Month: November 2020 (page 4 of 4)

Flashday Friback

Scorpio 14° (November 6)

So yesterday someone from the wizarding world contacted us. I suppose it was just a matter of time. The longest email on record, but not something we are going to do. It’s day four of the election, waiting on Pennsylvania this morning to deliver some fabulous chunks of Biden vote. I am fatigued from all of this. Our guy just pulled ahead thankfully. I can start feeling hopeful and maybe even normal again. Patience is what is being prescribed and I too need to be that much more patient with myself. There is no sound from the melted pile of circus peanuts. It is hiding upstairs somewhere. They have little to no success with their legal claims, its own party is backing off him as are Fox news. The pressure on the Republicans and conservative media will only grow—they will need to divorce themselves from its conspiracy theories. We are two countries is the takeaway. If we had voted in a progressive in the primary, we would be losing right now. As progressive as I am in thought and feeling, we would have shot ourselves in the foot if we leaned too far leftward. I’m going to start my day in the kitchen, working on menus and preparing food for the coming days. I will get four pages in the can today as well for sure. I will also lie to myself and not do it. It doesn’t matter. Wood is being delivered and work will happen. I jst need to keep showing up and keep backing off for now. Lots to be so grateful for.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1096-1100. 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.

Thursdays always feel a bit steely. Maybe it’s that Thor’s day thing, Jupiter and his lightning bolts. Thursday is a bit like wearing tight shoes. You know there is a reward for really pulling out this corner of the week, hopefully setting Friday up to feel like it should, one to kick off early. Of course, on Fridays, I kick off early to clean the entire house and cook ahead for the weekend.

We had two clients today, a Libra and a Sagittarius client from opposite ends of the world. It was a power couple of clients today actually, but not literally, the most currently overused word in our world today. All feels like ascension on this day, not an easy one but not overly hard won.

We will dip into Provincetown and putz around. Someone once said that life is a paradise for people with passions, I’m paraphrasing. By this time I am happy to be having pasta. I actually made linguine clam sauce yesterday, which I failed to mention, so this night, in pasta craving aftermath, it will be gluten-free chickpea pasta with red onion and anchovy and parsely. Food is an essential character in my life in case you didn’t know. We have a new cookbook from Sofra that I”m really excited about. I am going to blow through the remainder of my work day and sit down and read it.

So many wonderful things are going on right now. The expansive Jupiter energy also does tend to permeate a Thursday. And then there’s Ru Paul so quickly. I know people like to run down Drag Race but I still find it terribly relaxing. If I’m going to watch a Scorpio Queen of Television I’m going to watch RuPaul not Roseanne.

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Struck with the notion that my own interprestations of the Sabian symbols might, in itself, make a great book. We need to get in with a publisher with whom we can do more blockbuster books, more academic books, more poetic books and more point of sale commercail fun books. I also want Emily to start getting into our world of design. Emily for A.C.

Also getting a loan to open a local store which would be called A.C. and we can always move to a bigger one. We definitely need a commercial space to work from—and one where we can fall asleep if need be—and/or it comes with an apartment which would be solely for the Summer Consultancy.

Food today is a French Poodle. That’s what we call a souped up version of Poodle which is typically kale, quinoa, avocado and chickpeas. This night the chickpeas were cooked in a pan and slightly carmelized then mushed a bit, like peas, with vegetable filled bit of leftover soup. Delicious. The quinoa was also made in chicken stock and the kale was extra sautéed with garlic instead of steamed.

I had taken a wee tour of Orleans and got there what I needed. After dinner we sat by the fire sipping an organic red and talking, talking, talking about, well, everything under the Sun. I knew I would be alone the next day and that I wanted to make good use of my time. So often I just sprawl out like Oscar Madison for no good reason, spending half the time alone making a terrible mess, and then the other half already having to clear up in some kind of panic, which is silly.

It’s like some kind of boyish male rebellion that I suppose does get some ya-ya’s out: Drinking a little to much too earlywhile watching bad “action adventure” television, while still getting a little work done, walking around without anything on; leaving lights on in rooms all over the house; smoking; looking at porn for no apparent reason as it truly does nothing for me. To be honest the sounds of sex turn me on more than seeing it which can put me off as it never really looks as satisfying as it sounds.

I will make weird food like sauerkraut (and end up eating the entire giant Bubby’s jar) with healthy chicken sauces it, pouring some molasses over the lot, as it sizzles in the cast iron pan, slathering all with mustard, and eating it in a hurried passion. Drinking bottles of sparkler water straight out of the bottle, leaving trails of nuts or edamame, goat cheese crumbles and bread crumbs in the kitchen and dining room as I snack on the fly, suddenly, at intervals, all through the day and night.

I will shower outside which is good.

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It dawns on me, Saturday, that I all but abandoned the fortnight feel of what I wanted to set up while still in the sign of Aries. So now, I must awake and read a chapter a morning. We might call it this morning’s chapter. The Blague page simply stays open all day to catch ideas and record doings. We celebrated the sign of Aries and I will punch that up a bit. Then in a few days I shall be in the sign of Taurus—I know we already are but I”m not, which makes sense just to me.

I made this note about trans people combining the energy of the sign, finding balance between the inner polarity of the sign, while cisgender folks work the outer polarity that the sign has with its opposing sign.

So I will have to pretend a bit that I did this with Aries—dialoguing with the people that is—while I get up to speed with Taurus. I have made some inroads so it’s not too much a stretch. I can certainly play catch up on notes for the new book and such in the first fortnight of the month as I also put the HA books into place, at least that’s the hope. That is to say I’ll play catch up on the first two signs, I’ll put the HA books together, minus the needed front matter. And I’ll thus spend the second half of May focused on reading the Calypso Blagues and going through year one to extract some possible themes. So long as I have something June 1. I can pull the bell and I’ll have three full months to make all the other magic. It really is plenty of time I tell you. And if someone big pops into the mix, a real headliner, than tant mieux.

I am already sensing such a new vocabulary emerging as I consider the next book. And let’s face it I have a number of good book ideas inside my brain and a number of them can be ebooks which I self publish as well. I still like the idea of finding a good house that will do print only for some of these ideas.

As a writer I love the symbols of punctuation, the Chiffres et Lettres of things. I just falshed back to my Elements of Style book at the other one which my high school published and I loved so much. I really do want to find that book. I’m ready to reeive and to empty out all real and metaphorical file cabinets. I do want my real file cabinet to contain not too distant archives of things. We could buy some beautiful wood file cabinets. I will be posting about popular peeps. I want to get my nitty gritty work done in the morning.

But back to the new book ideas. It will be my job now to continue to flow ideas into the right places. It’s a metaphor for pretty much everything right now.

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Sunday nothing happened, or did it? I think not. There might have been some hope and there might have been a lot of buildup that was otherwise alleviated, but nothing occured quite. It was the be all end all, already, of television addiction; even though I didn’t quite surrender until evening, and overnight, into the wee hours. I mainly spaced out and went from room to room moving bits of whatever—plates, clothes, food—without much purpose. There were different birdsounds than usual outside, some ended up being atypical (love?) calls from our familiar birds.

I could be promoting Fauxnique’s show coming up at Oberon, or doing home yoga. I think I told S about Michelle T from the Feminist press. I wonder if I should throw parties or would it kill me. I came upon a notebook filled with scribblings from 20014 looks like. And a to-do list that had fourteen numbered items, one of which was to “call John Richardson, another “note to Goldwyn sis” which I guess meant to Tony’s sister.

I have fallen a litte bit behind on this and need remind myself, as I play catuch up, that, come tomorrow, I am reading through all my entries I made on first new C boat trip.

Meanwhile I can start going through and updating the minutes. And I do need to go back and find the things I recently wrote about Gemini and Libra and plug them in where they belong. The whole point is to begin charting next year’s planet moves as I read through these C Blagues and then back through starting at October 7 or something like that. Things two things can happen simultaneously, and any new thoughts on the signs can aris spontaneously, as they are already accumulating in any case.

Then I can sit with my planner, which should be quite nutsy boltsy for May that is to say write the HA books, moins intros, and just simply map out new bits for show, extracting from my reading and reworking these thoughts into drafts, while following original structure laid out. The only other thing to do is to have a meeting about Nextrology proposal.

In the afternoon Afterglow hours we must schedule resend of returning sponsors and send first round to new, missionary and sparkler sponsors. I believe I’ve already made drafts. I will also contact hotels but I have to negotiate that against writing a note about S + C summer consultancy And with that I also wish to write a very brief statement of fact that can double as a press release…something like

Celebrated authors and leading astrologists Stella Starsky + Quinn Cox have been conducting their “summer consultancy” on Cape Cod for over a decade. Modern mystics with an international following of clients, Starsky + Cox combine degrees in psychology and astrology and have been called “psychics to the stars” (Vanity Fair), “the favored astrologers of fashion insiders” (Elle), a word-of-mouth phenomenon (Time) and TK.

Starsky + Cox are authors of the best-selling Sextrology (HarperCollins), Cosmic Coupling (Random House) and their own series of Haute Astrology horoscope books. The have contributed to countless publications, sites and have appeared on numerous radio and television programs, most notably, as regular guests, on “Chelsea Lately” on E!

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Today was the kind of binge watch I live for. Recordings of “Trust” and “Silicon Valley”, which is knocking it out of the park this year, plus Barry and “Howard’s End” and Paddington2 and Wonder Woman, with some “Troy”s thrown in for good measure. As of Mayday, one doesn’t watch anything but dwindling “Drag Race” for a giggle. I can truly wait on all other things, televisual.

My sleep was weird and I was up during the night, and up permanently by four when I had sardines on toast. There was very little to clean up after being alone these days to make the world sparkingly presentable to the returning goddess who was truly divine in that she brought duck liver paté, le tur cheese and innumerable crackers. It was a binge day all around, though we shared just a little Lambrusco, a word that might appear most often of any in this Blague of late. And then just as quickly, it will disappear

Going wineless for the next fortnight. Fortnights are the best I can do without red wine that tastes of violets and manure—if you’re lucky enough to be invited to my house (once a fortnight) you might get to taste our gorgeous house red. In between times I am looking at reducing. So red and reduce, red and reduce. Anyway with summer here I spend a lot of time in the car between Provincetown and Wellfleet By The Sea.

There is so much more to write between 5 and 7 am….and I’m just at my computer these days at 7 so I must try to step things up a bit. With the warm weather and the extended days of light I can have had my outside time and still get a whole bunch of work done between the pm version of those hours, so six of one half a dozen of the other, a terrible expression invented by a so-so mind, I’m guessing. I’m also grasping, reaching, feeling somewhat overextended these days to be sure.

