hair appointment. And I ate a ton of olives. Then I headed over to meet her for dinner at Hearth which was incredibly overrated and overpriced. It really is too bad. I mean it’s one thing that in this new gilded age things that used to be easy breezy and rather on the cheap, like grabbing a bite in the East Village, has turned into twenty-six dollar orders of meat balls, but it’s quite another that there is even less effort put into it. Back in the day you would show up at some restaurant and even if it was cheap and cheerful the hostess, say, would have a look and a healthy, reassuringly cool attitude. She wouldn’t be wearing a fleece pullover unironically as if she were working some NYU cafeteria. I find myself not even wanting to tip anymore just becuase nothing matches the prices and the service places has gotten, worse and worse, lazier and lazier. One morning here at the Marlton I had to ask three different servers for a side of honey. And everyone just seems to take it for granted they are going to receive big gratuities on their crappy service. Sorry but no. Anyway still on evening one: We had a little bit of friction at dinner because what happened but a run in with he whom I’ve offered referred to as the devin incarnate because he hasn’t not been. In full disclosure I reached out to him last to wish him well and get any suck karma, good or bad, off my side of the street. His response was “thanks for the sentiment” adding S. on the email in an effort, what?, to rat me out for writing him? Whatever queen.

So soon after sitting down to dinner S. tells me that she was walking past his shop(s) and looked in the window and there he was doing his usual futzing thing. Their eyes locked and he beckoned her in and, well, honestly I didn’t really pay much attention to her telling me what exctly transired except for the fact that he hugged her (twice) and I think she said he asked about me or something to that effect. I mean if he’s not schizophrenic I can tell you that the situation absolutely is. And all I’m left wonering is: would he have acted that way toward me if I had similarly been passing and took a glance into his fussy little window. Eek gads. Even if he was being nice and actually loving in the situation he still creates this dynamic of division in a sense. Just one more way he proves that he’s a psycho. If he would have hugged me the same and been all lovey dovey then why doesn’t he just write me a note saying he wants things to be kosher between us (because he doesn’t); yet he knows that S. will report back to me how he treated her; so, in effect, he wants me to know that he feels one way toward her but another toward me. And thus he wished to cause even further pain. And why? Because he is an asshole that’s why. Anyway, honestly, if the situation was reverse I would have given him the giner and walked on. But S. being the nice person that she is allowed herself to be drawn in; and she doesn’t think people are as evil as they are so she doesn’t realize that she was part of his manipulation. Which pissed me off even more.

We went to see David Mills after dinner as he was performing at Pangea. The show was just good but it isn’t one I would necessarily put on because it is a bit too understated, probably, for the festival. I really am loking for a little bit of pizzazz, actually. I ended up knocking a candle over and the wax went flying and ended up staining some of the nicer clothing items we were wearing which reallly is quite a bummer to be honest. The walk home was a bit brisk but it was pretty okay. There is just something depressing about being here I can’t quite put my finger on. I meanit’s very glomy and very dirty but not in a lovely old-school kind of way. It’s more or less just a dump at this point and the streets are filled with banks and drugstores and things that used to be there, scaffolding surrounding every other building, no glowy or even vaguely sparkly feel that one used to encounter strolling from block to block. It just seems deptressed on an irrevocable level. Like something that won’t really come back. Looking out from our hotel suite at what are some of the most expensive buildings on Lower Fifth, it looks like the windows, some of them filled with books and some with air conditioners left, carelessly, in place all winter long, year on year, are all about to just fall out like rotted teeth. They look as unhappy as their inhabitants.

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

Scorpio 24° (November 16)

Yesterday the day Ambassador Yovanovich sat for public hearing in the Congress with that asshole trying to intimidate her. The days must be numbered now. We can’t possibly allow this to go on. And there have to be at least half a dozen senators who will cross the aisle, even if it’s just because their constituents said they must—who cares, now, really, about those who won’t cross the aisle for the very reason their lousy constituents wouldn’t want them too. Good is slowly winning I feel. And I’m going to let that slow and steady momentum grow in my consciousness. We let go any plans that would have shackled us and as a result the day was long and spacious and we could pop in and out of the televised proceedings. I had started a vegetable soup the day before, and also home-made chicken stock, so we just put it together and let it gel during the day; lunch for S. was avocado toast with some tomatoes I pan-roasted, and I put said tomatoes together with sardines and cream cheese as a spread for my own toasty bite. All our meals were had in front of the telly today. Soup with Ari Melber and why not? Realized Will and Grace had been on and watched it holding our noses. Wow that show has sunk to an all-time low and I don’t think I’ll be tuning in for any more of that torture. It’s all about last ditch efforts to have kids and you know Will and Grace are going to parent together and it makes me want to puke. Do you hear me? Anyway, I spent the day writing and packing and fell asleep pretty exhausted rather early only to awken around three (big surprise) and I popped on the TV to see exactly what time it actually was and Smithereens was on TCM. Now I know this film was pivotal for S. back in the day but I think I only thought I knew it or had seen it; and if I had seen it, which is slightly familiar, I don’t remember any of it. I only watched a bit with the sound off before thankfully falling back to sleep. But what struck me was the following:

