Sagittarius 14° (December 6)

So it’s Sunday. We decorated the tree last night, which was good fun. I’m going to spend the day putting the entire chronology together for the new counsel—fun. Obviously not something I want to have to do but it is necessary. My dream life is pretty wild. I do feel I’m getting to a good point in my process. I have connected with some childhood friends on the old book of face. We continue to go through and chuck things that we know we aren’t going to need. Some days I feel completely overwhelmed by it all, while other days I feel like, well, if we had to, we could likely pack up in a matter of two weeks. It will be an interesting time, and I want to do everything I can to avoid spending more money and having more stress, however the righteous path of standing up for oneself and one’s principles is the true north that needs following. Especially during dark times such as these, it is unfathomable to me how it is and why it is that someone would want to be so consciously meanspirited. It’s just wrong. And I pride myself on always being on the side of right. Some days that takes extra cups of coffee, sometimes not. Today I am going to dig down and put the project into works in time for our chat tomorrow. S. will speak to the Jazzagals. I do wish I had more of my own community, even a virtual one, but guys are crap. And in some way all the fellows I grew up with are all up their own a-holes, not in a terrible way, just that they are so preoccupied with their own problems (families) and marriages (divorces) and finding their various ways to anesthetize themselves (cannabis, religion, to name a couple. I wonder if they think I’m equally self-involved. I wish I were more self-involved and not always feeling the pain of being on my lonesome. But there you have it. I will knock off early because, frankly, all I can think about is cooking and drinking wine. And so I will make one of my go-to crowd (of two) pleasers, flounder, which it must be said nobody can quite make as well as I do. Eating a lot of fish is something I do on the regular, and though I don’t like to drink on a school night (lying through my teeth) I’m going to get some buckets of wine and have a grand ol’ eve.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1246-1250. I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

Woke to Stella not feeling stellar. We were meant to go to Maine but we stayed put. I did work in bed setting up a Boston Globe article which worked out well, timing wise for the journalist. Speaking of journalism:

I was talking about being a journalist. I started at Passion magazine in Paris in 1986 than moved to New York in 1987 where I worked at an Avenue magazine offshoot called On The Avenue; at the same time I became managing editor then editor of DV8* which was a downtown music, fashion and art magazine that club kids like James St. James and Michael Alig would circulate for us at clubs like the Tunnel, Limelight, Palladium and The World. I then became managing editor of The New York Social Calendar which was a hip rag that was put in the new breed of luxury hotels like the Royalton and the Paramount where Where magazine wouldn’t fit. I freelanced for a number of magazines and newspapers including Paper, The New York Observer, Stop, In-Style, where I was a party reporter and Detour, where I wrote big celebrity features, The New York Times and the Boston Globe. I also was a field producer of a television show called Ooh La La made in Canada by the people who produced Fashion Television with Jeannie Becker. I did fashion pieces for youthy magazines like YM, Mademoiselle and Teen People. Soon, though, people got wind of Starsky + Cox and we/they began writing horoscope columns and features for seemingly every publication from Paris Vogue, Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle and Teen People, Star, Glamour and ultimately the Daily Beast (if you can believe we had a short-lived column there which ultimately became our own brand of Haute Astrology). Meanwhile under my real name and also under Stella’s real name I wrote for Neimann Marcus “The Book” which was pretty prestigious and allowed for more creativity than journalistic outlets, even though it was considered advertorial

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The word nemisis is literally from the goddess Nem-Isis, who was the shadow twin of Isis. An archeytpal Debby Downer if you will.

In my life, I believe, that I have had one nemisis, which is different from an enemy. A nemesis might be closer to a frenemy but one of the two people in the equation might be bordering on restraining order. My nemesis has actually tried to kill me, oh so subtly, but I don’t take it personally as he tries to kill everyone he “loves”, oh so subtly, because he has this weird worship/destroy attitude toward people he suspects are smarter, more fortunate or talented than s/he. This nemesis is no longer a nemesis in that I am in no way any longer emotionally involved with this character. Someone close to me probably warned me by saying something like: Anyone that wants to get that close to you so fast is probably not someone you want to know (or probably will know in the longr un because they are going to assert some narcissistic agenda). True dat. Funny thing about narcissists: They stage things like farewell tours and then they don’t go away.

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To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of 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.

Sagittarius 13° (December 5)

It’s funny but I came across a post about Bill(y) Mumy: It’s amazing. What I see as a teacher and student (not in that order) of acting is how  engages his core and diaphragm every time he “speaks” in other words connects, all so naturally, to that upper case Self inside. That is why, no matter what Bill has ever done as an actor, it is real to him. Acting is the opposite of acting in the sense of pretending, acting is acting, which is how humans express honestly, from their core, what they want, what their objectives are, and every word they speak is one and the same with their intention as the character. This is an innate understanding Bill possessed as a child. It cannot be taught to someone at a tender age. They either get it or they don’t. I can make comparisons to other child actors at the time Bill was working so prolifically. One of them is no a famous director. But there is no comparison between the true actor and the phoner inners. Acting is an art of the purest sort, because your source material is yourself. I never for a second did not believe Bill on screen. Even when, as a kid, he was hiding behind the same styroroam boulders that seemed to grace every planet on which the Robinsons landed. He shared this with Jonathan Harris: The ability to make even the most preposterous real. Jump cut to the Vegetable Planet. But I have to also say, while on the subject, that this praise is true for the entire cast of Lost In Space. Each and every actor on screen was a professional and they were equipped from the get-go (let us not forget that June Lockhard, too, was a child actor, and a very good one, gifted with the ability to be truthful, always, in the moment. She is especially wonderful in All This, And Heaven Too, with Bette and Boyer. I’m off on a tanget so I’ll reel it in. Bill Mumy’s acting ability had always been honest and stupendous. It is why we all still want to be his friend so many years later. He is an Aquarius, so it is right up his alley to have a gazillion friends, reserving his intimate connections for a very select few. Being that much older than me (and I’ve told him so) he was my hero for all my young life. When God Bless The Beast and the Children came along I was still in 2nd/3rd grade but I remember thinking—good for you, you’re not remaining the Tiger Beat kid. And then one day, as adults, I got to interview him and I promise you I was as gushing in that conversation as I am here now.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1241-1245 I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

The party last night turned out to be pretty fun. The cast of the FB movie were there for the most part. Catherine Waterston actually seemed nice. Monica Lewinsky was there which was interesting. Kate McKinnon sat right behind me. Whoopi Goldberg was pretty much my date and though I had no qualms interacting with her I don’t think she was overly interested so didn’t push. In fact, it was one of those dinners where everyone else is talking in pairs and trios and someone (me) has nobody to talk to. It rarely happens to me so I kind of rode it out and used it as a way to feel meditative in the circumstances. It wasn’t personal. Whoopi had a special salad from the rest of us but still didn’t eat it. She said she only really eats chips and french fries which was funny. I mentioned to two people we knew in common and she lit up a bit which was nice. Sheila Nevins came over and was introduced to me and I sort of gushed at her. To which shw reached out and carressed and held my face. I made a joke that I’m going to tell everyone that Sheila Nevins touched me uninvited—she’s a major mover in the #metoo movement—to which she replied: I’m going to tell everyone you touched me first. Ha! She is so elegant and funny too. JD appeared in the midst of it all and knelt at the head of our table to chat and then he came around to chat with Whoopi. He asked her a question that I overheard which reminded me of something someone would ask another high school student; I can’t really repeat it here. But, as they were hovering directly over me I sort of chimed in and made them laugh. JD leaned on my shoulders and squeezed them which was cute. Whoopi did a French exit. There was a sort of auction style pledge drive at different levels—being the budgeteer that I am, I pledged an amount that probably seemed paltry to others, while it was quite a lot for me. We were whisked away before dessert and had a last little something together just the three of us in the hotel lounge. I’m always sad when our time with our friend is over, though, in recent years, we have seen quite a lot of each other; in the past, the oughts decade, for instance, I never really knew, with such a parting, if we would indeed see each other for years to come; now I know there is always a next time that I needn’t wait too long for. I truly love this dear friend and I’m so grateful we get to spend time together and laugh; and laugh we do.

This morning we awoke early, big surprise, and decided to have breakfast down stairs in the whatchamacallit room and it was really fun. The food took forever to arrive which was perfect because we just wanted to sit there and chill and people watch and do practically nothing. Everything on the breakfast menu was ridiculously expensive, anyway, so I decided to order the most ridiculous thing: Eggs Isabella. Let’s just say that there were both truffles and caviar involved. I’m usually so careful when staying as someone’s guest but I just thought what the hell—it’s not something I’m going to ever make for myself. It was really fun just to hang out and soak up these last hours. We packed and went for a walk, zig-zagging the sidestreets between 63rd and 79th, between 5th and Madison and ended up at the Frederic Malle shop. Then we decided to have a spot of lunch at Bar Italia, sharing a couple plates, before getting in the car and heading back to the Cape. Was truly exhausted but the trip was so worth it. The celebrity bits don’t impress me a bit. What I love most is the true-friend time. True friends are truly hard to find.

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We arrived home late last evening. I have a scratchy throat today and I think I know what that means. I had the morning to myself to catch up on some writing and I could feel myself getting sicker and sicker. We had cauliflower crust pizza for lunch and a green salad with chicken breast for dinner. I had some thoughts post the party in NYC the other night.

Perfect that I am no beaming in from a futre time zone, when I still have a major cough, to report that all plans for the coming week were laid to waste. First of all relationships with people aren’t working and it’s global so it has to be me. And yet I swear to all things Christlike that I am being an agent of good—even not being as good to myself as I could be. But I’m going deeper into self care.

Had a nice show of support from some late breaking sponsors today. I really need to come up with a way to fundraise moving forward. I’ll put it on the list for October 4. I sent out a giant mailer to a bunch of venues regarding Brian’s show on Thursday. Had nice note back from Nancy Bauer on that score. I reached out to Desiree Burch to see if she would come stateside for the Feburary date the Illustrious people left vacant—thanks for that guys. And I finally have a date in the books to talk to Mass MoCA I should articulate that. Paid up the hotel and expenses looking tight but I will do my very best to remedy that in coming days. I see Lance Horne is doing something at ART. I will write him but he won’t write me back. I suggested Ikechuku Ufomadu also as a Feb replacement. Locked Tomoko in for our holiday show. Haven’t heard back from Danton will resend and hopefully he’ll join to. We are all on sale now at Joe’s Pub and happy to work some marketing magic. I did hear back from Sage Francis as well but I’m not sure he’s not flaking out again already. Audience is looking light for Gravitational Fool on Thursday but we will work some last minute magic.

