Aries 20° (April 9)

Kip’s birthday. I always remember that because we had brunch with him and Melissa the day after we were married. I sent him a text but it’s no longer his number so I wrote him on FB. My diet is getting real right now. Been seeing pics posted of me from just five years ago and I was super thinner than I am now. Anyway, boring to talk about my weight but it can be a problem and it needs now not to be. The flashback posts to 2015 (below) didn’t yield much so I’m hard pressed to write something. It’s a great time to detox and I’ve been overindulging in the wine because like everyone I’m a shut in. I rejigged my schedule a bit and it all works out perfectly. We braved to post office and two shops today but had already decided this was going to be a no work zone afternoon. I watched several episodes of second season of Handmaid’s Tale, which is consistently good, although unnerving because it dovetails too much now with reality. I am going to turn over a leaf and a corner all at the same time. I’m so glad that lame-ass (never shows up to vote) on the make, on the cheese candidate is out of the race. His followers are so fucking crazy. Honestly they are a lot like the cheeto’s followers to be honest. They just seem so blindly cultish and why it is we have to allow them time to mourn….? Did I get time to mourn when Warren dropped out? I don’t think so. Anyway largely trying to avoid the news. Reworking the menu file—I have a menu file of garde manger that plans my food for the next three weeks. Actually I have to get up really early tomorrow to do some cooking and cleaning and then I will print everything out that I need to write for the following three days. I do need to start texting with people, which I will do in between the raindrops so to speak.

What else can I tell you today, let’s see. I am fielding cautiously optimistic semi fundraising pleas from other non-profits which is exactly what I plan on sending out if I do. I need to see if the recycling thing is happening in town because I have a car filled with crap. That same car has again begun to take on water in storms and the entire floor of the chassis is seeming to crack. I need to buy some sealant is all. Wow I guess sealant is a word as it breezed through spell check. I’m really not even sure who our friends are any more. I don’t know how to regram. Am I supposed to? All I can do is what I can do. We had a new client from Ireland this week which is good news. So far we have had some fairly good fortune even in the midst of shutdown-ness. The entire field of candidates that ran this year have got to all be given places in what must be the new administration. I am not interested in being here at all if the Cheeto wins another four years. In fact I want to be super poised to get the fuck out of here. I will have some cash to throw toward a rent and perhaps I’ll keep the newer account open. Actually no idea what I’m going to do. Saw that Susanne did something for the Biz of Fash am curious to know what that might be. I have written to Tim Blanks multiple times but he never writes me back the bum. I don’t think he remembers me quite. What an interesting time this isgoing to be for people who rely on making money from live performance. I am so grateful that that is not my main source of income at this juncture. I don’t know if it will ever return to what it was. We may eventually vaccine against this fucker but there will be new ones to contend with. Anyway I’d like to leave this on a cheery note.

The following blocks of texs are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 101-105.  I am reading through all my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, but the time I get to my seventh, I will have through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize:

Ever since I was a child I wanted to travel north and east. Boston and New England beckoned as did the northern cities of Europe. They still do. I used to have this vision, this hope, this dream of meeting a really old man, an alchemist, someone who may have transcended the cycle of life and death. I still do. Only now I also see this figure as being one and the same with myself. If I’m on a journey toward wisdom I know that i have taken a single step on a road of infinite leaps. At the same time I’ve never felt so convinced of the fact that we either all live forever in various forms or that we reincarnate. But I’m almost certain there is no death, just as the Zodiac says, only regeneration. I feel like I’ve been having some brushes with so-called disaster as of late but what is dis-aster but the coming apart of those very stars, a symbol of ultimate fame and achievement, which we know collapse upon themselves in Time. But what do they do outside of It?

The best way to become wise is to wise up to ourselves. I find that my own patterns of so-called mistakes generally derive from my inability to transcend, oh I dunno, certain bad habits or desires the indulgence of which only ever seem to cause me more pain than joy, even if the goal was pleasure, or indeed, especially so. So what I’m thinking is that you have to transcend first. You don’t achieve transcendence just be sitting around hoping and wishing, and certainly not by indulging in all the temptation that the limelight might bring you. Transcendence isn’t the end, it’s the means by which it breeds itself. I can have my vision of some wise old man with white hair whom I might magically encounter in some northern European city, an alchemist who will take me under his wing and impart all the wisdom I might be able to take in. Or I can be that man myself and, like any true alchemist “get the lead out” in my own journey toward true north, the true light hiding in all the density of darkness.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. 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 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2020 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2020 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Aries 19° (April 8)

Though I did have a rough night, especially due to this weird itching and red bumps (which I think is irritation caused by the laundry detergent Emily used in London), I am that much more optimistic, maybe, than I was yesterday. Today is our anniversary which helps and I will be eating linguine with clam sauce—oops gotta take clams out of the freezer—did that plus cleaned the entire kitchen plus sent our notes to the TV folks for the pitch. I’m not actually going to do much in the way of writing, newly, here today as today’s reading of five posts from the past yielded enough personal stuff to paste in (below). We are going to send old cell phones to my friend Heather Randall, Tony’s widow and mother of his two children, whom I’ve never met (well actually I met one as a baby) but whose trajectory I’ve followed. The idea is to hopefully clear up three more days, Thursday through Saturday, to focus on and finish the branding project. If anything extraordinary happens today I’ll pop back and insert it. Otherwise I’m going to put my head down and power through as much as humanly possible. Tonight is a last hoorah of sorts and tomorrow begins a more ascetic period.

The following blocks of texs are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 96-100.  I am reading through all my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, but the time I get to my seventh, I will have through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize:

I am thus dedicated to bringing up the baby who resides inside of me. A new wave of life is cresting within and I know that I shall give new life to others by giving to myself. Yesterday was such a miraculous day with the Supreme Court deciding in favor of marriage equality—a miracle because of those who dedicated their lives and perhaps didn’t live to see this happening. But it starts with the personal and then moves to the universal. What is worth giving life to, of benefit to the many, starts with doing right by oneself. We joke about how the LGBTQ community might still continue to add letters to that marquee, whilst the B will still remain silent. I’ve been a fairly loud voice for the B over the years or have tried to be, though there isn’t as much support out there from either the gay or straight communities. In terms of gender equality, we more readily understand fluidity and that we can’t strictly always strictly label people, male or female; likewise, in regard to sexuality, not all of us fall into strictly gay or straight camps. And gender does come into play here too because, we as a society don’t seem to much care if a woman is bisexual, in fact it seems to add to her mystique; yet bisexual men have always gotten a terrible rap when in fact the world is probably, ironically, overpopluted with them…us.

I believe, and say so in our writing and to the press, that transgenderism is part and parcel of our present evolution and I believe it’s the same with bi or pansexuality. The notion that people can’t be attracted to both sexes has always seemed ridiculous to me. Of course it’s my experience so it would. It’s a sad paradox that the most ardent proponents of gay rights often seem to be the biggest detractors of bisexuality. In a movement toward living label free, why are folks so hung up on this? Because it’s not their experience? Well, being gay wasn’t straight society’s experience these past centuries which added up to persecution of gay people. If you’re gay and “don’t believe in bisexuality” then you’re just as much an oppressor as any straight who found your gayness to be a lie or a disease. You should mount a campaign, then, to have the B removed from the marquee. So long as you don’t, however, you must commit to acknowledging the existence of B people. But bisexuals and pansexuals are partly to blame for where they find themselves. Because they are attracted to both sexes it has been less a struggle for them to polarize in a straight direction and to, in a sense, “pass”. It wasn’t wholly displeasurable nor did it seem utter self-denial to do so, but of course it is. So long as bisexuals and pansexuals are casual about their existence, one can’t fully expect the world to take them seriously. Living in the gray area of the spectrum, in half-light, is a half-life.