It was of it’s time. Now I know that sounds obvious but hear me out. It was made and set in 1982 and, though we associate the eighties with being the beginning of big shoulder pads and Wall Street and Alexis and Crystal, the fact is that, in 1982, New York (as the prime location not only of the film but of American consciousness at the time) was at its most burnt out. We think of the seventies as being burnt out but really it was just still burning. In 1982 New York was a shell of a former self and a raw scaffolding for what would be its new identity. In the film, the characters are living in a van in a parking lot surrounded by homeless people and burnt out buildings and everything, including advertisements for shows at Max’s Kansas City, was expressed in fresh grafitti. What was happening on screen might be a slightly exaggerated version of what was going on downtown but not too too much. Susan Seidelman was capturing the authenticity of the era in real time. People looked like the characters on screen. They smoked extinguished cigarette butts, they dove into diners where they would see a friend or acquaintance and quickly steal a bite of their burger, they wore converse hightops with miniskirts that cost pennies in thrift shops. As we did. It got me thinking: This was the last time a filmmaker caught on screen, in fictionalized form, a reality they were presently living—well, it was at least the last time a white person did. In the late eighties and nineties Spike Lee and John Singleton managed to show us slices of real life in real time, fictionalized though it was. Tell me what film you can think of since that time, though, when we are seeing the reality we are living staring back at us through film. Diane Arbus did it in photographs in the fifties and sixties; Joan Didion did it in the seventies (although she was writing essays from life, which doesn’t really count). Only a certain desolation and despair can be translated as such. Unless you labor under the delusion that your life in the West Village in the nineties was exactly like Friends or Sex and the City then I don’t think you have even a specious argument. Another thing: I hate Ryan Murphy. I’m sure I’d loath the person actually as much as I do his revisionist glamorization of horrific times. Paris is Burning was a documentary so it doesn’t count. But had there been a real scripted film at the time about people living life in New York City during that time, instead of a sanitized twenty-first century version thereof, that would have been more along the lines of what I was talking about.

Anyway we rose at six and left the house by nine to make a train from Dedham. These tablets are really chilling; although I did feel a certain wave of adrenalin attempt to make its way up through the miasma of my newly alchemically shifted self. Still it wasn’t nearly like what I have been coping with over the last couple of years with increasing intensity. We are headed to NYC and the Acela is much more relaxing than driving that is for shitting sure. It’s just after noon now and that means only a couple more hours to go. Part of me imagines I will take a nap when I get there, but, honestly by the time we check in and unpack I don’t see how that will be possible. Also I just realized that I forgot some things which (oy) I won’t mention. It’s not a big deal but it does sort of add to the dilemma if there were one. Which there needn’t be. So much of this stuff is made up in my mind in any case. I might do well to just lie down, set an alarm, and head out just in time for dinner and not have to stress any of this. I do have a habit of complicating things unnecessarily, that we know is very true. Meanwhile I’m sitting here on a train next to a boy who I think is a coder of some kind. He keeps writing impossible mathematcal looking equations. I can barely type in English. I have a giant to-do list, I may have mentioned, that I have to start plugging into my online calendar and/or daily planner. I’m sorry I don’t know how to code. Should I care that I can’t? Just got an invitation to a holiday dinner—it popped across my screen—but it isn’t something I’m going to be able to make. We have to figure out, as it is, how we are going to get from olde Cape Cod to Boston during Christmas week. I suppose we could stay in a hotel for two nights and then make our way to the family for dinner. That is a possibility. Might be very good for shopping; and still we would have time to do any last minute laundry and such at the inlaws. We will again post Scotland when back in London for, what? two days. And then Suffolk and then I suppose we can make our way to Paris and drop our bags at Susie’s or Dom and Nan’s and then head down to Geneva where H+C will surely pick us up and then onto Venice (with them?). This is all to be figured out.