I reached out to Cole too, but I think he’s just too big to answer emails. I pitched myself to play Tru in Jay Allen Pressey’s show but again no word back on that. I will suggest it to another venue. I’d like to get my hands on a copy of that play. Trying to confirm going to Portland but my spidey sense says that I’ll be too sick to do so. Still trying to get blood out of the stones that are the 141 guys—now that they have left the community they seem not to care that much about the work we’re doing. I do need to bring in more income. Next week I’ll circle back to Tatiana Von F. Emma sent some contracts I have to scan.

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Last evening I really didn’t sleep at all, my cold keeping my up for most the night. We had to move two of our clients, one to tomorrow and one to next week. We had an exact repeat of our food intake today as yesterday—cauliflower crust pizza for lunch and a lovely salad with chicken breast for dinner. I watched a pretty cool documentary about settlers on the Galapagos Islands in the early 20th century and otherwise lay low, trying to sweat this cold out, in bed for most of the day. In the evening we watched the Jane Fonda doc but didn’t finish watching. Will do so tomorrow. Going through some writing:

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

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

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

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I slept somewhat better. But still this cold is kicking my behind. I don’t feel much like writing today to be honest. So I will do another cut and paste:

As we often are, we were approached by an event planner to do readings for guest at a private party. But there was something mysterious about this whole affair as the planner didn’t seem to be someone who threw a lot of parties, and we came to learn she worked for just a few clients helping them with their private and corporate events which kept her busy. This event was to be at a private home in Rhode Island and we took it as an opportunity to see a new part of New England. Only was there did we realize the island was where much of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom was filmed. So we drove around to visit location spots, most notably, the “cove” of the place that serves as the film’s title.

The party itself only had about forty people in attendance but it was pretty elaborate and the grounds on which it was held, a private home on the water with multiple acres and buildings, was something the likes of which I’ve never seen; and I’ve spent a lot of time around rich people. We were set up in a sort of tower structure from which we could look down on the partygoers whom one couldn’t help imagine lived very privileged lives. One never knows exactly on which side of the political equation people might be in this position but, we were in short order led to assume that these people here assembled were on the right side of politics and history. How did we know this? Because they were all incredibly nice and unassuming people. In a world where the biblical adage that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven often rings so true, this party of people was to prove twrong that saying.

We had no idea the name of the hosts all the while we were at the party. Only by doing a bit of Google detective work the next day were our assumtions corrobarated. The host of the party was indeed a well-known, celebrated, very wealthy man of the Warren Buffet school of philanthropy where he was determined to give a great deal of his wealth away and to put it in service of others. We’ve always said that when it comes to private clients the best people in the world seem to find us and to be genuintely interested in raising their consciousness, making it a joy to help them in that aim. What we realize is that the same holds true for those who come to hire us for events. In either case we have never solicited interest but allow word of mouth and, I’d like to say, some good karma, make the referrals for us.

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Drove to Lexington this morning for lunch and for a birthday ice cream with the birthday girl. We had a quick bite at the parents and then set off to Beverly to see the showcase of Gravitational Fool at Endicott. I need to articulate some thoughts regarding this show and what it needs but I guess i just need things to percolate in my brain a bit. I will otherwise re-muse myself:

Why do I do what it is I do in regard to the half of each year, I spend, putting together performing arts festivals and series. Well, the simple answer is that Ed Sullivan and I share more than a birthday. Like Ed, I was a journalist from the age of 22 to about 40. IN fact the main reason I thought to adopt the pseudonym of Quinn Cox was because I wanted to keep my journalistic world—editors and publishers and the subjects I wrote about—separate from what might or not be a success as an astrological duo which has affectionately come to be known as Starsky + Cox. But you see paradoxes began to spring up. Like my Libran brother Oscar Wilde said, and I paraphrase because I’m too lazy to look this shit up: Give a man a mask and he’ll reveal his truths to you. Okay I’m going to look it up and see how close I got. What he actually said was: “Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth.” Which is much simpler and better but I was close.

People do not know me and that’s been okay. I think I’m getting ready to reveal myself in teaspoonfuls. The fact is that back around 2005 I thought Stella and I needed to take to a stage, something we had only done together, rarely, in acting classes where, at HB Studios, we were labelled “the Lunts” which, I won’t lie, I loved. I had a sort of rock-bottom epiphany where I thought, hang on, our book Sextrology came out last year and it has been a success, so we should take to the stage and somehow combine comedy and astrology with some music thrown in. At a place called (under) Elmo in Chelsea, which one tried to convince oneself was a boutique version of Fez under Time Cafe which had recently closed down, we launched our first “Cosmic Cabaret” to a full house of wonderful people we knew personally and periferally. Lots of fashion people—Zaldy and Ruben and Isabel Toledo and John Bartlett—as opposed to performer folks. And, I have to say, after another decade or so “being” with performer folk, I much prefer the people in the fashion and design world, despite the fact I was so utterly convinced, in 2005, that I wanted to stop hanging around with fashion folks whom I did at the time find fatuous and enter the “real” world of performing artists who were down, dirty, honest and true.

Performing artists, who had been down, dirty, honesty and true for the whole time I dipped in and out of their circles, for the past 20 years since I made my way to NYC, but when, in 2006, I began to seek their company, they were on their last gasp of genuine experience. Now, first, let me say, there is no downtown. And I say this as both a journalist and a downtown denizen who more dabbles in performance. I have said this for a decade now: Round about 2007, “downtown artists” began emulating some hybrid breed of Upper East Side Socialite and opera, indie-movie and/or rock star. Quite a leap, I know; but one felt, downtown, that one should speak in a mid-Atlantic accent previously reserved for Rosiland Russell and garb oneself from head to toe in outfits that were spontaneously ready to pass, if pressured, at a Met or Whitney Event.

Suddenly the creme de la creme of the downtown scene used words like creme de la creme. Though they might still live in apartments where the bath tub was recently or still, in the kitchen, they thought they should no longer have to pay for meals or makeup or plastic surgery because they were iconic, and they were. Some still are although that particular brand of enchantment is wearing off and, dare I say, thin.

And I started to miss my friends that worked at magazines that no longer existed. I started to miss the art directors and fellow writers, like myself, who live such solitary lives that it takes a proper poking or, at the very least, a more gregarious partner to stap you into interaction. But what I missed most about living life as a more anonymous character was the ability to move on a dime, to travel, undetected, without needing to be any one place on any certain date….

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of 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.

Sagittarius 12° (December 4)

Just when I thought things might have been looking up another bomb, which I did not see coming, gets dropped. I truly don’t understand this life. The challenge feels way too big for me and I don’t know why, during a pandemic, that people can be so cruel. But I try to imagine that I am being guided in the right direction, despite the stress and searing pain I’m feeling. I look for signs and there may be some but not really sure they are what I’m after anymore. The stress is really just too, too great and I know myself and I need to secure a back up. There is no point in giving over to this place at this point now. The day really was going so well, but you just have to flow with the go in life, is what it comes down to, and so I will let myself be slightly derailed and then I will do a giant redirect. There is nothing else can be done about things. There is a special circle in Hell for people who intentionally cause others pain and suffering, particularly during this Covid-19 pandemic. (And it is so cliché to be a douche at the end of the day on a Friday.) 2020 has brought out the best and the worst in people, but like traitors, real perpetrators of any kind are now easy to spot among those in whom this dark time has brought out the bright lights of kindness and compassion. Go out of your way to be loving, as you have no clue what loss and difficulty others might be enduring. Don’t add to people’s pain. I know I’m preaching to the choir, here, because if you’re reading this we are friends, so at the very worst, you’re a benign narcissist (as I’ve pretty much weeded out the maligant ones from my social media sphere over the last twelve months)! Forgive even the most rabid fucktards for the sake of your own peace and well-being. Feel for those who tresspass against you because that karma you done heard about is real. Happy weekend everybody and stay out of every kind of harm’s way! 00

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1236-1240 I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

Still really unsettled by the shark incident and I know I won’t get back to our beach before returning from NYC where we go in a couple of days. I was looking back on some writing from the past couple of years. And I wish to just repeat it here.

My mother used to tell me how she had to fight and, I think, ultimately, drink to silence her “impressions”, empathetic Pisces that she was. Sometimes I would catch her unawares sitting in a kitchen chair staring unblinkingly, only her gaze seemed to direct inward not out. I didn’t experience what she experienced as a child.

I do remember moving objects when I was very small, something I never repeated, though I’ve tried. And surely I did enter the fairy world, for lack of a better term, through duvet covers and sometimes even the odd pillow case. But there was nothing in my youth or teens of the psychic about my experience except so far as my mother was concerned. I would get a flash that she was about to phone me and I would suprise and entertain friends and roommates by saying the phone is about to ring and it would be my mother which it was. I chalked that up to her not me.

In Rome in 1984 Stella and I met an old man who spoke in tongues whom we “understood” on a transmissionary level; in our Hoboken apartment in 1988 we saw plasmic scenes of partygoers from the 1920s superimposed upon the visual landscape of our interior. We had a ghost cat that visitors would also see and almost trip over. But it wasn’t until the early 1990s, living in New York’s West Village, where we did for a good long time, that my so-called gift emerge.

In clubs and in bars with a good buzz on was how it began. Inevitably the struck-up conversations with acquaintances or veritable strangers, I would start getting messages. People wouldn’t think I was crazy because I was eerily accurate in my verbalizations; in the moment I didn’t judge, while, next day, I chalked it up to quasi drunken stupidity. Now I know that drinks would relax the veil between me and it. I wasn’t a professional astrologer then, never mindsome form of metaphysician. These little episodes were foreshadowing. But, slowly, over time, I did begin to trust these impressions which  were being received increasingly in sober moments. I simply thought: cool, I have inherited something of my Celtic mother’s gift which might amount to a tiny party trick perhaps. No further expectation.

Year’s later as we began doing astrological readings for people, the sharp focus of doing so seemed to have the same effect as the fuzzying out that drinking enabled. Impressions were coming to me through the very opposite end of my mental spectrum—that of a concentrated openness to the symbolic patterning on a individual’s astrological chart. We were (and are) continually trained to read people’s charts, the result of which is already forever astonishing—the accuracy of a technical astrological reading will always remain inexplicable as to the why it works. But, more and more, there was something extra available to me. Training my mind technically, consciously, intellectually via the complexities and intricasies of one’s chart at hand seemed also to open a window somewhere in the back (or, to be accurate upper-left side) of said consciousness where these flashes, impressions, or rather, imperatives were asking to be articulated.