The womb-tomb is where evolution happens. If we are evolving as a species then evolution happens on the whole with each subsequent birth of a generation. I think the Pisces fish, synonomous with the Jesus fish, points to the notion of a “new wo/man”, an enlightened and evolved being, a superhuman powered by love and transcendence and compassion as we see embodied in a Christ figure. I also think Jesus was a bisexual hippy who loved Mary Magdalene and “the beloved disciple” John the Evangelist. It was a total whatever situation and I think we can’t divorce the fluidity (opposite facing fish, floating in and floating out) of gender and sexuality from the characterization of an enlightened, evolved being. I don’t think you get to be Jesus if you’re a polarized personality. I understand how radicalized the gay community has had to be in order to fight the oppression of what has been a radically straight and homophobic society. Going to extremes has been an absolute necessity. Still, the original goal is acceptance and compassion, sweeping and ubiquitous. And it just might be time for the silent B people to come out of their cupboards and perhaps even take the lead, along with transgender individuals, in helping the larger LGBTQetc. crowd get beyond any existing dualities.

Personally, this past year, I have had to gravitate away from certain people who were playing the roles of good friends in my life, specifically gay friends, around whom I felt invisible because they sought to ignore and indeed deny my identification as a bisexual. I came out to my parents when I was seventeen years old and despite the fact that my father specifically could be seriously closed-minded and something of a bigot, they totally accepted and understood that this was central to my essential nature. The same holds true in my thirty-plus love relationship with my wife. I can’t divorce any part of myself from the reality of my sexual identification. I’m no spring chicken. So being open an honest about my sexuality to my largely straight male friends all through college and beyond wasn’t the norm for them, but I was never treated like the odd man out or made to feel less than. At times, even, I felt my straight friends applauded me and were intrigued and, who knows, maybe I made it more comfortable for them to accept any gray spectral areas in themselves. Really the only shade came from inside the house of the LGBT(Q) community. And, during the eighties and nineties up to the present, it wasn’t the best time to be perceived as someone who lived anywhere along the spectrum. Extreme times do call for extreme measures, and it’s hard for a person to get their brain around being extremely gray. It wasn’t the bisexual or pansexual who broke through that; it was the transgender individual who did so. But some of us have been living for a long time beyond the binary of sexual identity, mostly invisibly—again due to fault only of our own—while the transgender community has moved past the binary as relates to gender.

I do see evidence of sexual evolution. I believe that a great number of young people don’t feel the need to identify as gay or straight or even bi or pan. They just are. And if they find themselves attracted to members of the opposite or same sex at the same time or at different epocs in their young lives they seem not to judge themselves and therefore invite judgment let alone censure. These are my people. These are people. I like to think that ten or fifteen years ago when I would declare myself bisexual on stage in performance, for instance, that I might have helped them feel that much more at ease. When, in my late teens and twenties, I did the unthinkable and urged (forced?) my straight male friends to hug me hello and goodbye and kissed them on the cheeks that I had something to do with the fact that straight men hug it out all the time now. I think that maybe I have already in my personal history dedicated myself, in some small way, to creating and nurturing new life. I have endured more than my fair share of shade and hate and disdain and sneers and side glances and whispers and all the rest by the other letters in the marquee and it’s only made me stand taller (as much as I can at my height) and look sharper and love more and find increased compassion. I have often wanted to say: you are doing to me exactly what you claim heteroworld has done to you all your life: denying my existence and hating, hating, hating. I can take it but it’s not okay. Just as it’s not okay, I don’t believe, to be a closeted bi or pan person. Especially when sexism comes into it. When it’s Megan Fox or Olivia Wilde it’s okay; but when it’s Billie Joe Armstrong or Michael Chabon or Marlon Brando or Pete Shelley or Leonard Bernstein or Cary Grant or Josh Hutcherson or Pete Townsend it’s not? In an ironic turn of phrase: Bitch, please.

Sociologically, today’s oracle speaks to pioneering efforts dedicated to the building of a new culture. It is all about rebirth. And I dare say it’s about rebranding. These aren’t mere birds, remember, they are game birds; and I will stretch for the intended puns here in that I have a new game face on now, seeing that my own rebirth shall be characterized by a winning resolve; and I’m also game—willing, eager, thrilled—to help to create a brave new world wherein relics of the past with their dinosaur ideologies and twentieth century snark can all gather together and read each other, sharpening their teeth that this new world, not dog-eat-dog, no longer requires. There are no theme weeks or dark rooms in my paradisal vision. Just people doing stuff, adhering to the golden rule while doing it. I am suffused with love for all people. Now let’s feed the hungry, lift the poor, proliferate the arts, depopulate the prisons and educate everyone. That is the new-life dream is it not?

———————–

I do believe in fairies. It’s one of the things I can’t not do. Then again I’m wont to see the animate in everything, inferring spirit and personality in a chair or china cup. 

Are there occult forces at work behind all vital processes? Who’s to say. I have felt quite strongly at times that there are; and other times the notion eludes me. But the fairy world is an elusive one; their stories are often thematically hinged on that concept. You may slip into fairy land quite accidentally, but you might not get back to Wonderland or Narnia or Oz or Brigadoon or wherever Darby O’Gill saw those little people. Now let’s look at all of this as a metaphor for Creative Imagination. The trick and the goal is always to marry our dreams and our ideals with everyday reality, to live the dream: To understand that what you wish for is animated by the spark of the wish itself and what fans it into fire is belief, in yourself and in the dream. One positive result of having gone down a bit of a rabbit hole this past week is that I emerged with a newly improved dream. And I do believe in fairies because it’s my own nature to personify spirit(s), to assign personality. It’s a Libra thing, trust me.

It’s also why I can talk about the natural spirit energy that animates each of the astrological signs through the personification of archetypes, which is a life long passion and a never ending story of discovery. Elves and fairies are akin to the lesser gods of our mythology and they do embody field and stream and orchard and river and hilltop and wood and meadow and tree and flower just as more chief deities work their archetypal energy through we humans. We are not just people but personifications of energy. I try to hit this fact home in every show I ever perform and it tends to go over people’s heads or overloads them somewhat. I suppose it’s not typical cabaret fare. But the fact is that believing in fairies and spirits, allowing oneself to sense, feel or even see them as some have is tantamount to exercising your imagination rather vigorously. So if nothing else believing in fairies is good for your creative health. Imaging is just dreaming while awake.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. 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 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2020 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2020 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Aries 18° (April 7)