There was a good article on Venice in Winter in Vogue from a few years ago. It looks super on the nose but when you’re visiting a place for the first time for a short time why not be on the nose about it all. I think it is just my luck that they’ve had one of the biggest floods in their history, a bit early this year, just as we decide to go there. What else is new? I just hope that after our visit, given my Pluto rising, it doesn’t completely sink into the sea. Anyway I’m trying not to panic. We are on the Acela still and we are stuck on the tracks as a bridge that is opened in front of us is not cooperating and isn’t closing. I am going to keep an open mind and think positive thoughts but why is there always something fucked up about American trains. They suck we know that. I have been on trains all through Europe for decades with nary a problem. As I write this they say that we will soon get underway. I’ll believe it when we are actually rolling.

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

Scorpio 23° (November 15)

I wrote Jesse to pull the trigger on next year’s covers and to find out which version he’d like as his twenty-twenty gift. I’m in pretty good shape for meeting Brad at 8. And then I’m going to quickly pack which should be a breezy prospect. I wonder when if at all we can do some shopping this trip. I think perhaps we should do some on Monday. I will keep my eyes out the whole time actually, especially for costuming. Might be good idea to assemble onto hangers what we feel we are starting with. I’m not bringing a winter coat to New York I don’t think. Then again I really should. Maybe that weird blue one. There is never a night I’m out with anyone who would care what the ef I was wearing that said, I think I need to fluff up the APC and, oh I have to remember to go to the tailor. I think when we go in in December I will do some more shopping then; and also I can do the South End and Sault when everyone else is at Nutcracker and then I could meet them for din-din at Myers + Chang where I’ll have to eat nothing. I must also figure out today when it is I’m starting Bikram, exactly. I will do that in a minute. In the meantime I have indeed finished the VSB grant (I will just re-read bits before sending upon return). I did submit the final report for the MCC grant. I really am handling everything now. I never hear from B.K. on any of the projects we’ve discussed which is really a good deal of too bad. Those awful people from Mass MoCA should be drawn and quartered, the way they treated our artists. It really is wonderful that Joseph Keckler is doing so well traveling with Sleater-Kinney, so proud of him for that. I guess they are playing places like House of Blues in Boston. It’s all good. I did write the astro girls to tell them to count us out this year because we have so much on our plate. And I am looking at cementing a talk with Tim for December 3. So those things can slide into the schedule as it is.

Today is sort of a banner day I have to say because I have really and truly finished all my 2019 projects and I’m now moving into promotion mode for all of the above. I have clients—two new ones and a returning one, live in NYC this weekend and early next week—and then we head to Boston where I have meetings with the A.R.T. and a check in with my doctors, trying to get all those things tied off too. I will have to tell the Harvard folks that I’m away for the February show but I don’t think I’ll do that until we have affected some solid ticket returns. They will be reminded that some of these other folks were not my idea, per se; but on their original wish list. That is to say I’m not taking any falls. Meanwhile I must now begin a grand Project To Do List which then needs to be scheduled into the next six weeks, specifically. This will include pretty much everything that has been eluded to over the course of the last two weeks. The goal would be to tackle as much, and as many of them, during the next two weeks of November, such that December, which will itself be a gallop to the finish line, can be even more chill than one might have imagined. I feel as if I deserve this next six weeks. And I know darn well that I deserve the three months after that. We are also meeting a potential new publisher on Monday at our hotel and I’m feeling pretty okay about that too. Whatever will be will be is surely an adage that applies most readily now.