I pick a Tarot card every morning. Doing so is never the same twice. Our minds are never exactly in the same state when we do some ritual behavior—they state always varies at least by tiny degrees. This morning I was shuffling absent-mindingly to the point that I forgot what I was doing, lost in some early morning daydream, the to-dos of the day yet to creep their way in. Suddenly I “heard” a pick me from one of the cards I remembered I was fondling. I did. It was the Magician. And its appearance immediately inspired the theme of today’s installment. In a way my so-called psychic ability, as transient as it can be, is the Universe’s ultimate Blage on me.

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Possible venues throughout New England Portland: State Theater; Aura, Longfellows, Space Gallery.

I stumbled on a few things I wrote of late

How to speak on the subject of nothingness: The day was devoid of meaning, there was nothing to discuss, the televised news headlines were the same as last night’s, it was toast as usual, today, with almond butter and honey, not miso-tahini sauce. Alas, it was a no-nonsense day, with varied purposes being personfied in beings moving too and fro, like birds, in the morning.

There was beauty; there always is. But today had a special spark suggesting something significant might happen. Use of simile, unawares. And somewhere via something else a corner of the mind awakes from long sleep not hindered by worry and longing. There was poetry, too. Somehow, inside ones head, verse was heard, sounded like voiced by Laurence Olivier, the first name to be introduced here. And now, I have nothing to fear.

I asked the door to move if there were spirit here and it didn’t. So I know that it is just me. And before I exercise license I must feel, and that is near impossible. Take sip, swallow. Make of yourself vehicle and vessel. It’s uncomfortable but it gets the lead out. Golden years, gold, whop whop whop.

I sent L.R. another email to try and get paid for the time and energy I put into booking her a gig. I don’t know why I won’t learn my lesson with certain people who seem to feel justified in using others for their own selfish ends. Lesson learned. Never again. I alighted on Rob Roth’s show and wrote him a note but he wasn’t interested apparently. I’m still pulling teeth from people who pledged to become sponsors of the festival. I don’t understand how ridiculous this process has become. The December show is coming together band-wise. And I’m already immediately into grant writing for next year. Crazy.

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There was something else I stumbled upon recently, things I wrote but failed to remember:

Living in seaside towns you see your fare share of inns and B&Bs and so forth. And there is something about the signage that can tell you something right off the bat, I find, about the personalities of the owners. If full and they hang a little NO to the left of VACANCY I take it as a polite, time-saving gesture for all involved. It’s polite enough without being cute. I hate cute. The only exception perhaps is when a shop says OPEN and then scrambles the words to read NOPE when they’re not. I can sort of deal with that. But when an inn or B&B is full and they hang the world NO to the right of the VACANCY sign, I feel we’re in for a bit of a problem. I mean there won’t be a problem because obviously I’m not entering to inquire about a room—I wouldn’t anyway; but I might subliminally steer visiting friends or strangers, even, away from some a place. Somehow that particular combination of the two words is the equivalent of the kind of 1980s joke, like, “I’m so interested in this—NOT.” It’s something Roseanne used to say as the character Roseanne on Roseanne. It’s a little dangle-y, as if there is a silent question mark after the work VACANCY? and then boom: NO, loser. It’s just a bit passive aggressive.

And then there is the more cloying passive aggresive version of the no vacancy sign which is SORRY. Really? Sorry? Are you. Why. Who asked you to be. Who says I’m disappointed? How did we jump to disappointment. It’s assuming a lot: To think you have the power to disappoint me. It’s so condescending. It might be worse than VACANCY NO now that I think about it. Like it’s so fucking great to stay at your crappy B&B. SORRY. That’s like breaking up with someone because you know they are just about to break up with you. Like I have to be shut out from staying at your crappy place and also be noble enough to let you down easy that I didn’t want to fucking stay there in the first place. God. It’s such a victimy projection. Like don’t fucking worry about it. I’m fine. I don’t need your fucking pity that I can’t stay in your lousy room with the squeaky double bed and eat your mini muffins with bad coffee in the morning. Trust me we are good.

Whatever happened to FULL. I love FULL. It’s so simple and direct. It’s the opposite of VACANCY, that would be EMPTY which wouldn’t be accurate because a place isn’t empty then full it’s filling up and then full. FILLING UP would be a cute way of saying VACANCY but, yeah, we don’t like cute so never mind. And so what—damn the parallel structure—FULL works just fine. It’s succinct and yet it feels a little friendly. It’s not assuming anything about me or asking me to feel away. It’s not like the other codependent nightmare signs. It’s just like FULL. That’s it. We’re cool. No need to discuss. I have boundaries. I wish you well. I’m not going to waste your time. Just keep looking and I wish you well. God Speed.

While on the subject of signs: I have this idea to market a two sided Provincetown Paddle whereupon, on one side it says COME HERE and on the other GO AWAY. Because after living and working in this town for quite some time what I’ve noticed is that it’s a petrie dish for polarization. And ultimately people fall into two categories—those you want or actually need to see for one reason or another on any given day OR those you are definitely trying to avoid seeing or being seen by. So I thought I would market an auction paddle. I could call it the “Provincetown People Polarization Paddle”™ I think it would sell like hotcakes.

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Yesterday we drove from the Cape to Boston. I haven’t had panicky feelings in a long time but as I was telling S. I have been experiencing a sort of dread lately. It might very well be about money, but I think it’s more than that. I think it’s about the creative limbs that we keep going out upon and not knowing when to sort of reel those suckers in.

Some more remembrances:

As a small child in Jersey City we used to have soot showers. That’s right. There was a nearby factory or something and sometimes soot would fall from the sky like black snow flakes, wafting down. It was very odd and frankly something I hadn’t thought about probably since the last time I witnessed one—sometimes sitting down to write a Blague without any exact idea about what that Blague might be can trigger memories of this sort. These soot showers used to happen, I recall, most, in Spring, which seemed longer when I was a kid, in no small part due to the manmade changes in our weather patterns.

There was something magical that happened to kids in Spring, which I can’t quite explain. In the city, there would come that day where bubbles and water balloons and kites and kids trying to ride bikes for the first time without training wheels, bats-and-balls, those paddles with the ball attached with a rubber band, and hopscotch, water pistols, and hulahoops, and those small pink balls one used, in cities, to play handball against a brick wall, and the two dangerous early-seventies toys called Clackers—two balls on a string you would try to make hit above and below your quick-flicking grip, only to hit yourself in the head or face—and that other gadget, a loop with a string and ball attached, where you strapped the loop around one ankle and you would try to jump over the ball as you swung it in a circular motion with said ankle, only to trip yourself and fall face first onto the pavement—all would all start to surface. Girls played elaborate patty cake and jumped rope and everyone played Red Rover and May I.

Later in the more bucolic suburbs, in addition to paper airplaines, boys would fold up paper footballs and shoot the between a buddy’s goal post—index fingers connected at the tips with both thumbs up, while girls made what I was told later in life by someone were called Cooty Cathers, little magical folded and numbered creases of paper with numbers that you manipulated with your fingers and to which you posed questions about love, for the most part. I didn’t describe this at all well. Under flaps of paper were “answers” to the questions girls would ask. Suburban girls played less patty cake it seemed and gymanstical feats seemed to replace jumping rope, but that might be Nadia Comenici’s fault. And of course little league and new gloves and mitts and such played a major part in the childhood estate of Spring. And for some reason candy seemed to be more a Spring occupation than it was in other seasons. I think that had something to do with marketing and the knowledge that kids could sneak away to candy stores more readily in the clement weather.

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Yesterday we drove from Boston to New York City. It was ridiculously fast and easy all the traffic going the other way. We checked in and immediately went in search of lunch. Match was just a couple blocks away so we got seated and when we plopped down realized that Richard Barone was seated next to us with Paul Williams. Actually I spotted Paul first and thought in an instant that the only person I know who knows him is Richard et voila it was Richard. We said hi and did our own thing. S. had soup and I had a tuna tartare and then some single espressi and upon splitting had a nice chat with Richard and Paul who I think is 78 years old and really nice. He gave us his card. He is preseident of ASCAP. And he not only wrote We’ve Only Just Begun and most songs you (well, at least I) grew up on….he wrote the freaking The Rainbow Connection. For that he should be sainted.

We quickly spruced up and prepared to meet the publisher of Harper One books who was coming to see us for a chat. These types of meetings always give me something of a panic attack to be honest because I have such trauma around publishers, editors, agents, managers and lawyers in regard to book world. She was super cool but super on a schedule as is not expected. Still you never know where these things go. She mentioned doing a book for people we know that own a shop in Salem. Anyway we got a text that JW was going to be joining us that evening for dinner which was to make a happy foursome. We met around 7 and it was just the three of us for awhile which was great cuz we got to catch up on personal stuff and then JW joined and that was a differnet kind of fun. As usual we closed the joint and it wasn’t the best night of sleep.

We had a wee breakfast in the room and then set off for Barneys where I had two clothing options in mind that I needed to round out one or the other of the outfits I brought. I ended up scrapping everything and spending way too much money on a Margiela jacket and cotton cashmere t-shirt. Anyway I never buy clothes and it was a good investment so really no harm done. Then we decided to have lunch in the building at Fred’s. Suddenly Michael Cohen was there (apparently—I did not know this—he lunches there pretty much every day), which I thought was strange cuz Donnie Deutsch had been saying on Morning Joe so much, recently, that Michel is laying low and he hadn’t really seen him. S. had the chopped salad which is her custom and I had the club salad with blue cheese. We had a nice crisp glass of Sancerre each and headed out. Who should we see exiting the restuarant, in that weird area with art sculptures made for six year-olds but, yep, you guessed it: Donnie Deutsch. Before I could open my mouth, Stella said: You know Michael Cohen’s in there. He said yeah I know. I said: So I guess he’s not laying as low as you said. He turned scarlet and said yeah but he’s still not talking though. Meanwhile Cohen spent the entire hour we were there getting up to hug or shake hands with every manager and waiter at Fred’s. My take is that he is trying to act the hero, now, since pleading guilty. As if he is going to save us from the orange menace. I’m not really buying it. He is a crook just like the rest of them. Donnie Deutsch works out way too much and his kids who were playing around the sculptures are really, really young. I’m guessing this is family number two for him, but what do I know.

My Margiela was being altered meanwhile and I was to hit Barneys back at 430 to pick up the jacket. Well I texted the sales guy, Anthony, at 430 and he said twenty minutes. I was already strolling over and I had to be downstairs in the hotel at 6 to meet the car. I sat at Barneys till about 5:15 becoming increasingly irate and adamant and when I finally go the hand of I bolted back to the room where I still had to shave and shower and do all such sundries. I forgot to spritz myself with cologne and raced back to the room at the stroke of six, and the phone in the room was already ringing. They are really precise with timing I guess. We got to the party in plenty of time and was meant to be greeted by our friend who now works for the charity, Kris. We didn’t see her and so just checked in ourselves. I was holding my phone and glasses because I thought I didn’t have any pockets in my new jacket. This was disproven by our friend Debra who was the first of the guests to greet us.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of 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.