Put into the books: Getting email sign-off formula from S.; money meeting; secure the registration sticker by snipping it. Schedule receipts work for a week from now I do need to get to the bank and see whether or not I can get recent transactions. I need to begin mapping out the speak in regard to the pendant information. (Festival) Schedule time to send letters to would-be sponsors and especially new Sparklers and speak to the senior center and reach out to schools and theater programs with student. I should say it again: I don’t know if you know this but: I have been writing a daily blog for the past five years. It is called the Cosmic Blague (blaguemeans joke in French) and it was originally intended as a catalyst for drawing out stories from my life, which has been filled with extraordinary synchronicities, so-called coincidences, indisputable divine interventions and, yes, moments when I seem to have been the butt of the Universe’s joke, all such experience which  Kate Bush tunefully called the “strange phenomenon.” I began writing my Blague with the start of thenew astrological year, on the Spring Equinox, 2015, a time when I was feeling more than a bit kicked to the curb by the Cosmos. I wanted a daily ritual of accomplishment and I wanted to tap my well of storytelling but I had a hard time starting. So I gave myself some specific inspiration. In astrology, each of the twelve signs encompasses thirty degrees of the Zodiac adding up to 360 degrees of this cosmic circle, corresponding (close enough) to the 356/6 days of the year. Some time ago, an astrologer and a seer channeled what are called the Sabian Symbols to express the individual nature of each of the Zodiac’s 360 degrees. So, year one, I mused on these symbols, to inspire thoughts I could type down, not only on the symbols themselves but also as a trigger for the personal stories from my experience that I wanted to relate. That was year one. In the years between then and now the Blague took on many forms and expressed a number of purposes. Sometimes it inspired incredible creative flow. Other times it made me feel super locked up and I would find other ways to keep going, including using it as a personal journal, a platform for other writing I had to do—shows, book proposals, articles, branding concepts—or as a way to vent and even gossip about people, places and things, though disguised for the most part—sometimes I would accidentally name folks (woops, that wasn’t good, especially when I got called out). There were spates when it just got really deconstructed and a bit Dada, but I kept going. So here, as I start the sixth year of daily writing I have decided on another way to trick myself into being prolific enough: I’m going to start reading my Blague entries (which I’ve never done) five a day—If I read that many I will have read them all by the end of this next year—and I’m going to cut and paste the best bits for each day’s entry, while writing new thoughts that stem from doing just that. Let’s call it taking inventory of my thoughts to date and “development” of any work that might warrant it. I have a great deal of other writing on my plate this year and won’t have a lot of free time for my Blague (sometimes I would spend hours a day on this); and so if I get really in the weeds with other work, these simple cut and pastes can function as re-runs with a little introduction by yours truly. This has been a really worthwhile process for me and, in typical woo-woo fashion, I will say: I think that by keeping on writing as I have done, mainly, for myself, even though other writing gigs or deals mightn’t have been forthcoming, that I created a magnetic force field to attract other opportunities to me. Because, as I say, it is going to be a busy year. That said I have not promoted this Blague at all, hardly. At first I was posting my postings to a Facebook page, but I stopped doing that. I may again; who knows. Anyway, just letting you know what’s what and hopefully, as I distill the Blague this year to highlight what I perceive to be the “best of” what I’ve done in the past, it might warrant other readers beside myself!

The following blocks of texs are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 91-95.  I am reading through all my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, but the time I get to my seventh, I will have through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize:

In my case, trying to rationalize what had characterized the prior week, while having dealt with lawyers and doctors and insurance companies and a car dealership where we went to pick up the exact replica of the car that got totaled. We dropped our Hertz rental off at a location nearby, at an airport at the terminal. The next day, upon waking I will call that Hertz location to get a receipt to submit to my insurance company. A woman will answer and I will begin to explain: “We had been in an accident and rented a car from New Bedford and arranged to drop it off, there, at the Cape, which we did last evening at the Cape Air terminal”—I will then be interrupted by her pointedly and alarmingingly repeating in my ear: “We don’t have your car sir…..we don’t have your keys sir…” I will try to assure her I dropped it off and she will insist they don’t have my car. I shall ask if she is the supervisor; she isn’t. I will ask to speak to the supervisor and here her say (to him) this man wants to talk to the supervisor and the phone being thrown onto a desk. The supervisor will get on the phone and start yelling at me that he has customers and then he will hang up on me before I even speak. Then I will call back and he will pick up the phone and slam it back down again several times. I will call the nice young man at Hertz in New Bedford who rented me the ugly white Mazda mini people carrier and he will look up my rental number to confirm, yes, it was recorded you returned the car exactly when you said you did. He’ll have no explanation as to why this agent and her supervisor are so rude but he’ll apologize on their behalf and then give me the name of their area supervisor. I will call another Hertz nearby that will tell me that the evil Hertz branch, being at the Barnstable Municipal Airport is actually under an other supervisor’s jurisdiction, one located at T.F. Greene Airport in Rhode Island. I will call him and he will be appalled and he will offer me rental vouchers that I will refuse, saying that Hertz has lost me as a customer for all time. He will assure me he’ll get to the bottom of it and I believe him. He’ll call me back and say that he had a talking-to with the agent and her supervisor who didn’t even ask me my name or take my rental number but instead insisted they didn’t have the car I dropped off but they did. The weird thing, according to this bigger boss located in Rhode Island is that someone with my exact same name but a Nantucket address also dropped off a car to the same location I did within ten minutes of my doing so. John from Rhode Island had feared this was a mistake and I was charged twice so he checked and saw separate addresses and information for me and my name-alike. That means that if that crunt and her wuckfad supervisor had asked my name they would have realized that not only had I returned the car but two of me did so. Thank you multiverse. Thank you.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. 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 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2020 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2020 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Aries 17° (April 6)

Today has to be a(nother) new beginning. I want to make a change now; I’ve been too long in the same mode and I need a shift. It can be subtle. There is in fact no need to overdo any transition.  I have pins and needles a result of what I think is a trapped nerve. This is meant to be the worse week thus far in the pandemic. We need to get rid of the resident evil. It has to happen now. We cannot. I will do a little bit today and a little bit on Friday on my books project just to keep on schedule. This morning we are braving another expedition, this time to the Post Office, when it opens, hoping it won’t be a hotbed of germs. Then I will come home and prepare to speak to a client by phone at eleven. I am determined to get through this. My main goal today is to stay calm and stay connected and do some late afternoon yoga to get things moving. We have till the end of June to get our April car inspections, which is a good thing. I have quite a bit on my mind right now but it is going to have to wait. I have to attend to my health right now because it is of the utmost importance. Always, but especially now. There was some report about certain medications causing some issues for people vis a vis the virus; yet another thing to worry about. I think people should by and large check with their doctors in regard to medication. I for one am grateful that I have to opportunity to make some major changes on that score.

 Shocked and yet not surprised that people are walking around without any masks. Jogging along the road. Walking dogs. All sorts of things like it was life as usual. But it isn’t. I sent the farmer a note saying this would be a good week to finish up the work on the house exterior. He writes back for everything but he didn’t write back. He just came over and started ripping the house apart in a rather angry way. He has quite the temper as we know. He is a hot head who always talks about how he doesn’t like hotheads. He can’t even feel the tiny whiff that he is being asked to do something. Real problem with authority. Anyway it’s just the way it is. I am drinking too much in captivity and have to slow it down in the coming days. I have to make hay while the Sun shines as they say. I am very easily annoyed at this point. I want very much to turn a corner here. It is in my power and before we know it it’s going to be hot outside. I wonder if the beaches are closed here. They aren’t. They are the only recreational areas that remain open. I started watching a Hulu show a friend is on. It’s a really good show on the whole but I’ll veer away from critiquing individual performances. Listening to young Dr. Sun on television talking about how awful the conditions are in New York hospitals, while the farmer rips off piece of house in an angry way. I have to move through experience today in a major way. I just have to live one more day like everybody else and try to rise above and be happy and compassionate. I’m glad I have work to do. I wish people with whom we are working would get their shite together and get their ducks in a row and make this easier for us.