It’s a great time to let go of any crutches. One of which is hypervigilance, the constant doing of more than needs doing as if (in my case) I’m getting a jump on things, which I am not in the end. I’m already thinking about drafting next year’s books when that is surely a project that can wait. I have become so used, over the decades, to being in overdrive, I really have forgotten how to do less if not nothing. I do think I have a solid enough plan for myself such that I don’t need to second guess the process. But what I must do is stick to my plan—which will be reduced in work—so to conserve my energy for what is coming which is a lot. I know the new year is going to have its challenges; but I also have been at this rodeo before; so my plan is to be preventative and make some z dough and be okay with less, if need by, even for a couple or so more years. I am more interested in experiences than I am in any kind of luxuries. And I also want to be as prepared as I possibly can be for my good. Wow. For the first time in a long time I am rather at a loss for something to say. This never happens. I was just telling Brad today about this Blague. He had no idea about it which isn’t totally surprising but it is a little. I will have to do some beta research if you know what I mean by that (you don’t); I’m definitely happy to feel the lopping off of an entire level of angst but, given the law of comepnsation, I’m sure there must be another shoe to drop. There always is. But it’s like we were talking about earlier: If I can get used to this feeling then it will have been worth it; I didn’t realize how on high alert (alarm) I’ve been all these years. I didn’t know it until the artificial elements of it were brushed away. Even as a temporary solution it should be beneficial, longterm. I don’t see why it shouldn’t be in any case.

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

Scorpio 22° (November 14)

I woke up having shed quite a little chunk all at once. Called Mike the Mechanic he wasn’t in will try again tomorrow. Tried to make a rezzie Hearth and nobody answered will try back again in a few. I made a reservation for seven Saturday at Kanoyama, so that’s done. I’m kind of psyched for sushi and it’s so easy. It’s right across the street from Pangea and I don’t think it will be overly hectic like places we don’t know that well. I think we try something new on our own when we are there for the Kennedy event. This Cosmic Blague is going to add up to something someday that much I can tell you. I’ll be curious to read myself back. I’m going to have to be somewhat speedy in the writing of the new book. Maybe the intros are entitled random thoughts about the Aries et al. Right I know: I write the horoscopes first and then do the intros and those will be the starter kits in any case, more like the back of page matter we created for Wallpaper•.
A thing you don’t know about me: Upon moving to NYC in the early late 80s I worked uptown by day at Avenue magazine and downtown by night editing DV8 Magazine which was the club kid bible and the motor by which their parties were thrown—DV8* made deals with club owners to throw parties the kids would attend and where we circulated DV8*, the first ever magazine desktop published on a Mac as far as I know. I don’t remember Walt Cassidy (his aka Wallpaper sounds familiar) but that doesn’t mean anything. A couple of years ago at the LA Art Book Fair I saw some photographer that was showing work we produced at DV8* which turned out to be that of my friend and then contributor. I do know that David LaChapelle‘s firstcover (correct me if I’m wrong) was DV8*. And the pages, which I will start to scan at some point onto this FB Page, were filled with so many folks who went on to do terrific things. The much alluded to TV appearance and New York magazine article that constituted, which was the most exposure we/the club kids experienced at that epoch, understood and made mention of DV8*’s influence. I’ll be interested to know if we appear in this book. I always thought it funny that Wallpaper* magazine had an asterisk in its title as well. Ultimately, under our non-pagan names, Stella and I became co-Executive Editors of Wallpaper* in London, in the early aughts, our last ever office job working for somebody else. Postscript: Michael Musto wrote to say his name was Walt Paper. I still don’t remember him.

Okay well here I am, on this date, writing a final paragraph before I move onto the last project of the day. I have to say it is a real joy to get here; we certainly did ring the bell this year I have to say and as we slide into the final six weeks of it, I am reminded to take things slower even as so many things are simultaneously heating up. The reality is that I will be writing for a good chunk of the next two years and that’s okay. When I get on the plane I’ll start next  year’s planet moves. That can be January while February and March I put those packets together—grabbing “musings” and “experience” plus notes about each of the Sextrology chapters—into document packages. That can be like four two days per sign, four times twenty four is forty-eight, so that’s pretty doable really as a backdrop project, deconstructing what we’re doing;

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

Scorpio 21° (November 13)

This is how we set up notes for an interview—For Tanya at NBC.Why so polarizing despite being so helpful, women in particular. Don’t be condescending because it serves a purpose.We actually do think it was probably created as a system. All myth and archetype are encoded into astrological systems, most cultures had them. Feminist History of Astrology. Has Astrology always had Feminist Roots? How does astrology empower women especially? Empowers the individual. Columns back of book—joke. Now not? The party trick aspect waned and the more legitimate use as a philosophy and lens waxing. Why?  More individualistic.Vogue and Vanity Fair.