Sagittarius 11° (December 3)

I may be officially pushing my luck a little but if it turns out that the schedule loosens up that would be a very good thing, because then life could be more integrated. In the meantime, I will do my due diligence but will otherwise let myself be guided. It is exactly what is called for now and there is no real substitute for allowing life to unfold on its own terms. Touch wood: things tend to trend toward the better, while I must recognize that certain patterns repeat, and I must take responsibility for that part of it I suppose. I’ve spent the morning in the kitchen, roasted a chicken and brussels for dinner, meanwhile repurposed cassava pasta with beans and some broccoli for lunch. Have a client in about ninety minutes so I thought I’d get a jump. Publisher got back to us and we might have a wee more wiggle room which would be just fantastic. Keeping feelers out there for something fabulous. Things do have a way of working out and though I am not giving over to magical thinking, there is something to be said for letting unseen powers, those proverbial mighty forces, play their part. If one never holds the intention of doing harm then there can be nothing ever truly wrong with any outcome I suppose. We are covering all the necessary bases and there is truly nothing more than that which can be done, so no use worrying over any of it. The point is I will be finished with what needs doing before getting on any kind of boat. Only now I don’t have this giant fear looming over me and if I need to take time out to make a move I have the power to do so. 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1231-1235 I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

From a classical standpoint the first-born children of the gods are the archetypes of the first sign of Aries—both war gods, Ares and Athena (Roman: Mars and Minerva), these front-liners are two sides of the offensive/defensive warrior coin. Life being foremost a battle for it, we send these toughies forth.

The biblical archetypes are Adam and Lilith (the first wife of Adam) who was too like him—they battled for the top sexual position—and no compliant, though ultimately more dangerous, Eve. The symbol for Athena and Lilith is the same, a delta/triangle about a crossed staff. Athena despised her warlike brother Ares, familiarity in nature breed contempt, perhaps.

Anyway, all of these figures are alphas, as Aries people tend to be. Alphas being what they are, they tend to operate solo as a rule, not being the best team players on the planet. And like the first born gods they energetically draw upon, they approach life with a certain carte blanche. (White, along with red, is the Aries color. ) Full license, a blank slate. Think of Adam going around naming everything as if he was the only person on the planet. Ahem. Aries people (again, people of any sign are the most vivid example we have of that sign’s energy) tend to act this way. They don’t ask for permission, and rarely for forgiveness.

If you were the only person on the planet how would you act? Well I find that this time of year is a good time to contemplate that thought. Consider the indvidual shoots fighting their way through the soil, feeling the pain of being born—we are all of us, for the whole of our lives, like those bursts of life. Our attention needn’t be likewise undivided. We are the only ones. You are the only one. You are free of comparison. There is nobody with a better job, more famous friends, a more successful business, a more touted podcast, more hits on their websites, more likes on their posts. Life is hard enough to embody with singularity. And, as such, it can be the simplest of things.

Without compare, we can focus on what our singular purpose might be. Without consideration, we have license to “name” everything we see and encounter and experience. We can call a spade a spade. There is no competion. There is no contest. There is no race. (Insert double-ententre inference here). There is no rushing. There is no deadline to doing the one singular thing you were born to do: Become yourself. This is the true meaning of the sign of Aries’ rule over “birth” and “selfhood”. We must imagine what life would be like if we were the only one on the planet. What would we do then? Who would we be if there were no second opinions or outside influences? How would we dance if nobody were looking? Surely, we would embody our birthright. It would be second nature. There would be no clock ticking. We would simply be. The Aries motto is “I am”. We would go at our own pace. Again, life would be simple and though it mightn’t be always easy, there would be nobody stopping us from making it so, as best we might.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I’m a big believer in self-reliance. Believe me I have tried to not be but for some reason it doesn’t tend to work out all that great. Which is strange because people are constantly asking favors of me. When others do, I tend to comply, feeling it an opportunity to help pave the way or speed the trip of people in want. But I’ve got to say, I don’t typically get the same all-in reaction in return. Don’t get me wrong—it doesn’t make me bitter nor have a come to change my ways and withhold my help when asked. It’s just that, objectively speaking, I don’t meet many people like myself. That sounds egotistical in some twisted way but so be it.

Anywig, I tend not to ask for help (which can be it’s own “issue). And I will admit that I have waxed martyry in my day, but mostly not. I just find it so much easier to d.i.y.. Also desired positive results tend to taste all the sweeter. The man who wrote philosophically on this subject, most notably, is a Gemini not an Aries (I’ll let you guess who that is). But energetically speaking the notion is Arien. Self-reliance is most selfless. Just imagine if we embodied this principle. Nobody would have to pick up after your tweets.

If you want something done right…I’m tempted to finish that sentence with….hire a millenial. They seem to know how to do things quickly and easily, and now they do it with stickers, but I’m not sure they do it right. Am I self-reliant or am I a control freak. Am I hardworking or am I carrying some cross around. Uh-oh. I do know I tend to take on more than my fair share. Back in the days I waited tables I used to hope no other servers would show up so I could work the whole restaurant myself. I had recurring dreams of waiting tables as many servers do. But for me they were good dreams. How many Quinn Cox’s does it take to screw in a light bulb? One. No joke there.

Being self-reliant is a nightmare under this particular government administration. People with whom I have zero in common elected this baboon-bafoon to disempower the individual and create oppression on a scale we haven’t ever seen in this country. The marches and protests seem to have died down. Everyone is back to their distractions? Every day I spin the globe in my mind to alight on some place in the world I can feel as free as possible. I don’t think it’s here anymore. At least not for awhile. And I am self-reliant enough that I haven’t worked for anybody else for the last few decades unless it was as a freelancer who could walk at will.

So what is self-reliance at this particular instant in history? It’s hard to say. I suppose it’s not letting the government oppress you or the news of the oppression of the government depress you. But self-reliance isn’t escapism either (not even the good Pisces brand of seeking soul-asylum). Self-reliance is being a warrior in keeping with Aries’ martial archetypes. Self-reliance is health and fitness and personal well-being. Self-reliance is taking just what you need and no more as to create a deficit for others. Self-reliance is, in fact, taking a stand for those who can’t do so for themselves. Never do we have so strong a sense of self as when we are warriors for the freedom and happiness of all sentient beings.

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I was really put off by one of the performers this year in particular as said artist was the most high maintenance of characters we’ve ever encountered. Every week for months there was some drama. This artist alienated the entire creative team weeks before they ever met. On the eve of this artists arrival, while I’m between shows of other artists (a thought that would never occur to this person) I was having dinner and this artist called and started off crying and saying “I have a really bad feeling about coming”. Now, as I said, I had preemtively addressed every issue, and there were many, that this artist could have had, and here this person was about to say that they weren’t coming—I just knew that’s what was going to be said. So what did I do? I’m not proud, but I pretended we had a bad connection and hung up and then texted them to say all sorts of positive reassuring words and inviting them to come to the shows if they got into town. But I was resolved right then and there that I was done with this person. Anyway their show was last night and I couldn’t enjoy it in the least, despite the great talent this person possesses. As I’ve said talent is not enough.

Yesterday had this pall of sadness too, as that poor boy got fatally attacked by a shark on our beach. The whole thing has me spooked.Anyway, I was looking back on some writing I did and figured I would just let that be my entry today It’s from a year ago spring, or thereabouts:

Louis Alphonse, Duke of Anjou, would be the legitimate pretender to the French throne, who would be Louis XX.

Aries is the sign of the Self. But this is not to be confused with selfishness. It’s more like putting the oxygen mask on first before you can help others. But help others you might.

As I watch the mostly older white men on the right shuffling in and out of meetings in D.C. all I can think is that they couldn’t be more divorced from the concept of helping or serving others. They don’t even pretend anymore like they might have done forty years ago. Reporters are seen as an annoyance. It’s like these lawmakers are part of some royal family. Meanwhile, the British royal family, for instance, is suffused with the understanding that they are born to serve the people, despite their trappings of wealth—and really they’re not ostentatious.

I was reading Edmund White’s  The Flaneur recently, one of a thousand books Stella has put in front of me knowing I half-jokingly admit “I don’t read.” But it was a thin book and it was about Paris and I could knock it off in a morning. There is a bit about a loyalist bar on the rue de Rivoli. And how the crowd there wants to bring back the French royal family, such as it is. The notion seems absurd at first. Until you realize that the royalists’ argument is that a royal family would do more for the people than those elected. It’s starting to make more sense to me.

Just because the people in power didn’t get there by divine right doesn’t mean they don’t act like it.  Perhaps its not a divine right endowed upon them by a god but rather a lobby but they still act like they are appointed as if on by high. And they tolerate the rest of us whom they seek to oppress. Noblesse oblige now seems more modern a concept than what is passing these days for democracy wherein those who have don’t feel obliged to provide to those less fortunate. No. Even the income-based Affordable Care Act (that’s the name of it) where the rich pay a little more to cover those who have not is too much to ask from these entitled assholes.

Not that Britain is any great shakes these days but, despite the fact they have a royal family, they are way more (social-)democratic than we are—their health care and education system is a testament to that. Remember the Age of Enlightenment? The Social Contract? Reason? (All Apollonian/Libran terms in my astrological view). How about the Declaration of Independence? The founding fathers took a page from the royalists’ book: They were going to play the role of father to the nation and thus take care of and provide for others as an outcropping of their own inalienable fullfillment of selfhood.

Now we have to look at Paul Ryan’s smug mug. Or that giant orange pig face which, I’m sorry, shows signs of constant drug abuse. We have to stomach the chinless droolings of Mitch McConnell, the ignoramity of Rick Perry, the impatient, “tolerating”, violent insouciance of pretty much the entire GOP. We’re sorry to bother you we’re just trying not to starve, be enslaved and die. Sorry. We know you’re busy being paid healthcare on our taxes and getting lobbyist kickbacks and book deals and industrial contracts. Our mistake. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

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To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of 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.