The following blocks of texs are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 86-90.  I am reading through all my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, but the time I get to my seventh, I will have through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize:

By just after noon-thirty tomorrow the show of Spring will have come to a close and we’re holding a pageant of sorts to view if not judge the full pageantry of what beauties the season has produced. And we are gathered on a beach where I plan to spend my summer. That is not a sentence of privilege by the way. I know people assume I have some kind of trust fund or something because I spent all my life summering at the sea; but trust me, no trust fund. It’s just that living in the present in a way I enjoy has always been prioritized and not relegated to later. So here I am, savoring the moment. This Blague does much to keep me present in each day as I explore the energy of each passing one through meditation on these symbols. I work with clients by day helping them to self-actualize and I could be on a stage every night raising spirits through our unique form of Entertaining Enlightenment™. So what do I have on parade myself this day at the close of the Spring season. A lot. I might not be ready for the swimsuit challenge by Provincetown standards but I will put on a speedo with pride, showing off my hairy rolls and man boobs without hesitation, just as I’m ready to make a thousand perfect mistakes in tomorrow night’s show. We are ready to parade before you alll our wares—some vocal creations, some cosmic interpretations, some individual chart reads, some metaphysical musings, some personal stories, some voyages into the multiverse and hopefully spoonfeed those attended some wisdom in a spoonful of sugary wit. Justin Vivian Bond used to say “dare to suck” and honeys those are words to live by. Life is indeed a banquet or a parade or a pageant or whatever suggests full expression, so don’t be a sucker. Unfold fully like the fairy flower that you are. And maybe we’ll see you tomorrow night. I’m not putting any links here. You have Google. And our Haute Astrology horoscopes are also posted. See you tomorrow on the Solstice. I have to get a haircut and some Spanx.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. 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 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2020 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2020 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Aries 16° (April 5)

Okay I have been home now for just a little over two weeks. I cannot believe it has only been that long, because not only has the world completely changed, but also I feel as if I’ve accomplished so much in the process. This is so much worse than I imagined it would be. It isn’t great to be an optimist during times like these. At least it is Spring and we are looking at a warm six months ahead not a freezing one. If we manage not to get ill this Spring and Summer, there is no guarantee of not getting it in the Autumn. Are things ever going to be the same again one wonders. The very idea of going to Northern Italy frightens me. I need to call the doctor and get the film of my MRI, not that I’m going to start any kind of physical therapy up again now anyway. But we will get to understanding this whole arbitration scenario in any case. These are just top of mind things I’m dealing with. They can totally wait. I just wasted hours doing nothing but looking at real estate. I never know where I want to live. Nothing ever feels like the exact right thing I don’t know why. Why am I failing miserably today already. I need to forge on. Okay it is now hours later and I did half of what I had hoped to do but I’m not too, too concerned about it because it is still a lot and this coming week will provide opportunities for sneaking in here and there. Nothing other than this crap happened in my world today. I have to diversify and get my mojo working. My work is so sedentary by nature. But as the months tick by I do have the opportunity to do a good deal of the work at hand, sitting in a chair, in the Sun. Make no mistake. It would be quite beneficial, actually, for me to do so. Otherwise I need to go for walks in any case. I am going to have a dry couple of months I think just to support the notion that I can. Meanwhile I’m tearing through my wine cave.

I am completely floored by the fact some of my closest friends are making jokes about this pandemic as they are decamped to their privileged second homes, not social distancing at all it seems. I truly don’t understand it. I believe that I may be losing these friends (out of choice) before this thing is over. I cannot for the life of me understand what is going on. Anyway, I’m going to b-r-e-a-t-h-e. S. did a session with Pema Chodron today which sounded amazing actually. I have to talk myself through the coming days. When I wake tomorrow at five as is my custom I am immediately focusing on the bit of the project work I didn’t finish today. And then we are going to Provincetown with masks and gloves; and then I will talk to my client about her branding project. When that is done we will have lunch and then I will do my yoga and maybe go for a walk. We have the tide chart posted. I have to take a line with the farmer and get him to fix things here on the land. You don’t need to know what that means, like not at all. I wonder if people still go to AA meetings in this current climate—I’m guessing they are all by Zoom.

The following blocks of texs are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 81-85.  I am reading through all my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, but the time I get to my seventh, I will have through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize:

Gemini and the cherries are barely ripening on the trees outside and yet the usually elusive Cedar Wax Wing is out in abundance, unabashedly eating the fruit, before it’s truly ripe, leaving just pits on the vine. Pits hanging from tree twigs—it’s pretty comical. Have you ever seen a Cedar Wax Wing? I hadn’t for years. It was the one bird I wanted most to see but it eluded me. Now they are everywhere. At least until the fruit is gone. The males squeal as if the fan in your window is squeaking. He has a brighter yellow belly and a sort of a tuft that he thrusts from his head and bolts of red hidden beneath his wings; but even he, the male of the species, is sleek and tawny and under the radar.

I awoke to Rick Steves this morning on PBS. Don’t get me started. You know his company is called Back Door Productions, right? Enough said. I love the way his “guides” are always some guileless young guy with a peach-fuzz moustache. Whatever. Point being: Rick and Steve are already the gayest names in the Universe. But to put them together? Where am I going with this. Oh yes: The episode to which I awoke was an oldie. He was in Northern England and he brought his (then?) wife and kids. They went to Blackpool where there was a ballroom with elderly people busting choreographed moves that would make your head spin. I love places like Blackpool. Asbury Park and Belmar, New Jersey, of my youth, were like that once, and they weren’t copies. They were built, architectually, around the same time. And their look is similar to Blackpool. There were “pavillions” on the boardwalk where old couples used to dance. Okay fine I’ll deal with today’s oracle:

——————————————–

We are seeing common wo/man enjoying the bounty of civilization. Remember the middle class? I’m old enough to have grown up in it. I look at the young people around me and they closely resemble the Europeans my age, at the time, I’d encounter traveling around, back during the Reagan era; when, for instance, it was nine francs to the dollar. I don’t like the euro. I miss francs and lire. I miss pre-globalization. I’m so, so glad I lived it. My youth strikes me as so post-war now. I’m glad, too, that I lived in New York in the late 80s and 90s.  I’m happy to have sat front row at fashion shows before fashion was “a thing” and could take in the beauty of Linda, Naomi, Helena, Tatjana, Cindy, Kristy, Claudia (and, okay, Stephanie) and later Kate, all at once—all at once. Breath-taking. I would plop myself down front row and wait for someone to move me. They never did. I actually belonged there, probably more than most. But I did get the fish eye from Anna on more than one occasion. I suppose I took a Vogue seat. Oh well, too bad.

The middle class. Remember us? Now we have to be/pretend to be upper or lower. I’m bored. I’m bored with seeing my East Village New York friends style themselves like Upper Eastsiders from the late 70s. Really? You’re working a Nan Kempner look? How did we get here? Just as I’m tired of people grasping at some rent-stabilized life raft that no longer exists. You know what: it’s over. Get a livelihood. I sound horrible. I am horrible. I am sometimes horrible. You better know that about me. I despise artists, especially, who are in love with poverty and lament, lament, lament a changing landscape. Hello? That’s life. Change is the only constant—remember? Put that in your performance art piece. Psychosis is not performance art, by the way. Just like eighty year olds in Blackpool still trying to do some version of the Lindy Hop every weekend is a form of OCD. For real. We need to move on. I’m sorry the East Village is too expensive. Move. And maybe not to Brooklyn which is just as expensive. Move to Camden, New Jersey; or Blackpool or Asbury Park or, well not Tivoli. But move places. That’s what the American middle class did. They left the city and moved to new places, outside. They created new environments. They didn’t sit around bemoaning the fact that some dive bar or noodle joint or some barely great (to begin with) pirogi emporium suddenly lost its lease. They weren’t sinisterly-sentimentally attached to their past. I saw supermodels all at once and I’m over it.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. 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 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2020 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2020 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Aries 15° (April 4)

I’m setting the proverbial egg timer. Today there are many marks to hit as I made clear yesterday. I’m not feeling all that swift, a result of falling asleep in a draft, even being in front of the fire, which doesn’t draw all that great here, I think, as I always wake up kind of coldy when I build one and spend the evening staring at the flames. I made a lovely salmon with rutabaga and haricots verts amandine and we actually had dessert for the first time in weeks. I am feeling very confident even though I’m tipping the scales, which I can’t quite understand. I think I said this all before. I actually don’t have much to say (yet) today and the flashback portion of this Blague (I’m reading through five previous Blagues a day dating back to the first year of this thing 2015) yielded practically nada. That’s fine. I’m looking forward to just doing the minimum today, moving things around, really. We bought so much food and there are bits of it that need to be eaten sooner than later, which is fine. It is possible we won’t need to go to the shops for another two weeks now, which mightn’t be a bad thing. Anyway, I will figure that all out. The goal is to clear the decks today, accomplishing some pretty boring work, that I can hopefully do with my brain turned slightly off. Let’s see how that goes. It is very tedious work indeed, but it does need to be done. I don’t know how to celebrate things in this current state of affairs. We had our second book optioned for a TV show and we sold a third book to a more major publisher than our previous two. It feels very good indeed. I am getting closer to having it out with the HC people; and I also have a list of questions for our agent; and I’m curious as to what needs to happen in TV land.