I don’t mind a short graph of nonsequitors and I don’t want you to judge me for employing them. I had another mystical morning. Most mornings this week. Spoke with a client before the interview with Tanya. Ticking things off the list big time. I’ve been writing notes to myself everywhere, including on a giant blackboard; and in about a half hour from now I will start erasing hopefully. Tying off, as I said yesterday (or the day before). Also not jumping at the first possible thing, I’m more interested in holding out for the good stuff. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t quite finished here today, which is fine, i’m going to spend the next ten minutes doing this and then the next twenty on pre-work for my meeting with Brad Thursday morning. These sorts of last minute whatchamacallits give me the willies and the heebyjeebies and leave a large pit in my stomach. I suppose I might feel my way back to when I was friends with Bruce Piszel which was second or third grade maybe. We both had these big knight figures we played with, one had gold armour, one had silver. And I also had this sort of fold out metal castle thingy with turrets (there was a Fort Apache version of this weird toy) with plastic knight figures that were very civil looking and then their enemies which looked like Saxon vikings or some such. His older brother and sister Buddy and Pam would probably ten or so years his senior and they were concert pianists who played separately and duets and studied with the teacher we studied with but Bruce quit. They moved to Rutherford the year we moved to Wyckoff. I tried to keep up visiting but it didn’t last long. I think Bruce and his younger brother Michael got into karate. They were pretty active kids.

But I see us in our turtlenecks and striped bell bottoms and Keds sliding across the floor, playing, sometimes Operation which was my favorite and it was so cool that they had it. I suddenly see another playmate, a girl, heavy, and yet like Marcy from Dennis the Menace, with pigtails tied with that thick cottony twine that came in different colors and girls always wore then. I remember being in a driveway. I recall an entrance with a vestibule. There was something very European about the Piszels, as their name would suggest. Polish I think. Was Chopin Polish. I do believe that it was the first time in my life that I can think of as depressing. I don’t know why. All I remember is a wet winter that wouldn’t end. I’m going to have a day tomorrow but it’s actually okay, only because I will get up super early and do then what I didn’t quite get to today. But what else is new, really, I mean this is the way of the world. We are cancelling some unnecessary plans which I think is really wise. I definitely need to float through as much as I can and take the time to pack and clean and all that sort of thing. I believe it is enough to forgo one thing but not all things. I don’t think felt depressed again, actually, for awhile. I do remember the first year moving to Wyckoff I had a smell in my nose like old cracked colored paper and this lasted for months. Probably a sinus infection that went unattended. I suppose there was a bit of depression involved, staying indoors, playing superhero, tying ropes to the railings inside our house. Metal railings inside our house. Why were they not wood. Don’t answer that.

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

Scorpio 20° (November 12)

Mystical morning. We will out for most of the day. First to Provincetown to sort out all things banking. I made some avocado toast to hold us over and had turkey bacon and stewed tomato frittata waiting for us afterward. Then a whore’s bath. (Kathy Griffin is a hero.)The off to pick up some new goodies from the apothecary, and onto Yarmouth for two quick, rainy appointments of S’s. Then I was twenty-two minutes early for mine and I saw I had a call and it was the facility saying I could come early. Why do I find getting MRIs one of the most relaxing experiences. It’s like I when forced to stay still I will do so willingly. It’s like an iso-tank. They blast loud sound alarms of various beats into your brain and, in my case, spine. You have both earplugs and headphones piping music—I picked classical (because I know it further induces my iso-experience). And a few jokes surfaced: 1) It had a good beat but I just can’t dance to it; 2) Can we go again? 3) I forget the rest right now, hopefully they’ll come back to me. Oops, maybe that sound did scramble my brain a bit. It was very wild, rainy, stormy and dark with not much visibility on the way home which was stressful, but I felt remarkably unpanicky. I wonder if the apothecary had anything to do with it. That and the fact I left my car window open, I will find, when I wake the next morning.

While at the bank we got a text that there is a gala to go to in New York City. So I guess we will be in town twice in the next month. Fine why not. These are the moments from which life is made. It accelerates my diet plans to near-crash level (I’m hoping to discern a healthy path in the next month cum six weeks. I have to say it is not as easy as I suspected. There might be something to this thing about thinking you can quit stuff easily any time and then realizing, wait, not so fast, when you actually try to do so. I have to demonstrate to myself that this is possible. I have been trying to apply the same philsophy of “floating past” that I use to handle anxiety to the surfacing of certain urges and desires to, well, give in to urges and desires, some of which go hand in hand. There are many ways we take the edge off. And yet we describe people we admire as having an edge. I think I just thought of a title for this Blague entry. I’m sure I’ve already used it. I’m not going to tell you which thing happened. And you should ask yourself why does it matter.