Sagittarius 10° (December 2)

I woke up rather late and that is really okay. I’m still not on a fast track and there will be drama this day. I think I felt that innately. First let me say that I got myself back to sleep after being up in the night by invoking all that are available to me. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before but I am definitely wrapping myself in certain protection and power and I don’t have to go this process alone, that is a misconception. Eminences have made themselves known, not to me but close, in the past and it suddenly dawned on me that I can open some major channels. Sometimes you have to back off to go forward. We sent a note back to the publisher with guidance from our agent and so that will just have to play out the way it plays out. In other news it became clear that my anonymity was blown but I do think that it will have a positive effect. We shall see. All is a question mark and I need to step away from all of this, as I do. We will go and get a tree and put it up and make ourselves a lovely final dinner of faux pasta until after our next trip to Cambridge. I am slowly going through, taking inventory of the contents of the basement and cataloguing on route to moving. I don’t want to have to think about any of this, really, until September at the very earliest. Sometimes you just have to step away and let some information in. I do think that I am on the right track on that score. We are narrowed down when it comes to where to look for a place to hang our hat for awhile. And thus we are open to any synchronicity that might strike. The tree went up the lights went on and we had a magical evening. I am lost in real estate porn and it is becoming quite the distraction I can ill afford, so I will have to sacrifice this particular addiction to move things along. I’m happy to be back in more spiritual a mode in the face of all this nonsense.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1226-1230 I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

I was asking myself today what would a perfect day be like. I think it would be me rising for an hour by myself, having some tea or water, and tweeting out some S +C thought in the morning in regard to the cosmic weather or positioning. I might then go and read of my old Blague on the Sabian Symbol, and more about that symbol in general. Then write a few lines about it for the Blue Book. These thoughts may or may not be represented in the new Blague, or I may again link back, looping through again for another year. Anyway I would open my daily Blague file and have it open most of the day just to keep writing into—various thoughts and what not that can go in this direction or that—and QC would tweet/gram about that and share S + C and vice versa; as well as anything Stella, product, and the tweets of our closest friends and allies. Afterglow would do a tweet and gram per day, only. At noon, there might be another tweet or gram from S + C on various theme(s). I would have an early morning yoga and lunch. The day would consist of the hours between 2-7, for the purpose of the collection, and then one would have a soup or small salad, 10 being my ultimate bedtime. Work from 6-8 or nine, yoga then lunch until 2 then a good 5 hours of dedicated work for the collection; of course clients fall into those hours as well. As does any administration regarding projects with ad agencies or other fashion companies, that don’t have a product component, but might want to feature us in their shops as well.

I believe I may have to get my PhD from the Sorbonne in Metaphysics. It will only take me about ten years but so what? I too will have become somewhat astute at this sort of thing and Stella can help me; or I was thinking Harvard Divinity School for some kind of spiritual degree. I know it sounds crazy but why not. Stella is well on her way and she managed to fit it in some how. There are crazier things to consider than that. I don’t want to spend very much time in New York City; I have a morbid fear of doing so. It would make so much sense on so many levels and yet sense isn’t really what motivates me or rather sensibility isn’t. Sense does very much in the Jane Austen sense—ha, ha! I know there is a balance; and for one more year at least we will do first things first. And that means combing through the existing existence and eliminating majorly.

I need to ritualize saying goodbye, even to objects; well especially objects, actually, in many cases. I feel I can say goodbye if someone is watching me do it. I know that sounds crazy. And I could just record everything for the camera before dumping it, which let’s face it, I was always going to do. This is me hanging on to ephemera within an emphemeral existence. If Einstein can die who the fuck is going to miss me? Some people but not many. I’m not a crowd pleaser to be perfectly honest. You have to really know me to love me and most people really don’t—know me, that is.

I had this journalist aggressd me today and I was really having none of it. I took screenshots of her spew and sent it directly to her manager. Then saw she apologized so I wrote said manager to say never mind. Forgiveness is all. It really is. But fuck these people who think you owe them…for what? I don’t owe anybody anything and they owe me nothing in return. I am on top of my shit and I juggle a lot of shit, so don’t come knocking at my door or my Facebook Messenger LOL to wipe all your poor pity me angry insecure bullshit. I don’t have time for that. The voice in my head is a righteous black woman. And it’s not the Maya Angelou type of righteous, or even the sort of peturbed and put-off voice of Nina Simone; no the voice in my head is way more sort of worldly wise Southern, proud, warm and loving, but still not taking any shit. You hear me boy? Oh I hear you voice in my head.

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I am determined to do less and be more. That is one of the tricks of our trade, and what we tell clients at the most relevant times. I do long for a time when I can get back into all my books and such. I think I will celebrate this birthday as a turning point. I have really been living in so much hurt these last four years and I am determined that it will push me into a much more zen and vibrant place. I have not always kept my side of the street clean and that is the truth. But what is also true is that, due to my upbringing, I can have very bad taste in people. When you spend your entire childhood trying to get affectionate blood from stoney so-called loved ones…stoney is the wrong word: Mean people is more correct; when you try to be liked as well as loved, in effect, you cut and paste this dynamic on other relationships moving forward. It’s a terrible burden.

As a young adult I went deep into spiritual reading as a way to find an even deeper connection than the ones that were rejecting me. It reminded me of something I’ve written before:
Sometimes you spend all your days and nights thinking of other people. And the cosmic joke is those are the same people who take you most for granted. I wonder sometimes if I removed myself from friend/family dynamics if others would feel the miss. I doubt it though they should. Then again they might be relieved not to have to deal with me. Apparently, I’m not easy. I think I’m super easy. And very nurturing indeed. Others differ on that score.

The Vitametavegiman episode of I Love Lucy was on this morning at the ungodly hour at which I awoke. Lucy was my babysitter. Before I could talk or read I was imprinted upon her. I used to think her name was Lucy O’Ball because I hadn’t yet learned that Lucille was a word. But she is part Scottish so that’s cool. I don’t think I’m long for the past world. I’ve been milking it forever and it no longer serves. I would watch Lucy and think I will always watch Lucy but something about me says I can’t watch it any more. It’s too far in the past.

And when you’re suddenly old, as old people are, the past no longer holds the same appeal. It’s not cute or comforting. It seems vividly archaic and scary. One must get away. And so one must. TV in general is a problem. But for the fact you can see great things. The grand irony. I watched Louis C.K. last night flirt with bisexuality. He wasn’t stealing my act because I don’t have one. But it was fantastic and amazing to see him delve into territory—all the while keeping his straight safety line—that I’ve, in my own small way treated.

He does this bit about being knee high at a football game where the “urinal” is a trough. As the son of a father who had season’s tickets to the Giants games where, yes, the urinal was a giant communal affair and, when you’re eleven (that crucial age) when you pee, dicks are too close to eye level. Unlike Louis C.K. I didn’t glance side to side. But I was aware of some “power”.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of 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.

Sagittarius 9° (December 1)

Someone got up at four-thirty and brought me along for a ride as well. It is now four hours later and I haven’t gotten any work done as of yet and have to do way better than that if I’m to make the magic as needs making. The hardest thing to do, really, is just get in. But that is why I am here today. I am really frustrated as I attempt to enter. I can’t seem to get my brain around it all. And what I said yesterday about disposition feels hard to embody today but I am trying. It would be so easy to escape but I fear what I might sacrifice in so doing. I suppose I should let things be sticky and just work my way through from there but lord it isn’t easy I can tell you. 

In social interaction as a couple with such a mate, she plays the role of translator, but with nary an eyeroll. She may mistake madness for genius in a partner, drawing on her classical archetype as spiritual champion to an ideological hero as she might see him or her. That’s just some of the sentences I wrote today as I get my brain around this entire process. I’m a few days behind in terms of posting posts. We hear from our publisher today and my anxiety goes through the roof. There is so much on our plate right now and I know I’m being tested for a reason and I am ready to rise to the occasion. It would be wonderful to find a way to land, but really, right now is about not getting sidetracked and staying the course. I pray to Athena, the goddess of helmsman, that I will be able to sail this ship. The beauty of that metaphor is that there is no shirking of daily responsibility, in order to get to the final destination, one must make watery tracks every day. This is what I have on my mind and on my plate and I have to make hay while the Sun shines as I race against the nippings of the dirty dogs at my heels. I have all the power I need at my disposal and the trick is to let oneself be guided.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1221-1225 I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

My particular spritual father isn’t Hemingway, it’s Fitzgerald, a superior writer, though obscured, in large part by his own reputation and (thus) a fellow Libra. I love everything about the myth and the man, whom I know less than the myth. But I have always thought that we would have made great friends. I can feel his pain if not his genious. And just imagine the two of us, traipsing around Paris, on a lark and on a bender, young, tan and full of the dickens. We would try to impress and outwit one another. We might buy each other ties as presents. We would meet our wives for dinner with inside jokes. Where had we been together all day they might ask? The answer may include the words bars, hammams, parks and haberdasheries. He may have bought me this hat on a whim. We are more than friends Fitzgerald and me; just this short of lovers probably. In a couple days time we might disappear without a trace to the Riviera for nearly three weeks sending one funny but not so amusing (to some) telegram. There would be rumours which we scoff and in which we each, secretly, revel. We can’t decide between the two of us who is the most good looking. From the inevitable sizing up that happens when you share a hotel room, I know mine is bigger.

Scott really is an amazing person. That one night, downstairs, when I ordered les grenouilles, he was absolutely on fire. A little manic I’d say. I think he wasn’t being square when he said he didn’t drink in the day. It really seemed he had; and I have a pretty good radar for that kind of thing. We had had a perfectly normal breakfast, although now, come to think of it, he was rather quiet and monosyllabical and yeah, cagey, I suppose. After my little walk to get cigarettes and postcards he was already gone from the room, which felt a little loaded with unncecessary deceit. Anyway I was headed to the beach and got one of the last lounge chairs. It would prove to be the hottest day of the week and I had to run to the water lest I scorch my feet. The families were gone by midday and didn’t return in the afternoon. I had my lunch en place. By the afternoon only half the chaises were filled and there wasn’t a kid in sight. La Rentrée happend within the span of an hour, this extinction burst of families crowding the beach were all, apparently, just taking in a little bit more on their last morning before checking out. I made eye contact with several of the adults and probably made it obvious on my exiting the plage that I was staying juste en face. In my perverted mind I imagined some of those beachgoers being so enamored that they followed me or planned to show up in my hotel bar in the next two hours. About which, it turned out, I was right.

I had smoked half a pack on the beach in my frustration and my lungs were literally hurting—I could feel it in the shower—like when you get waterlogged, as a kid, from staying in the ocean all day. So I was rather lost in self-recrimination as I descended the hotel’s sweeping stairwell, muscle memory walking me across the lobby’s marble floors, around giant potted palms, to the moulding-mirrored doors, still closed, leading into what at first seems a tiny hotel bar until you see it is a long, narrow bistro, to the right, leading through blue light, cooly reflecting off checkboard floors, ceiling fans blowing the high chalk walls rolled the hotel’s long narrow bistrot, spilling through its sidewalk café. So long it was that the square of light that marked its entrance, still at the bar where I stood, would appear to fit within the circumference of my watch face…

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Want what you have. It’s a cosmic spell. Wanting what you have inspires three-fold appreciation. Peter Frampton, Donovan. Taurus are evasive. Henry Cavill. Bjork & Yorke. Charles Daniels. Christo Jay. Dane Chenery. Reginald Johnson. Paul Nesbit. These are names I come upon. To be honest I was in part making a list of black people in Provincetown as I know very few which isn’t a shock as we unfortunately live in the whitests of places. Not that I have very much against the whites (except everything). I do think one of the things I’m most lacking is a bit of socialization. I think I’ve forgotten how to be with people on some level, such is the solitary life of a writer. I think that’s also why I do things like festival and such. Just so I see more people. The consultancy is even going through a phase where most clients live a world a way, some of them, and we do appointments by Skype.