Okay so it wasn’t a monumental day but I did think a great deal about some good stuff. For starters I think I understand how to approach people. Also I think I have created a path for practical creativity, which is a thing. I’m fucking freaked out by what’s happening everywhere. I am blatantly aware of the epic seriousness of the situation. I just ate a half a pound of ground sirloin in the form of two large sliders on g.f. English muffins, topped with a quality bleu cheese and then these carmelized red onions and homemade cherry tomato ketchup I created, paired with a little leftover root vegetable. So the point is if you’re reading this you need to understand that there are over five years of daily Blague entries available to you on this site. It started out in 2015 with me writing about the Sabian Symbols (Google that shite) and then it just became this addiction, really. I am supposed to be being funny but I fear that I very rarely am. But, as I write ever day, even my rare moments are adding up to something, at least that is my hope. You see, I am combing through the last five years (as I write the sixth), reading five Blagues a day, which (you’re such a math wizard), in the course of this years I would have (daily) read all the entries for the first five years. Makes perfect sense if you really stop overthinking. I know it’s something you do, but you can stop now. I know I sound a little manic. This is how I get when I really want to create volume for my Blague. In a way I just get chatty, at the same time I am sending that part of me that wants to entertain and create something of import into overdrive so that what I am typing out now at lightening speed will have at least a shred of validity. Shred has fewer letters in it than I previously thought. I have no written two very chunky paragraphs. And now I have to write at least a middle sized one? Who is making up these rules?

I’ve been in a very 1990s head lately. I think because that was the last time I lived in constant fear of AIDS and all it meant. And now that feeling is back? Is it really thirty years later? How can that be. We stalled in that the generations that came after are not in conflict with us. If anything they wish they were us. I think I’d like to paint over some of the crap I see. I know I don’t have to be so completely cognizant of every last drop of integrity I bring to the table. I can just be me sometimes, whatever that means. Who knows. I like myself in Europe. I understand who I am there. I do not recognize myself very readily in America. It has always been the same old story. In America I live so much in my head—to the point that when I think of myself in Europe I almost have a bias against that guy as if he is unselfaware to a fault or whistling in the graveyard or doing whatever wrong in regard to his understanding of self-existence; and yet that guy who lives there is the guy who goes to yoga every day and takes courses and goes to museums and, like everywhere, shops and cooks and keeps a tidy quarters and entertains (I never entertain here). We need to offer all our clients an extra hour and I need to find out how to pay some shite forward via the community. I think this paragraph might indeed be long enough. I miss some things about Boston, too, now; I look forward to rekindling that relationship. I’m going to suggest A.R.T. postpones our cancellation. Let us do one more full season with a bang. Let’s invite back the biggest selling artists for the last three shows.

The following blocks of texs are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 76-80.  I am reading through all my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, but the time I get to my seventh, I will have through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize:

It’s funny today I was in a quandry about whether to stay at my computer chipping away,writing and producing my myriad self-imposed assignments, all of which I love to undertake—although I would prefer they didn’t happen all in clumps—or get my fast becoming a wee bit too robust self out for some exercise. I am a big believer in staying physically active and I do find that it does indeed transmute into great thought. Some of my best ideas come while sweating my tush off; although it’s always a challenge to remember the thoughts as they arise as one can’t always stop to jot thoughts down while in the middle of certain exercise that requires something of a meditative countenance. And I truly believe that one has to be of a certain physical vitality to fuel ones passions; otherwise they will constitutue a drain, one end of that doubly burning candle. Personally I can only burn one end at a time though I prefer not torching either.

—————————-

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. 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 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2020 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2020 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Aries 14° (April 3)

Again, today, there isn’t much to post from the past, as explained below in this Blague. So I will attempt to make this day as interesting as I can for you all. Last night was an absolute blast. We were in full lockdown, listening to Dee Lite and dancing and then we sang around the piano, just the two of us. Dinner was lovely mushroom faro stew. We watched this tacky movie that is sort of good called Troop Beverly Hills with Shelley Long. She should have had more of a career. There was that remake of Mr. Blandings called The Money Pit. I remember it became a title of a story in the magazine On The Avenue, the tabloid of Avenuemagazine. That’s for another day. Back to what happened today. Well we had a lovely breakkie of miso-tahini spread on toast and coffee. I organized and cleaned and we had an early client, one of our favorites. I know I’m not supposed to say that but that’s how I feel. Then we had a lunch of romaine hearts with cherry tomato, turkey bacon, chopped egg, oregano and parmesan with a lovely dressing. Then we set off shopping, which is more intense an experience than it was last week. And certainly way more intense than during the weeks before that when our dear leader was still calling it a hoax. We will find evidence of this maniac knowing full well this was real on a date preceding him telling we the American people it was a hoax.

I woke up at about four and there was a Susan Blakely film on. Report To The Commissioner. Richard Gere plays a pimp. It is “seventies New York” on TCM this month. Which is fitting since NYC looks as vacant now as it did early Sunday mornings in the me generation. After lunch we went shopping as I said and got fish at the fish shop and food and dry goods at Friends and wine from Town Center. All great places for which I am so thankful. We unpacked and had another client, also a favorite plus. Love our clients today. And we got a decent figure for our book and we accepted the offer. I am now making rutabaga and haricot verts amandine to accompany a salmon. We will have ice cream to celebrate. I am drinking a delicious inexpensive organic/biodynamic red wine. All the food is cooking. I have a schedule to make and I must rejig the two week menu which has now grown, likely to four weeks worth of food in the house, I kid you not. I’m going to start working the freezing. A client has a friend in a movie in which my friend is one of the stars but I only know this because the client gets me looking it all up online. I keep thinking about another client we haven’t spoken to in recent times. I think I need to ask Stella if she’s heard from her. I am a bit of a psychic; and I need to become more so, which means getting really spaced out which means losing forty pounds. Okay so I’ll lose fifteen and only be a little psychic. Meanwhile, I don’t care what the scales say. As a Libra, whose symbol is that brutally honest apparatus, I can tell you, in all sincerity, that I have never felt better about myself, physically, than ever before in my life ever. I’m big and feel full of beans and fantastic. I have muscle in any case which might be tipping said Scales. And I just basically feel kick ass and older and looking great for my age. So suck a dick all haters (and you know who you are you little cowards). “Wow, Quinn seems angry and off on a tangent.” No. Just expressing as you should do. And the suck a dick line is a direct influence of my current Bojack Horseman binge.

If I were to write one more paragraph I would be a freaking hero. So here’s the deal: Tomorrow is Saturday and I must: Prepare tomorrow’s Blague; tackle both the Taurus and Aries set ups for the next year’s book guides and if I have time go through some receipts. Why? Because, that way I can focus on the crickety bits on Sun and Mon. Bye.