There is the sense this week of being on any number of precipices and there isn’t really anything wrong with that. I don’t understand stories on social media. I don’t really understand much. All I know is that I’m writing more content here right now as I funnel, shepherd, all my to do list that is popping up as I go into a giant list at the end of this. I am predicting that by, what day is it today, Tuesday?, that by Thursday I’m super all caught up and that, at this point, I will be waking and writing a paragraph, stopping at lunch to write a paragraph, then adding a third before dinner. That’s how this maybe is going to go from now on. Everything else between now and six weeks hence, at the end of the year, is just a matter of tying off. We aren’t even thinking about starting something new. I wish I had a friend who would knock on my door and shout hey and then walk (door’s open) and find me in front of the fire a flop down and just start talking at me like some TV neighbor or dormmate. I want that kind of close boon companionship again. And, to quote A Chorus Line, god(s) I hope I get it. And you wonder why I don’t have friend’s with references like that. Not here on Cape Cod anyway. No shortage of bearded fellows in plaid who will talk at me sideways with their arms folded though.

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

Scorpio 19° (November 11)

Look, you do what you can. And I am going to spend the next ten minutes telling you what’s been up today. I still feel icky about the A. thing because, as these things go, there is a chance I’ll be scapegoated. There is something a bit anxious in the air today anyway; and I seem not to be the only one feeling it. Mercury still retrograde like crazy: I went to activate a new card by phone and it wouldn’t let me do that. I went to finish a grant and it asked for certain bits to be uploaded—”demographic material”—which is a bit weird in that they want people’s email addresses and such? It makes no sense. I will piece together this final year while also taking the opportunity to extract myself, professionally and emotionally, from certain influences that are no longer serving. More glitch (and I’m just smart and being preventative) I reached out to the producer at our festival venue to say I wanted to get contracts moving sooner than later this year; and suddenly that was met with “oh can you change the dates I’m not sure they will work” after giving me to greenlight by email which is like more than a verbal agreement, n’est ce pas. The world is filled with the selfish and the cowardly and they seem to be rewarded and remunerated for their narcissistic bullying. But I’m jumping the gun.

I got onto my doctor today to get some preventative health measures in place. I still have one small hurdle to clear tomorrow on that score. Otherwise I spent the day getting a jump on everything to do with next year’s low-hanging grants, and in anticipation for a pow-wow on that score come friday morning. I need to find some easy going folks to be on our board as well to keep that energy moving forward into the new year. In the meantime I have a good deal of press that I can remerchandise. I don’t feel that I need prove myself any more. I mean, at this point I simply want to monetize some of the artful content I’ve created (there’s nothing wrong with saying that, is there?) and get all the ducks in a row. There is so much to do in the next six months it would make anybody else’s head spin. The trick is going to be to get back clear up and clear out because we are not taking all this stuff with us in any case. I am of a mind to want everything brand new; and we will have a moving sale and let people park on rose lane and maybe even out back. I truly want everything that’s not nailed down to be gone daddy gone. It’s definitely time to break with things from the past which isn’t always easy; however, when you’ve lived with them long enough you can let them go. Sometimes this philosophy also applies to people. I have been having an easier time getting my brain around that—a lesson learned from being burned and hurt by others, the mean girls who, even so, are teachers.

If I had to self-psychoanalyze I would admit that, no doubt due to not feeling accepted (read: loved) in my family of origin, I have sought life blood from emotional stones, pretty much all my life. Could explain why all growing up and into adult age my series of bestest friends were all Virgo. There was that PBS series on rocks being the literal platforms for life which was so fascinating. And I think about the mutability of the earth sign of Virgo which we’ve always likened to clay, but it would also apply to those more “core” elements of ore and coal, which becomes diamonds via the sign of Scorpio, yet another link between those two signs. Lends more meaning to Libra balance between the two.  I love working side by side with S. but sometimes she slaps here laptop keys as she types. We were recently visiting her sister who was on her laptop at the dining room table and she does the same thing. Even though they were born before the advent of ubiquitous computers they somehow share some gene that predisposes them to this apparently. I wonder what the primordial equivalent of sitting on a computer would have been that would have been transferred to this functional act. We willl never know.

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

Scorpio 18° (November 10)

Didn’t have the fullest night sleep in Reading but it wasn’t too too bad. We had some Thai food last evening and ice cream and watched a little Leminy Snicket. And it was so good just to give in and hang around and take some baths. And also take our time getting out of here this morning. We still managed to leave around ten thirty or so and I was feeling fairly relaxed on the drive and then very much so. We had a late breakfast at one of our favorite places on the Cape, Sunbird, in Orleans, where we did a tiny shop and grabbed some Chinon for a send-off on the wine for the next week. We are vagabonds, we really are; and as such you either have to relax into it or bemoan it and seek to stay put more often. We need to fall more firmly into the first category. I had salt cod hash with fried egg; and the chef working is the son in law of farmer Jim where we live. It’s already very quiet here and I am once again confronted with the fact I have no friends, really, in the area. People don’t have friends though—this is something I’m coming to realize. As we get older we have our partners and rotating acquaintances but we don’t have the kind of close friendships we had in our youth except when we see those characters with whom we’ve managed to preserve said bond. Anyway, I’ve got to stop saying anyway.

Reading this back I realize it’s probably not true for many people. I find women have a better time at amassing friends as does the gay male population, community having been so determinative in their experience and evolution. For the more straight identified male, who is more loner by nature I suspect (it happens in nature as well) one must be forced all the more into communion. The bro mentality centers very much around sports or place of business or industry. Tradesmen, for instance, in this quasi-sleepy New England town in which I find myself might be loners in their individual jobs but on the whole, when gathered together for a beer or meeting at Cumbys or Dunks or wherever a plethora of pick-up trucks might be spotted, bond over their comeraderie within the field. And here I sit, day after day, alone here at my computer, waiting for the next client interaction, often my only human interaction, for weeks on end. All of this is about to change, I realize, to some degree as I return to city living; but that is just yet another natural landscape that is more populated by humans, whom I will see and in with whom transact, but only, really, to pay the check or apologize for taking up too much matt space in yoga, or with the odd tourist asking me questions I may or may not be able to answer.

So it was decided I should make a pasta—red onion, anchovy, carrot, pan-roasted tomatoes, oregano and parsley, some chicken stock. We had a cocktail of left over La Stoppa and some Chinon, and then waved wine bye bye for quite awhile. We caught up on a little TV but not even really. I think we mainly just spaced out in front of the fire. I’m not writing this à la minute in case you didn’t know. I wrote to Mark to connect about this season and next and did begin a good starter list of artists we could present. I have some fairly specific ideas about fundraising too. I need to get back to the twins. It will be whirlwind week and I’m trying to get my head around that before we head to New York. That should be fun though because we will see David Mills perform and we have three (male!) clients which I’m also excited about. I like some cock in our consultancy. I know that was crude but it does break things up a bit in an otherwise pussy driven private clientele. Again sorry but I just felt like putting it that way. And I am the only one reading this probably. Funny how, especially in the middle of the night or upon waking, when you still can’t be assed to get out of bed, you are flooded with ideas; and then when you head to your typey box so many of them scatter.

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

Scorpio 17° (November 9)

Anyway, I was alone for most of the day playing catch up while the three ladies helped my father in law with his computer and went for a walk in the forest. They actually said forest. I pretty much recuperated and tied up the conversation with A. which kept carrying on for some reason. There is a weird quiet calm to this suburb I find myself in and I need to fall into the arms thereof. They had the dog with them today so I didn’t have to do anything about that. The brother in law is away so it is much calmer and not a constant monologue of directives that start with a sort of whiny questioning interation of my sister in law’s name. I love the guy but he can be a real pain in the ass (he knows I feel this way about him so I’m not being disloyal here—it’s even kind of his “brand” LOL).  And he is one of the kindest people (to people he loves), though not so great to strangers, even waiters….you know what I mean? He is quite successful and often goes with the territory of being ambitious, admittedly venal, and fairly self-absorbed. I should say another positive thing about him: He is a very good provider and he does focus on himself and his needs which sees him traveling a lot on his own and I have to say that I have often been jealous of his ability to leave the fam behind and go off and have fun on his lonesome. I couldn’t tell you what I did with the afternoon hourse exactly.

Last evening we did enjoy some time with the inlaws themselves although it was quite a performance. MIL comes over first and she’s fantastic and very youthful despite the fact she’s working a cane these days; and apparently FIL was all uptight about not being able to get into some program where he can watch his stocks go up and down (thus why the girls had to help him today); we waited and suddenly it was decided we would start with out him; but just as we buffeted our plates he strolled in, as he is known to do, like an actor stepping onto a stage. He’s got his “where he’s coming from” and “where he’s going” that characters in a live play should “have” and he has some opening line, of course, of his monologue (or rather a one-sided duologue) that he will deliver for the entire evening for the most part, triggering pretty comic responses from a pissed off MIL. FIL is actually his name strangely and now I’m thinking I should nickname MIL Milly. Milly and Filly. He is (as a Leo) very fond of horses so that’s also fitting.

I don’t think his daughters were all that psyched about his behavior. For, while they were helping him with his IT needs they also managed to convince him to buy his wife some jewlery, which he actually had them buy on his behalf. Punishment and reward, punishment and reward, infinity. I, alone, focused on bathing and repacking and licking my wounds from my time in Cambridge. I’m happy for the break from presenting artists for a while. Even when the process is lovely, being all about other people takes its toll on me; I have other producer friends who fare fairly well with it (but they typically make money not lose it like I do). It’s making me think how I need to regroup on that score, too. I’m kind of happy about time to rethink my process. I’m also getting very psyched for getting out of the country for awhile. I need some healthy distance, especially with what’s going down with the government. This is going to be some kind of winter I think. I’m happy for all the people I know doing fun things. I feel for those who lament but make lemons. I saw a post by a famous friend who recalled her mother and sister going on a holiday while she was sent to a “spa” which really turned out to be a fat farm for chubby girls. It was a funny story even though you know it was anything but at the time. I’m feeling sort of both things at once, dynamically, in the space just under my rib cage.

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

Scorpio 16° (November 8)

I awoke rather bemused at last night’s doings. And to an email that one of the performers sent to the entire venue team saying that the key they had to the flat provided didn’t work and also “we didn’t get paid” (as it’s own paragraph!), and subsequent ones harping on the subject of payment. I tell people: Do not send professional emails at two in the morning, especially when I left you after a night of partying at eleven and I know we’d been at it since five o’clock in the evening. There is so much to unpack here. It would almost  seem like there was some arrangment made directly with the venue (there wasn’t) so the first thing I wanted to find out was had a fallen off any correspondence (I hadn’t) which will prove to take a couple more days to find out. The next thing is, even if there was(there wasn’t) a plan to pay this person the night of the show, do you still want to be the person who is writing to the directors of the theater along with producers (myself included) saying we “nevergot paid”? How about “we didn’t receive our payment as planned”? But the effing thing of it, nowhere did anyone say you were being paid night of; in fact the payment schedule is in your contract, you know the one you said you sent months back which you never did. The one that we had to chase up for you and ask you to “resend” because we didn’t want to say you never sent it though we know you did but we are pretending we don’t belive that so to be polite? And sorry but there was very little audience, and your half of the artists guarantee amounts to less than you ate and drank last night on not your dime. So shhhh. I understand why others have said things like “I don’t think I can stay friends,” with this person; to which I’ve always responded: “oh, don’t say/do that,” because, because, because you’re wonderful and loveable. Just, again, shut up.

I wrote immediately to say I thought the email strange and that it probably isn’t great to send a venue, with which one is working for the first time, an email that is all-too-easily read as blaming, accusatory and going to be perceived as fueled by a night out. But my two sentences of caution and tiny admonishment, designed to nip it in the bud, did the exact opposite. It escalated with a series of responses reacting to what I don’t know. Nothing I was saying. Thus the escalation. It was as if I was accusing you of going around my back and having “clandestine conversations”. No. All I wanted to know was did I maybe fall of an email where you made an arrangement for getting paid night of. Simple yes or no question. I wanted to know that before I said any more other than: don’t be weird in an email at 2AM to professional people you are meeting for the first time. That’s all.  Anyway we had a morning appointment today with the client we saw downstairs at the bar the other night. We had lunch at the taco truck and I added fried fish and shrimp tacos to the menu of my terrible, hedonistic diet this week. We ran some errands and then we headed to the burbs to visit family. I cut chicken and otherwise sipped La Stoppa. I want to call Mike at City Winery and put a little musical series together there and why the hell not. For Spring or Fall. Part of the plea to diversify. I’m taking New York very easy I’m going to saunter the whole time. These are not my words. but they do fill out a paragraph. And really ca suffit.

I have seven minutes before a client calls so I thought I’d let my mind go and see what pops out. Now I have four because I got side tracked…

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