So I have to start working out some bits. I mean, really, I suppose, bits, or attempts thereat, will comprise the bulk of this Blague for the next few days. Let’s just say Provincetown is a tough town. For those of us who live here it is a tought town. Foc’sle. Alex Carlton. Bu The I Dint Haaa. The town has changed so much so fast Ryan Murphy has only managed to buy four houses. R.P.’s opposite of the P.R.rs. People moving out people moving in. All because of the fo-ore of their skin. It reminds me of the white exodus of the early 1970s, where the whites left the city to the largely black population moving in. The gays are the new white people. As you can see I’m not quite there yet. Bits are now just junked up, gluey, gunked up in my exhaust pipe. And so this is a bit dada-tastic today but that’s okay. I’m not really myself yet. I took in so much over the weekend and then I overloaded myself again over these last two days.

This administration is feeling like so much leading up to that explosive “going away party” Cerse Lannister threw. You don’t make a ton of friends doing what I do. Some here might ieven call me let’s just say Tenacious. I prefer to call it Absorbing. This is a Cancer man thing. As the sponge, paradoxical: Yes like a sponge, taking it all in, but also absorbing meaning irresistably enthralling, someone who sucks you in. Charles Daniels. Omar Neil. It makes me nervous when people, newscasters say, well, especially newscasters, but also politicians all kind of pundits, when the can’t get through a sentence without slightly mispronouncing and then repeating, repeating what they say; so that the pattern of the discourse is like this (hand motion); I get so lost in anticipation, angst really, sometimes total panic, of when they’re going to make their next mistake.

They say…well somone says something but, having stepped away, i no longer remember what I was going to say, let alone, them. I have two weeks to drop a suit size. Sorry that thought slipped out. Maybe I should just stop here.

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I should focus on the two signs of Scorpio today, but I won’t. And I, I mean Marthe, should focus today on doing some hotel write-ups and, in the process, I should make some inquiries as to places that might be so kind to host us. The thing is there actually time to do this? and I should make it part of Sunday’s focus? I think I need to stop, drop and regroup: and take a look at my big black book.

Oh the sense I feel remembering fashion weeks in Paris and Milan; duh, of course that’s what we’re doing. I don’t know if I can truly stomach New York again; but I know I need try. I will work out some math in the morning but it should be quite easy to accomplish; meanwhile staying uptown will be a nice change; and I look forward to catching a vibe.

All I’m doing really now hinges on how it is I conduct myself henceforth. I do have to be careful about my relationships—it’s an area where I’ve been cavalier in the past. And I would do well to begin building back a few bridges. Though I dare say the bulk of what moves me is the ability to work with people more readily on creative projects. Something is beeping outside and it’s driving me a bit bonkers.

We did some local morning radio today, which was fun, and then strolled and had ourselves a wee Kofi; we got into a nice chat with Tim about product and learned that Chris Mart. has been in town this whole time; who knew? We did some box office jazz hands and headed home and realized we wanted to go beack that evening to P to see Midnight at the Never At.

The play happens in a sort of limbo state of afterlife where you can build your own existence, or at least a room in this case, from your memory. The setting of the play, thus, is the back room of a Greenwich Village gay bar called the Never At in the 1960s where there is a little stage where the main characters once performed a show at midnight called Midnight at the Never At. What I realized is that limbo and memory go together and it’s very Pisces in that sense, the triple goddess in triplicate, numbering nine, the muses whose mother is Mnemosyne (memory). Mnemosyne would be a nice name for a luxe supper club, itself. I do love a luxe supper club.

But that’s all of a same piece as all the feelings that are bubbling up of late; I really could cry a lot if I set my mind to it. I have such pangs in my heart and viscera; such sadness and regret and anger being released, chaos of emotion distilling into wisdom.

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I don’t like talking about the orange menace, but my question is: if he has a short list of twelve people what does that tell you? that he considers pretty much everyone in his inner circle not to be above suspicion. Think about that. He can’t trust even the ones closest to him; it’s the same reason why he throws everyone under the bus; he doesn’t think anybody likes him so like a sixth grader he’s going to dump you before you dump him, because you were going to to it anyway.

Who here has ever had a panic attack? Who here has ever had a panic attack while driving? Who here has ever had a panic attack while driving, feeling like you’re going to have a heart attack or stroke, and then a commercial comes on the radio for stroke rehabilitation? Time to pull over. But I find this sort of thing to be one of the ways the Universe likes to fuck with us. Prankster that it is. That’s a cruel joke for sure but sometimes it gives us funny ones like:

Besides what it says about the Cape Cod demographic, Provincetown is High School. Commercial Street is the Hallway along which many people share lockers.

I know I need to back to find more of these and bring them forward and work on them. I just, most of them being on a Provincetown theme. Like you really can’t get away with being a total a-hole in Provincetown. Trust me I know. (Laugh maybe? And a little bit more about me if it’s funny.

I mean if you’re an asshole to someone in a big city, you know it’s not that small a world; or if you live in the suburbs, say, and you have some kind of run-in or whatever, it would be isolated and disconnected and alienating but…in Provincetown which is Here if you get into a sit with someone, it’s like that scene in Grease and you’re like Rizzo and everybody knows you’re knocked up by the time you get to Tim-Scapes. That reference will only make sense to some, my execution of the analogy not withstanding…

There seems to be a hurricane coming our way. That would really be the icing on the cake. Well I guess I’ll then have to do some recovery relief. I mean, really, what is one to do? It actually isn’t the end of the world. I would live to fight another day. There is in fact enough to do by just doing it

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To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of 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.

Sagittarius 8° (November 30)

Rude awakenings, but I’m ready for them. No sooner had I put an email together hitting all the major points needing hitting when the knock came at the door and some douche with a badge and no mask had a little piece of paper for us. This was actually good news because it meant FF had finally retained someone that our guy could talk to, so I’m seeing that as a positive. Still it was jarring in an otherwise already jarring time. I had ended up sleeping in, good thing. I’m not in the least struggling but I will say I am shuffling a lot of information right now through my sieve for a brain. I made a lovely cucumber, feta, tomato, olive salad for lunch and a red pepper soup, which we had with blue cheese and crispies. I am still not back in, but I must begin to be in the next twenty-four hours. The weather is dark and dire. There is a storm kicking up. And by the time we meet with a client from London in the afternoon the wind is whipping. It was a good session and on days like these I’m so grateful for this kind of connection. The absurdity of friends posting about their privilege on social media is so extreme and so disappointing. There is some Martha Washington quote about misery and happiness being products of disposition and not circumstance and I wholly agree. I’m looking so forward to finding our little place somewhere and I am increasingly drawn north in that thought form. I am willing to take responsibility for my own disposition. It is good to know that certain things are very much within our control. Sophrosyne, self-restraint, is something that I would like to explore for Aries woman. Skill in handcraft to describe Athena and Hephaestus. Philosophia a love of wisdom. Fire spirit, holy spirity. Allegory of wisdom and strength. Cardinal equals primary (first) initial and initiation. Jakob Bohme. Anthroposophy of Steiner. Dianic Wicca. From Natura to Divine Sophia. Taurus possesses a great appetite for life and is the most sensual. Appetite, eating, consecrate but really rules the gullet. White witch families running antithetical to lizard king broods. Set in 1998? Funn? Cosmic joke backstory can be more mystical for instance like in our live shows. We have said that we met at summer camp for gifted children of our ilk. For everyone of those tired old Bushes….what if the show started in the present with word someone wants to make a TV show of our life and so we have to go back to where it all began to go forward. I know this started out sensical and then became a bit Dada, but really you have enough to read below you don’t need this part to be perfect, or do you?

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1216-1220 I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

Yet another splendiferous morning on the beach; and as I enter the final stretch with festival plans and fundraising in particular I am potentially in very good shape right now, if I can just stay the course and keep my wits about me. I have already done what I do: Which is to Once the hub-ub of the next ten days is through I will begin to focus on getting pictures framed and junk dumped and other such things done that fall under the heading of going through the debris of the past fifty-five years. How did I get to this place it seems so very surreal. And yet here I am. Well not quite yet so we’ll hold that thought. I don’t have the support I once had on any level from would-be sponsors; so I need to pull it out now, more than I have.

I have to find a way back to the magic that could help me pull out this festival at the last minute. So I”m going to tap into “The Eight Days and Nights of William Willing” which is the name of a treatment of a novel I wrote many moons ago on what became a well-worn theme; but, hey, what else is new. I know I will drop the ball and that I’ll have to work my way back from some kind of edge because I know I’m wont to go there. The question is how far off track am I willing to go and how much energy can I put into working my way back. But now, I’ve promised myself, that I would do double duty and introduce my festival alter ego Marthe Svenjördt and to her writing as the new concierge of our website. Here are some of her restaurant “reviews”:

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I slept a whole hell of a lot. And spent the day getting super caught-up on my fundraising. Honestly, I really have done all I can do—the rest will have to be maintenance. It sounds like S. had quite the time in New York filled with kismets. She saw Siobhan and JVB and other friends; but she also got put back in touch with Andrea Liberman, who has her own store of Greene Street, as she should do. She ran into our artist friend and designer, Emily, and Woody Allen and Soon Yi walked into the bar where she and Griet were having a something. It sounds to me like she had one of those visits that are one in a million.

Wigstock looked kind of boring from the outside (pictures on social media); so many people in the community bitch about the commercialism of Ru Paul, and yet this enterprise, spearheaded by Neil Patrick Harris, seemed devoid of soul. But I dunno, I wasn’t there. JVB looked beautiful in the pictures.

Anyway it’s past 9PM and Monkey Business with Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers is on. It really is a bizarre film. Ginger is always so embodied and does a ton of interesting things. Cary Grant is terrible and ad libs way too many words and antics. He actually ruins the film. Also the guy who plays Lloyd in All About Eve is in it—I was just thinking the other night that I’ve never seen him in another film. He’s soave and interesting. (Hugh Marlowe) They film also has a bunch of kids in it, including that kid that appears from time to time who has a deep voice. I see Dean Stockwell in it too, only he doesn’t utter a word.

Anyway in the movie Cary invents a formula that makes people become younger in behavior anyway. It also cures the onset of farsightness and should bursitis. Ugh. And there is another scene in it that I see I Love Lucy ripped off. That’s the bummer of I Love Lucy: If you live long enough you see that the writers “borrowed” ideas from other films, plays, sources.

I once met Mädchen Amick back in the earliest nineties and she was awful. She was dating Alessandro Nivola who apologized to me for her behavior. I bring this up because Drew Droege, doing his Chloe Sevigny at Wigstock, namechecked her in his very funny bit.

It’s now past midmight and I cannot sleep. I’m doing everything I can to keep my side of the street clean, as they say.

I hate tall men, not all of them but most. I recently learned that in Europe, and maybe it’s true, too, in America (I wouldn’t know) that in bars this is the trend: Tall men get picked on the most, in the outplaying of a scenario that goes like this: Tall buff man enters bar with friend. Other men want to beat up becuase he’s tall. (And a conquest?)

I am going out on a limb—and I’ll be sure to alert the psychological community—but I would label this the Goliath Syndrome. Aren’t we all just perfect golden Davids if we can slay someone whose being suggests he could snuff us into dust. I’m going to say yes.

I did a bunch of drawings and encoded them with letters then promptly forgot what the letters stand for so the drawing will be as mysterious to me as everybody else until my pre-dementia un-kicks in.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of 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.

Sagittarius 7° (November 29)

As mentioned earlier, you can enjoy and engage in this book fully, gaining fuller insight into your astrological self than the one chapter dedicated to your particular sign. Like other books on the market that actually require you to have your own natal chart in hand in order to process the information the author is providing, TK can provide you a wealth of knowledge and guidance, if you have your chart handy. There are a couple of ways you can approach this. First, you can take the basic information regarding what signs rule what astrological houses in your chart. For instance, if Virgo rules your fourth house, you can apply the Virgo chapter(s) and their archetypes to the aspects of your life that fall under the pie-slice of fourth house rule. Or you can take the planetary approach and determine which planets, which also rule aspects of your life and self, fall into which signs and thus apply the contents of those chapter(s) to the realms of those planetary rulers. (There is an at-a-glance glossary provided at the back of the book to help guide you in this, while there are countless books out there which focus solely on the signs’ relationship to the planets and the astrological houses.) 

When it comes to the practicable suggestions sprinkled into every chapter, though they are especially designed for individuals of the particular signs, there is nothing wrong, and everything right, in anyone of any sign taking them up and trying them out (especially in relationship to those areas of life determined by planet or astrological house as determined by your individual birth chart). Our hope is that every reader will get the most out of their individual chapters, foremost, as well as insight into their loved ones by spying into their chapters, but ultimately work all the practical magic the book has to offer. You are, after all, as your own birthchart vividly illustrates, a snapshot of the entire zodiac itself, not just one sliver of it. As we like to say: People are pies! You have all the signs, planets and houses, elements, qualities, polarities and archetypes in you—you are an ever expanding, upwardly spiraling universe all your own. So, have some fun applying all the chapters to the various aspects of self to which they relate, bearing in mind that your primary chapter illuminates your primary path toward self-actualization on your own hero’s journey through this most precious lifetime.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1211-1215 I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

We were out the door at 6:30 and it was quite good walk. Not as good as tomorrow. I just know these things. Thinking about the gaslighting thing. And of course my mind made a joke of it. It makes sense that John Derian has a nineteenth-century aesthetic and vision because, as long as I’ve known him, he’s operated by gaslighting. It just might be something that Marthe Svenjördt could get away with.

Jokes of intros for curtain speaches. Definitely doing the Provincetown thing and the Wellfleet Jewish joke. Perhaps add a thing in about surfing.   Maybe also the Manafort joke. I can’t watch tv anymore because you know it’s the same repetitive story and images on a loop. The one image that unfortunately stuck with me is that Manaforte walking shot where he shoves the cameras out of the way. His body language is so sick.

Went to the PAAM to see the Biala and the Helen Frankenthaler and both were amazing. It makes me so proud that we have such good art right here in river city. Sorry. I’m a bit punchy. Grabbed some salmon with cauliflower and spinach salad made dinner.

They used my sleigh joke tonite on Insecure. I like the show although it does sometimes seem to move sideways. I just hope nobody really caught it because it’s one of those jokes that’s so up from grabs Zeitgeist wise. Anyway, right now this Blague is designed to get my head on straight with only thirteen days to go before this fundraising year turns into a pumpkin which people in New England tend to put on door steps way too early. They probably do it in New Jersey as well. There is plenty of time when there is “collection time.”

I was struck in the letters Helen Frankenthaler wrote that she and Bob (Robert Motherwell, her husband) were working 18 hour days. Nobody ever really works 18 hour days. 12 maybe but not 18. There is a lot of faffing about in an 18-hour day, and one is so damn tired, they’re beat before they’ve begun. Like waking and baking, remember? How it used to just make you tired for your whole existence. Did you ever wake and bake? You’d walk around like a zombie. But there was that comfy cushion of it all. I liked pot before it became a super drug. Not that I liked really fatiguing dirt weed or anything; but I did like the kind of pot that didn’t make me feel like my arteries were about to explode sending me crutching, kneeling in the shower, running water over me bargaining with god if he would just make it stop. I don’t find that kind of marijuana very fun. Oh but I was talking about “collection time.”

“Collection time” refers back to when we worked in fashion and S aka L had her own sporstwear collection. Designing two seasons a year for a young designer is actually a lot and despite the unavoidable faffing about that was part of the picture (due to her partner, a too-rich-and-thus-totally-dysfunctional-and-immolized-creature who would show up to work wearing two differnt shoes or carrying the trash she was meant to drop down the incinerator in her building but instead took for a ride on the subway to their 40th street studio and showroom. Anyway….”collection time”, two but especially the one week leading up to the show/defilé required one live on about four hours sleep. Apparently, Helen and Frank got in a good six hours, which isn’t terrible, and they considered putting together party lists as part of their “work.” I do love both painters though I must say. But their party list reads like…oh never mind…there is no good way to make this joke without seeming completely anti-Semetic.

==================

Another beach walk first thing this morning. The bittersweetness of the season has already descended. It was one of those magical mornings where the light twinkles like crazy and you feel like you’re inside Wrinkle in Time or The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The walks have been spectacular although they are surely touch on the feet, I must say. I believe I can begin to make myself easy, but to do so I should dedicate this Blague, today, to my to-do list and just record all the random notes that have once again began to crowd the surface of my desk. We have one appointment today with a client in Munich and then I have a phoner with one in L.A.; though it’s cliche to say the one in L.A. could very well flake out and just not call at the desginated time. (As expected.)

I will aggragate all random thoughts and I will tie up all loose ends such that all runs like clockwork starting now (it already does). I needed to get sparkler level from Bai and perry’s and figure out who to approach vis a vis missionary sponsorships and update that doc, which I will do today. I will keep writing until my nerves calm down and I’m in the final stretch and trying to make sense of it all. I think I’m managing okay, all in all. And on deeper thought, I’d say, pretty well. I will sketch in Thursday for Hotels and Realtors, as they are an untapped but important source I ignore most years for fundraising because they are just so dire. Also the hotels already pay tax to help, so the best I can hope for is a little accommodation and anyway, theirs are the perfect places to peruse to make sure they have cards and such. Seaglass is especially on the to-do list.

I will indeed be introducing Marthe to the world tomorrow so I’m excited about that. I’ve put together three different mailers that I’m hitting everybody with and then next week I’ll go even wider for support. I have to also make a third doc for Brian King that combines Nefa Info up Front with Poster and Bio Info and send to the Nefa peeps to make sure all looks kosher. I can borrow from the Endicott release on that score.

Ugh I just got a note about our upcoming court case vis a vis the accident we had three years ago when some stupid idiot while texting plowed into us going a mile a minute while we were stopped in traffic behind a long line of traffic. I hate insurance companies and these kind of sick venal institutions that try to fight you for money when it is all their fault. I don’t know. I really am losing my faith in this country and the way things (don’t) work here. I used to be so proud of our functionality, dating back to Rondald Reagan who was a horrible person and president. Even his son, junior, seems to think so. What are you supposed to do with these kinds of people I mean really?

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of 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.

Sagittarius 6° (November 28)

Astrology itself is something of noble lie. That is to say one must buy into the notion that the movement of the planets and their relationship to one another has meaning, without having any proof. This is especially true of one’s natal chart, which is a snapshot, a freeze frame, of the planets’ positions, at the time of the individual’s birth. Once we accept this conceit, however, we enter into a world that functions quite scientifically, with rules and math and endless associative, interpretive meanings. Reincarnation, too, is a sort of noble lie that is nonetheless at the center of major religions and belief systems. Like astrology, it can’t be proven but it is the basis for an entire world of philosophy and codes to live by, Karma chief among them. Of course, any belief in God or gods involves the accepting of a noble lie. None of us (that we know of) has ever seen God, and yet nothing impacts our human existence, our morality and our judgements, not to mention the wars we wage, as does our notions of this or that invisible God. At least we can actually see the stars, which appear to us all, nightly.

In a sense, our brand of humanistic astrology involves the acceptance of both the noble lies of astrology and reincarnation. That is to say that you were born the sign you are (with all the intricacies of your individual birth chart, pin in that) to learn a whole set of life lessons endemic, primarily, to the estate of your particular sun- and sex-sign archetype. In this view, astrology, and particularly, the humanistic branch thereof to which we subscribe, is foremost about personal evolution of the individual in this lifetime as it relates to the more esoteric notion of the evolution of an individual’s soul, over many lifetimes. And you can certainly enjoy the exercise of exploring the former application, without accepting the latter, should you find reincarnation a spiritual bridge too far.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1206-1210 I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

It’s (not according to the above date, which would make this yesterday, bacause I had to do some justifying since there are 366 days a year, nearly, and only 360°) Sunday morning and my high school friend David came to visit with his girlfriend Tracey. They are both biologists and very interesting and we have great conversation and food and wine and song together and it is a joy to be with them. A rare, true joy. It was supposed to be really lousy weather but they cam anyway and the whole weekend had a sneak-between-the-raindrops kind of feel.

I was about to close the roof and windows of our old Mercedes which we’d taken for its yearly gas-up and spin through Provincetown when our friends pulled up about 7:30. We had some lovely Lambrusco and I had made two chickens and potatoes and green beans; and we drank Rioja and played music, singing until three in the morning. I don’t remember falling asleep, but I awoke at seven with a start remembering I never closed up the car. It was just starting to drizzle; I made it in time. But I couldn’t fall back to sleep.

Bacon and eggs, trying to start this Keto diet I still have to read about. Then we headed to the beach as it was quite nice out, certain we would never get onto Newcomb Hollow, that the lot would be full. It wasn’t. Crazy. So we went for our full three-mile walk and drank lemonade and saw seals and a whale and various sea birds. We then went into Wellfleet town and harbor and settled at the outdoor Mac’s down by the water. They ate proper lobster rolls and tofu burritos and broiled salmon with steamed vegetables while I ate a bowl of chowder. Poor me.

We came back and tried to nap; but that didn’t work; and it began to pour, pour, pour. So we cancelled our dinner reservation at Baie; but then we had to shop for food and wine which meant Provincetown anyway, so off we went, just the three of us. S. stayed back and got collected. We did our one-stop-shop at Perry’s for pasta, nibbles, sauce, wine, Labrusco, cheese and crackers; and then Dave reasserted the art stroll, which was something they were really keen on doing. Tracey is a collector of sorts, so it was nice to see her enthralled. We got a spot right out front of Ken Fulk’s house and hit a half a dozen galleries. Tracey really connected with Pete Hocking’s work which made sense. And today they set back off to Ptown and purchased one before heading back to New York City.

The synchronicities also abound(ed) this weekend. Because the first night they were here I was saying how my favorite record was the David Byrne and Brian Eno: Everything That Happens. I have of course sang songs from this album and it has inspired me show-wise. Then last night, while we were eating our buccatini and marinara we enhanced with artichoke, S. said that while we were in Provincetown she saw that Neko Case had put on Instagram that it was the tenth anniversary of the record’s release and that is was in her top five records of all time or something. These things always happen to me.

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It was interesting running into Shania. It would be fun to hang out. I feel an affinity there that I don’t much feel with other people, always have. And I find it to be worth exploring. We are officiellement now working the Keto and I think it will yield some good; the thing is I don’t eat much differently, anyway. Ah, that feeling you have as a young person when you can eat and eat and eat and nothing would happen to your body; I didn’t know I would miss that visceral experience quite so much.

I was thinking this morning how I just need to move through writing on my subject rather than thinking about the world of agents and editors and publishers. Oh, my. I’m just going to continue to create and go slow; my rushing ahead is only ever about fear of not leaving no stone uncovered to cover my ass-ets. But this has funneled, along with other obsessions, into a full river called Hypervigilance, and it no longer serves me.

I know I will slowly be moving mountains this week. I have much in the way of writing and editing and emailing to do to pull off this festival. Doing so as best I can at this point really does constutute success. And I have to keep the book-writing going as well. On that note I muse on Aries:

He can’t deal with rejection in the least (while his so-called opposite sign of Libra’s whole being and existence is hinged on negoatiating it, along with all things one-on-one relationa)l. No sign takes what life may bring more personally than does Aries. Impuslive. He sees the world/existence as possessing the same qualities as he—that reality/existence is impulsive, competitive, dog-eat-dog, raw and rather random.

================

Vulcanalia the First Day of August. I once wrote a whole thing about this. It was a for a variety show we hosted as opening night to the Afterglow Festival in 2013:

Quinn
Enlightenment. Revelation. A Turning point.

Stella
A turning out.

Quinn
To everything, turn turn turn.

Stella
This is a great turn-out

Quinn
This is a real nice clambake

Stella
A revelation is a turning out of cosmic Truth and Grace

Quinn
And a turning out of Self to receive it (Stella puts arms up in Y) See you are the chalice. You are the holy grail ready to be filled

Stella
Giving up and over

Quinn
Surrendering

Stella
Total faith

Quinn
Belief

Stella
In Love

Quinn
Love, Love, love

Stella
A Sudden, Spontaneous Connection with the Divine

Quinn
Not organized Religion

Stella
A word that actually means to re-link, the root word lig as in ligament, connective tissue

Quinn
A re-linking implies then that there’s is a disconnect (aha moment)

Stella
See, that’s the enlightenment part.

Quinn
And as far as the entertaining goes, it’s not just that we love to sing and gotta dance and (Jimmy Durante) tell jokes just like everybody does.

Stella
Ah, well, everybody should. But not every body does.

Quinn
It’s that the performing arts and spiritual practice, ritual, used to be one and the same.

Stella
All coming under the heading of “lifting spirits” if you will.

Quinn
Re-linking our own indivial divine sparks with the eternal flame of the All.

Stella
You’ve seen it happen. Whether a performer on stage or your math teacher in class suddenly blurring-out, becoming a pure aura of energy against the green blackboard.

Quinn
Oh, beam me up, Scotty. Or to your ancestral Edinburgh home.

Stella
To be sure. That divine energetic connection will be made. As above so as below.

Quinn
If we journey inward, microcosmically we find tiny central orbs being orbitted by even smaller orbs, if we journey outward, macrocosmically, we find central orbs being orbitted by smaller orbs….and

Stella

We are stardust (a la Joni)

Quinn
Yes and Hu are we, (realizing they have come full circle in conversation)

Stella
Huuuuu (singing)

Quinn
Hu-mans! Hu. H-u is the most ancient “name” for “god”. It’s the divine sound of the universe. We are man and we are hu. Both animal man and divine hu put together but…

Stella
there is a disconnect

Quinn
…which we can relink by chanting, singing Hu, the

Stella
singing Hu activates our upliftment.

Quinn
singing Hu draws us closer, in our state of consciousness to our divine being…and so we going to re-lidge, here and now, theatre and temple, stage and sacred space as well as our own man=ly sides—and I promise you you have one….

Stella
and you my dear are totally good to go

Quinn
with our Hu-sides, all together, and and and we will also connect our divinely dual individual selves with each other so I want everyone to hold hands or lay your hands on one another in some fashion, those on the aisle can grasp the shoulder of the person in front of you and Stella and I will grab hold here

Stella
oh I know, you hate to be touched, that’s okay there is a simple remedy for that. You turn it out. When you don’t want to be touched, right, you recoil, your energy goes in.

Quinn
So just turn it out

Stella
I use this technique especially on the subway. If someone mindlessly or intentionally rubs his leg against mine, or if i’m straphanging on a crowded train and I feel some lumber rising into my own sacred spaces i don’t recoil but instead I Turn It Out and express the full energy of my being from the area and, well, my whole being really, and the power of my energy emanating forth first relieves all my stress in the situation and it actually disallows any intrusion, repelling unwanted advances….except in those rare instances where the connection is more than you bargained for and you end up getting off …the train…a few stops earlier than planned and then have to call your girlfriend later to apologize for having had to miss your lunch date but, as I say that rarely or really never happens, but when it does you know the energy was gooood…..well it’s like you with telemarketers.

Quinn

yah, yah…(increasingly pleased with himself) well I did figure out the best way to get off those pesky call lists. It’s very easy. The phone rings. And it’s like: hi it’s Ashley from Foreclosure Village or whatever and instead of hanging up or yeah recoiling in some way you Turn It Out and start getting into it like oh yeah Ashley. oh yeah I am so glad you called right now cuz I was just toying with my own foreclosure was actually just feeling…..ad lib…..all kinds of pressure building up and I would totally love for you to talk me through the issue that needs to be worked out before it blows up in all our faces.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of 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.

Sagittarius 5° (November 27)

It has been over a decade since we’ve come out with a book, in printed form, from a major publisher. Our first book, Sextrology, subtitled The Astrology of Sex and the Sexes hit book stalls in 2004. In it we explored our philosophy, which asserts there are twenty-four main archetypes, not twelve, determined, in binary terms, by sex, and that men and women of the same sign were embodied separate and unique astrological characters. The book really was about the sexes foremost and sex secondly, although we included sexuality by sign as it is an integral part of personality analysis, in this case, as determined by the stars. It’s a funny thing about time because, as we explored the spectrum of straight and gay sexuality in our work, something that hadn’t really been done before in popular astrology, our book was considered groundbreaking; now, however, these years later, the social dialogue surrounding gender and sexual identity has developed so rapidly and intricately, that Sextrology strikes some people as dated and too binary in world of increasing fluidity, for lack of a better word, in sexuality and gender. 

Although we have ourselves always held a flexible view of gender and sexual identity, as a collective, we simply weren’t talking about these things then the way we are now. And we have, since the writing of this book, gone back into our older work, making necessary changes and additions to text, so to reflect where we are all now in the conversation. All this to say that, because this new book follows the same basic binary structure of our previous works, we want to be clear that we are inclusive of all genders in our text. If, for example you are a Taurus woman, whether cisgender or transgender, you should make that your primary chapter of focus. How you identify is what is important here. In any case, we have intended this book to be read in its entirety by everyone, and we’ll provide you suggestions on how to do so at the close of this introduction. Before we do that, we’d like to explain how we found our way to writing this book at this time.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1201-1205 I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

I’ve decided on a new tack for my intros which I think I might have mentioned; but anyway nobody is reading this but you and me so you’ll forgive if I repeat myself.

I get on the plane feeling better than I have in my life. I was so happy that I began working steadily starting in September on our Christmas show for Joe’s Pub because we have never had a bigger, more appreciative house; and though we were spot on for the holiday, with song and narrative, the performance speaks to our larger scope, now, as individual storytellers with, in my case, burgeoning, and, for S., continuing solo show work. And here it is, January, and we are starting a new chapter of our lives. The plan is to spend a couple months solid here, building the consultancy, which we’ve also been steadily working on since September.

Good thing we had pictures taken this Fall because they really make a difference in approaching French press and so forth. We will let out the Paris flat when we go to Venice; and make a list of those who we can gift the place too—Pete & Ted, Susanne, Pascale & Matt, others, over the coming months. And in summer, we will really work out something with someone we meet, maybe through Susi, to let people in and out and otherwise caretake for us in our absence. With money coming in now, salary wise, we should be able to have half the full amount down for our New England house, within the year—I have and we have been saving . And, with all our outreach in regard to our products, we will in the process of building the event business along with the other elements of the brand. I can’t wait to get to the apartment but I’m going to enjoy this plane trip, having sorted out a way not to travel like cattle.

I will have a car waiting and make my way to the flat. Tomorrow I will shop for some foodie basics and flowers as we will have at least two clients the day after and three more by the end of the week. We are going to focus exclusively on our own design ideas for the coming months, and I’m putting together a very short list of performers for Afterglow 2019—Frank DeCaro, Molly Pope, Dane Terry, Bridget Barkan, Stella Starsky, John Jarboe, Jibz Cameron, and then a smattering of biggies. Easy peasy.

We will enjoy Spring after traveling, and get into a steady rhythm, focusing on the major design markets and other times that press and buyers and potential clients come through this beautiful city. We will coordinate with P + M and J + N and J + L and maybe D + G. The Nelsons could take the apartment at some point. There are many Americans and others in Paris who will likely come and see us. I need to reach out to Wachsberger in any case.

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To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of 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.