The following blocks of texs are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 71-75.  I am reading through all my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, but the time I get to my seventh, I will have through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize:

So I’m going to do a little experiment—why don’t you join me. Let’s look at what’s on our plate and accept the fact that it is of our choosing. Then, wherever there is any element of dread involved, let’s change that story. Either we remove the components that cause us stress or anxiety, or we decidedly go about them from a completely different angle than we ever have before. What is dread, really, but prethinking? So let us first not prethink. I often tell clients, “If you’re worrying than you’re not working,” and I sometimes must practice what I preach. Because really the task or project at hand isn’t the problem; the real issue is our own particular battle within for a certain joy-in-efficacy; and it is important to give ourselves things in life that we can accomplish without too much struggle that impart said joy. This “blague” for instance. I do it every day and it does provide solace and, yes, happiness; I have no expectations of it, really, which is out of character as I mentioned. It is just a thing I do, a new field of experience into which I can bleed. As I write this I realize that it might be doing something unexpected in the process: Making me hyper aware of activities I undertake that don’t impart the same sense of well-being. Uh-oh.

Well, again, I’m going to scan my plate and determine what I’m dreading. I will either ditch it from my plan or embrace it and try to execute it in a different manner, evolving the how, and paying the what no never mind. We can create the unfamiliar even in the face of the proverbial that breeds contempt. The truth is that reality is all unexpected. Anything can happen at any moment. Perhaps we keep ourselves on hamster wheels or running in ruts out of fear of the unknown, which might well just be some new variables. Well I say bring on these new variables, because daddy needs a new equation. Stat. Oh wait, it’s my responsibility to provide that. So I’m going to get on that. The point is dear readers: Today is about rising to a new occasion. Let’s work this mother out—forgiving the split infinitive, please. Aquarius is all about the future and it starts with this new field of perspective on what already exists before us. So yes, yes, the future is now.

————————-

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. 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 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2020 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2020 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Aries 13° (April 2)

Back in the day I had a friend whom I’d always punk on April Fool’s Day. I always miss him on that date e.g. yesterday.  I want to use today to really talk myself through this project at hand because it’s important. I had set up the fact that the creator and the company are one.  TK is the creative offspring of company founder and designer JL, long a leading voice in fashion, with many successes to her credit, who understands what women want and need from their wardrobe. Her industry experience, refined esthetic and artisanal expertise combine to create a clever and beautiful collection of clothing that liberates, motivates and celebrates the wearer. Just as true craftsmanship goes into each individual piece in the TK line, ingenuity abounds, too, in the overall creative concept of the collection: To provide the customer a highly functional selection of styles, as beautiful as they are wearable, which will breeze them through the day into night, suiting all career and social settings, to far off places and across international date lines. Anyway that made a start. There isn’t much text from years past to put into this entry today so hopefully I will get some thoughts down here, even if it is more about the project on which I’m currently working. We are very fortunate that we can make these things happen as we go. I should probably get an invoice out tomorrow. I will have to find it but I know it is here somewhere. All such things will run through my head as I isolate and self-medicate and process the would-be joy in the sorrow of this time.

I have been in pattern of falling asleep around eight and waking up nigh on midnight. Then staying awake for a few hours and then going back and forth, in and out of sleep. Great time to remind myself of the larger Game of Thrones plotlines, with the sound off, just as a refresher. I do need a way to stay connected with folks. I should be trying to send 100 people a day their eBook, if I can. That might be a great help then again who knows. The widgets we do because the widgets we can; but with a whole new book now on the horizon, I will need to streamline my experience to be all about specific subjects in writing. Happily there will be a great deal of dovetailing going on. I spent the morning in ablutions and then we had a client and then one who really needed guidance on the fly. We had lovely avocado toasts for lunch (me, with provolone) and I had prepared a mushroom barley only to realize my grain had expired, so I will use farro instead and see what happens. I have prepped a chowder for tomorrow and the way I’m approaching the kitchen is sort of the way I’m approaching everything. I decided to recycle 2019’s intros for the book, switching out 2017, only because they are largely done and so few readers have seen them in comparison to what I hope will happen in 2021. We are cooking up a whole new vibe. I look forward to more New England an experience, just as Paris takes precedence in the real estate of my life. I did some nice work this morning on the branding project and everything is sort of happening all of a piece.

I do think isolating is a great time not to. I for one am aware of how little a lockdown effects me because I work at home in any case, writing and consulting clients, virtually, in the main and I tend to do big food shops every fortnight and plan menus in advance for at least a week at a time, because running a business and doing more creative career work plus a consultancy plus cooking and cleaning requires a certain level of Zen-style multitasking. But I am typically asocial and in a bubble much of the time. Which is what social distancing has made me realize: I’m forever social distancing and, once this blight is over, I’m going to work harder on staying connected with people. Anyway this is what I wrote TK is a cohesive collection of items, all of which have an extraordinary stand-out quality. Each piece in the collection is designed to be a cherished staple of ones wardrobe, to be a go-to, signature article of clothing a woman wears often and over many years. TK is a collection through which the wearer can express her own style and make a bold statement: She values a modern design, with an subtly dramatic flair; she appreciates an ease that’s fused with elegance, and she prizes freedom and movement, in both the functional feel and fluidity of a garment, and the sheer motivation she experiences wearing the collection. As a working woman on the move in an appearance-driven industry, JL understands first hand the need to be on the go, and to look good doing so. Designing TK to travel well is also top of mind for L, who like most women, are forever trading one mode of transportation for another, whether on the town or internationally bound. And the fact that TK gets the balance right between X and Y, Y and Z, the clothing collection transports a woman from one setting to another, allowing her to sartorially slip into one role or another, easing her seamless transformations.

The following blocks of texs are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 66-70.  I am reading through all my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, but the time I get to my seventh, I will have through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize:

I don’t always succeed but I strive for my Libran archetype; sometimes being ordered, balanced, principled and, even, so highly conscious, isn’t as much fun as the alternative. We can’t all be like Libra Sting and do yoga and meditate between playing madrigals on a lute; sometimes we’ve got to let loose and let Dionysus. That said, there are great benefits to the clarity that is unrivaled in the Libran experience. Apollo is god of light, lest we forget; he slays the Python, a Chotonian image if there ever was one—he rules the world of glaring, righteous, if not angelic light—Libra is the s cardinal-air sign, which translates to light and all that means—enlightenment, theories and prophesy, ideas and ideals, principles, high precepts, goodness and righteousness. So why would Daphne rather be a tree than even date Apollo? It’s likely he’s just too much. I mean talk about having great expectations. Pip from Dickens’ tale of the same name, or even Linus (the name of Apollo’s orator son in mythology) waiting on that pumpkin, Libra has high standards, expectations and demands, as soaring as the straightest Doric column or collonade of trees. And what Libra do you know about whom you can’t with some frequency say: They’re too much?

————————-

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. 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 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2020 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2020 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Aries 12° (April 1)

Sometimes it’s not so easy just to change tack on a dime and immediately dive into a new project, especially when that project involves absorbing its full breadth before being able to add to the further articulation. What can I say? That would be on my tombstone if I ever have one. Oh, the meaning less ness of it all. I had finally alighted on a lifestyle that suited me, in surroundings that were buffeting. Not to say I was being my best self there, but I was truly making an effort and had gotten into a strict exercise routine, and was enrolled in school, while still working and moving the larger needle forward. I’m grateful today that my choices haven’t backfired. I grateful that it is now April and not December or January. We need every bit a sense of hope an renewal as the Spring portends. Unlike yesterday, when I had no previous entries to post, today there are a ton from the five day span I was surveying today. To remind my reader, with the start, on the Spring Equinox, of this my sixth year writing the Cosmic Blague, I am reading five a day of my previous last five years of posts, which, by the time I enter my seventh year, will mean that I will have read the first five years, So that I will only have to read one a day, from my sixth year, during my seventh, which will each be a tiny anthology of those five day spans I am surveying now. If you didn’t understand any of that I cannot help you.