One of my first television heroes was Oliver Douglas. I remember already relating to his experience of being surrounded by crazy people—people of the town to which he insisted on moving—even his wife, who didn’t want to go there. And since it was his idea he was determined to make it work. I think I related to this because my family of origin—father, mother, sister—were all absolutely bonkers in their own way. And I was the odd man out. I said in my adolescent years, upon witnessing the opening credits of Superman two, when three prisoners are trapped in a prism spinning through space—to me that summed up the rest of my family’s karmic relationship, to which I was just an accessory.

Green Acres, which played on the theme, perhaps of the grass being ever greener on the other side, to me was a metaphor for growing up in an alcoholic family where the crazies are normal and you’re made to feel crazy, gaslighted from the getgo. Green lighted and gas lighted. Bob Newhart, Bob Hartley, was the same, really. His wife wasn’t bonkers like Oiver’s, often aligned with him, which was a bit more comforting, but everyone else was off the wall except for his crazy patients who always ended teaching him a lesson.

If I were to consider myself a comedian, which I’d like to do—or at least a comic writer of sorts—I suppose I don’t keep my jokes secret the way others do, but pour them out daily, if they come via this Blague (means joke in French), which, the irony being, nobody really reads. And I’m kind of fine with that, strangely. I am secretly really quite shy. But this is a year where I really have to challenge myself and fail doing it or else I will go on feeling rather unfulfilled. And then those crazies hurtling through space in their prism, really will have won.

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.

Michiganers

Scorpio 13° (November 5)

J’ai beaucoup de chose a faire, et il y a toujours des excuses pour rien faire. C’est la vie. Demain il faut recommencer, sans question. Grace a dieu pour France Musique, it keeps me sane. I am only going to write a few sentences here today. I’m not really sure about D.. I think he isn’t as up front and honest as I require from a friendship. I don’t look down on people who get divorced of course; but there was something about his relationship with his spouse that rang wrong, that he was with her so he could have an out. There is a little gaslighting in that situation. I think some people feel that if they bond with someone who is unstable they always have an easy out. This will be the last night of this sort of thing. I am really ready to dig in and get the job done. I truly am. It aint going to be easy. But really it’s just a matter of writing a few things here like: Nobody possesses a greater appetite for life than Taurus man, the most sensual of the male signs in the zodiac. He XX is the very embodiment of sense and sensibility, inspiring and reacting to desired stimuli, in an ongoing effort to appeal to others’ wants, tastes and needs. Thus, he furthers his own aims, which he downplays and obscures, while providing what others mightn’t even realize they are lacking. He is a keen observer who will channel his skills and talents into filling what he perceives to be open niches of opportunity that promise to please others while offering him a stable platform for gaining attention, affection and momentum to keep his secretly ambitious wheels in motion. He is a master of seeming insouciance, having people believe that his achievements happen naturally, without effort. This not only disarms others but engenders even more support to help him along in his career or creative efforts, typically one and the same. Taurus would have you believe he is too pure a conduit of intellectual, aesthetic and artistic endowment to be self-promoting in the process of such expression. He might never outright invite patronage, but he is not above engineering others to take pity on him in the execution of his master plans. At his best, Taurus man will honestly dedicate himself to making the world a more beautiful, bountiful and blissful world in which to live, striving to provide an increasingly lush landscape of experience in which, the more the merrier, people might share, and admitting any personal benefit in so doing. The less evolved Taurus, however, is in it for his own gain, covetous of acclaim, material reward, and all forms of validation that serve as a poor substitute for self-esteem. All Taurus men struggle with the feeling they aren’t enough—it is the particular challenge of this sign’s path, paradoxically designed to breed out of such senses of self-deficiency. The true test of this is whether or not the Bull fellow can feel fulfilled despite any real or metaphoric mob of applauding fans. We are not telling you to change, Taurus. Your path is your own. But we want you to own your true nature and try not to disguise your intentions. For the truth is Taurus is the most evocative of creatures, a master of self-cultivation. Like a gardener he designs his persona to be appealing, especially to those whose attention he most wishes to capture.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1091-1095. 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.

Had a rather stress-free journey into New York City, and it was a lovely chilly day. Dipped down to TriBeCa so S. could pop into Ted Muehling to fix her earrings and buy J. a congratulatory gifty. Got to hotel and room was ready; and so we were able to have a little bite and take a wee walk for me to find something to wear. I found things to wear just not to dinner; so with a full suitcase I felt I still had nothing to put on. It’s a weight thing, which it always is, and I have to get over it and transcend this issue once and for all. Anyway, spring is here and with it comes my daily constitutionals; and it will be nice to get back to yoga in any case. For some reason this winter was harder on my body than others have been previously.

Dinner was at Marjorelle which was pretty effing delicious. I had the clams and the tagine of lamb. It was actually fairly reasonably priced for the three course menu; while I suspect the champagne that flowed counterbalanced that ideal.

All in all I fell back in love with New York this night. Seriously I haven’t wanted to spend much time with my ex city over the last ten years; but there is something about being in that uptown environment that seems at once like old New York, when I worked at magazines uptown, catering to denizens of certain zipcodes, and a modern new gilded age version in which we unfortunately now live. And the divide shall get more stunning still. But on this day I just wanted to enjoy rolling around a bit in some lap of luxury.

Though it is for sure on my mind that I need to pull professional threads through and start working some major magic. Ones personal life does, in many ways, effect ones professional one, and that can be a good thing. I am so fortunate that I will soon be back living along one of the most beautiful beaches in the world and I can let sand, sun and sea work its healing power. Oh, what a Lucky Man….

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The morning was mine to bathe and collect. I decided to go more causual on the look because it was going to be a long day and I wanted to be comfortable. I was looking forward to meeting Jessica and her boyfriend Blaine. To be honest I never saw her on the Daily Show but I did see her HBO four-episode series special which I loved. Our dear John Early was on it and he has never been better. I was hoping, still, at this time, that he might return to Afterglow, but in the time since, he’s had to decline because his TBS show films during that time. It’s going to be a lot of fresh talent this year at festival.

We had a second day (and would have a third) of smoked fish platter for lunch—I’m off smoked fish now, although I think it’s smoked salmon for lunch today. Irony.

Well I should start by saying that S’s celebrity citings included Daniel Day Lewis and his wife (we always see Daniel Day Lewis and he and I share a barber who says we have the exact same hair pattern—maybe we are related on the Irish side who knows); also Blythe Danner and John Leguizamo. And then this morning she shared the hotel elevator with Bradley Cooper. Another irony: He is occupying our suite which we wanted to move into before the marathon HP play today. Alas, we will not be able to move until we return around 1AM; so post smoked fish, we got dressed and took a cab up to 43 Street. It was a civilized mob scene already, forty minutes before show time. We saw some of the familiar faces that HP events bring around and some unfamiliar ones as well including Brooke Shields, Emma Thompson, Liev Schreiber and Anna Wintour.

We were also seated directly behind a certain billionaire whose home we visited less than a year ago to work our Starsky + Cox magic at his estate in Jamestown, Rhode Island. He seems like a decent man; though he was angling to meet the author which wasn’t unobvious; he has very aggressive facework which makes me feel sad for him.

The play was even better on Broadway than in the West End, mainly because we were seeing the original cast now. And it was fascinating to note how they refitted an entire theater inside the old Lyric. The audience ooh’d and ahh’d as one would expect and the play is paced very well despite its length. I had a champagne pre-curtain and one at intermission; and that certainly smoothed any lingering ruffles from last evening. And then dinner at the Lamb’s which was a dream. Like our own private experience of the first scene of All About Eve and its Sarah Simmons club—portraits of whom I assuemd to be Duse and Bernhart abounding.

Life can be so strange. Then again, compared to what?

Back for the second act and standing ovations and bows by the creators and off to a suite at the Lambs for a little respite pre-after-party. Was feeling high and reviews were coming in, all good. Then off to the party where I did a beeline for the danceflor and left my sweater, jacket and scarf on a nearby table. I danced for about an hour with guests and members of the cast, using my talent in this area to create some circle-around scenarios, then looked for my attire as it was time to go. Never found my scarf which is just as well as it was given to me by someone whom I no longer cherish. But the real bummer was that my ticket packet “fell” out of my pocket which was sad. I suspect someone swiped it to be honest. Even in that rarified environment an extra momento of this sort might appeal to people’s lower instincts.

My dancing self is now pretty famous in certain circles. For me it’s always a good way to sweat out a bit of the evening (in this case marathon all-day) fun before retiring such that I will wake up with no lingering remnants of the evening before. Which was the case, and luckily, as we had two new clients starting in the morning.

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A quick breakfast nibble and then two clients in our suite at the Marlton. Then that damned smoked fish platter again.

Then a walk in the old neighborhood. I said it the other day but I’ll say it again: I have sort of fallen back in love with my ex city. I just don’t know if it will ever work out for us to be together again. First of all, it would be a costly venture; second there is that sense of never being able to go back again. Still, in Springtime, with those bloody blossoms, the West Village is hard to resist. We had a glass of wine at Buvette and went wine shopping as well. Wine was the theme. It was lovely weather and a lovely walk and we dropped our things back at the hotel, splashed our faces, and went to see if we could snag a couple of seats at L’Artusi.

When you walk into L’Artusi the first thing you see straight ahead of you is a corner of the bar that then stretches back further. But our little slice of synchronicity today was walking in and seeing (and hearing) Brooke Shields talk about the play yesterday to her friend and the sommelier. I couldn’t resist. “So you liked it?” I asked. A ten minute conversation ensued. She totes got the pacing. She said she just bought the same earrings S was wearing—the ones S had fixed the day we arrived. “We’re twins, ” she said. And we pointed out an age-old irony that S’s sister N has all her life been compared to Brooke.

Anyway it was fun and jovial and life affirming as these synchronisitics signposts can be. We had a lovely meal at the bar which, however, is set too high for the stools they give you, and it wasn’t just shorty old me who seemed to think so. Then this handsome boy in a striped mariner shirt sat down next to me. He ordered a “no alcoholic cocktail” in an accent that was difficult to map; and he prayed over his food when it arrived. He then commented on the amount of potatoes that came on my plate with the steak I ordered. When we left he stopped us to say he had one more morning before heading back home in the AM and what should he do. We said go to the Whitney downtown. It turned out he was Norwegian Italian and was here for a “book festival”. I did a bit of research and he turned out to be a playwright visiting for PEN’s World Voices event in which I knew a bunch of people participating including Penny Arcade and Eileen Myles.

I friended him on Facebook but haven’t heard back.

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To say I have an overactive mind would be an understatement. I always loved the band Blind Faith, and especially “Can’t Find My Way Home”. There is a simple version of the song on piano by Joey Curtin. It’s actually a song I can play. And I love “Surrender” by Cheap Trick. I am constantly chasing thoughts and feelings, not one to be centered at all. Maybe that’s a thing about Libra where they are balanced but not centered. Gemini is the negotiation of opposites, one against another—they are the most polarized as people and sometimes bi- so. Libra is a blend, and so not always an easy one. It’s in some ways easier to compartmentalize, which is why Gemini can only deal with “the immediate” what’s right in front of them. Libra instead spans—inner life, outward experience and, one might argue, time; but then we have to define spanning time. I think it means something like acting in experience with a mind, if not a feel (for we are talking about Libra now) for for “the longbody” of life, as opposed to the immediate, Gemini being ruled by Mercury the god of both close-relationship, ubiquity, being quicksilver everywhere at once, and also the emphasis of the the present and the now, being perhaps slightly different things.

The present is something which can be mesured and expressed in outward circumstance whilst the now can only be innerly, maybe mystically intuited.

Anyway I woke up this day and had breakfast with Steve from the company that is doing our launch . We both had poached eggs and quinoa and S. had granola and yoghurt and ordered a basket of pastries. It was most enlightening and then we left the Marlton and headed to the Eliot in Boston which, since we always get the same suite, is like coming home; and it’s quite a good sense of it. I’m loving staying in hotels when I have to; so much less hassle right now than having some apartment, even short-let; because then I feel compelled to food shop and cook and nobody wants to do that.

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Dinner at Uni last night really was delicious. There is nothing like just going downstairs in your hotel to eat. And Uni is so good and I suppose needs to be quite pricey. I wish the Eliot had coffee in the morning. They don’t. It’s there most dire drawback. They could just install someone on an espresso machine inside the restaurant in the morning. I’m going to talk to them!

So after walking to Great Barrington on Newbury for coffee, we came back to see two favorite longerm clients; then we beat it and had sushi at Whole Foods in Hingham after spending $400 shopping…for two people. We got cheeses and Lambrusco and chilled the ef out. It was glorious as we gear up to May, so much possibility and positivity to look forward to. And May is a sexy time, too, no, lest we forget. Not that my own loins are so springy never mind surging. Did you ever hold a baby and feel your loins surge as a young, well, man I’m assuming, unless the ladies can do it to?

What’s a matter with me. Why am I so weird. I don’t know. I’m like a bonne vivant viper. Seriously I am so mean, and I don’t mean to be. I take things really personally. I learning not to but oh em gee which means something else when you type it: oh, em….gee!

This might be a funny thing to explore: Why it is that I am at once the nicest and cruelest person in the world. I got that Libra Medea Medusa thing going on, in male form, which is fitting of the Apollo archetype; for the god of light and truth and reason and music and poetry and all beautiful abstract aspects associated with his sign, (ruled by Venus on the astral (air) plane, ruled by the Scales the sole inanimate in the Zodiac), Apollo is also most cruel, his arrows causing searing pain, and his mythic punishments being pretty nasty (this is a hopefule statement I want to fully fact-check).

And again Libra is a blend and it can be a lot for people. I own that. I have never claimed to be an easy character to deal with, truly not. Anyway, I am terribly flawed and given to fits of fury and flights of phantasmagoria. The trick has always been to try and tame this driving force. I know I put people off. Many people probably. I may be known to be prickly but I’m just as sweet and juicy a peach. And I make the bestest friend I truly do.

But I can be a stone cold bitch. One doesn’t think of Apollo as being warm and fuzzy. That’s more a Dionysus thing. I love the gods, all, and always have. I have always known they are immortal and I don’t believe the have the provenance to die.

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.

Hovering Farm

Scorpio 12° (November 4)

Today was a hodgepodge. Feeling optimistic about the Democrats pulling off the presidency although I am doubtful about the Senate. Still I feel we have some time on that score. Getting the word out there as best I can and really hopeful that I can affect something positive in all of this. I’m again in a holding pattern with wood delivery (that isn’t a euphemism) and I’m once again losing patience with this character called Chopper. I know I’m not going to get very far in terms of writing anything today. I’m so preoccupied and so tired of all the gaslighting and such. I was corresponding with a friend by email over someone from our childhood: In seventh grade, I was my friendliest with Mark B., and so Jay was originally in our orbit a bit too. We all smoked cigarettes but we weren’t 16, we were 12. I was sort of Nancy M’s boyfriend ish for a while. And so we were all “bad” smoking Marlboros outside 7-11. Needless to say, I wasn’t long for that scene and focused on being the drama nerd that I truly was. Mark and I were bedmates for a field trip to Philadelphia and, maybe, Gettysburg? Our roommates in the next bed who shall remain nameless (yeah right: Steve McThomas and Tim? Van Vleet?) were a little too giggly in the neighboring bed. Speaking of which (and segue back to Roger and Pete): weren’t they caught doing similarly on (same?) field trip? Or is that suburban legend. I remember that party at Pete’s, the very last days of school, in the back yard. He had a friend with him from Deerfield called Andrew H. who turned out to be in my dorm at B.U., He and I also tripped together, the second week of school. He was raised on Park Avenue, dated a Vogue model, was on the crew team and was so ridiculously perfect looking I felt like we were different species.  Remember tripping? Awwww. 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1086-1090. 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 binge watched Lost in Space, mainly to see our friend Parker Posey play Dr. Smith. It wasn’t great—in fact it bordered somewhat on Land of the Lost with a lot of running around and revisiting caves. But I haven’t binge-watched anything in about a year and the total zombieness of it all really felt great to give into I must say. I’m sorry world, but if you’re going to extend winter another month, and give me nothing but gray and rainy days, then I get to watch that much more television.

I am super excited about seeing the Harry Potter play opening on Broadway on Sunday. Fate has allowed us this as a perk for having a great thirty-two-year old friendship with so creative a talent and her kind and generous consort. Although events like this always make me wish I was thinner. But I yam what I yam. And the rest of the world will just have to get over it.

Speaking of television (as I was a few couple paragraphs ago), I’m really enjoying the Howards End on Starz. It’s fun to have a slower, more fleshed out version of what is surely one of my favorite stories (and films); there has never been so tragic a character as Leonard Bast, as I’ve probably said already in a recent Blague.

I just visited jkrowling.com and noticed she and S have the same paperweight which is designed, looks like, by someone who also used to be quite a close friend but who “turned” on us a couple of years back. I wish I could say I am over the hurt of that incident but the truth is I’m not. S is so much better and moving on than I am. But I am terribly sensitive when it comes to these sorts of things. One doesn’t expect sort of fourteen-year-old behavior from a fifty-five-year-old man; however, this man actually stated time and time again how he was a fourteen year old girl trapped in an adult male body. Now you’re thinking: So why do you care that you’re no longer friends. Good question.

I have never once in my life thought that I’d like to be famous, despite the fact that so many people I know are. I loved being an actor, which truly was a craft. I never thought I would make bank on it (which might be part of the problem). Anyway I didn’t have that kind of life. I had to work and scrimpt to get by. Also I never had the requisite confidence in the business of it all that I had on the actual stage. Who knows. It might all come back to me at some point. It would be nice to enjoy some kind of success at ths point as an actor and I do feel that I deserve that certain slice of happiness. Would be a challenge to go for that type of thing now but not impossible. Only for me it will need to fit a larger lifestyle.

People seem really torn about Lost in Space. They seem to either love it or hate it. Either way strong opinions are a desired effect and I hope the show runs a long time and makes Parker a lot of money.

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A show that answers the question how did you meet and come to do what you do.

Really it is about being within the construct of Time while coming to understand that all is one big “simultaneaity” happening in a cosmic instant which is exactly why it is that Quinn gets increasingly psychic and Stella, likewise, to borrow from the Baroness, “can see the future” in her own way. The trick is to just start picking stories from our individual and shared lives and plug them into a timeline until we find a string of stories that work as a show.

Starsky + Cox enter in darkness and station themselves stage right and left. A projection screen reads 1963, a warping, waved effect moves across it moving the image like a wind blows a flag or water ripples over a sign buried beneath it. A purposely blatant, if not bad, but kind of cool interpretive dance or pantomime begins, Starsky + Cox each go through their own pantomime of life experiences and pasage as the numbers tick forward stopping first on (possibly) 1973 (though it could be anywhere). A collage of sounds and music concide with each of their illustrative movements.

Some movements include being born, crying eating, making faces and noises, learning to walk, running away laughing, sitting on the toilet, taking baths, putting on school or Sunday clothes, learning at desks, kneeling at church, eating cookies, playing sports, learning dance, playing with dolls, doing cootie-catchers, being beaten up all things leading to age 10 if 1973 is the first number.

There can be dual monologues at this point or not. The interpretive pantomime can then become less innocent with sexual trespasses, more attempted sports or activities, trying drugs or alcohol, being teenaged stuff at the point the numbers reach 1981 Starsky + Cox can cross to each other, accept imaginary diplomas from one another, then walk off switching their tassle. More college type pantomime, more drugs, experience, learning, make up, music, dance The end point of this sequence will be 1983 when both sit down and we hear airplane sounds or the cabin crew doing a bit. The point is we are now on the plane to Paris both in window seats separated by a wide body.

The dialogue would begin by saying this is how we offically met but actually we were in this exact configuration before when the previous spring we went to see the English Beat, with REM opening, at Boston University, in a group organized by a mutual friend, though we were on opposites sides of the row in the auditorium and din’t actually meet. The character of the mutual friend plays a “role” in that ultimately he becomes a top plastic surgeon (whose job it is to remove wrinkles) he may make an “appearance” only in so far as he will be in Rome in Spring of 1984 when we meet the man who speaks in tongues.

Other stories would include the Harmonic Convergence, doing a Tony Randall impersonation that seemed to conjure him into being, maybe Graham Nash, taking liberties with truth and sequence, giving ourselves poetic license.

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I have an entire basement and office and “attic” to go through to rid myself of three decades of accumulation. I had planned to do this over the winter; and if you were to ask me why that didn’t happen I would be at a loss to tell you why. But I can’t avoid it any longer and will prioritize making this happen for myself. The trick is I keep waiting to do this as some kind of team and I fear that is never going to happen so I must now move on to singular thoughts and actions.

Too many things feel like the law of diminishing returns. And it is high time to take the bull by the horns and try to make some important things happen. I do not have the luxury to sit around and wait for some kind of permission; nor do I want to be in any kind of competition. I think it’s great that someone like D.D. is satisfied running what amounts to community theater. I would likely slit my writsts. I see these people who have spent thirty some odd years in recovery and they seem not to have learned anything but self-servingness. They seem the least woke people of all. Strange that.

Yeah I don’t think twelve step programs are really a recipe for recovery in the end. It just seems like institutionalized dry-drunkeness or whatever one is recovering from. Case in point we are meeting someone this week who approached us about doing a business project; only now it seems he’s turned the tables and acting as if he’s doing us some kind of favor. It’s all a bit too topsy turvy for my taste. But I am the Bob Newhart, the Oliver Douglas (do you know who that is?) the Larry David. These characters make for some good comedy in art but, in life it’s not that funny.

One has to take their cues from the universe, in that I am a firm believer. As such, I can only go higher and higher. And I shall continue to do so in a conscious motivated upward spiraling. It’s way too easy at this time of life to get discouraged and groan about wht didn’t happen. For no lack of trying, the list of failed attempts is far longer than that of sure hits in my experience. But that’s what it is: my experience. It is no better or worse than anyone elses. If you have certain success, especially in the arts (as they devolve into entertainments) you can continue to create (and delude yourself you’re making art) because people will buy into any crap you put out there. But that is, in and of itself, a dismal affair.

It’s better known as drinking the Kook Aid and sometimes the flavor thereof is champagne cocktails. I have never needed anything I don’t have. But I have failed to want very fully that which I do possess. To take stock, to appreciate to the utmost, is a recipe for one’s own value rising. This is what I tell me clients. Clients. I look forward to having many more clients in the coming year. In fact I will very much be making this my focus. I have pretty much decided to let much of everything else go and to become this tunnel visioned entity in regard to our craft and business. On the agenda today is to get a final draft note ready for sending to lecture and speakers offices and the like. I will review my notes with S on all of this Thursday morning. Today is only Tuesday after all.

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Barbara Bush was what she said of Geraldine Ferraro: “It rhymes with rich.” I know it’s de rigeur revisionism to cast the recently departed as some kind of saint. But the truth is she was in so many ways a monstrous woman and I don’t feel compelled to act or think otherwise. I am surprised her husband outlived her. Long lives, both; maybe it’s the hate that kept them alive. I think it would be naive to think he hasn’t murdered and that she didn’t know about it. Even if those you kill are faceless and nameless you still dial M.

Had a lovely meeting with our friend Tim with whom we might do a little business deal. Things to Google: Water based dichargers for printing fabric. For example there is a place called Forward printing. I would be very interested in knowing the pricing of the equipment thereof. There are so many interesting artists and graphic businesses and resaturants and so forth that might avail themselves of my printing skills. It all bolsters an argument for diversifying and sort of going into business for oneself, having a side hustle. So being both the production and the distrubition and the sales? Would be fun to price out. Just for kicks.

The truth is I am looking for a little diversity at this juncture. A side-hustle with a little substance. A way to generate some extra abundance while having fun doing it. While the larger ships come in. But I think that’s just a normal fantasy people have. Like I’ve always wanted to own a café. Will I ever actually own one? Perhaps. But it isn’t now. And I do have quite a substantial side-hustle in the festival I produce. The only thing with that is I don’t make any money, which, of course, was never the goal.

The key thing for me to do is to jettison, and yes it would be a sacrifice, things that have taken up a lot of time which no longer serve me. Moving through, today, will entail sending out another set of fundraising pleas, setting up (if not writing) two more Blagues before traveling to Boston and New York; having a draft of the letter to send to speaker’s bureaus, outlining the next six months in terms of what is happening when, speeding through making some notes for next year’s books’ intros, getting a draft of a contract together for artists; and create a graphic email-able card for our summer consultancy.

I have decided to remain very much in my bubble. I can’t do anything more at this juncture. I’m full up on the news of the day and I need to stick my head in the sand for an ironic breather. I will reemerge, hopefully, stronger than before. I am more upset about the woman who died on the Southwest flight than I am about the state of the world today. The whole big picture seems totally rigged to me; and it is forcing me into a more selfish mindset and modus. Not to say I am some kind of selfless being normally; but so much of waht I do is about furthering the efforts and evolution of others, whether with our private practice or in my charitable work promoting and presenting artists.

We are coming up on some serious me time.

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Left Aries this morning, the Sun did. And now it appeareth in Taurus or, should I say, Taureth. I keep my distance, almost naturally, from Aries while Taurus draws me in with a lot of temptations that can end semi-tragically.

I think I have been semi-retired since taking my first job at fourteen. I realized this when, this morning I said I’d like to semi-retire at fifty-seven.

The Leo woman thing can fall along a dichotomy between ultimate loyalty and falling out of favor. To be examined. Along with all the other gender signs over the next ten days as I put the pieces together on next year’s weekly astrologies.

Having said all I said yesterday, I think I’m going to make my side hustle acting. It’s something I can surely do beginning sort of now ish. I would like to restart that and tennis and skiing this year and I think that will give me a sense of accomplishment. Daily, it will be the piano and singing as per usual. It’s very important to have small ambitions, something I attribute the energy of Cancer and the fourth house, frankly.

I have a lot to say and I have a lot to offer, but still I feel that disconnect between this who I am and how others see me; I’m looking to examine how to bridge that gap. I also feel, as we all tend to do, a gulf between the way I live and the way I imagine my life to be. That is also a divide to cross. Or drop trying.

Today is the first Spring embarkation and I’m fairly psyched. We will set off the the ICA first and then to family dinner up nahth. I’m determined to hop in the car early in the a.m. tomorrow for New York where I’m hoping we won’t tempt fate and magic. It can be enchanting for about forty-eight hours and then the tide tends to turn.

Going through song catalogue. Archiving shows and so forth. Our tandem show can get into the metaphorical ways of living and how they are more true than true. I will make a contract and send it to the artists. I will start to go through my own Blague work. I want and need to hit all my marks. In Taurus we should take stock of our talents and assets.

I tweeted: We’re in Taurus, witches.Time to connect to your inner nymphs and flower gods; and to stop, drop and roll around in the proverbial roses like Ferdinand who is so fabulously light in his hooves. Love yourself—just not to the exclusion of others.

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.

Fairly Itching

Scorpio 11° (November 2-3)

Yeah so, the last couple of days were pretty major. Awoke at the crack to do part two of prep for colonoscopy. It was wearing on me that I had to drive an hour to get to the place, as, while in the throes of pissing clear from your rectum, you can’t imagine being able to sit in a car that long without exploding. And we just got a new car. Not my first colonoscopy rodeo. Had one about six years ago. I don’t have a picture perfect system but I think it will hold together for the duration. It was a very busy place in Hyannis, six doctors seeing fourteen patients each, and its Cape Cod so a lot of old people. It’s actually a very impressive operation (why do I weirdly enjoy things like this?) that works like a Swiss clock and the doctors and nurses and everyone are so nice. My anesthesiologist (omg I spelled that correctly on the first go) was Eugene Eldridge, an olde Cape Cod surname, in his early 70s maybe, telling stories about being stuck in St. John’s during hurricane Irma…and let’s face it, it’s all about the anesthesia. Best twenty minutes of sleep I’ve had in the six years since my last visit. While in the waiting room, before being called to go in, a man came out and his wife was waiting for him. He was probably Eugene’s age and he didn’t say hi to his wife but went to the window and asked if he could have two envelopes because he wanted to write notes to two of the nurses who just took care of him. (Yes this seems weird to me.) Then he asks if their their names were Jill and Fran. Yes they were. Okay, and he’s writing his little love notes while the wife, still having not said a word, gets up and just leaves, one imagines heading for their car. And I’m thinking okay it’s sort of sweet but mainly it’s creepy. The nurses are seeing a hundred patients today and, even with your love notes, they are not really going to remember who you are, sir. To them you are literally just some asshole. 

Had a lovely rest with pizza and blueberry pies to follow, and we rented Anonymous, one of my favorite films of all time. Watched a bit Monday night and the rest Tuesday morning. Election day. All but ignored it until six o’clock in the evening, only pausing to get a sense. I decided to do very physical things today only to keep myself occupied. I brought all the plants inside and set up a little area. I have the worst bruise in my forearm from the intravenous. Actually hurts quite a bit too. Cleaned the entire house top to bottom and prepped a whole bunch of food. Steak for the first time in probably six months, with roasted potatoes and side salad. Yum. I little fun time fireside and a singalong at the piano, and then the passing out in front of scant election returns.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1081-1085. 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.

Michael Cohen got raided. We went shopping in Orleans and found out the owners of the local wine shop have sold, this on the heels of our cool produce shop closing. Why is it that in any village in any town in Europe or the UK it seems, there is a fishmonger, a butcher, a cheese shop, a gourmet shop, several cafes where you can get anything from coffee to a soup or wine and just sit undisturbed for hours, and in small town America you have some Thai restaurants that are closed during the day, a dry cleaners and a Christmastree shop. We are a bankcrupt culture even in the smallest of ways. But I’m going to continue on my journey. I have no idea what that last sentence meant. Oh yes I do.

Being on the brink of something amazing feels, well, amazing. You know when you know when you know what I mean? It’s different from having a manic episode. Not that I would know. Although there have been times when my office has looked like a set piece off the film A Beautiful Mind. Remember Russel Crowe? He’s over, right? We saw Gladiator (me, again) on the boat in keeping with the bacchanale spirit of the party on Mustique. I will likely never go to that particular party again, but it was quite fun to be sure. I think I will make “to be sure” my new catch phrase; Stella will get into it because it’s after Miss MacKay from Marcia Blaine fame. If you don’t know what that means we can’t be friends. I’m so sorry.

I am not the cat’s meow in my own estimation. I think I might just get over myself and get up at the crack tomorrow and finish all this jazz; then off to get the old hair cut; just how to tell this particular barber to just give me a trim did not prove successful in the past. I’m surrounded by old man energy suddenly, my dear acting teacher taking a wee dive back into my life. The father in my French family who was just ten years my senior died last year by suffocating in a hole dug for some technical purpose in his small yard which was in pride and joy. I know he wanted me to see it when I visited, but I didn’t. Now I have a hard time beaming in to speak with his wife and family, you see, because I hadn’t for decades, really, before arranging a reunion, just month’s before his death, back in Grenoble. All tragic. My acting teacher is 93 and other people aren’t.

I’m most comfortable with the above size paragraph. It turns me on, I will not lie. Catching up on Blague-ing is for the birds. I’ll bet my hair cut Monday that’s my decision. We can go for fish together. And I shall clean the house. It will be Friday and a day of little things. I love the little things. I am not not here. I need to leave in a minute. I also must decide what to do with the multiplicity of my thoughts which really is about filling notebooks. I don’t want confrontation. I want an end to it all. I won’t get upended a word I hope doesn’t need a hyphen. Time passes by and it does make me sad. I am who I am and sometimes that person might work a little something something in the privacy of their own unread paragraphs. You only need know what I’m feeling, am revealing. The words are just architecture stacked one atop another like the inverted layers of Rome.

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Okay so nearly three years ago we went to this dentist on steroids (figuratively, and probably, literally) about whom many people either rave or say nothing staring blankly. Being neither one of those types of people, I just wanted a good dentist. And this fellow had supported some of my artistic causes over the years, so there was that factor.

I was surprised to learn, as we booked two appointments, that it would cost $1K, in advance for examination and cleaning, and that the payment was to be non-refundable. It was a lot. It was a lot a lot; but we figured it was a good investment. Though I should tell you I’ve never had a cavity in my life; my gums can get a bit dodgy from time to time, but, look Mom, no cavities.

The first odd thing was that the visit began with a tour, mainly, of a shrine of diplomas and other tribunalia, and the female army of dental assists contributed to the cultish feeling around this doctor, who, again, was always very nice. But I would soon learn I hadn’t so much gone to the dentist as been taken to the cleaners. With an ironic twist Because, you see, I never did get a cleaning.

I got a poke around by one hygeinist, I presume, you sort of pre-diagnosed me, pointing to things the doctor would say about my mouth (which he ended up doing, imagine that!). Then a second hygeinist came in and, mind you, the place has a TV screen on the ceiling and the room is super modish and spacious, like getting your teeth done on the Death Star.

I don’t quite recall if, but I’m sure, they took conventional xrays of my teeth; I’ll check my notes; otherwise it’s possible I had had xrays recently at that point and waived it off.

I do know the two started this tag-team dialogue and deep ultra sounded or something my teeth, one by one—perhaps it was sonar—finding what I presumed weaknesses deep inside the bones of my teeth or some other. And every time the machine beeped one or both of them would make a uhh or yup, or a combined uhyup sound, together. This fantastic voyage went on for a long time; and I was told the doctor was coming in and that there was no time to do the actual cleaning —they would do it “soon next time”. Fine.

Doctor comes in and the rest becomes a bit of a blur so I’ll keep this paragraph brief. When he uttered the words you have eighteen cavities I was taken over by a Mars-ruled blush of pure anger; thankfully, being in the chair, not having to look herr doctor in the face. As I couldn’t have disguised the cartoon train whistle foghorn expression I was wearing. Aaa-ooh-ga! cast in red-orange.

Tune in tomorrow for the continuation of Minority Report Al Dente (Part 1)

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Our experiences had been different but similar. Let’s just say it was all about total reconstruction and being ushered into a room to talk about loans from a company, here you go, we just happen to have information about this company on hand; plus the mention of and a request to take a biopsy—denied—of what turned out to be a burn from a jalapeño. So $1K lighter, with dirty teeth, and a document with a diagram of a mouth with notes indicated where my eighteen cavities were lodged, I left. I needed time to settle and regain objectivity. And I’d be going back and could have questions answered.

I called to schedule the follow up visit and the cleaning I hadn’t had, and set the time, and the assitant’s soothing voice on the other end of the phone quoted me yet another astronomical, not to mention just plain shocking, price for the appointment. Um. I already paid $500 for my visit alone and I didn’t get a cleaning and anyway I was going to come back and talk to the doctor about what seemed to me to be an impossiblity: eighteen cavities. when I’ve never been diagnosed with a cavity in my life. Sorry that’s the doctor’s policy.

Well I said I’m not coming back. Days later I see a charge on my card for another $TK amount from this doctor’s office. Now I’m pissed. I call. Oh it was for something or other and then it wasn’t; ultimately it was a mistake; another sorry; it gets taken off my bill. I write the whole thing off because I’m busy and fuck it. I don’t always have the bandwidth to fight battles. You understand. Sometimes you have free time and you’re like: Okay, I have time for this. But, mainly, not.

Over the near three years since, when I’ve seen other dentists who still say I have no cavities. And during which time I’ve asked around—do you go to doctor so and so? and do you? and what’s you’re experience; uh, huh, and yours? Okay. Seems people are pretty well split. There are those who have had or heard of friends who’ve had similar experience to us. But, I’d say equally, a great many people have the near opposite story to tell, where the doctor shoots the works on them and charges them precious little. And some folks shrug their mouths into frowns at the mention of my eighteen phantom needed fillings.

So I sent a polite note asking the doctor, again someone with whom I’m cordial, to offer some kind of explanation. Instead one of his hygeinebots got back to me to say the doctor doesn’t feel comfortable emailing me answers (I bet he doesn’t) but that I was welcome to come in for a consultation. Or no you don’t. I said I wasn’t interested in that just some kind of understanding as to why our experience had been diametrically opposed to other patients. My question was answered with a question from the receptionist: What prompted you to write now? To which I responded: Well in the last nearly three years I’ve seen three dentists none of whom say I have a single cavity and in that same nearly three years I have heard such wildly conflicting accounts regarding the office experience chez le docteur, with whom I reached an impasse. I then said, then, in lieu of an explantion I would appreciate a full refund for my office visit for which I received nothing but a bogus diagnosis and no cleaning. We shall see what comes of it.

Somewhere at some time the future me might commit the crime of eighteen cavities, but at this point and likely for decades to come my mouth should be presumed innocent.

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We received the first incoming sponsorship donation of the new season yesterday. In our meeting the subject was publishing and it got me thinking: All about foreign editions and ebooks and being more entrepreneurial on this score. I need to mogulize. I need to charm a scion of a stationery empire. From my Paris pulpit perhaps.

I also downloaded my Facebook information today. Put it on a thumb drive and whatever now I can quit if I want to. I’m thinking I maybe want to sell some stuff. too.

I’ve never really sold anything before, but I feel like I need a kind of close commercial experience from whence I also make a little dough; then again, nobody needs my crap I suppose. What I really need do is to start going through all my own shit and making room in the one file cabinet we own. Bliss would truly be….it will come back to me. First, I feel I need to spread out and bring back most things that are locked.

Then on the subject home improvement, or what is better known as the Dale List includes fixing the African ladder that we pass off as art back onto its mounting; fashioning something that can replicate one of the metal rod “corseted” fasteners under one of our Perriand Courbousier pony chairs, and to secure them all in any case; creating sliding mirror doors on the bookshelf; work: Rewiring lamps, painting the whole upstairs. All of this might happen and then again it might not. I don’t know how long I’ll be staying where I am. Do you wonder why I say that well it’s like this: We have a lot out there and spinning and if I’m just going to show up back here on Cape for a few months a year, I don’t mind the place staying on the dodgy side until I leave I really don’t.

This weekend really is busy enough. For starters I have to write two more versions of the following letter to Sponsors to get them to pony up and help with my non-profit. This English journalist I know is writing a piece on sidehustles and I reached out to say that producing live performance is mine. Anyway here is that letter to be reworked for both the returning Sponsor crowd, the Missionary Sponsor crowd and the new Sponsor crowd. Let’s do the Missionary version first here, shall we…

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So the plan was to wake up and directly do a full session of Bikram upstairs in what might be becoming a new gym of sorts. I need to work on strength and get this carcass moving once again. Though, I dare say, I’ve been rather fond of the long winter as it has served as a wonderful excuse all these long weeks. Anyway it didn’t happen. It’s now 10:41 in the morning and I’ve yet to launch this new yogic effort. I will try to do so around 3PM today instead.

It was rather warm overnight and now the temperature is plummeting a bit. Such a weird spring. Oh and we bombed Syria last night so there was that. I don’t know my fellow earth travelers—things are getting even weirder. And you never hear about the Parkland kids or gun control at all. This country is an amnesiac of the first order.

So today will be a salad of experience: I will finishing creating the various letters I need for outreach to sponsors and venues. I will create a social media diagram for our meeting. I will get a draft of a letter ready for speaking engagements, seminars and workshops, that type of thing. I will go through stacks of magazines and newspapers and start cutting out stories to scan for press etc; and find TV clips in the process. I also need to jot down some notes about Cancer people and Leo people, off the top of my head. I also need to put a note out there…well regarding something…I’m sure I’ll remember what. (You see I walked away for a little while certain I would hold that thought; let it be a lesson to you.)

I also need to write this into some form of decent, friendly copy.

Hello. Stella Starsky and Quinn Cox here. So and So was kind enough to give me your email address. Collectively, we are Starsky + Cox leading astrologers and authors of the book Sextrology (HarperCollins 2004). We run a private consultancy of international clients, the majority of whom hail from the arts, entertainment, fashion and design industries.

We have written columns and features for the world’s top publications and websites including Vogue, Glamour, Elle, Allure, Cosmopolitan and The Daily Beast; and we have ourselves been globally featured by publications like The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Time, InStyle, Vogue, Vogue Italia, The Boston Globe, British Vogue. Sextrology has been translated into sixteen foreign editions; and the book was followed by Cosmic Coupling (Crown, 2010) and our self-published yearly series of Haute Astrology ebooks.

We have appeared on numerous satellite and terrestrial radio and television news and entertainment programs and were recurring guests on “Chelsea Lately”. Chelsea Handler, Charlize Theron, Kelly Ripa, Kim Cattrall, Scarlett Johannson, Isaac Mizrahi, Mario Testino, Kate Moss, Sharon Stone, Karl Lagerfeld and Rufus Wainwright have all been outspoken fans. Starsky + Cox have collaborated on events with Marc Jacobs, Barneys New York, Colette Paris, Selfridges and Harvey Nichols in London, Edinburgh and Dublin, and have created content for MAC Cosmetics, Chandelier and Kylie Minogue.

Starsky + Cox have offered their Cosmic Clincs®—working with top PR and event planners—offering on-the-spot astrological readings at private and charitable events. We have also guest-lectured at company events with our “Unlocking the Zodiac Code”, a presentational talk and workshop on the power of the Zodiac, with its twelve signs and houses, as an ancient system for self-realization—”the original twelve-step program” as we say. On top of our private and charitable appearances and lectures, we perform a thought-provoking musical comedy show still on the astrological theme. In New York City we have appeared at Dixon Place, Ars Nova, The Zipper Factory and at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, where we perform regularly. As we live part-time in Massachusetts, we have also performed at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge and at numerous venues, most frequently, in Provincetown.

Anway it obviously needs a little work. Which I’ll get to, tomorrow. Meanwhile, here are things to Google: trouble making a muscle; how to best archive all your old CDS.

And oh the increasing waves of longing I’ve been feeling this week; like I’m meant to be strolling some dusty village street, somewhere in southern Europe, France, maybe, near Spain, or in the Aquitaine. And then I decided it might be best to give said longing a specific place (for starters) where it might send the right messages and perhaps effect some realization. So I’ve decided to focus on the little corner of the 5e arrondissement à Paris that I love so much.

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.

And So It Begins

Scorpio 10° (November 1)

Rabbit, rabbit. A weird night’s sleep but enjoyed the extra hour, post Full Moon on All Hallow’s Eve. Now Happy Samhain. I’m on a clear liquid diet today. Hoorah. Just coffee and tea and water thus far. There is talk of going for a walk but I’m going to pass, actually. I feel a bit coldy and I can’t be when I go for my procedure tomorrow. The fitting beginning to a week promising to be a true shite show. So let’s see. I washed dishes and rejigged my schedule and did some UI due diligence and updated the menu and returned emails and got my brain around today’s diet (made jello) sent S. a copy of the note to fuckface; and what I have left to do is prepare ye these Blagues for the week plus plan the new set of menus, plus get finances totally up to date. Otherwise I’m going to lay very low today and feel the transition happen. My nerves are a bit on edge and the ongoing pinched one was causing a bit of involuntary movement and I’m not in the mood for that. We have a list going of things we need to order. I’m going to leave the screens in for another week but I will be sending that note preemptively. Also, I have my ablutions to perform prior to tomorrow’s appointment. Yuck. I used to toy with starting a magazine called Yuk. I still think it might be a viable idea, digitally. Nobody reads this so I don’t think I’m giving anything away. Or am I.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1076-1080. 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.

Breakfast at Tatte where some newbie at ART was dishing the staff—oh uh. Drove back to OCC (Olde Cape Cod) and just got some bear necessities. It’s still so wintery and I can feel it in my bones. I sound like an old person. Oh yeah. Super excited to be seeing the Cursed Child in a couple of weeks. Watched Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson’s show on HBO—John Early was a guest and he knocked it out of the park. He really did.

I really do want to stick around here the next two years and get some fun kitchen witch stuff going; like I really have a feeling about essential oils (done in a non cliché way) and other wise digging into the whole apothecary vein. I think I might start by adding some books online. I’d like to make some shrugs and tinctures; but also in terms of the more apothecary ideas we’ve been talking about. And when I say we’ve of course I’m referring to myselves.

I have that all too familiar sense of longing. It really is quite a good thing really. As I say is by our longing, via our need that the Universe can find us. Aries is want, Cancer is need. Both Cardinal signs i.e. putting it out there. And yet, paradoxically, that feeling is often/always/also a sign to dig in right where you are, to center oneself, and to give oneself more breadth of small experience, the things just close by with which we can occupy our time, the small ambitions that are usually muscled out be TV or masturbation.

Yeah I said it. (Sorry, that was my Chris Rock impersonation) I’ve watched his Netflix special a few times. He really is the best and this new piece Tamborine is quite expert. Wow. Still, Netflix has more quantity over quality of stand-up shows in their service. The rare one is great. The funniest thing on Netflix isn’t meant to be: Tulip Fever is an inexplicable film that is up there with the great good-bads like Staying Alive (The Saturday Night Fever sequel). What a yucky time in mainstream American culture that was. I was already feeling Elvis Costello and Talking Heads in ’77 and I was 13 for most of it.

Things are really heating up. I just don’t know why it is we have such a high tolerance for this bullshit. I mean it would be bad enough if he had frauded people out of their university money and experience; or that we haven’t seen tax returns; or that he makes fun of the disabled; or that he fights with the FBi; or that he is using the stage of world politics making threats to other nations as his personal means of expression; or that he paid off women including playmates and porn stars; or that he had shady business dealings; or that he is trying to fire everyone who is involved in the investigation. But there is so much more. Imagine if this were Barack or Hillary.

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Waking up on this morning is like happening into a work-in-progress, which also characterizes those individuals born on this day. There is an element of happy surprise now in realizing how far along plans and projects actually are; just as we sense a cozy security in knowing that achievement is had slowly, thoroughly, without the anxiety of haste. Today, we feel all shall end well, on a self-satisfied note, spent either in jovial company or in more desired solitude, inwardly gazing as events dissolve into night. Rhea Cronos, Old Mother Time, rules this day, stretching her sense of everlast over its frame. There will be obstacles, if only to illustrate how readily they can be removed. Those born this day may feel thwarted from, even robbed of, nay spared, a conventional course of life experience; they are, in sacrifice of so-called normalcy, being shepherded in an extraordinary direction. This Capricorn day is equal parts careful and capricious. We seek to engage in productive activity, without over achieving; indeed we have the confidence of imperfection, an aristocratic ease and the guilelessness of those whom others only erroneously presume possess airs. The tactile is paramount on this day, a need to commune with the nobility of nature and show it deference. We sense and acknowledge the present, momentous power of what lies beyond the loose protection of our conscious minds. The day invites nourishing intrusion, mostly in the form of serendipitous happenstance. The steady assurance of low light and distant cloud blankets the soul like a swaddled babe. We deliciously strain against the confines of our own perceptions, safe in their sane protection. The limit of our consciousness feels a blissful thing onto itself, a mixed membrane of the familiar and the vastly unknown, this two-part blend of ingredients making each the more delectable. We feel the texture of this day beckoning as do the long contoured ridges of fresh pale cut applewood. Reaching out to touch it, even its coarseness provides reassurance. We will not waste the graces of this day. We will utilize them in full appreciation, counting our blessings, without compulsion for saving, only savoring, our every boon and bounty. People born on this day embrace quality over quantity—they are abundance conscious, highly aspirational, choosey and sparing. A default sense of sacrifice making the most meager indulgence all the sweeter characterizes the spirit of this point in our journey around the Sun. Bright quince ripening in a cold blue-grey bowl. Today we are asked to see the exotic beauty inherent in the presumed bland. Our powers of discernment, natives of this day realize, are key to achieving desired goals. We can see obstacles before us, or the building blocks for assembling our dreams. People born today are expert at visualizing the entire path of their long journey to fulfilling their destiny. We are all this day suffused with the understanding that there is an art to living, the technique of which lies in disciplining the mind to see the upside, the solutions, in every situation. Natives of this day show us, by example, that the act of living is the purest of all creative processes. Today’s native comports herself regally, using the obstacles in her path for fuel to reach ever further than even she originally anticipated. This day reminds us that life might be allowed to exceed our expectations. People born on this day are rarely disappointed, for they project realistic expectations, living frugally on the surprises that the universe (heeding their humble mindset) blissfully springs on them. They are subtle creatures, never showy, typically cloaked in elegant greys, browns, maroon and black, the color of renunciation. They seek to absorb, negate negativity itself, picking up real as well as karmic and energetic slack, clearing the decks, preparing the way for goodness to find them, while never taking on too much so they might be needy of extra help. They tend to take up a surplus of responsibility so that their loved ones might have a lighter, breezier aspect. This can see them being taken advantage of by those who don’t recognize the quiet, constant spiritual sacrifice that this Capricorn soul devotionally makes—this can result in their being scapegoated or overlooked by the obtuse who mistake their humble nature for a self-effacing one. On the other hand, the person born this day can have their surpassing self-esteem taken for a snobbish, haughty nature. Wrong on both counts. Just as this day stretches out forever, time seeming to move more slowly than usual, so too, is its native the proverbial tortoise who paces himself for the long haul, ultimately winning the day, yes, but having a thorough experience of life. This day is to be lived on its own terms—one shouldn’t seek to alter ones experience of it, neither through substances that warp perception nor via the imposition of drama or dysfunctional behavior. People born this day are preoccupied with the notion of being clean livers, regardless of where they fall on that spectrum; they are sober by nature, and unlikely to manufacture drama or manipulate others in any fashion. They thrive without crutches or artificial stimulation. This day’s native goes beyond living in the moment; she glimpses eternity within it. There is no rush today. We don’t wish to sidestep any feeling being evoked; even melancholy is sweet now as it accesses even deeper emotions that can be excavated most readily this date. Those born today are dark and wintry nights. They may be foreboding but inspire a need for warmth and joviality, for close companionship, cheer, upliftment and illumination. On this day, we take a page from its natives’ book, and build a fire in which we, virtually, through visualization, ritually burn all vestiges of a past in so-called ruin that no longer serve, but rather bind, us. As the third and final earth sign, Capricorn represents Mother Nature in her crone (from Rhea Cronus) or dying aspect. The Capricorn motto, “I use” is best applied, here, to what we characterize as dead wood in our experience, which may be used to fuel the fire of our being in which we are purified—our trials and tribulations forge us into more whole and perfect stuff. In this fire we burn our own defects, the only real impediments to our happiness, and thus become a burning beacon to attract future hopes and wishes. This is an ongoing process reignited on this day which reminds us: We have both all the time in the world and not a moment to lose. Today provides us desired pause to process all that has led us to this point on our journey around the cosmic wheel, so that each of us may go forth as our more essential Self, carrying no excess but for increased light and wisdom.

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

Monday felt a little rough, but again this year’s New England weather has been diabolical. This was a good meeting day otherwise. We let the conversation emerge pretty seamlessly and found ourselves alighting on the consutancy and foreign book deals—we’ve been approached (we’re always approached) by some people to partner a bit and so it sent us in the direction of exploring notions about exotic markets and how to best remerchandize that which we’ve already written. There might be some fun entrepreneurial notions up some sleeves on this score.

And with the consultancy too: We’ve started going back through the annals of all the clients we’ve seen to date—thousands and thousands—reacquainting ourselves to their stars and stories. The process feels like touching fabric. It’s as if revisiting the clients one by one is continuing to energize a connection if not with each individual then with the consultancy as a collective. We have been so fortunate and we fascinate to work with such incredible people.

We also went over the finishing touches of our gorgeous new business plan for our design enterprise. The plan itself looks like a work of art, honestly; I can hardly believe it. It becomes more and more real everyday; and I have to say that I need some place to put my aesthetic feeling and power. With such a platform, one can throw onto it; but it also draws one out, asking one to give to it. I know I want things to be really quite tiny. It might be good to check out some Providence graduations; spending money in such a way, now, is a very good idea as we are putting into research. So much good design coming out of Providence, actually. And only three hours from New York City. Oh, dear. I don’t want to live in Providence please don’t make me. I feel that investment in this area, from outside sources, is personal, that it is an investment in me. And that is something for which I truly long and by which I would do so very right. I want to let myself be invested in. In this case I want things to be as personal as possible.

And straightaway, this weekend, I must get onto the yearlies (books of weekly horoscopes per sign). I think they are a lovely idea and the perfect platform for approaching a cool stationers. Stationers are the thing. I think, too, if you can replicate old world sorts of things like having a writing tablet and sending hand written notes. I’ve been struggling a bit with the whole notion of handmade and electronic. I’m over this electronic world; in fact I think we are going to see a giant backlash.

Fiesta forever is indeed much better than Siesta forever. Then again?

We walked down the rue Commerce in the 15e a couple of times back while in Paris. It was rather depressing that road. And our previous positioning, which we found again, this last trip, in the 17e, was even worse. However it was very close that section of the arrondissement as it nears Batignolles that was so fancy. But I dare say, still, creepy somehow. We passed a Scientology center this last trip even. It makes me wonder if we didn’t shoot high enough even then. I think we are naturally demure when it comes to giving ourselves material things in life. It seems almost embarrassing. I actually wouldn’t want to have so much money as some of my friends have—and I mean that most sincerely. I just want to have a rich bohemian life. In Howards End vernacular I’m a Schlegel not a Wilcox by any stretch. I’ve been a Bast and I don’t want to go back there.

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.

Il Faut Un Titre

Scorpio 9° (October 31)

Watching a cooking show set in San Sebastian. Today will be the final day of summer enjoyment, in effect. Evenings sitting outside may arise should we hit another spate of Indian summer, but for the most part, with the full Moon today on All Hallow’s Eve, and the turning back of the clocks, and two months of increasing darkness, we will make a necessarily fitting psychological shift. It all feels quite right now. I keep tweaking the letter to farmer fuckhead. I am feeling more not less confident about it. Looking forward to my daily Bikram practice restart on Tuesday. I think it will be the most therapeutic thing I can do for myself, mid mornings. And on days we have clients I simply don’t do it. The next two months should prove to be very powerful indeed, then after a few days break, only, the following two brings me to having something drafted at the end of February, which will be a great milestone. And then we get to May, which is all tweaking and would thus allow for some afternoon house hunting here and/or there. That is a worthwhile way to spend the long winter. I will deposit four months into farmer fuckhead account in December, which will bring us to May, at which point we will drop another four in, which brings us through September if we include the original last-month. At that point we will ask for a reckoning for the electricity and so forth, and I will have made my move with the injury situation. 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1071-1075. 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 last day of March 2018 and the last Blue Moon until 2020; and Easter tomorrow, quite a confluence, the Moon also opposing Mercury all T-squared by Mars and Saturn in Capricorn. Mars is exalted, and Saturn dignified, in the sign. So there is much amplification in the way of power. I think this weekend is posing a challenge: To get to know our real selves a little better and to trust our own sovereignty in situations. There is no reason to go far afield knowing it takes so long to come back. It is on that score I say to you: Know Thyself today.

This sort of speak, I feel, comes under the “weather within” idea I want to work on with S. in our weekly social media offerings. Something short and sweet and astrological—an interstitial—which we might nonetheless have a little comic fun with. Cosmic Comics® Productions. I would like to make a tiny LLC off the biz with that moniker. I think that might be wise. We talked a while back about being content creators, double entendre intended for sure. Contentment creators. That’s another way of putting it. Getting a number of memos out into the either. The montage portion of the programming. What is the film that makes fun with the montage section? Is it Team America? Something like that. God that was a great piece of funny, funny work. I love those guys. Thinking back to the turn of the millennium, just some eighteen years ago, I feel I’m living in a very changed world.

I spoke about The Weather Within (brought to you by As Above So Below, you’re cure for metaphysical irregularity). It can be fun and funny and require us to be up and at ’em; as we say. I must also check in with the Boston Globe and make sure they have all they need to run a piece this way. I will also put sponsor letters into emails this week and link to the press item as well. I need to go through the weekly minutes tomorrow morning in time for Monday meeting. And I will break down the dealio on social media plan. It’s all part of the program of underachieving borderin on laziness. I know that this is the way to approach the year ahead.

I was thinking about certain times I’ve been with people and how I’ve behaved. For instance, at our dearest friends I might show up for some two week period and I might have been smoking, which I would do, no apologies, outside never thinking a thing about it. Or I might have had a boatload of wine at dinner and send everyone off to bed only to then tidy and “finish drinking” making everything camera ready. I would never do these sorts of things now—if I did I would have to commit myself. And yet my attitude doesn’t get any better as I age, though my behavior might. Still I sense evolution.

Next year, we will be in Europe and UK often. We must base the consultancy in Paris; it is actually the most practical thing to do. So many of our clients are in Europe or Asia and since we see folks mainly by Skype in any case, and so many in-person yearly clients work in fashion and design, they can see us there. Also, most friends how are at the grandparent age—that happened quickly—and I’m ready to be a god/grand/parent for sure.

Monday must also be about settling accounts—we have a number of people and causes to give to in our tithing spirit. I mentioned tithing last week in terms of this young fellow whom I found needs our help. That’s part of the reckoning. Post the Libra Full Moon, I’m feeling pretty balanced overall. And having physically cleaned and organized my offices, je suis tres content.

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Easter Sunday. And it was not a good night. I barely slept as is the typical case when alone. But when I first woke up in the middle of the night I had a glob of yuckos that I coughed up from my chest and discharged, flushed. Seriously, given that entrance into awakedness I assumed I had a really bad cold. My sinuses hurt anyway, but they basically always do; and I felt generally lousy, so I naturally assumed I was coming down with something. And most of the morning was spent in the head that I’m sick. And yet slowly as the day unfolded, I began to feel fine. Like all of it was allergies or something.

It is also April 1. Now, I had a friend with whom I shared April 1 fun. He lost his way and now we are no longer friends. But today is our sort of shared holiday, as it was for years, and I’m a bit wistful not for that relationship, per se, but for a close bond with another guy on whom I can play practical jokes and have a fairly unconditional bond. It seems that male friendships lose their emotionality over time and they wholesale dissolve on the main. I used to have so many close male best friends. At least a dozen. I miss that. Mostly Virgos, but that’s another story.People forget that, when you don’t procreate, that you’re not occupied as most are by family life. And they assume you are equally predisposed…indisposed…disposed? Anyway, when left alone, even for short periods, I feel that particular dearth.

All told I’ve gone a bit fetal today I suppose.

Krt who owned the Bell Caffe where I worked in the early nineties—today is his birthday. I love/d Krt….Funny I just came back to write this after several hours and I had a nice tete-a-tete with Krt. I’m sorry I’m not using accents properly, someone can edit me. I had left him a birthday message and he wrote me immediately. We will catch up when next I’m in London. I’m just realizing, given the earlier bit of this post, that maybe I got a reminder from the universe

I watched All The President’s Men last night and it’s fine. It ends weirdly.

Now everyone knows that I have an erotic attachment to Luke and Leia from Star Wars, thus Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, both Libras; and maybe you also know that we assign these characters as archetypes of the sign of Libra—they would be assigned regardless of the fact that Libra actors portrayed them; but typecasting by sign being what it is this comes as no suprise to we in the biz—which means just the two of us as our biz is something unique to us. I have a current allergy to parenthesis.

Mark Hamill seems troubled to me in a way that I take as a cautionary tale. I think he struggles with some kind of substance abuse, most likely alcohol addiction. I don’t know this to be true but: He looks and acts the way I imagine I would if I were to myself slip into some kind of downward alcoholic spiral. And to think about what he looked like younger; we’ve all changed I realize, but he was a slip of a pretty Apollonian boy; and now he’s bordering on playing Steve Bannon’s stunt double. I don’t mean to be glib or point fingers; I feel for him; but: Empathy is always at least half self-preservational. You may quote (and credit) me on that one.

I don’t know how good I friend I really am; and where I am lacking in that department I would attribute to the fact that I am not the best friend I could be to myself. The irony of the Libra man, associated with the seventh house of relationships, is that he will not have a very good one with himself. He is other-orientated, especially in one-on-one relationships, a series of which make up the Libran friendship landscape—he is not a group person. He will give the larger-half portion of everything to his mate, in both senses of that word, but will ignore himself, which means he has less of himself to ultimately share.

I see Mark Hamill on a talk show, say with Ellen. And I can tell he’s drunk or something. I call also feel his pain in trying to appear normal—I know first hand that can be work. When in the past I was consciously drinking too much or too early, I wouldn’t ever admit it. Now I would. But that’s because the light got in to all the broken places. It’s Leonard Cohen who said that’s where the light gets in—he’s a Virgo, and Virgo is all about the break, the crack, followed by that light of Libra. There’s also a fine Roches song called Broken Places.

I believe I shall stop here.

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o you’re like why is this post Aries 13° but the Sabian Symbol you attach at the end of th post is Aries 14°. Well that’s because my post is about the day as it unfolds from the degree point (here 13°) but that same time frame encompasses the 14° Sabian Symbol, as the degree point signals the completion of that symbol. I hope that made sense to you.

I didn’t forget to watch Jesus Christ Superstar live. I just didn’t want to. And anyway, too many commercials, as Stella would say. I’m sure I can see it On Demand; though I doubt I’ll be able to fast forward through the commercials, so I’ll probably never see it. Awoke at 5:30 and I knew immediately what kind of day it would be—and that I was mind-melding with Stella who also woke pre-dawn to drive back to the Cape. We would have our own Easter—I made pea soup with mint, roasted chicken with new potatoes in the drippings and ginger carrots. And, in a passive embracing of innocence, we watched the original Paddington and it was adorable, followed by stand-up acts on NetFlix. All in all we will file this under a mental-health day. And physical health too as, I’ve been feeling old “conditions” more accutely.

Even my closest friends don’t realize that I “suffer” day in and day out with a nagging physical problem. I put that word in quotation marks because, dealing it with so many decades now, it’s just part of my nature. My own private Chiron, you might say. I don’t want to get too into it but I’m going to say the first leg of the larger problem started in like 1990 I believe. I was at a friend’s place in Brooklyn just hanging out and jamming and I felt this kind of pop in/on the left side of my jaw, ear, throat, face, neck, mouth, tongue, sinus, windpipe, palate, eustacian tube, head, brain. To this day I don’t know where the “things” is located; but it has never been the same; and when i say that I mean that henceforth there has been a block or misalignment. I could go on on this subject and create an entire new blog based just on it.

Instead, I’ll just say that I have been constantly, both mentally and physically, negotiating this thing that happened; and I’ll say that it forced a certain ongoing meditation in me, if not an incessant prayer, which I believe helped “grow” my psychic sense(s) over the years. I remember soon after the incident…oh wait, I have to say first, that I told my mother about it—anything metaphyscial that I might encounter in life was best and easily shared with her because she always got it, nodding, eyes closed, telepathically saying I know, I got it, I understand, been there. This time he reaction was that much more glib. Oh, you popped a gland. I never thought to ask if this was a thing. Actually I just realized I never Googled it. (time lapse) Oh my god don’t Google that, what you get is people, vets, popping their dogs anal glands. Nothing on the subject as what my mother dismissed as a popped gland. Did she make that up?

Anyway, this ongoing nearly thirty-year-old affliction is my little cross to bear. And as I said: I believe helped “grow” my psychic sense(s). I remember soon after the incident I would go into a sort of shavasana, first, trying to “find” the place inside that was afflicted or damaged; and I would imagine this etherically thin golden thread “sewing” up the damages, like I was giving myself psychic stitches. As I did this, breathing deeply, the affliction would move or, rather, I would get a sense that it wasn’t any one place, per se, but along some kind of real pathway, nerve, lymph or circulatory, and/or along some invisible meridian. Anyway, the practice of this sort of meditation, which began pointedly, in time, just took over and became a part of my consciousness, whereby I am forever creatively visualizing the relief of this injury or blockage. I think it is part of my being now. I favor it doing exercise, careful to protect whatever it is. I fall asleep on some theme of this mediation. I never need to count sheep.

When I was young I had a Teddy that played Brahms. That was very relaxing. This two score and eight year mediation since affliction became my adult bedtime go to. If you look close me in my waking hours you might notice sudden movement or intakes of breath through my nose all designed to clear said block. I don’t do these things consciously, now, on the main.

I just realized that I forgot what we watched before Paddington and stand-up comedy: Rosemary’s Baby. How’s that for an Easter movie? I might make an argument for it year on year. So what do you do on Easter? Oh we have a tradition of watching Rosemary’s Baby. Happy Easter. Anyway, as happens with these mental health days, in so many ways designed to crank up the old synchronic machinery, many of the themes in Rosemary’s Baby were repeated in the other innocent entertainments we watched afterward. Hail Adrian. The film itself is shot through with so many inexplicable, coded, mystical things I find. Roman Castevet is the name of the main warlock (though Maurice Evans is in it as his would be foil—Evans being most famous for portraying the warlock father of Samanta on “Bewitched” at the time. Roman Polanski and John Cassavetes direct and star. But Roman Castevet is an anagram for Steven Marcato. The film was released in June of 1968 and in August of 1969 Sharon Tate was murdered in the most diabolical manner. John Lennon of course was shot outside the Dakota, which in the film was called the Bramford, which Evans says was the site of witches, cannibalism and murder in the early days of the century.

I might admit I believe that the film “unlocked” something; and I think the author, Ira Levin must have, on some level, tapped into Aleister Crowley’s story in the writing of that book. He actually is on the record as saying that the wave that he started with this book and then the film, which were followed by a slew of literature in the genre, most notably the novels of Stephen King, and films like The Exorcist and The Omen, created such a sense of Satan in the world that it likely fueled the Christian fundemental movement, by relief.

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We all have sadness and have experiened lost, but some people are better at grieving than others. I am not one of those people. Dating back, I always felt kind of ripped away. We moved to the suburbs from Jersey City in 1972; and then I was happy to ripped away. Though we weren’t your typical suburban family, I assimilated best of all—my father and sibling had the hardest time—my mother, the Pisces, dissolving in anywhere. But we were ripped away each summer to the Jersey Shore. I didn’t complain about this, but having summer friends and year-round friends made it difficult to bond really full with people and get any sort of consistency or momentum going. And as I was graduating high school my parents sold the house in Wyckoff, so I never returned there during college (except for once, in the first weeks of school, when I and a band of friends from B.U. stayed there and went to see Simon & Garfunkel in Central Park, on a whim, driving overnight and landing, near Wyckoff’s border, where the car literally broke—it’s frame cracked—anyway that’s a story in itself.

Instead I returned “home” to our summer house which was now our year-round house, trying to keep Wyckoff friendships alive but to no real avail. So I committed to a social life I could come home to on the Jersey Shore. I worked at the Parker House in Sea Girt and tried to cobble together a cool social circle. It worked but briefly; and not too many years later that house was pulled out from under me. And I suppose I repeated this trauma in my adulthood, moving from places I loved just like I gave away designer furniture I loved—George Nelson and Eames and other great pieces at least to great charities like Housing Works.

But I think I’m ready for a new era of ownership and stability as I get to this juncture in life. By the same token I could run away and join the circus (which is code for move to Los Angeles to become a character actor). The thing is, curse of the Libra, I am always intrigued by new possibilities and am never so sure as others seem to be about places of habitation and career directions. I can do what I do from anywhere, pretty much; which is a wonderful thing. And the word retire was never in my vocabulary, even dating back to when I was younger: I always knew I’d do something for a living that allowed me ultimate decision power. Ironic isn’t it that someone with difficultly making decisions has at least decided that he wouldn’t outsource decision making power. Maybe it’s enough to embrace this power, and forget about how I wield it. I wield it. That might be more than enough.

The moon transits Jupiter in Scorpio today so emotions can be intense for sure; but as they trine Neptune in Pisces the intensity should be allowed to dissipate just as readily. Today is a pivot, this much I feel. And though there is a ton on my plate I must flow with all of it. Producing a show this week at the Americn Repertory in Cambridge, continuing to write new introductions for next year’s Haute Astrology books, sign-off on a final draft of a business plan (and get my brain around what comes next on that score); I do need to start work on the new books themselves; I must finishing casting next year’s series ad A.R.T. and also this year’s Afterglow, not to mention beginning the outreach to fund it. There is more; but these are the major balls in the air.

The other elephant in the room is, well me. I was going to write the diet I must now began in increasing earnest and intensity, but I could resist. It’s spring and i need to drop at least ten lbs., which, to be honest, I end up doing pretty much anyway starting this time or year through summer, even without trying. My reasons for a little crash aspect in the diet is strictly practical and also financial. I need to fit comfortably into clothes I already own for upcoming events this month and next in NYC. And so I’ll be frontloading diet and exercise above all other things these next few weeks, and then just let it become part of the new order. I have been making my very spicy drinks and broths and getting early to bed and early to rise plus not drinking any wine at all. I know longer plan these sorts of clear-outs really. As I say, they are an annual unspoken event of sorts.

Lunch today will be a glorious leftover black bean soup. When you wake up at 5:30 as we do, you tend to be ravenous by 11:30. Then again I always ate lunch early. I remember back in the day, specifically, when I worked for the Book-of-the-Month Club in the early 1990s, I would hop the number two train from, practically, underneath my building on 12th Street and zip up to 50th Street to the Time Life Building, in under ten minutes. If I packed a lunch I would inevitably eat it at my desk by 10:30 or 11AM and have to go out and get a second one around 1 or 2 PM. I know that they referred to this in The Lord of the Rings but I thought it was something made up by Tolkien.

Does it ever freak you out that you will die without reading all the books you want to? Now these are the thoughts that could keep my up at night. Ha. Who am I kidding? Nothing keeps me up at night.

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I feel blatantly negative and unhappy and angry and upset and I want to be able vent the fuck out today. I am sick to death of just about everything and nothing is going to change that right now. Every gods damned thing I say or do seems to result in boring, bad nothingness. This is the way I feel. I wish everyone would just fuck the fuck off. The world is just filled with liars and users and assholes. That’s a fact. On this day I want to empty my bank account fill a bag and just fucking move to the desert, which, by the way, is becoming unaffordable. I just don’t feel I can live in this sick-o-phantic world anymore. cue Google search Quebec. I don’t know where I have to go, or what I have to do, to find kind people who aren’t fucking hypocrites and to experience some kind of genuine, well, experience, I truly do not. This world is one big diseased narcissistic ball of fuck hurtling through the space; and I really don’t see any healing in sight. And I don’t know why I bother trying to make any bit of it any better for anybody. It (largely) goes unappreciated.

I feel maybe I have it wrong. That if you can’t beat ’em join ’em is the only way to navigate this world. Nobody espouses true kindness, compassion or humanity. Nobody. Everybody is out for their own gain, plain and simple. And those of us who aren’t are just fucking patsys. Remember this is just the way I feel today. I’m hoping that indulging it might get me to the other side. There has always been a battle between good and evil raging out there and in here. But now I think the playing field has become terribly uneven. Greed has never ceased to be the problem, it only gets worser and worser. Our parents’ generation was a blip, and anomaly; and we are seeing the result of that, particularly as Americans where we are not only not given health care and education by rights, but they purposefully don’t want people healthy or educated because then they won’t vote for disgusting monsters like the melting circus peanut.

And honestly I feel like a waste of space myself, which is probably where all this is coming from. It seems I can’t do enough to fight the good fight—that which is raging inside me. So many of us in the country are so busy trying to survive, and help on the small levels that we can, that we have so little steam to take it to the streets where it belongs. It seems futile, resistance, it truly does. Why can’t the people we put into power be championing the bigger issues and causes. They will have privatized everything by the time I finish this post. Speaking of posts—the post office will be next. I don’t know where to go to finish out this life in happiness. Again this is me just talking today.

Pence tie-breaking against Planned Parenthood is sort of the last straw, and what broke the camel’s back on what was already a fairly lousy morning. I felt fine. But the world got up on the wrong side of the Sun. This might be working. I may coming out of it as I express what needs expressing. Still I’ve more to spew. So: Keep moving around your objets d’art/Photographing skinny young boys/Millions selling the Emp’s New Clothes/Hose down your vintage Pontiac/Keep vigil over the fridge/Find what you need in aisle five/Don’t forget your pills.

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.

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