This morning was comprised of a little brainstorming on the TV front. I have specific ideas which I think would work best; but I also have to defer to the “zeitgeist and buyers”—already learning so much. Hoping we can make something of this in a big way. Also we got an offer today from Hachette for our new book so hopefully we will make that work. It kind of feels good and I think I can pretty easily get my brain around pulling this off. It would also entail a nice chunk of money in a world where we don’t really need that much. I made a beautiful English pea and mint soup for dinner tonight, which I’ll follow with a roasted beet and goat-cheese salad (made some cracker crumbs from Mary’s g.f. crackers which I will coat the cheese in and put in sautée pan) on Spring lettuces. For lunch we did one of our favorite tricks: crushing a bag of kale chips, like a dry pesto, to stir together with some g.f. linguine, such a quick, satisfying meal. First we spoke with our agent and decided on a redirect. So we will wait to hear back from her today, hopefully. The settlement situation is such: They want to set up arbitration and avoid court trial. I’m totally down for that direction. Probably not such a bad thing to get a little beaned and focus solely on the work at hand. We won’t hear back until tomorrow, now, but it is good news that we are back in the book biz. I am so happy for the opportunity to have a professional relationship like this one and I’m going to make sure I hit my every mark. Not wasting the grace. Not wasting the opportunity to establish a good relationship. We are so fortunate to have had our second book optioned for TV while we are offered a new book deal, while we meet clients virtually online and otherwise do exactly what we do in any case. Makes me realize how battened down our hatches typically are in any case. I’m looking forward to this time. I wish I hadn’t taken on this latest project, now, but I am going to enjoy every minute of all I’m doing and realize it all contributes.

The following blocks of texs are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos.61-65.  I am reading through all my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, but the time I get to my seventh, I will have through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize:

I remember in 6th grade, when we first learn about the Greek gods, right. I was so utterly turned on by the gods. I made myself a tunic out of old curtains I found in the attic and did incantations to Dionysus, wanting divine communion with him or else it was my inner wine-o emerging. But I was sad too because the conceit was that the gods were something people once believed in but they no longer existed. That notion depressed me to no end. But I didn’t give into it. I knew it wasn’t true. The gods weren’t dead. They were very much alive. But this was before I could articulate my reasoning: That the gods are energies personified. And energy can’t be destroyed. That we too are energy personified. Or that Mary is Aphrodite. That Jesus is Eros. And that the connection between the gods and their namesake planets and astrology and psychology and archetype and energy and theatre and temple and spirituality and the stage would ultimately wrap me up like a blanket.

But I remember 6th grade, the last day of school before Christmas vacation, it was snowing, we couldn’t go out for recess. There was no real school work to do—no point starting new lessons. We played fuzz ball. (The class divided in half throwing a softball size pompom like those on the top of our winter caps across the room and if you didn’t catch it you were out. I was typically out pretty quickly.) Then I think we rearranged our desks. And it was a half day. And we were just sitting quietly with our hands folded. It was bittersweet because our teacher Mrs. O’Shea was moving away and wouldn’t be back after vacation. I remember accidentally calling her Mom one day when I raised my hand. That was excruciatingly embarrassing. As if I needed any other reason to stand out like a sore thumb from the rest of the class. But I was always the square peg. Going against the grain. So, 6th grade, waiting for the bell to ring and free us for Christmas week. Hands folded on our desks. Mrs O’Shea with a teasing smile asks the class if we are looking forward to Santa visiting which induced a group groan because 6th graders no longer believe in Santa Claus. So as the class sputtered and moaned and rolled their eyes in a cacophony distilled to a single phrase: There’s no such thing as Santa Claus, I….raised…my…hand…and said: Hold on. I believe in Santa Claus. Loader moans now with threatening jeers. And I don’t recall the exactitude of the Linus Van Pelt solo argument I launched into; but I know it had something to do with the fact that Santa Claus must exist because so many children believed in him down through the centuries and if that many people believed in Santa that he must “exist” on some level, just like the one God whom everyone believed in without seeing and who, I was a bit peeved, replaced my beloved Greek gods whom I loved so completely, just like that one Dick Sargeant replaced that one Dick York as Darrin on Bewitched, my favorite show. I didn’t know Santa Claus was Wenceslas was Saturn was Old Father Time was Father Christmas. Just like I didn’t know that Endora on ‘Bewitched” was Saturn’s wife Rhea Cronus and that Endora meant endure and personified the Capricorn energy of preservation and conservation. I just knew that if every one of those snot-nosed muggles in my sixth grade class, for whom I had a natural contempt, could swallow the fact that their mainly Christian all caucasian father son and holy ghost existed then, by Christ, I could make a strong argument for the existence of Kris Kringle, with a K, like the Kardashians, our modern false gods, all too readily worshipped. And I remember Mrs O’Shea making this face, [sic.] as if to say, sounds reasonable; and 24 sets of other children eyes fixed upon me their gaze melting from bah humbug into a happy gratitude that their childhood belief, so newly vanquished, could be, at least for this moment before the bell was to ring, so magically restored.

—————————–

I worked in Paris in 1985-86 at Passion magazine, which was a super big format magazine and we would have vendeurs who would swing by the offices to pick up big stacks that they would then sell on the streets, in the parks and gardens, in outdoor cafes and even in restaurants, walking through crowded bustling rooms of conversation and scraping cuttlery and tinkling glasses, Passion along with Interview and City and whatever else might be on offer. Before I got a job at the magazine, I too sold them on the streets for a day but I was terribly bad at it so I was grateful I was hired for an actual job in the magazine. I did though hand them out to front row faces in the fashion shows which in those days were in tents in the Tuileries not at the as-yet Carousel du Louvre. I remember handing a copy of Passion to Princess Caroline at one of the shows, saying, “here you might as well have one since you’re in it”—there was some story on her. I was always off-handedly addressing people that most people treated with uber respect and kid gloves. It was the eighties, and I had a socialist ax to grind and authority issues. Some years later, during a book signing for Sextrology at Colette, Princess Caroline would attend and tell Stella and myself, “I’ve heard so much about you.” Really? Okay.

There were several vendeurs of Passion; the most ubiquitous and prolific was called Jean-Yves, I believe (pictured below)  and one of them was this African guy who’d I see here and there around town, in furtive glances, out of the corner of my eye. He was very dark skinned and small and had a shaved head and was usually hidden behind these large magazines he was holding up. One evening Stella and I were out to dinner with a crazy friend of ours called Vivian whose outfit for the evening was a pair of mens striped flannel pajamas. It was the eighties. I can’t remember where we were having dinner, somewhere in the sixth arrondissement; and this fellow through the restaurant and I grabbed his arm and asked in bad French “tu vend Passion”, to which he responded “mais oui”. I explained I worked at the magazine and invited him to join us, which he did. He ordered champagne and I remember thinking that he must do pretty well selling those publications around town. He said his name was Jean-Claude he was from Cameroon and that his father was actually something of a tribal chief. Very interesting. He was highly educated and spoke English and French superbly and after we killed the bottle of bubbly he invited us to a club privé called Le Flashback. Off we went.

The place was dark and filled with poseurs and you had to purchase a bottle of something which would be placed on your table and you would pour and mix your own drinks. For some god awful reason we got a bottle of gin. The place was packed the dance floor filled with couples and, as was not unusual in France, single people dancing with their own reflections in the mirror that squared the entire room. I noticed Jean-Claude was behind Vivian with his arms wrapped around her cupping her now naked breasts as they writhed and I caught him in profile and suddenly realized, what a cotton picking minute, this isn’t the magazine seller after all. As horrible and probably racist as this sounds—I promise you it wasn’t—I had mistaken this small African dandy for the often facially obscured vendeur. But, uh-oh, when I asked Jean-Claude if he sold upper-case Passion he said “oui” thinking I meant the lower case sort.

In any case he wasn’t a gigolo and he and I actually became copains, hanging out smoking hash and drinking at his fancy Saint-Germain-des-Prés apartment. I once invited two French guys I’d met in my neighborhood, Jean-Luc and Phillipe, to hang out there with me. We ended up, as guys do, even ones who basically don’t know each other, wrestling, which in this case consisted of Jean-Luc, Phillipe and I each diving at Jean-Claude in turn whereby he would handily pin us with one move or literally throw us across the room. He was like a tiny Cameroonian super hero it was astounding. And the manner in which he defeated our moves with ease made us laugh hysterically as we exchanged glances of disbelief while, you know, being chucked into a wall. None of this of course has anything to do with the Sabian Symbol today at 3° Gemini which is all about “Formalism” but so what, it’s my Blague and I’ll blab incessantly if I want to. I will add this, that in a twelve-fold sequence, Gemini rules this oracle and given it’s rule of the third astrological house, it is associated with boon companions and all kinds of merchants, especially street vendors of newspapers and magazines. So there.

——————–

I am doing my own returning, in the next couple of days, to Cape Cod where I can’t wait to get sand in really uncomfortable places. I have always needed to live near an ocean and have been very fortunate that I have for most of my life. I was speaking with a client recently about recapturing the spirt of ones salad days. The misteltoe and holly in the image are sacred and ancestral, and I think they ask us to examine what those elements are inside of us. How do we get back to our own source of being. It certainly isn’t through nostalgia but something deeper and more primal a connection. These are themes in the show we’re currently writing for sure. In this fish bowl world in which we live, where everybody is watching everybody posture and post visual and textual snippets of their life on social media, directing it to appear a way, trying to manipulate others’ perspective of them, it only makes me crave a simpler, more anonymous time when, if you had to reach me, you had to catch me at home on the phone, now quaintly referred to as “the land line.”

Of course I am saying this in a post that will appear on social media. And I wish more people liked the Facebook page for the Cosmic Blague but I really shouldn’t care. The whole purpose of this endeavor is to return to, first, the source of these daily Sabian symbols but also to whatever wellspring of stories these symbols might trigger. Whether writing or performing or producing or what have you there is that soul-crushing risk that there won’t be an audience. But it can’t stop one from soldiering on if you have some calling to express yourself. I do think our popular culture has torqued the balance to the extreme; such that the same handful of celebrites get all the attention; the sad fact is that this trend is mirrored even in what are meant to be non-commercial forms of art and entertainment; it can all seem like a popularity contest; and if you’re not designed to be so over-the-top needful of attention or worship—as many popular artists and personalities are, even in what’s left of our (or any) subculture, you won’t get it. The same downtown performer who bemoans the loss of a true avant-garde artistic community is the same one who goes on tirades that they don’t get enough press, awards, or attention from the media or gentry at large. You can’t have it both ways. I have always thought that such self-professed “down and out” people who protest too much about the evils of celebrity or wealth would be the first to jump at the opportunity to have them, and they would be just as bad as any kardashian [sic.]—I am of the mind that the lower-case “word” kardashian should be introduced into the English language, meaning: an entitled, vapid greedy, venal no-talent who seeks fame for fame’s sake and is devoid of any spirituality, compassion or sense of proportion; it could also work as an adjective given its -ian suffix.

So perhaps we don’t know what it means exactly to return to a source or our own individual source but I think we know what it isn’t, and what elements of our own personal or collective life represent being as far from a sense of honest purity and spiritual power as can be. So maybe we start there and just keep backing off these things in our own life. For some it could be as simple as cancelling cable, or only using social media for professional or philanthropic purposes, or turning off any means by which we can become polluted or manipulated by such powers seeking to create a certain want in us that manifests in our buying products or into political or religious or other kinds of ideology. We can’t totally isolate that’s not good. But we can stay away from people who play the game of making others feel less than or are constantly and desperately trying to represent their lives to us as somehow better than our own. I think another aspect of returning to the source is finding your true tribe which for me means developing relationships with other nerds who are on a path toward increased self-awareness and expression in manners that lift up others not put them down for ones own self-aggrandizement. And if that means a lot of solo time en route to better communion, well, that’s what books, beach blankets and hammocks are for.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. 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 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2020 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2020 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox

Aries 11° (March 31)

I have a few questions for my accountant. Like how far back does one need to keep tax information before it is safe to chuck it. Also I need to know what I need to do by when. I have got my receipt work under way which is good. I want to keep moving forward on all of that. I think I will dedicate much of this day to figuring out that process. And then tomorrow I’m going to doing my yoga by nine in the morning and then focus solely on the branding work through the Saturday which will surely be enough time to make a major dent. I think that should be pretty much all I’ll need. My main goal this week is to stay healthy, get a few items in which we need, make hay on that branding project, and otherwise start the process of putting my next book together. We will ultimately find a print partner to work with. I am not going to let the larger world of book writing get me down. I’m not sorry I’m not Chani Nicholas or whatever her name is. I’m sure she’s lovely. But if people want to low-ball us and this is a tactic that is one thing. I have to let this push me in more purely entrepreneurial directions. We can leave doors open. I am getting my mojo back. It might be artificially fueled, but I do think it is possible that this is the answer: the aforementioned entrepreneurial thing, in terms of the books. I need to be the publisher—of books, of products, all under Wheel Atelier, which is a beautiful entity in itself. Obviously we are not doing events. The great thing is that the consultancy is largely virtual in any case. There is a pandemic happening right now. That cannot be understated. Chani Nichols or whatever her name is is probably a fan. Not that I care. I don’t think people realize how much abundance I create just being me, the never-ending residual source. We have so many facets, personifications of diversification.

It will be important that this entry today is not only bulky but potent, too. Language strung together in beautiful ways is beautiful. I forgot the fact for twenty years at least. I remember Marcus, with is pointy blond beard and renard personality, from where? Michigan. Minnesota. Somewhere. I wrote poetry daily in the café he manned, on Hudson Street. I was thirty tops and would wake and bake and head there for a scone and an Americano and he would wait on me and we became friends over time. AIDS was raging. Our apartment on West 12^thstreet faced the back which was a direct and proximate view of the back of The Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Conmunity Center on 13^thStreet.  I once saw a doctor jerk off a patient. And, as they had parties there on weekends, I saw men having sex in the lighted stairwells on several occasions. It was like a private window onto a pandemic. And here I am living through something scarily new. I am going to withstand it. I am going to accept it. I am going to let it move through me, especially if I contract it. Our agent wrote again. The publisher keeps acting (and speaking in writing to us) as if we are being obtuse or defensive, which we are not. Just make an offer or not. We don’t need to know the effects of your every neuron firing. We will have spinned our wheels for nothing. I can make this book writing jazz pretty damn easy, along with everything else. I really went into the soup last night and today I am feeling a bit under and I cannot afford to feel that way at this particular point in time. We will have to cancel a client which I don’t like to do but I have to stay in bed pretty much. A good a time as any to watch Tiger King. I can’t remember the last time I gave myself a day off. Well, actually, I can: Venice at the end of January, which was not the best time to be in Northern Italy. I feel as if I’ve been on the run from this pandemic since that time because everywhere I went seemed to shut down around me. It was pretty traumatic, something I’m not sure I’ve completely let myself feel.

The following blocks of texs are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 56-60.  I am reading through all my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, but the time I get to my seventh, I will have through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize:

Actually there was nothing from these five old entries that was personally anecdotal enough to include here.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. 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 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
Copyright 2020 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2020 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox