Month: December 2020 (page 1 of 3)

Wonderful Life

Capricorn 9° (December 30)

Even though it’s just two days ago I’m supposed to remember what happened on this day and I don’t. Not because I’m some kind of drug addict or anything just because the times are so strange and so filled with same same meanness on one side and on the other with this constant barrage of monkey wrenches and fires to be put out . So I’m doing a bit of catching up here and I am working a numbers game when it comes to words even in the writing of the book draft. It’s the ******** up at all. The writing the linear thing forward that’s supposed to be new and different and the opening up the space and time for droplets of guidance and synchronicity too not only sweetened the pot but be the mainstay of actually what this text will ultimately become. I’m not sure I could have typed that sentence better than speaking it so for the first time I’m maybe understanding that if I’m in the right frame of mind this dictation jazz will be exactly what I need. Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve i’m going check the menu and see what we ate … we ate salmon … apparently which is A mainstay of my diet that was a joke we had salmon way too much. The point is is that bland menu discovery gives me nothing to go on in terms of what actually happened on that particular day so I’m going to assume that I organized I cooked I bathed I try to write. All those things would have happened. I think we also maybe did we go to the shops I think we did this is terribly boring doesn’t matter there’s plenty below to entertain you. 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1366-1370. 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.

Strange that Taurus is the premier feminine sign but it’s symbol is the masculine Bull; after much consideration of that cunundrum it occured to us that Taurus’ symbol itself might be purposefuly ironic and speak to the subjectivity, the power of passivity, of this sign: The Bull symbolically represents that which the sign of Taurus seeks to attract not its own character at all. The Bull fertilizes (the feminine), in more ways than one; in the garden analogy. Also, the upshot of the Io myth, which ends with her being chased by a stinging gladfly across the Bosphoros straights—the “cow ford”—whereupon she emerged from heifer form, appearing, now, a goddess queen, herself, , (Isis), on par with Hera/Juno is, the upshot is, the upshot is: the myth of  Europa, the response in the call and response of Io and her descendent (by Zeus), Europa, who now travels back across the Bosphoros on the back of Zeus, her lover in most beautiful Bull form, transfiguring the narrative, Zeus, yoked in floral garlands, taking the burden of bovine form, once Io’s shame,transmuting it into Europa’s honor.

Remember we said Taurus rules the senses and appetites, thus, we might say, all of the earthly pleasures, which Taurus people may indulge, but more to the point: Taurus plays on the senses and appetites of others, that oomphy Venus energy, seeking union, weilding its power of attraction, Taurus people being most pleasing. They offer endless delight, exhibiting myriad talents in infinite milieus, eyes an ears attuned to audience reaction, making endless corrections to their work, art or enterprise to achieve their one goal: to appeal. Just as we move from the first sign of Aries to the second of Taurus, we swing from the Aries from Ram, the shepherd on the hill in the Christmas story to the nativity scene, the stable, the manger, or cow trough, being the center seat of the adoration scene, from the french, manger, to eat. We could just gobble him up, and we will later. Taurus energy not only seeks favor, to be prized and cherished, you might say it also wants to be consumed, possessed. Feminine Taurus  stands counter to masculine Aries which seeks to conquer and perhaps consume in the process, though it isn’t the usual goal.

One of the things to admire most about a Taurean is their ability to hang a high price tag on themselves. They will do the work, cultivating themselves and their talents like a master gardner, playing nice, being pleasing, if not somewhat fauning and sycophantic which is always an inside-out expression of certain narcissism. The mirror is a recurring theme in the art, music, film and literature of Taurus creatives, and the natives tend to be very exacting in their appearance, cultivating a strong look that communicates not only their sensibilties but their intentions. They are, on this score, in a word, deliberate. This, along with practical and methodical and determined and focused are Taurus watchwords, being as myopic as real bulls are, metahporically speaking, of distractions or detractors, and also of their own artistic delusions.


I am noticing a shift on my behavior toward a hyperfunctionality that I find somewhat disturbing. I wrote this sentence a couple of days ago and I almost feel completely opposite now.The point is that I am a creature, as we all are, of highs and lows; and there comes a time when one really has to come to terms with Mr. Inbetween. I’ve never liked him but I’m thinking now that he might be the perfect entity to befriend at this juncture. Something about being alone on the weekend kind of shocked me into a certain realization of myself: I am the prime cause of any unhappiness I suffer. Not to say that people haven’t done me wrong because they have, but the truth is I am really ready to let go of all that now in a way I haven’t before. I must take responsibility for befriending people whom, upon meeting them, the word run was flashing across the screen of my mind. But I’ve been a glutton all my life for stones from which I can’t get blood because that was the relationship dynamic I had growing up in my household. But I’m now in my advancing years and I can’t afford this anymore. I have learned over the last five years especially how to be alone; and that has been helpful but not the entirety of the equation necessary now to lead a good life. I will admit that I am not at my best upon writing this but the happy paradox of that is what feels like a new unyielding desire to be the best I can be. This shall require baby steps because as good as I can be to myself, I too have mimicked the behavior of others in my early life and have undervalued myself in a way that is no longer tenable.

I was writing some thoughts on the signs’ “experience” these last few days but I need to take a bit of a break from that because the whole point of it was to killt two birds with the same stone: to make some new ideological inroads about the signs while remaining true to this daily Blague with information you might want to read. As if I have readers. Although I realize I might be surprised. And anyway that is all about to change because I will be changing it. There is so much bubbling beneath the surface right now and I feel as if my only job is to let it and participate in that bubbling. I don’t want to overachieve in the least right now; and I’m not going to push anybody to move the needle either, despite there being so, so many needles right now. I’ve learned my lesson about rushing other people; it only ever backfires. I will wait until next week to start putting feelers out on that score. I am determined to prove to myself that I can hit my marks; but I am not going to work myself into exhaustion ever again. And I need to devote myself to the well-being of others too. That is the best part of doing client work. I can make myself completely available to other people’s happiness and fulfillment. It makes a huge difference in ones life to be fortunate enough to do that; I think I/we would do it even if it weren’t an aspect of our livelihood. In fact I know I would. It’s just how I’m built; and honestly, it is the role I played with my parents—mediator—in our earliest life together. I was psychologist to them before I was five years old, sitting them down on either side of me on our tiny sofa in our Jersey City apartment, urging them to find middle ground. This must have seemed so odd to them, now that I think about it. But when I think of myself, I almost remember feeling shocked at the time by having the wherewithall, as if I were an old soul of sorts, although I never considered myself a very, very old one.

I have gone through so many phases in my spiritual development, and I’ve entertained some pretty kooky belief systems along my path. I think I always vacilated between a certain sexual abandon and a need to find some semblance of god, in turns, during my teens and early twenties. There is nothing wrong with sowing wild oats but I seem to have been doing it in these two directions, getting as many spiritual ya yas out as I did lusty ones. Now I think it may have been the same energy flowing in not necessarily opposite but often parallel directions. I wanted some sense of the transcendent and also of comfortable oblivion and they both promised some taste I guess. Now of course I’ve spent a lifetime opening cosmic, spiritual channels. I didn’t know then, for instance, that I could be as psychic as I have exhibited over the years. Although, of late, I feel a bit dulled in regard to that faculty. But, like with the whole ball of wax I’m attempting to tackle here, I know the best course of action for better tapping into it. It’s about being clear (not to be confused with going clear). It’s about lifestyle, too, and making more rooms for passions of the more quotidien variety. This I can do.


I am hardpressed to write today, mainly because I have so many chores on my plate that includes some food prep, house cleaning and dump running. When one does everything for themselves, as we do when we are not living in cities, one must dedicate certain days to all the d.i.y. that comes with it. Don’t get the wrong idea: I actually love doing myself much of what is necessary to lead a functional domestic existence. I’m basically an old-fashioned whistle-while-you-work kind of character who is eternally grateful that he has never had to punch a clock in his adult life but has managed to live off his wits—I have also not had to make the kinds of compromises I’ve seen others make in order to have a surplus of riches which strikes me as more of a stress for these so-called fortunate friends who have in this way or that sold their souls to large enterprises from whom they (whether they let themselves believe it or not) take money laundered money, which has become the most prolific variety in recent decades. The Russians are coming? No they are already here (in our Western world) and have been for decades. I’ve felt this for years living in New York city in the 1990s and early aughts…or is it oughts?…oh well it doesn’t matter. You’re not even reading this. And that’s fine.

I really would rather lead a modest existence, financially, so long as it afforded me increased freedom and the ability to express my creativity. The well of creativity, though, is not fathomless and it needs refilling; and in order to do that one has to back off and get plenty of what is good for a person—rest, water, exercise being the simple chief things among them. I’m definitely in an existential mode. I won’t say crisis because, honestly, I feel more emotionally and mentally stable than probably ever in my life, a result of understanding how much strain I have been under in my doing all I can to fight my way out of the hole that was the end of the Bush era. As cliché as it might sound, I feel we were on the front lines of that economic downswing only because so much of our existence was based on freelance writing at that time—we weren’t focused as we are now on the consultancy which is far more rewarding a career direction in the end. I love working directly with people; and the publishing world, in the end, was almost the worst of all the industries I’ve worked in, including media and fashion and that is saying something in itself. Anway I’d like to get back into talking about these “sign experiences” I started and to see where that might take me.

Taurus people might be prone to overindulge their own appetites, at least that is the dime-story converntional wisdom on the subject. Moreso, they create hunger in others for themselves. This happens in positive ways, making people hanker for their skills and talents, but also finding ways to addict others to them. That didn’t make much sense but I think I am driving at something here. Taurus people collect other people, and they will prize certain and target others. Oh wow I really ran out of steam on that one. I will have to revisit this idea for sure as it needs fleshing out. Let’s move onto the Gemini experience…Ah! wait I have another Taurus thought:

The thing about fixed signs is they are not the originators, typically, of ideas, waves or movements in their creative work that are the cardinal signs that precede them. Cardinal signs struggle with follow through and sustenance, a Taurus word if we ever heard one. All fixed signs drill down and are all kinds of things that one might associate with being fixed. In Taurus’ case we say the sign energy can be stubborn, obstinate, determined and deliverate, grounded, etc, terms that one might apply to the Bull itself.  Taurus people don’t like complication, they naturally keep things simple, which manifests, most poignantly, in their going long and deep into specific interests, instead of being renaissance wo/men in any sense of the word. The are niche dwellers, narrowling focused, leaving no stones unturned in the cultivation of their uniquely pinpointed talents/skills with which they continually wish to flourish (flower!).


I’ve decided that I miss glamour, or rather my life is missing it; no I think I meant the first thing I said more than the second. I think that’s one of the beauties of our taking this new direction—I do see that as much as we give to it, it will give to us, which is right. Part of my glamour aesthetic might be described as downtown east village, but really that is just part of the equation because I have always been less down and dirty than the glamazons who emerged from the club and drag worlds. I have never had that sort of drama or severity in me to bust out. I never stuck with any one thing, being the Libra that I am.

Anyway I’m going to really forge ahead again on writing these new thoughts on the signs experiences today which are part and parcel of my planning the next series of books. Let’s now move onto the Gemini experience:

The twelve signs of the Zodiac are unique combinations of the four elements (fire, earth, air, water) and the qualities (cardinal, fixed, mutable) respectively. As the third sign, Gemini is thus themutable-air sign. Now if we think about what all that implies, air signs being the domain of the mind and social experience, we might say mutable-air translates to thought itself, a swirl of information, what is in the air or ether and consciousness itself. Gemini people are abuzz. The sign’s planetary ruler Mercury, named for the heady, mercurial, eternally youthful god of communication, orbits, like a moth to a flame, closest to the sign. The planet symbol, with its antennae’d circle “head” on a crossed staff, depicts the winged-capped god himself, but also birds and bees and all kinds of angels and insects and the beguiling fairies. The horned Puck is Oberon’s messenger as Mercury is Zeus.

Quicksilver Mercury speaks to our speed of thought. Gemini’s sign motto is I Think. Mercury (again that small orbit) is all about immediacy, not only in time but also in space. Mercury and Puck can be here or there in an instant. Mercury is the Psychopomp, the only entity who can travel from heaven (Olympus) to hell (the Hades realm) and back again, as the “conductor of souls,” the dual god of the crossroads, coming and going, and the characters one finds there—merchants and theives, magicians, dealers, barkers, buskers, and every assortment of savvy streetwise folk, a way, if only metaphorically speaking, to describe the fast-talking, clever Gemini people, the Zodiac’s true operators. Mercury’s female counterpart is the likewise winged Eris, goddess of discord, whose main myth bring’s us to the Gemini characters of Castor and Pollux, the mortal and divine Twins (Quadruplets, really) of the sign.

Eris was the only goddess not invited to this one glam party on Olympus. She got even by causing a war which began with chucking in an apple on which she scribbled “for the fairest among you”—Hera , Athena and Aphrodite naturally thought it was for them. Jump-cut to the Judgment of Paris (prince of Troy) who over Hera (who offered power) and Athena (wisdom) as bribes for choosing them, he picked Aphrodite who offered him the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, also, along with her sister, Clytemnestra, were the other two quadruplets to the Gemini Twins. Helen was married, Paris abducted her, and the rest is tragedy. Mercury and Eris are master manipulators; their Disney counterparts being Peter Pan and Tinker Bell, amont the modern archetypes of the Gemini people.

But let’s back up. The duality that is expressed by Castor and Pollux is that of mortality and divinity, or immortality. In the bible myth, one is expelled from the garden (the fixed-earth Taurus) by biting into yet another apple which results, in what? Concsiousness! Which is characterized as duality and knowledge of opposities, good and evil and mortality and immortality. In fact, being booted from the garden, one is no longer granted everlasting life, let alone youth.


Finally made contact today with Pete Nelson the tree house designer whom I went to middle and part of high school with before he set off to Deerfield, I think, in his sophomore year. My friend Barbara Bestor put something on Facebook looking for a tree house designer and Pete has become pretty famous. Anyway, I don’t think he quite places me but we had a nice chat for sure. Brought back some old memories and some pangs too in the process. I will attribute an exacerbation of that fact to my not being very social, if anything I’ve been rather anti- these past couple of years. My life, you see, is peopled with clients, a few family, the artists I impressario, the venues, the sponsors I hound, and the general populations of New York, Boston and Provincetown with whom I come in contact. I have an Aquarian Moon; and though I have been loath to admit it, I do prefer the comfort of aquaintances (does it share an etymology with the sign name?) if not outright strangers. By the same token, ironically, I am oversensitve when snubbed by people I tend to keep at arm’s length anyway. Oh well, that’s me I suppose. I have shared the most intense if not intimate conversations with people I’ve only limitedly interacted.

I’ve never been in therapy which might surprise people for two reasons—one, because I might seem so sane to people; and second, because I might seem to be completely nuts. I can assure you it is neither. I think I just understood the term saudadefor the first time, because I do long for that which I have never experienced. It comes in waves and glimpses. I long to live like F. Scott Fitzgerald; I long to live in some small Italian coastal village; I long for to live in an open-plan dark wood mid-century home on Iceland only ever listening to atonal music. Those aren’t what I long for but vague representations of it, emo-conceptual post-it notes slapped on a deeper feeling I can’t quite ever fathom. Meanwhile the simplest things can feel like molehillish mountains. I know that if I just did what was most humpish, most choreish, most likely to speed my schedule along—so I didn’t have to constantly cross out entries and re-write them on later days in my planner—the very first thing in the morning, than I might lead a more stress free day. It’s good to even try and trick yourself (like writing this Blague a day ahead so that if I slightly slip behind I don’t really), keeping momentum in bite-sized chunks, life might feel more flow. Or as I directed a client this past year: flow with the go. I don’t think that last sentence was grammatically correct.

My procrastination is typically akin to chasing those waves and glimpses. It can send me down internet rabbit holes looking at Sardinian real estate or exploring the retail viability of frozen custard. I could be the frozen custard king of the cote d’azur…see now we are blending with my F. Scott fantasy. On the riviera in the early 1980s things still looked enough a way like the footage of To Catch a Thief.It was ghost-townish, remnants of a glamorus former hotel-restaurant world still functioning in a deliciously threadbare way. A surplus of space and anonymity along the sea. This is an experience for which I also long but it isn’t one I haven’t experienced. Right now I feel it is about pressing pause. And I do look forward to the process of mass elimination, starting with the most obvious and working our way to the most potentially heartwrenching, in the process, getting our collective life into a few dozen boxes. Anway I should get back to some diatribing about Gemini….I don’t know why it feels so hard to focus on some new musings on these signs but here goes:

Gemini personifies the duality of the human experience we all share. They vividly express various extremes, all of which come under the heading of that mortal/divine dichotomy. Gemini people seem to most easily occupy either end of the spectrum at once, like Mercury, god of the crossroads, the streets (gutter), who can nonetheless ascend to the stars. Those crossroads symbolize our thoughts, or more accurately our choices. And Gemini people can more easily hold two opposing thoughts at once. They can be the most failingly human (embodiment of the fall energy) and the most soaringly “divine” in the expression of their soul, whether exhibited through their intellect or talent, the latter always seemingly fueled by the former. And sometimes they seem to express such divine talent as seems to be too much for their body to bear. Especially the women of the sign who push themselves beyond their limits, again, that moth to a flame.

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.

Tumbling Dice

Capricorn 8° (December 29)

Dump run and then I need to write between five and ten pages. I also cleaned the house and made a few meals in advance. I am operating (once again) on no sleep but that’s okay. I feel alternately relaxed and grateful then pissed off and resentful. I managed to get some writing done which is encouraging. Had a nice long talk with Brian and interesting about lanesville. Some notes I wrote torris being lazy laziness is a pitfall something about not doing their homework not watching Jean Brodie they don’t really laugh they don’t want anyone taking focus something like that prepare for the don’t know what it says. Ares is about purpose tourists about performance not just being performative but really not pejorative that they show up and give a good performance of their good at the performance of things something along the lines of like you know an Olympic athlete might be great but then they choke when it’s time to perform whereas tourists is very good at that whole bit so that’s the notes from that I I’m coming across a lot of old material that I’m not using which is a shame because it’s really good so I have to factor that in moving forward so I don’t reinvent the wheel each time so that should be the last time that happens whenever I get down on paper today I’m moving on to the next time tomorrow and but first I’ll spend the morning kind of getting in touch with the format that is emerging to make this job easier to give myself prompts and try not to get behind on that score. 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1361-1365. 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.

One of the purposes, and the sometime practice of this Blague is to allow for certain stream of conscious. Last night I dreamt I passed by a famous colleague and he snubbed me. I feel that I myself am in a constitutional crisis. That that which metaphysically makes me up is being shaken to its foundation by the tsuami swirl of this current administration. It seems to me that we should be protesting daily, perhaps, in the evening and asking for a new charter—the Chartists were a theme of last night’s “Victoria” on Masterpiece. One point is: being snubbed as such comes as no surprise: One of my ongoing life lessons has been in rejection, a Libra experience for sure—the premier myth of Apollo, a main archetype of the sign, is that of his rejection by Daphne; likewise he is not the chosen inheritor-son of his supreme ruling father Zeus, hat is Dionysus, in effect, his own male-youth form whom he birthed from his fatherly thigh, the body part ruled by Sagittarius, ruled by planet Jupiter (Greek: Zeus). Ah how it all goes together and slides around. But that is part and parcel of what I am currently needing to express in my next messaging about publishing.

But back to this notion of being in a constitutional crisis, from crux, a word akin to crossroads. The duality of Gemini, ruled by planet Mercury, for the messenger god of the crossroads, is that of extremes, no sign best representing the notion of divinity on one hand and merest mortality on the other (Pollux and Castor) than Gemini. And people of the sign being the most vivid example of how these energies play out, personifications of this energy, Geminians portray the notion that people can reach soaring heights of divinity while falling the furthers into the depths of human desperation, whether in turns or at the same time, or both (the operative word of the sign of Gemini). We see in the biblical line that The Fall is characterized by duality as the manifestation of sudden consciousness provided by a bite of an apple—Gemini’s motto is I think. Gemini people personifiy the notion that we are all essentially dual, that we all in various ways continually at a crossroads if not in crisis, as said crossroads in a natural endowment of the human condition….and so forth. And so what comes after being at a crossroads, in crisis, but change, recovery. I never really made the precise link that the following sign of Cancer might simply be change but of course it is and synchronistically we assigned Cool Change to be our “Cancer song” in our recent musical show, written by a Moonchild but of course.

I’m perfectly content, today, to float around these ideas. Cancer is the sign of recovery, change, positive change. To change, to evolve, to move on dot org. Duh that the fourth house is that of the home you come from and the home you create, which we have already associated with passage, promise, deliverance, hope (which floats, Cancer being the premier Water sign)—and fresh water at that. The sign is Cardinal Water which is fresh, moving, life-giving waters whether it be rain (following the electric static of Gemini’s Mutable Air, leading to such a torrent), or the resulting rising and roaring rivers, springs and sources, the origin (home you come from) and where it goes, and what changes it makes along the way.

There is a archetypal, metaphsyical and, at the very least, a philosophical genius encoded into the Zodiac. It is the onion we ourselves continually peel, that which never ceases to reveal layers, revelations. There is some primordial logic to it that draws on, connects, and expresses our elaborate mythologies to which it is inextricably linked…it’s all that…



I spent the morning writing but what I ultimately intended to publish here got cut and pasted elsewhere because it bore what should be some secret publishing plans. Writing is a tortue there is no doubt about it and, if I’m going to do it on a grand scale again I will have to be compensated enough so that I can secure myself a semi-tropical place to hole up and write like the dickens; barring that, I’d need to be in an affordable city and/or paradigm where I wouldn’t have to make a meal or a bed unless I chose to do so. Writing requires a housekeeper who, at the very least, can do some grocery shopping and chop some vegetables. And now I must resist the urge to Google “houses for rent in Sardinia” or some such nonsense. But the fact is I must undertake the redirection (another Cancerian word) of our book brand, and do so in such a way that I can be completely nutsy boltsy about it.

I found myself, upon opening Facebook, saying aloud: “I can’t do this anymore.” And the point is I’m not sure I can. I need some college interns to handle that sort of thing. Some marketing and pr interns I can put in charge of social media and the management of all things digital. Another good reason to remain based in Boston with its many schools. Of all the cities in the country (most of which I have never visited so take that with a grain of salt) I think Boston is the most liveable for me. It is the perfect backdrop for my human existence, at once a place to love and rely on, though it mightn’t provide much excitement, and a sort of bedroom community to my New York existence that necessarily needs representing, more and more. Today is the 22nd and I’ve 22 days till our next major public event and so here I am in the first throes of redirection which, ironically, is about attending to what is already on my plate. Interesting irony about the word recovery as it suggests making profound changes while pointing to certain reclamation of a past state of being, bringing something back that was lost. Ourselves?

The day shall be long and I will need patience to put the wheels needing to be in motion. I am happy for the still two months of winter as the Spring will bring much in the way of travel. I am looking for putting that particular time line in place. Starting tomorrow I will be focusing my writing on creating next year’s book intros. I think with those in place, and a couple focused weeks in March, I should be ready to release the next Craken. I have two full years to get my household itinerary honed and consolidated down to some very portable boxes; and to simply move the domestic existence to another place, so that is truly an ongoing meditation. So much of my existence is represented in books and CDs. I think I will ask Emerson what he thinks one should do about ones entire library of CDs. It would be wonderful if someone were to (or has?) invented a device that, as you play a CD, it records that CD, digitally someplace, apart from iTunes from whence ones Library can seemingly disappear (how does that happen), so that it truly belongs to you the owner. I wonder if that’s a thing or if it could be invented. But I digress…

After I make my way through what might entail four pages a day, for the next twelve days, I will then be free to return to the process of mining myself reading back through a lot of what I’ve written these nearly full four years, pulling out bits, working them, fleshing them out, as possible passages for something different. I’m not sure where it is I’ll be going with all that but I know that I won’t have to keep reinventing the wheel but that I can start creating a series of gears from what has already been forged.


I know you think you have to, but, to the Mika Brzezinskis of the morning news, and really all so called “liberal media”, you don’t have to ask questions that make you seem impartial, especially when you put Democrats in the hotseat over this shutdown. And stop suggesting that they should be dysfunctional enablers of a lying, cheating, thieving, murdering (children held in captivity at the wall), human trafficking (where are the unaccounted for children?), propogandist, money laundering, authoratative, TRAITOROUS pseudo-president and puppet of the international mob syndicate by giving into his raging addiction to all things evil. Then again you put up with the overbearing Joe Scarboroughs of the world who won’t let you get a word in edgewise and whose suggestion it most likely was for you to start growing your hair.

Maybe that was a low blow but, I’m sorry, the gloves have to be off now: Any bit of justification of this lunatic or any inch we give him, he will take a million miles. Meanwhile I have some astrological themes to tackle today and I’m going to dedicate the next few hours to doing just that.

The sign of Aries, that of Cardinal-Fire, is the start of the astrological New Year, on the Vernal Equinox, Spring, which suggest more than a season but a launching into action. The sign is ruled by planet Mars, named for the Roman headstrong war god, Greek Aresfrrom the Greek ariete, literaly, to ram. And so theRam of the Zodiac, is characterized by purest action, launching into action, if not into battles of dominance, headlong. Mars. Both the god and the planet Mars signifies the premier, primal Male Principle in mythology and astrology. The phallic spear of the planet’s symbol portrays outward, centripetal, directive assertive energy. It is the time of shoots springing to the surface and newborn lambs niblling such suculents. It is also time for battle, the month of March and marches named for Mars. Allsuch things springing into action. Newness in itself as the premier concept. New begginings, the infancy of things, this is something, in anything or everything that is, which the sign of Aries rules: the beginnings of all things. Birth and war, the attack, are both bloody affairs and instant struggles for survival.

Athena, the war goddess, is the classical feminine archetype of the sign, representing, among other things, the temperance to temper the Mars masculine temper of the sign. One speaks of masculine and feminine energies in astrology in the abstract; which is very much different from surveying males and females of a particular sign whose make-up in character does, nonetheless, always somehow draw upon thier archetypes, here, Mars and Athena (and a myriad others, (but we’ll get to those—for now we’re spoonfeeding you). Mars and Athena are the first two off-spring of the Olympian gods’ progeny, the first born of Jupiter/Zeus and Hera/Juno. Life is foremost a war that you mightn’t win, so you have to come out fighting. Aries rules this spirit and people born under the sign are suffused with it.

Aries rules the human ages of birth to seven years, that which is defined by adjectives like “terrible” and nouns like “tantrum”, at once the most helpless lamb and most shriekingly selfish and demanding, others be damned. There is a lot to unpack here. As the Cardinal-Fire sign, which translates to a spark (of life), our ignition and animation, also purpose. Mars signifies pure energy, that fight, spearheading goals and Athena the strategy and diplomacy and prudence to support these aims. And so it is no surprise that the most singularly directed of sign-energies in the Zodiac, that Aries people are themselves singular, self-motivated, me me me, every wo/man for themself. They typically have pinpointed campaigns and quests they’re determined to go on and they do so, yes, with a certain vigiliance. It’s as if they can’t separate what might appear to us to be selfish, selfishfrom self-originating sense of duty toward fulfillment. Aries feel they were bornto do whatever they aim for, endowed (and sometimes burdened) with an outsized mantle of import such that said goaimsals feel elevated to that of a spiritually calling. Or maybe it’s vice versa. The point is singular Aries doesn’t second guess it.


I have a surplus of phone calls to make that I really don’t want to make. I actually loathe speaking on the phone more than most things, just one of the many ways, probably, in which I have become neurotic, things falling into that category tending to be things one should work on. I have like four hours before I have to change chores here which is actually really inspiring. I’ve already gotten so much done, it feels like a luxury to sit here and write. Now seems to be about assessing situations. S. is off and running on a new venture—other projects might be more a promotional tool than providers of payoffs, which is far better than fine. I suppose I might be feeling optimistic; and it’s not that I’m being cautiously so, I just emotionally fatigued on that score so to be living frugally on surprise, that said, it could be a year of good counsel, eventful, broadcasting, bookish, show-offy, and of aesthetic and artistic expression, among other things. There will still be the impressario, the scene and playwrighting, the daily Blaguing. So I wax academic—I forgot academia!

In near direct contrast to Aries which precedes it, Taurus, the fixed-earth sign, is ruled by Venus, representing the metaphysical feminine principle. Fixed earth is the fertile garden replete with flowers, the power of attraction. Planet Venus energy is centrifugal, working in the opposite fashion from centripetal Mars, whose symbol recalling a shield and spear or the male genitalia,  Venus’s symbol, a circle over a crosed staff, conversely depicts the womb and intact hymen, innocence. It is the main theme of any garden myth, mainly as it leads to certain temptation, again that power of attraction. The gods (read: human archetypes) associated with Taurus are the earthy nubile nymphs and youthful male flower gods. The main nymph mythi is that of Io, who was turned into a snow-white heifer by Zeus to hide his affair with her from wife Hera who knew what was what and pretended she thought Zeus was giving it to her as a gift. She was going to teach her a lesson (mainly about men). The story of Snow White is a retelling of it all. Did we mention that that Venus womb symbol also recalls a mirror, vanity being one of the sign of Taurus’ pitfalls, the sign’s color being green.

The power of attraction appeals to the senses and appetites, assignations of the sign of Taurus which also rules the throat, the gullet, as well as the voice, symbolizing talents, another attribute of the sign. The second house of Taurus, whose motto is I have, encompasses value(s), talents, assets, both real and metaphoric, along with real possessions, money and all kinds of quality stuff. Whether refering to our own talents, our collectibles, or investment portfolio, it is all a matter of cultivation, tending to that which we hold most dear and at which we are most gifted, that which comes most naturally. The nymphs and flowergods toil nor do they spin, the pastoral sign of Taurus advocating for a passive, come hither, approach to even their own ambition. Their energy goes into drawing interest and audiences to them rather than doggedly chasing some quixotic dream.

You go to the garden it doesn’t come to you. And here we see the link to the vanity, Narcissus, Hyancinth, Adonis all being among those male flower gods. Unlike objective Aries, the natives of which are focused outward, perhaps the least self-consious of indifiduals, the navel (or mirror) gazing Taurus takes a subjective approach to self, inclined to see themself from the outside in, forever making adjustments based on audience appeal so to cultivate that which is most valuable to the Taurus: adulation, if not outright adoration. Cows, calfs, bulls are totems of worship and idolatry.

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.

Mood Indigo

Capricorn 7° (December 28)

Feeling unwell today.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1356-1360. 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.

Today has a consolidating feeling. We are getting ready for a quick trip to Boston and New York and will mainly be focusing on art and letting the inspiration begin. I have been giving myelf a good talking to about art and commerce and how the ‘twain shall meet. I am very much looking forward to righting every wrong I possibly can, career-wise; and now that I know that, if I am clever and priming the pump and making sure that there are some key items which might already generate a little action, I’m convinced that continued support will come to us. There are no free rides that is for sure; and I don’t know if I’d even know how to take one given the opportunity. We have an agent friend visiting tonight and that should make for interesting conversation. I have been staying up too late these past few nights binge-watching stuff, episode after episode, and I”m not exactly sure why. C’est comme ca I suppose.

It wouldn’t or shouldn’t be unusual for me to fall asnoozed for a little bit today. I’ve precooked in the cosmic kitchen all I can possibly do in preparation. The house has been cleaned from top to bottom and all the errands needing running have been run. I woke up feeling really chilled and coldy today so I have got to take care that I don’t get too runned down before I even embark. There was a post from Scooter today about Walt on social media. I’m thinking this must be an anniversary of his dealth. Walt and I made for uneasy bedfellows when we worked together in magazines. He had been a wunderkind, both of us now in our mid twenties—I was twenty-five when I married—and he felt threatened, which he shouldn’t have done, because magazines were not my jam; I was saving all my love for acting at that time.

Walter, as I always (and everyone then) called him, was a tough-as-nails narcissist and a style genius, sincerely. He was raised in the clubs and as a teen knew more than is reasonable, and wrote, about fashion; while putting together photoshoots where he was also the man behind the camera, styling his subjects, doing self-portraits, typically, in tandem with his friend Simone whom we all called Fondu. Walter and I worked together, first, at The New York Social Calendar which was a cool thin mag available in slick new hotels opening, like the Paramount and the Royalton, in New York, becoming the Where magazine of that brand of chic, quaisi-boutiquey hotels. I was officially, as Managing Editor, Walter’s boss; but he couldn’t conceivably cope with that dyamic; particularly because I was brought in to replace Lisa Kennedy and Donald Suggs, combined, who both worked at the Village Voice and were considerably more “correct” than I was. Correct was Walt’s favorite word for describing both pinacle expression and experience.

In the end Walter and I came to highly respect, and more importantly, trust each other. I recognized his talents from the start and he ultimately came to see me in the most favorable lights. I really felt appreciated by Walter and the feeling was mutual. I loved Walter though we lost touch as he apparently lost his way. Is Capricorn, the goat, about finding your footing? I feel this time of year, with which the sign corresponds, is very much about that. We all want to get the new year off on the right foot, for one, and it’s also a very dreary time of year, perhaps for many, when the past, in particular (associated with the sign with its emphasis on traditions with its ruler Saturn, named for the god of the former, golden age, with his scythe or sickle, the prototype of old-father Time, may give us pause if not come back to haunt us. The goat god Pan, giving rise to panic and signature melancholy, to which we might succomb, sometimes completely. Not finding ones footing, this time of year notoriously sees a spike in suicides, whether suddenly intentional, or ultimately inevitable, slipping sadly into finality.


Drove to Boston today as an artist performs my series at the American Repertory Theater. They gave me a little conference room to sit in while I awaited our room to be readied, which it readily was. Stella had appointments out and I brought lefties from last eve’s dinner, so I had a few bites and tried to get some ideas down and also fit in a little Glow work. We had an afternoon client and then hopped a cab to Waypoint for din din. Had a lovely Georgian red, salad and pasta, keeping it super simple. Then on to Dan’s show which was exactly the one he did this past Afterglow Festival in Provincetown. He had been given an alternate dressing, which was more like a green, room. It was actually a performance space. Then my colleague Sophie came back to say someone was requesting me. I knew who that was.

The someone is a supportive character in terms of the non-profit; and we met, seemingly, through some form of cosmic connection. In the end he will have inpsired extreme and unique behavior on my party—he was so loud and so filibustering that I found myself putting my hand over his mouth. And this is someone whom I am meeting for the first time in the flesh. That is to say that I was immediately moved to dysfunction in relationship. This, though, after said someone shouted out to the stage during the artists performance, not once, but a few times. I had a message, that I didn’t get until the next day, that the artists sent me immediately after the show saying he wanted an exit strategy from the theater without encounter our supporter, who was seated with a group of friends and with whom, all together, including the artists, we were going out with afterward.

So here we all trundled along to the restaurant and Stella situated herself between the aritst and the sponsor, who was quite aggressively physical, and the companion with him was also proving to be caustic, although I was unaware of the fact at the time as I was seated, across from the artist, next to Brian. I was have a fun and lively conversation, all the while keeping my eye on the someone who was spouting Shakespeare or his own poetry. These sorts of experiences which only happen with certain people and in certain places, like Paris, and not typically anywhere in America, never seem sinister in any sense to observers when they’re happening so I really didn’t glean how much influence was currently being running; and the flirtatious companion came over to chat (mainly about how he had to get himself and this certain someone to another party) and ended up planting a kiss on me which, I’ll admit, in the moment, wasn’t totally unwelcome if not unsolicited. Again that kind of Paris in the eighties kind of feeling; although I don’t think it went down to well on the other side of the table where more of a battle was being waged than I wagered.

All said, people, particularly the apologetic, should always get the benefit of the doubt, which is surely something I shall provide while being ever the more mindful of boundaries. Despite indulgences, the evening felt freeing and it ended on a mindful note with the artist walking him back to his hotel before we got a car back to ours. We changed our plan and decided not to drive to New York tomorrow given the ensuing weather patterns. I know Stella is sad not to go and to miss the museum plans she made, and me too; still I feel we are dodging a bullet and we will spend the day, tomorrow, at the M.F.A. here instead, after some delicious breakfast brew of coffee and a healthful muffin, up and at ’em.


Woke up to a pointed friend request which is fine. Had some solo time in the hotel this morning before meeting for what we determined would be a small but flavorful lunch as the plan at this point was to return to Cambridge for the soft opening of Longfelllow’s. So I had a chowder at Sonsie and we strolled to the museum. The jewelry exhitit was small but surely meaningful—we already owned the book. And we saw the Ansel Adams exhibit too which, maybe it was my mood, left me cold. We did bump into Sarah Peake and her wife Lynn, however, so that was a fun synchronicity. We walked back through Kenmore instead of the way we came, behind Symphone, etc. And it was getting fairly cold at this point. Upon our return Stella suggested just going downstairs to Uni and calling it an early night and that’s what we did in the end. Harrison was working so we felt very well taken care of. And we ended up brining our bottle of wine upstairs to watch Ru Paul and then fall asleep. That rhymed sort of.

Meanwhile: Yesterday on our drive into town we had an amazing discussion, Stella and I, drawing on our meeting the other night with Tim B. (there is also a Tim C. in our life but there is no Tim A.). For the love of multipurpose I might recount this as if I’m recounting the meeting as a whole to those who were there: Again it was wonderful spending time, having dinner and catching up on all the terrificness that has transpired in the in-between years since book club. Alot happens in a decade. Or maybe this isn’t the way to go. Perhaps it’s just a matter of me speaking on certain subjects. Like authorship. We never undertook the notion of writing a new book under our real names, but it is an interesting concept because it is meta in the sense that we are bringing the readers behind the veil and, in that vein, I think it could be a wonderful project and tack to take. The question remains what to do with our original directional plan when it comes to publishing. I suppose that shall remain to be seen. I will reach out and determine next steps.

The idea that Tim proposed is an idea we already had, and which has been on our would be book-publishing to-do list, now for over a decade. And it was always linked to a certain broadcast-program concept, so it is something we really do want to do. We have been thinking that we have other projects, first to roll out, but we are interested in changing that roll out if we think it makes the most sense. I don’t think it should slow the roll of other Starsky + Cox projects however but that our roll-out should now be double pronged. Doing one project under our own names does allow for certain objectivity, on ourselves included, as Starsky + Cox are part and parcel of the history of astrology, being one of the most successful brands to publish on the subject. Anyway I don’t think the pursuit of this idea vis a vis the pursuit of getting the next Starsky + Cox project going should be in conflict or mutually exclusive; rather we believe they can, should and must run in parallel to one another. I think that is the main takeaway in regard to where we are in this process.

Also, a couple of days ago, I heard back from our friend and colleague Diane who is now involved in a new media and broadcasting venture. She reached out before the new year to ask if we wanted to develop something. After a break in fielding many a producer’s inquiry into our brand, plus doing lots of filming on that front, I am keen to do something. So yesterday, also, in our brief car ride to the New England capital. It is a very simple idea. In fact it couldn’t be easier or more perfect and it recalls a familiar form while allowing for a total refreshening of the usual guest-driven concepted in a talk format. I need to find and update our bio a bit to send Diane’s way early next week.


Having met as teens in Boston, marrying in their early twenties, Stella Starsky and Quinn Cox have gone on to become two of the most successful astrology authors to hit print. Their seminal book Sextrology (Harper Collins 2004) subtitled The Astrology of Sex and the Sexes has sold upwards of half a million copies in dozens of languages around the globe. Hailed as “eerily accurate,” their work dragged the subject out from the occult aisle and placed it smack dab in the center of the modern zeitgeist. Cosmic Coupling (Crown 2010) followed suit; and Starsky + Cox publish a yearly Haute Astrology series of twelve horoscope books; and have contributed to numerous publications and websites.

Starsky + Cox have appeared on a number of podcasts, radio and TV programs, in the U.S. as well as the UK and Europe; most notably as regular guests on “Chelsea Lately” on E!. “Live!” host Kelly Ripa is also a famously outspoken fan. Starsky + Cox were hosts of their own public radio show “The Cosmic Connection” which gave a glimpse into their private consultancy. Drawing on psychology, astrology, metaphysics and a little “something extra”, Starsky + Cox are counselors to an international clientele whom they help achieve self-actualization. Starsky + Cox also conduct their starry, entertaining, on-the-spot “Cosmic Clinics” at charity and private events around the country and abroad. Starsky + Cox have collaborated with artists and numerous music, fashion, beauty, media, advertising, entertainment, product and events companies like Bryan Rafanelli, MAC cosmetics, Sephora, Chandelier, Kylie Minogue, Marc Jacobs and TK

Starsky + Cox regularly perform their double-act of song, wit and wisdom at places like Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in New York City and at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Recently, Starsky + Cox presented an original motivational lecture entitled “Unlocking the Zodiac Code” in Boston, Massachusetts.

Starsky + Cox are serious consultants with an encyclopedic knowledge of myth, mysticism and archetype. They are certified by The London Faculty of Astrological Studies with degrees from both Boston University and L’Université de Grenoble. Starsky has an additional degree from La Sorbonne, Paris and holds a masters degree in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of East London. She is also a CMA-certified meditation instructor. Cox is a scholar of metaphysics with quantifiable psychic abilities.


I didn’t binge-watch Grace and Frankie, that didn’t happen. It wasn’t my whole day. That’s ridiculous. (I really wasn’t even very good but anytime either or both of the stars are on screen they make even the crappy script somehow magical). Anyway it’s fun to stretch out into a day and it’s good for the creative juices and goals. I have been watching a lot of royal themed shows for which I am an absolute sucker. I don’t have a proletariat soul I’ve learned. Anyway, I really want to keep my ideas flowing here today and “aim for four hours” each time I sit down to write. (I watched the Colette film and really loved it.) I need to get out of the house more for sure, in any case; taking some drives when I can in the old cream Mercedes that otherwise just goes to the dump in winter. But sooner than soon we will be walking in the beach on our daily constitutionals and everything will feel as it once did around here.

One of my goals for the coming weeks is to actually slot items on my to-do list into actual days on my calendar. Funnily enough my calendar has just stopped synching. I think it’s a result of not having the Cloud thing happening. I actually hate the whole concept of the Cloud. I feel like I’m spending money for people to steal from me, whether it’s Facebook or whatever other seeming involuntary system I’m locked into. It’s so gross and scary and dehumanizing—I miss the anonymity of a less technically advanced society. All of this only trips to the growing sense of inauthenticity that experience has slowly and insidiously taken on. But no matter. I am undaunted. I am just going to go down the list and start knocking things off of it. I am fortunate to have afforded myself the luxury of working on what I want to next, getting projects out there and spinning.

Taking a bit of a break, these next two weeks, on any ingestible that transmutes to sugar—it’s something I’ve been meaning to do these last twenty days, something of a soft resolution. This can be a very productive time of year for the body and for jumpstarting healthful and, almost more importantly, meditative practices (tho ere the twine shall meet). I found time for such things in my youth, even as I had to go to an evening job at the end of most days. It is possible, I’m confident, to get back into that kind of a head again. Saturdays shall be my major reading day. Thursday is design day, it seems. Friday will always be a good day to shop and clean and all that jazz—a good day to take myself to lunch as well. Four hours of “ridding” on Sundays also leaves room for reading and the minimal of writing, which is what I’m going to be doing this year in any case. I think Mondays will be my hard and fast, shall we say, nugget days, working on anything to do with books and the like. I don’t need to start that process, really, until March for next year; and I won’t do any other major writing until I get a hefty advance. And, when I do, I shall only write at four hour intervals, mostly, in the morning.

On the subject of the Zodiac, it does seem to me to have an inherent logic. There are so many different ways, of course, to slice and dice it. A crime novelist I know says may be using an astrological theme in an upcoming book. I actually forget I was told this, basically, until now. I may have blocked it out. Anyway there is one book that may be referenced in so doing—one which I myself haven’t read but wouldn’t mind doing.

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.

Such A Much

Capricorn 6° (December 27)

It’s Stella Day! Carbonara Happens.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1351-1355. 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.

Trump is definitely a Russian asset. This is as obvious as the toupee on his head. It isn’t enough to say we hate this man, because hate is the wrong word, as is man. A guest on a news show recently said he’s barely human. This is barely accurate. Anyway, I’m backing off the news, and television in general for awhile; I’m eager to get my Spring on and in order to do that I have to clear the Winter decks. I think by the time the astrological new year rolls around, end of March, I’d like to be focused on all new things. And Winter is just about a third over now which makes one mindful not to waste the time. Capricorn’s motto is I use and in some ways I think it means don’t waste the darkness and the downtime; go in, hibernate (Winterize) and, yes, leave it on the mountain. Crashed relationships, downed artistic delusions. Renewal is going to take some resolve to put the past behind. Another Capricorn power. The goat gods were culture gods—culture is at least one generation, if you will, more resonant than the present state of civilization, a Libra word. The word civil implies relationship. There is much to mine here, but back to my original point: Just as Capricorn energy pulls through traditions, and even deepens them, a most pure example of Capricorn power being that of preservation; but the energy of the sign also resolves the past, putting certain elements to permanent bed. Permanence is actual the goal, here, in two directions.

For the next three months I’d like to do nothing however that is simply not possible. In fact my personal to-do with which I emerged from yesterday’s first business meeting of the year is pretty packed. Much of what is on it are perennial things which, in my yearly cycle, need to be set up right around this time of year, so to make for an easier, though always potentially busier, second half. There is certain pride in knowing how to ride the serpent from year to year; and of course this year the plan is to add a new major component; so I really need to be ready. Or not. We shall see. The trick now is to decide which days, in some kind of strict routine, I work on what spokes of the biz.

It’s all pretty banal stuff. The fundraising is always the most daunting. I’m looking at making the other stuff rather fun. I’d also like to expand into the brand ambassador space but even as I write this I think no we have to save that for ourselves. The one brand we ever ambassored was a KY warming gel, ha! Someone looking at this paragraph think, at a glance, will think that I’m in Kentucky. I’m not. I’m on beloved Cape Cod but I head to Boston and New York in a few days to produce a show and see some shows and visit some museums. I’m really excited to get away for a quick bit and when I get back i will tackle those minutes for sure. This is always a great place to write out some notes for those things on my list that requiring the stringing of words, especially when it is astrological, so you should expect some of that. Meanwhile I’ll be somewhat brief these next several days.


Okay I admit it: I’ve hit a wall. (And no not the wall). Somehow today, with all these posts about Carol Channing on social media, the emptiness and absurdity has hit me with full force: Too much of this is mindless media slavery and addiction, and I list narcissism under that heading. There is mental illness involved in powerlessness over excess anything, but the man forms in which it takes: Endless selfies, opinions, stances, memes, trends, games, posturing, soapboxing, punditing, moralizing, mourning, celebrating, bragging, showboating, lame joke-telling (and we can go on and on), everyone trumpeting all at once but not really listening is probably not only a distraction but a determined one. I think social media is just one more opoid of we people. I use social media unapologetically for one thing only, really, and that would be promoting, which is really always selling something. Although most of what I sell is for non-profit purposes. So…

I have to find the courage (which really just means push through or path-ness) to put this life in motion. It tickles my fancy to think of really making a go of it at this point; and I also believe it’s time to make ourselves happy. I can literally spend a good five months, in two two-point-five intervals, abroad; it is where I am at my most inspired, for one, and in many ways my most healthy. I walk everywhere, my blood pressure lowers, and I’m await from the madness that is American culture. I need to be in America for the better half of a year, I realize that; but it makes my needs on that score rather lean, in the process. I’m looking forward to the very near future with signature superstitious trepidation. I fear, as many of us do, some other shoe dropping on happiness. But for now I just want the happiness. And to crack more than a few codes.

I think of Boston and I think money. It is a finance city. It has much more to offer than that—like some of the best food anywhere, and a better night’s sleep than one gets in New York—but as I continue my outreach to would be financiers for my non-profit touring festival. But I don’t need to be there terribly much and certainly not during the cold months. May and June and September are probably the best times to be in Boston, especially when in conjunction with Provincetown. But we shall soon expand into various places, I imagine, as the consultancy and other aspects of our wee dynasty demand. It’s going to be fun to get all these various projects spinning and just keep revisiting them, in turn. The trick is connecting all the nots and not letting it spread you too thin. It is important to fan out though for sure.

And right now it is truly very simple, without too much on the January plate. I am systematically setting up my tour plan, speaking with various venues, and most notably about Brian King. I’ll be on the phones pretty much constantly in this regard the last two weeks in January, simultaneously casting my Provincetown festival and next year’s performance series in Cambridge. I have to be really blunt with would be supporters to, and train them into giving earlier than usual. Otherwise it is just too hard to plan not having a clear idea of budget. And the town of Provincetown is giving me less money this year than they have in recent years. So one has to be prepared for such shifts.

It is all about moving the needle, or as it has often been known, the spoon. And just taking the time to get things off the ground, starting with books. That’s why I’m pretty happy to be having an agent friend over to dinner tomorrow whose brain we might pick a bit. And who knows, perhaps we will even find a project to work on together. With Goop in hand we need to reach out the the PR Czars and suggest Sextrology or Cosmic Coupling. People have often said one of the first entities we might need to hire is a PR but I do remain rather skeptical on that score for a variety of reasons not least of which is that I know it can be a lot of bullshit. That said I have been happy with the job certain folks have done in the past and I would consider rehiring someone on a project basis for a specific purpose. But right now we need a push for V-day with a little mini release attached. And a couple of pictures pasted in. And that is really all.

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.

Salutations

Capricorn 5° (December 26)

Boxing Day was pretty fun. Leftovers were delish.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1346-1350. 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 don’t talk about sex much. Even though people associated us with Sextrology and think it’s some kind of a special area of ours. It really isn’t. The astrological archtypes don’t get checked at the bedroom door so we were able to go there; but it really was a publishing “sex sells” idea more than it is some area of expertise on our part. I have always considered myself bisexual which is a known fact, mainly by way of acceptance of my earliest sexual experience(s) which was somewhat imposed on me by an older male. It didn’t in any way repulse me, but I wasn’t shall we say “mature” enough to actually enjoy it. Still I became fairly blasé about sex and gender as I came of age and never made any bones about it, forgiving the pun. And it was the 1980s so it was perfect timing to be all troisieme sexe about it all. I might have mentioned that when I moved back to France, to Paris, in 1985 I was somewhat bent on the prospect of performing a sort of cabaret act as Pan, just Pan. I really should have done that; if I were 21 now, with this brain, I woudn’t have hesitated for a moment. But then I had zero confidence about myself as a singer or actor even. Funny that it would only be two years later that I’d move to New York and study acting, ultimately with the so-called great Uta Hagen who didn’t much like me. I did sacrifice for that art, I really did. And I still do I feel. I mean, look, my Broadway career didn’t take off even though I was in two productions; I wasn’t Danny Burstein who, actually, then, would never sing at a gathering. In the two years I worked with him back to back I never heard him sing. Crazy. Anyway, I have an idea about all of this that I might be exploring soon, in book form. Will keep you posted. Meanwhile I’m writing less and posting (old Blagues) still because I’m considering myself to be on a holiday, still, a mental health holiday to be exact.


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.

For Fuck Sake

Capricorn 4° (December 25)

Christmas was a bit of fun. I spoke to folks on the phone. Roast Beast.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1341-1345. 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.

Last night, New Year’s Eve we drove back from Provincetown and S. had businesses further up Cape still; I had this weird loop of Sousa music in my head for a good chunk of the morning; still feeling the fatigue; it turned out weirdly in that it must have been, what, noon? when I fell into a deep nap, waking up completely disorientated, like multi-dimensional if you know what I mean. Any old wig, we made a delicioso Crab pasta with fine linguine and, then again, I was out like a light before 9PM. But not before having which I hope is one last extinction burst of anger and sadness which are never traveling far from ones own sense of remorse. I was in big need of understanding that what other people think of me is really none of my business, however I probably rid myself of the clawing feeling by giving into it so full that you might imagine I was grief stricken (because I was); being Irish I do know how to keen, which is different than wail, as keen is specifically wailing for deceased people; and, well, it was about people who are dead to me, so…Ha! And now I continue my holiday spate of posting the original Cosmic Blague entries which I am myself just now re-reading.

The cosmic order of the day is, well, cosmic order. And boy am I grateful. I just want to let go and let universe. I had so much to accomplish this week, I was meant to perform in a new monthly show on Thursday, and what I thought was a passing cold has knocked me for a loop. So I had to just let it go and let nature take its course, which included four hours of non-stop shivering in the night, and a day of watching classic 1970s movies on Netflix in the daytime, just like the gods intended it. The Sabian Symbol associated with this day at 12° Aries is A Triangularly Shaped Flight of Wild Geese. And the first thing that strikes me, after al these days of geometric shapes and triangles, is that even the most abstract images can be derived from nature or expressed by it. Today is just about letting the intelligence of the natural world dictate the agenda. It speaks to there being more essential things than what’s on the menu today at the White House or who’s said the wrong thing about Bruce Jenner.

Flight is always an expression of the soul; and because this flight pattern is etched upon the Sky, it naturally makes us look up in awe. Little known facts about wild geese too: They won’t leave any of their kind behind in the migration, and if a goose should become ill or injured in the journey and need to land, one other goose will volunteer to keep that ailing goose company, on land, until it recovers or expires. Try to find that kind of loyalty and devotion among we humans. People born on this day, says one source, are open and willing to embrace their lot, without preconceptions of what that actually should be. Doesn’t that sound super relaxing. I think we could all use a little bit of that brand of mindset. Most people seem to bemoan their lot, or talk with their mouths full of sour grapes.

I was thinking this morning, after seeing a familiar character on social media go off on the notion of celebrity that: My sense is that the down-and-out characters that are always complaining about the famous would leap at the opportunity to be a revolting celebrity themselves given half the chance. Ego is ego. Whether you’re a bubble-headed (booby) booby like pick-a-Kardashian-any-Kardashian or a poverty-loving misanthrope whose always pooh-poohing these people, you’re basically the same thing in my book: not a wild goose. The goose isn’t silly, it’s the emblem of constancy, something I find is pretty rare in people in a larger social context but also in intimate bonds. The upshot being that the true gooses really distinguish themselves. Those are the companions in life whom we should value and emulate.

Venus is the planet of union, it’s energy being attractive. I like to imagine those geese in the sky giving us a V for that planet of love. When we are unified, in romantic, familial, fraternal, brotherly or sisterly love, in that V-formation, we are equals and in the proverbial It together, whatever obstacles or hardships may come. Indeed we are more able and even willing to accept what comes our way because it was for no lack of love or protection. It’s only when we feel abandoned that we might act out in an abandoned way. Life is a journey and it sucks thinking you’re always having to be on it alone or worse, in competition with others. Other than one year in little league, I never played on a team; I went to a huge college and mainly lived off campus; I haven’t worked more than probably a total of less than two years, all together, with an office team, and those who know me know I have no family to speak of. So this aspect of life is something I really have to work at as it doesn’t come easy. I can tend to isolate and I have a morbid fear of cliques let alone cults. And yet, as I write this, I seeI realize that I have an adopted family of actors and performers, many of whom belong to the Afterglow Festival family of artists, a most cherished one of whom is called V; I have adopted family, in Europe, in the form of one extended brood, who took me under their wing two decades ago, and of course I have Stella’s family which triangulates around a certain red-haired youngster whose nickname just happens to be Vie.


Today is the New Moon in Capricorn conjunct Pluto and Saturn (and Sun of course). And so it’s time to turn the corner a bit and segue into “second semester.” When Stella and I returned from our study abroad in France to finish up our senior year in Boston, the “second semester” concept became a thing. I had actually initiated it, I think, dating back to my freshman year when, after the first spent in the clutches of a controling (and obnoxious) Scorpio roommate, I moved out of that room, trading with our third “friend” Chris who was at that time becoming much more suited to his friendship with Mike the Scorpio, Chris being the Virgo that he is, and a poster child for that sign at that. I roomed with a Korean guy who spoke very little English and whose really name I don’t think I ever knew but he went by Chris as well. At least that is my vague recollection. He wore those black plastic sandles with the thick cross strap, kind of like Dr. Scholls, and he shuffled in them, just to push the stereotype. I never saw him naked. I never saw Mike naked for that matter. We once all joked about how he got dressed inside the shower, taking actual bits of clothing in with him. In the same conversation, it was revealed that everyone had seen me. I think I was proud of my body then in a way I no longer am; and I do remember feeling that much more average (or rather “textbook” enough) in the penie-department that I didn’t mind flaunting what I had, as boys typically do when they can. I remember saying to Mike and Virgo Chris, “well we all know who has the smallest one”—I meant this guy Marek from Connecticut who was naked more than most, and very comfortable with the fact he had a micro-one apparently—and Mike knew who I meant. But Chris suddenly burst into this rant of “okay, okay et ” thinking that we meant him whom neither of us had ever glimpsed. Oops, we didn’t mean you Chris.

Anyway, “second semester” signalled a marked change from the first. I lost the fifteen pounds I gained in the first; I spent more time alone. But it was really my sophomore year when the seeds of what I now, still, call “second semester” were born. It was then, while sitting around with Chris and Mike smoking bongs, I suddenly shot to my feet and called the study abroad office asking “got anything going to France?”; they had, but it was already booked, but I managed to squeak in, a move that changed my life. I also upended the single dorm in the Earth House I was inhabiting. I hung the metal box spring on the wall as a sort of industrial art piece and put my mattress directly on the floor, I made “shelving” from metal milk crates, attaching cafeteria trays I swiped from “Veg” (the vegetarian cafeteria where I now ate) onto them as shelving doors; I bought a used 1960 something red columbia bicycle; i wore thermal leggings with shorts and sweaters with brooches and big rain coats and floppy hats; I smoked a lot of green pot with red hairs in it and went on a few mushroom and/or acid trips. I started listening to Fripp and Eno and the like.

In France, junior year, second semester was all about pushing Spring and making weekend trips to le Cote D’Azur instead of the weekly trips to Paris; putting on shorts and espedrilles way to early. Nobody wore shorts in those days in France. In fact, two years later, when I was living in Paris, I wore bermuda shorts from my apartment on the rue des Halles all the way through the rues pietons to le Beaubourg and people followed me and hung outside of cafes-bars to gawk at the site of some American male in plaid bermudas. Oh how I loved my collection of bermuda shorts, but back to the story at hand….

The year between the two living in France, our senior year in Boston, second semester meant way more than ever, building on the energy, I think, I had channeled that year in the Earth House. I wore either tux pants with suspenders over rotating muted green and orange turtlenecks; and over that I would wear those thick red-black plaid wool ankle-laced hunters? pants, also with suspenders, so that my bottom half was never cold. I would take them off in class. We ate pretty much nothing but red bean soup made in a wok or the usual stirfry. I grew my hair to look as much as possible like Sting’s in the Do They Know It’s Christmas? video, wearing hats for several hours before going out so to make my curly hair straight and wispy. Second semester was spare and intellectual. As it was, just like with sophomore year, I got straight A’s only now, in senior year, I was taking all graduate level courses. (My junior year abroad completely wrecked my grade-point average because I pretty much failed everything as I pretty much didn’t even speak French and pretty much had no reason being on this program in the first place. But senior year “second semester” was about becoming empty (spacey) , lean (manarexic), exquisite (precious) and supreme (smug). Endless tea with lemon. There is so much more to say about this but I’m not going to.

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.

Thanks Awfully

Capricorn 3° (December 24)

Tonight is defined as a pique nique. I’ve been snapping some photos of myself. I have nothing more to say.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1336-1340. 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.


Stella’s Birthday Day! I feel as if I’ve slept a thousand hours. One of our LA cum NYC cum New England clients will come to visit this morning which will be fun. And then Stella will work her way down Charles Street and T it to Cambridge where I will meet her in Central Square. Another day of catching up on this writing and slowly emerging into new material as I continue to post some ancien materiel. Working on Brian, it was rather a bust again today. Just one sort of nothing contact. Sometimes I feel these directors are just giving lip service. Anyway, I will go to Cornish Pasty and have a delicious potato leek soup with stilton cheese. I am rather in love with this place I must say. And I will walk Mass Ave over the bridge, breathing deeply, meet Stella and we will walk further on to Harvard Square and have a drink at the bar at Alden & Harlow before heading across the Cambridge Common for our reservation at Guiglia. I expected more from this place, frankly, given the hype. We had pasta because they make it fresh. I ordered a boar ragut type deal to erase the boar ragu pasta I had at that nightmare “resort” in Connecticut last week. So there is that. We had fun actually. And we Ubered back to the Eliot and had a dessert at Uni, all in all a perfect night. Here to satisfy your (and my) need for quantity, another re-run of the original swipe at Blagues past:
Lo and behold today’s Sabian Symbol, for 7° Aries is: A Man Successfully Expressing Himself In Two Realms At Once. For starters, seven is a number near and dear to my heart as it is the Libra number, one of Light, Order and Music, seven rainbow rays of in a lightbeam, seven notes to “The Scales”, and many more Apollonian connections. And ways in which any of us lead double lives not withstanding, when I think of two realms I immediately think of the material and on material realms. Yesterday we explored A Square, With One Of Its Sides Brightly Illumined whereby we were drawn toward that illuminated side where we might break on through to the proverbial other side. (I neglected to mention that the square, or the cross, symbolizes matter and the material realm.) Today, we look at life from both sides now: We have broken through to discover that the other realm or dimension might be immaterial but it is in now way unreal. This is always a real a present reality, whether or not we are engineered or inclined to perceive it, while it would also be empowering to imagine that this dynamic is esepcially available to us on this particular day. I’ll be curious to peruse a list of people born on this day to see if they personify this dynamic in any way.

There is precious little written online about these symbols. But I stumbled upon an interpretation of 7° Aries being labelled “Integrity Light”, all the Aries degrees being “Integrity something”, tomorrows, according to this site is “Integrity Regeneration”, regeneration being the keynote of Scorpio which follows the sign of Libra which is (cardinal-air) Light—so I’ve just stumbled onto some validation that these symbol degrees may indeed be following the zodiac’s pattern of twelve, thirty times, circles within circles, equaling the 360° cycle of the calendar year. So, you see, sometimes (read: always) leading with our intuitive sense with result in concrete proof in the pudding. Anyway, in this description, this symbol is characterized as “the one who keeps his lamp alight whatever the price”. We have moved into the light (cue that little person’s voice from the film Poltergeist) and now we are holding that lamplight aloft, or indeed we are the light, that shines in two directions at once. I think of the children in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, entering that realm for the first time—Lucy (meaning light) first encounters a lampost, which marks the point between the so-called real and imagined worlds.

Whether we are speaking of the world of our imagination, or some spiritual, energetic realm that we can “psychically” visit if not fully inhabit, we are on about the same thing. Back in the late 1980s, right before I had an extraordinary “event” happened to me whereby I was triggered into an altered state—I will try to write about this for you at a later date—although Stella and I have told this story a number of times, live on stage: I had a dream. The dream centered on this giant black book from which I was privileged read; the book was titled, in giant silver letters: I Magi Nation. Now of course it spells imagination; but it also points to the notion that perhaps I was a Magi and that I wasn’t alone, but part of a larger body, community, nation of them. Within days after this dream this weird event occured—it may’ve been triggered by a stranger slipping something into my drink—I will never know—but it resulted in my being endowed for a night with super human thought and strength that involved my “seeing the math in my head in blueprint form” for successfully dive-rolling out of a car going 40 miles an hour, landing on my feet and then sprinting faster than a gazelle as well as my “seing the math” to launch myself in the air and scale an eight-foot fence without touching it; “seeing the math” as well to “find the sweet-spot” in a chain-link gate, embedded in cement, where I could hit it with my vintage Columbia bicycle so that the fence/gate would be knocked over, out of its cement foundation, allowing me to ride my bike over that fence without so much as taking my feet off the pedals—I remember that was important to me—to stay balanced on my bike without putting a foot down. This and more all actually happened on the eve of the Harmonic Convergence, August 16, 1987. I won’t bore you with the rest of this story now; but the upshot was that I learned the hard way, and in a manner I did not invite, that I was capable of perceiving (an) other realm(s) that had heretofore been closed to me. It was violent and forced upon me and at the time I did not see any good in this having happened. In time, though, I’ve come to understand that, whether welcomed or not, this event provided a breakthrough.

Needless to say, I strongly relate to today’s symbol, but just because I readily imagine my particular two realms to be that of a solid world and that of an impressionistic one, doesn’t mean the duality begins and ends there. I do find it funny that my partcular first “psychic break” with “reality” had “physics” overtones; as someone who hated math and science growing up, I suppose the joke was on me that my being endowed with extrasensory powers for one evening back in 1987, manifested as a combined superhuman strength powered by sudden flashes of mathematical, physicist genius. What springs to mind as the two realms you inhabit might be drastically different from my set. And yes there are terrestrial dualities that might be portrayed by phrases like “leading a double life” or “juggling two worlds at once” or even “bringing home the bacon and frying it upon in the pan.”

Still, I am inclined to see the Sabian symbol of A Man Successfully Expressing Himself In Two Realms At Once as being pinioned to the material/non-material world dichotomy. I think that we are, all of of us, expressing ourselves in these two realms simultaneously, but I don’t believe that we are all doing it successfully. Even those of us who might be conscious of doing it at all might fall short. I consider myself a auto-didactical metaphysician—metaphysics itself can be defined as “the science of the immaterial”. Indeed, “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy (Hamlet 1.5 167-8). Increasingly, I am made aware of this and, hopefully, becoming more succesful at said expression. And, having looked at life from both sides, now, what I’ve gleaned from my understanding of the unseen world has only inspired me to live more simply, healthfully and sanely, in the seen one. I am conscious of the fact that the expressions of our thoughts and actions don’t just manifest in the here and now, they make an impression on the “other side” as well—call it the spiritual realm, or that of infinite or eternal or, plainly, the energetic—where elements of our being, thoughts and actions are duly noted. Perhaps there is an Akashic record, I don’t know. But when I consider the possibility I immedately flash to my dream of I Magi Nation and the very real experience of realms of possibilty that seemed to defy my own natural laws or even those of physics, which I had encountered in the days that followed.

A footnote: When we embarked a decade later on writing what became Sextrology, our publishers assumed we would write a popular, splashy, sex-sells sort of book. We, however, sensed it was an opportunity to write a book that you really couldn’t judge by its title let alone its cover. Delving the immaterial but very real world of archetypes and energies as we did in the writing of it, Sextrology itself is a successful expression in two realms. It is at once very real and funny, bawdy and poppy, academic and as logical as an astrology book can be and yet it is also suffused with an “off the page” element, an admittedly slight tapping into esoteric knowledge, a knowingness and mystery that speaks to readers on a more purely energetic level. And, without getting too specific, I will venture to say that we’ve had indication that it has indeed been well received in realms beyond Horatio’s grasp.


Another morning at the Eliot and another client over the holidays which was nice. It struck me today that we seem to live in a number of places at once, not least of which is this hotel. Although I think we have sworn off this particular suite as it no longer seems quiet—early morning mechanical and/or dumpster noises every day; it’s also in some disrepair—and there was the shower/Draino incident; and it always seems to have smokers in it right before we take up residence. So we are moving, next time, to a different “line” in the hotel. We shall see if that doesn’t make things better. I know this might make me sound somewhat spoiled but not really. I mean nothing is cheap in this world and we are regular clients, and hopefully valued ones. The rain is out of control today and my back is completely out once again, so I will take the passenger seat to the Cape; well for the beginning bit in any case. We needed gas and food so we stopped in Hingham and I sat in the car in the torrential rain while S. shopped and then we switched and I drove the rest of the way. We had a little wine and some lovely cheese and it was bliss to sleep in our own bed once again after so much to’ing and fro’ing. We thought the tree might surely be a tinder box but it has barely lost any needles and is still subtle to the touch who knew. Anywig, I continue my rerunning of old Blagues as my holiday, I’d like to say continues but, let’s face it, it is just about to start.

I started writing the Cosmic Blague a week ago and in some ways I feel like Lucy and Ethel at the chocolate factory, needing to get into a rhythm, not letting the process get away from me. Also I haven’t done much in the way of outreach to let people know about this new project—not to say I’m writing anything so earth-shattering that people are missing out on something monumental. But I think I might do a bit of promotion today so that people get wind of it. Today’s Sabian Symbol for 8° Aries, A Large Woman’s Hat With Streamers Blown By The East Wind, seems to fit the mood —mine, anyway. I want to be a bit breezy today, I don’t want to get too heavy into it; as I write this I hear in the back of my brain the following phrase: Famous last words.

What strikes me most about today’s symbol is the fact that it’s a hat, belonging to a large woman, but the woman herself is not necessarily in the picture. It seems like an image from a dream sequence in a film, or one you’d have just falling for a brief moment in the middle of the day. There is something cool, calming and Spring-like about it. And, I can’t not equate the image with an Easter bonnet. This date and degree of Aries is surely one on which Easter has fallen. And so we must consider the energy of rebirth and regeneration. I mentioned yesterday that this random site I found online—fatmountain.org.es—lists all the Sabian symbols, labeling them with titles, all of which, in Aries, begin with the word Integrity. Yesterday was labelled: Integrity Light; today is tagged Integrity Regeneration. The description goes on to say that “the main quality of this person”—I’m assuming “person” refers to someone who has a planet in their birth chart pinioned to 8° Aries—”is his spaciousness of outlook.” I like that.

The fact the image is a hat belonging to a large woman suggests that the energy of the day is “feminine” in the sense that it is an energy of receptivity, those streamers reading something like antennae, picking up messages and vibrations. The largesse of the woman would suggest that the capacity for receptivity is vast, that today we might be of an expansive mind and attitude. We can also be open to have our minds blown on some level. But safely so. The hat is a symbol of protection from the elements, specifically the “masculine” Sky elements of Sun (fire) and wind (air)—fire and air signs, in astrology are masculine, whilst water and earth are feminine. An east wind symbolizes new beginnings and also spiritualizing forces. The streamers are there to sense and signal direction, like a weather vane. The hat is receiving the revitalizing forces. The message here is not to blow like the wind but to be open and flexible to new ideas and even sweeping change. Streamers are designed to catch the wind, they suggest a certain rejoicing in doing so. Today we celebrate our ability to go where the winds of change are taking us; doing so could very well characterize our own rebirth or regeneration. We let undeniably strong unseen forces, symbolized by the wind, move us. Interestingly, in biblical symbolism, the East Wind is one that disperses falsities and evil.

Think about the false notions others might have about you. To be great (or large like the owner of the hat) is indeed to be misunderstood; but instead of fighting falsity or evil mendacity we let them blow over us. The east wind destroys destruction. The good among us have nothing to fear from it, but for the baddies, it’s a bit of g/God’s wrath or judgement. So long as your side of the street is clean, you can welcome today as a wind that will wipe away the unrighteous and leave a renewed sense of innocence in its wake. Irrefutable truth is written in the wind—the answer, my friends—and we need only let it blow. We have no responsibility or cause to impose our truths on others. Our higher mind, the hat pointing to our crown chakra, knows the true nature of everything—I think of J.K. Rowling’s sorting hat—we can huff and we can puff but we can’t blow anyone’s house down, nor they ours. It is not for us to do. We must trust the larger forces at play to do such righteous work for us. The winds may gust and blow, but the weather within us need never change.


We don’t usually have a client on Saturdays but we made an exception for one of our loyal ones today. Otherwise I am promoting our new books as I do the Holiday Market we will volunteer our time for tomorrow. It really is pretty cool. This couple Loic and Rob own The Canteen restuarant in Provincetown which is absolutely delicious and one of the newer positive additions to the town’s dining landscape. Anyway, they have this entire beach front as they are right on the harbor and Loic, an Aries, is a really talented framer among many other talents (including being an ex ballet dancer) and they built this tiny little market city extending out from the back of The Canteen onto the beach with various local vendors and such. Anyway they are really giving folks and so it is a joy to dedicate some free time to setting up our famed Cosmic Clinics for folks to get brief readings from us, gratis. Hopefully we will draw something of a crowd we shall see. So we will have one more night out which will be fantastic. And a local hotel has been so kind as to donate a room to us for donating our time to the market. So we’ll get to have some Ptown fun. And as this is still my holiday, I am adding another re-run of the original weeks of Cosmic Blagues dating back nearly four years. Enjoy:

The Sabian Symbol for 9° Aries is A Seer Gazes With Concetration Into A Crystal Sphere. The correlation of this to the 9th sign of Sagittarius, the motto of which is “I see”, and the sign’s association with the third-eye, is fairly evident. It is written that the crystal sphere represents wholeness, I would suggest that it is the third-eye itself, activated by insight. The third eye, tertiary perception, is that which sees beyond duality and embodies the notion that there are three sides to every story, a fully rounded view. The crystal ball is all-seeing, not only in the sense that it sees everything, but that it sees all sides of any one thing. This is the opposite of navel gazing, which is synonymous with a myopic self-obsession. Here, we don’t know at what we’re looking when first we gaze—our eyes and our understanding are open to every and all possibility. What slowly comes into focus is the sum total of possibility so that we might act from a vantage of considering all factors—this crystal (clarity) is a sphere, suggesting full 360° circumspection. We can be assured of what we see, and we also must accept whatever that might be, for better or worse or both

In this symbol we see the merging of our intellect with our intuition, and we must use the former, in this case to serve the latter, creating a power line between the two. This constitutes “seeing situations as a whole”; intuiton and intellect on their own might each tell part of the story. There is the Seer and there is the Sphere, the Seen. It is the Concentration, which, like concentric, etymologically points to “bringing to a center” that unites them. Concentration isn’t projection of will, but a circling in on a larger truth.There is a marriage needing taking place between text and subtext, between conscious and subconscious motivations, between surface actions and underlying intentions. We are seeking to awake the supraconscious. For me the takeaway of today’s symbol is there being more at play than the naked eye can see. We mustn’t take situations at face value, we must consult the oracle of our own intuition—our emotional intelligence—and let our brain develop a cinemascopic picture of a situation based on its understanding, as difficult to articulate it as it might be. We must employ that spacious mind of yesterday, symolized by the Large Woman’s Hat. We can’t have prejudice and we can’t read into situations to serve the smaller aspects of our mind.

Funnily enough I’ve owned a crystal ball. And the story surrounding it does touch on the shadow side of gazing into it, for real, or metaphorically speaking. It was given to me by someone who, it just so happens, was a master of subtext and subterfuge, which can characterize the shadow side of a Scorpio personality. The sign’s ruler Pluto is named for the god of the underworld, a metaphor for a deeply profound personality who is miner for meaning and hearts of gold, on the positive side; while expressing an undermining nature on the negative. We see this in fearful, insecure and unevolved people of the sign. There were always two conversations going on simultaneously with this individual in question. The one he had with people —in person, by phone or by text—and the one he had about them, via, shall we say, subtext. With people of a character such as this, one is naturally leary, and should never get too close until they hopefully develop out of this behavior, which most shadowy Scorpios actually do. Meanwhile, ironically, it is the sense that people don’t want to warm up to them that fuels their detrimental scheming below the surface. Although this person’s put downs of others were barely subliminal, I assumed them to be isolated and petty, and didn’t give them any power. Until I saw the subtextual web this individual was capable of weaving. The scorpion is an arachnid lest we forget; and the kiss-kiss of some spiders, man or woman, as well as their idle surface chatter, can be designed to mask—Pluto wore a helm of invisibility—the stealthy time-released character assasinations they make against those they target.

Symptomatically, this individual in question was a paranoid, as one might have to be to cut so undercutting a figure. As people know I’m wont to do, I’ll post inspiring, uplifting, motivational messages on my Facebook page, from time to time. There was a spate a few years back when I did this daily. Then I noticed this individual had disappeared from Facebook; he hadn’t, actually; he blocked me. When I asked him about it, he said that he thought my posts, meant to universally empower all my cyber friends, were barbs pointed specifically at tearing him down. He was taking my new-agey or Eastern mystical, inspirational quotes personally…and as insults. Now that’s paranoid. The point I’m trying to make here is that sometimes we gaze into our metaphorical crystals with fear in our hearts and ill intent in our noggins, and that’s the picture that will come into focus. Self-fulfilling prophecy. If we go looking for problems, bent on reading ill intent into others’ conscious or subconscious motivations, we will always find them. Not to say we should gaze into our crystal wearing rose-colored glasses either. We must keep that supraconscious line between the subconcious and the conscious free of any imposition of will, hope or fear.

Incidentally, I never used that crystal ball that was sent to me. First of all it arrived with a broken pedestal, which I took as something of a sign; but also, probably because I’ve read too much Tolkien, I was concerned the object could read me on some level, so it was ultimately banned from view, put into a dark corner of a basement; perhaps, one day, it will be resurrected, cleared of negative energy, and employed for its intended purpose; but none too soon, I can assure you.

This is going to be a short one today folks. At least I hope so. I’m on day twenty-one of a thirty day Bikram Yoga challenge and, though I made it through a Boston winter without getting sick, with basically no heat in this impressive looking but ridiculous apartment in which I find myself, I now have some combo platter of Dickensian illnesses that would seem to combine consumption, rickets, pleurisy and gout. I jest (ish), but oucha-magaoucha do I feel like pooh warmed over; and Monday is a big client day and I must be sparklingly alert. Snap out of it.


We will be conducting our Cosmic Clinic today in Provincetown which should prove fun. Today also marks the start of my more comprehensive social media presence for the coming year. It still baffles me. And as I have multiple accounts and, well, businesses, I really do need to get a handle on all of that. With a move back in to a city it will be easier to get some intern action to handle much of it I realize; so I look forward to that as one new aspect of what we will do to accomplish what we need to. I am increasingly uncomfortable with certain silences—the fact that holidays and birthdays have come and gone without so much as a peep from certain quarters. But, without taking a hard stance, I have made a pact with myself that I’m not going to be the one constantly reaching out; too many relationships have become one sided due to people’s narcissism and I really can’t be a party to it any longer. I am ready to let so much go at this juncture. Someone recently made fun of the fact that some people write (blog) about their daily life; it was someone who is a successful writer of sorts and I couldn’t help thinking that he was throwing shade at me. But I thought, you know what: I am trying to get to universals via my personal experience. I can’t always hit the mark but there is much to be gained by the steady outpouring of my observations which I hope sometimes are humorous.

Such an irony that no sooner do I write this and head to our tithing station for the day at the lovely holiday market in Provincetown that we are confronted by the fact the friends whom we’d introduced and with whom (we thought) we still had mutual relations had their holdiay revelries planned without us; a truth I feel I have extracted from the ether today not only via today’s emission but via the affirmation I also put forth today regarding, well, basically releasing everyone from any kind of obligation to me or to any kind of past high or low, boon or difficulty, joy or obligation. The real point that needs being making now is that this collective situation is completely dead to me. There is nothing but snarky cliqueishness here. In short, actually, the lousy who have peopled my life can truly go fuck themselves. I say this fully now before the start of the new year because I want to truly get it out of my system. I think if I read the signs right here today I am being asked to completely close certain doors behind me and find a way to feel completely, mentally on board about that. I am fifteen minutes into a three-hour commitment and I intend to honor it, but in this next two hours and forty-five minutes I am going to let die any false hope or misunderstanding that I have harbored.

And this is the real gift. I really knew the truth this whole time. The fact is I was right all along and now I don’t have to second guess or wallow in the gaslighting. I can know what I know and that can be the end of it. Good riddance is not an oxymoron. And so I offer up these simple phrases, on the Sabian Symbols from the origins of this Blague:

I’m not sure what it is in my newly emerging personality that is manifesting as daily challenges—the yoga, this Blague—plus the horoscopes and other writing, our priority consultancy, the production and direction of a new Afterglow Festival, for which I must now begin fundraising in earnest, not to mention a number of upcoming shows by Starsky + Cox, both separate and together. Believe me I’m not complaining, I’m going somewhere with this: Today’s Sabian Symbol for 10° Aries is A Teacher Gives New Symbolic Forms To Traditional Images and I immediately think of re-branding, changing the headline, and revigorating old modes with powerful new widgets.

So the above litany: That was the old me feigning to be dragged through the new normal. In truth, I’m not planning to stop daily yoga after just a thirty-day challenge—I hope to do it every day for the rest of my life. I’m not shying away from the Cosmic Blague, it requires at least a year of my attention and so I have to sit back and enjoy the ride; and, as has always been the plan, I’d like to die in the wings during a live performance where I’m, forviging the pun, killing it. So I’m giving over to these new forms, now, in my daily existence and letting myself, if not my brand, be changed by them, so I can meet the future more as I see myself. Gosh I hope that made sense.

Dane Rudhyar speaks of today, 10° Aries, as embodying a “revision of attitude at the beginning of a new cycle of experience”; the traditional images we have of ourself and our circumstance might be outmoded, and we need new forms that suggest a wider range of meaning. This isn’t personal. We needn’t have an emotional take on, or reaction to, what is our new design for living We’ve made decisions and we’re sticking to them. This is us now. And we need a new abstract form to mark this shift in our outlook. And it all begins with that ‘tude.

Short of pulling a Prince and branding ourselves with some kind of unpronouncable symbol, or taking on a Ziggy Startdust persona, or inventing a new pronoun to which others might refer to us—all valid moves that great artists and thinkers have done to mark their development—we should at least think about, today, what might emblemize us. What have we stood for? How has that changed? What do we mean (to ourselves and others), now? And what might be our logo. Did you know that the first ever logo to be trademarked was the Bass red triangle in 1876. Thank you Wikipedia.

The fact is that the meaning and interpretation behind any symbol are endless. Especially this symbol which is about new symbolic assignations being added to, or replacing, older “traditional” ones. And it’s awfully generous, isn’t it, for this teacher to be shedding new light on some old forms. Gosh, I wonder if I know anybody like that? Hmmm. The point is we are making progress. We are not static beings. We are not locked into our own traditions and so, every so often, we need new symbols for ourselves, even, to mark or growth in wisdom.

When I was twenty-one I toyed with calling myself Pan and moving to Paris to be an androgynous cabaret artist. Well I have never been that androgynous due to hairy Italian genes; and it took me another twenty years to attempt cabaret. But it didn’t not happen. I had the symbol, the form in my mind, way back when. And as most do, I took on a new name when I began working as a professional astrologer-metaphysician. Granted, we had invented the His & Her Horoscope column for Teen People and I didn’t want my New York Times editors to know that it was me writing it, but still there was a tradition of doing this. Alan Leo. Athena Starwoman. Linda Goodman. Dane Rudhyar. The name happened first and then I sort of grew into it. I think that’s how it works. We change our attitude and we mark it with some word or picture, if only in our mind, and then we grow in that direction. Esso just sounds so mid-twentieth century—but Exxon, now that’s a name that could travel into the new millenium.

So, today, ask yourself: What’s your attitude? And how would you characterize it in a word or in an image. What emblemizes the new you? I think I’ll be a big blue ball. Interpret that to your hearts’ content.


Despite the hurt of yesterday, (I must be all grown up because) I managed to have an excellent time. We did the holiday market and met some grand folks and then we strolled back to the hotel. We opened a bottle of gorgeous wine and sat by the fire. The owners had donated this room to us almost apologetically as it is on the ground floor. But that only meant that our room opened onto the empty common area, a gorgeous living space with mod fireplace et al. I really loved it. And as we arrived back the fireworks were just beginning. We tried to stay and see them en place at The Canteen but it was mobbed and none too comfortable. We climbed the stairs of our imagined private lobby and looked out a glass door where we could see the entire works from the heated comfort of our own private interior. We just chilled until such time as we left to walk exactly a half a block to dinner at Strangers & Saints where our friend Raina has taken up a winter residency in the kitchen. Her own great Baie Bar + Resto isn’t heated, therefore seasonal, so she is collaborating at S & S and that is good news for all the town folk and neighbors. We ordered things we would never order like quahog dip and sliders and other fattening morsels—it was such fun. And, really, this was our New Year’s Eve night out for sure. Apres diner, we weren’t tired and needed to walk off the repast; so we strolled to the west end for a night cap at Joon Bar, another town favorite. We were immediately absorbed by familiar faces, and new, rather lit, ones at the bar. One fellow, who used to sponsor the festival, seemed drunkenly apologetic and when I complemented him on his hat (which was newly purchased from the holiday market) he gave it to me and, despite my endless protests, wouldn’t take no for an answer. Okay. Weirdly (I forgot) that one goal was to buy a hat at the market, a thought that went out of my head as a result of the shade so-called friends were purposefully throwing our way. Anyway, I was in such high spirits that none of that was bothering me now. It would too in coming days only to never bother me ever again. I’m continuing my holiday tradition of posting, now, some Cosmic (Sabian Symbol driven) reruns from the earliest Blague days:

Today we look at power, and worldly power at that. They symbol for 11° Aries is The Ruler of a Nation or The President of a Country. I think the original might be the former and yet the latter expresses the nature of the symbol. For we are not looking at the energy of a monarch or a dictator but the ruler of a democracy for the most part. A president presides, he has the power to execute the will of the collective, but he also has the responsibility to do so. I think of the energy of a president being very Libra, whereas that of a king is super Leo. Democracy and social order, balance of power, harmony among people, are hallmarks of the sign of Libra the mottos of which are “I balance” and “we are”. And being the 11°, one might equate it with the 11th sign of Aquarius in that sign’s Utopian vision. When one is the ruler or president most energy goes to keeping the peace, not just with other nations, but within the ranks of ones own, and among ones people. Where are you the ruler? In your family? At work? In some department? When you are in charge, mainly you deal with the censure of not doing things correctly. Or perhaps you are one who points out how those in charge are deficient; but if you were put in the lead role you would likewise be a target for criticism.

I was watching the documentary on Scientology, Going Clear. And besides the abuse of power by leaders of that “church” what struck me was how the IRS caved and gave Scientology tax-exempt status mainly because they were worn down by lawsuits. The IRS took the lazy route. And as a result that “church” has gotten away with murder, probably literally. The litany of abuses, the brainwashing, the blackmail is staggering. The documentary really left me angry at our powers that be, which allow this type of organization to proliferate. The billions of dollars Scientology pockets while those in its ranks suffer abuse is one thing; but the fact that “we” allow this organization to exist—which it can only do as a tax-free entity—is beyond me. My hope is that this documentary triggers some kind of upshot the way the documentary on Robert Durst brought about his arrest. I know it’s not as specific as the Durst situation—evidence coming to light—but seriously we have to crack down on this crazy cult. There was so much to the story that wasn’t in the documentary. The disappearance, for instance, of Shelly Miscavige, wife of the so-called religion’s leader David Miscavige—she hasn’t been seen in seven years.

In a democracy, we can all be Ruler of the Nation, theoretically. Any organizations that exist within our democracy that disallow that same capability for self-empowerment should be shut down. How is it that Scientology is protected by the first ammendment but Edward Snowden isn’t? If I were ruler of the nation, if I could, I would throw the money lenders (lobbyists) out of the temple (halls of Congress); I would impose caps on campaign fundraising; I would create a new-deal type works program for repairing our infrastructure; I would pardon Snowden; I would revoke any cult’s tax exempt status; I would outlaw GMOs; I would break up big Agro; I would impose oversight on big Pharma; I would tax the one percent at the same rate Eisenhower did in the 1950s, I would do a lot of things…if I could. All impossible, you say? That’s the real issue. Why is doing right by the people impossible? Why are venal, oppressive maneuvers all highly possible? Why do bad people in power always seem to win out? The main answer is: That, for the most part, anybody who needs to be in a position of power probably has a screw loose somewhere anyway. They are driven by ego. I love me some Hillary Clinton but really why does she need to be president so pressingly? I don’t think the prime answer is: to do good. I’d like to say I love me some Obama, for the most part, and he has attempted some good things; but he has also kow-towed to some of the worst people and entities on the planet, like Monsanto. Why? Maybe not because he wants to. Maybe there are threats involved.

That’s be the way Scientology operates: on threats. They have a dossier on “church” members yay high, one that “church” members provide them, admitting all sorts of shit in their audits. The irony of religious participation taking on the form of a visit to the IRS not withstanding, “church” members give their power over, or they believe they do. They are no longer the Ruler of (their own) Nation. And when you’re a celebrity Scientologist, the “church” uses you for their own PR purposes, and you get major perks and payoffs. Would that we could all boycott any project made by these celebrity Scientologists, or better yet: If we could send memos to Tom Cruise and John Travolta and Elizabeth Moss and Beck and Laura Prepon and Greta Van Susteren and Giovanni Ribisi and Kristie Alley and all the other famous “church” members saying that we don’t care what sexual proclivities they might be repressing. This isn’t the 1950s actually; and some spicy tales from their boudoirs might actually make them more interesting because, at a glance, this isn’t the most exciting bunch ever to appear in the same sentence.

Seven years before Graydon Carter and Vanity Fair published the story on Scientology’s search for a wife for Tom Cruise, the magazine included us in their “L.A. Intelligence Report” in the Vanities section in the front of the book. To be fair, it is a tongue-in-cheek page that mixes fact with fiction. Although, in our case, it was mostly fiction. First of all we don’t live in Los Angeles. Anyway, we were deemed “Psychics to the Stars” and one category in the chart-format piece was “Skeleton in Closet”. They said that ours was “Scientology referral swaps”. This immediately made us uneasy. And then came the questions all on the theme of “is this true?”; and despite putting out a statement that none of it was, our business is built upon a real consultancy with real paying clients, most of whom would not be comfortable if we were actually in bed with that awful cult.

I wrote Graydon Carter a letter pointing out the problem. He refused to print any kind of apology or retraction which, to be honest, I didn’t expect. His editors were vaguely sorry, especially Matt Tyrnauer who actually availed himself of guidance from Starsky + Cox on a regular basis, and yet, as often happens in this situation, we seemed to be personae non grata for speaking up about it. As if we should be so lucky to have any mention at all by Vanity Fair. But I do think the magazine was concerned with the legality of the situation, printing something not only untrue but potentially damaging. I then received a letter from Graydon’s office barely apologizing for any distress this had caused and how they planned to make it up to us with the publishing of our next book, which they would champion. They never did. In fact, they pretty much cut off all communication with us. Scientology calls it: To Disconnect. As a Ruler of a Nation, in this case a sensational magazine which is indispensible on long flights, Graydon Carter is well aware of his power, but perhaps not the abuses thereof. When he raised the ire of Scientology, himself, I thought there was something karmic in it. The cult of celebrity vs. the cult to end all cults. If only.

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.

What A Dump

Capricorn 2° (December 23)

Well I made it all the way two 2:00 o’clock in the morning after falling asleep at 10. So here I am up again but I can’t afford to be tired today and must power through and get my marks hit. Been really loving the show better things it’s pretty genius and I’m all up to date on every bit of busywork . Heard back from our council which is great and that could just rest for awhile. Getting a jump on the holiday cooking . Grateful I don’t have to do the shopping. And I am going to just get as many words down on paper as I can today and freestyle the rest of it. I did start the process of getting words down and then I had to stop and make some lunch and I needed to print out some pages and get the chapters that I’ve already written into a more organized state. The groceries had to be unpacked and I planned the menu for the weekend for Christmas dinner specifically . I’ve decided to make a different kind of potato then I usually make which should be delicious. I do have a great many ideas that I think just need to be funneled and I’ll eventually catch up with myself between today and tomorrow that is the plan in any case so I came across them old photos in the basement which will make for interesting posts and they also found some old sheet music which might be interesting starting to see how all these categories come into play which is good at I will start the process of throwing things away evenings and packing books up into various categories it can be stored pretty easily for the time being I don’t know how long we’ll have here obviously but I’m going to try and get through to next year we possibly can that would be the goal in any case so they will just have to sort it out OK so I’ve screenshot my recipes and I’m all ready to go For Christmas day that just leaves between now and Christmas Eve where I don’t have to be in the kitchen to get a real jump on pages tomorrow needs to be all about quantity I’ve been front loading quality And that’s been the right thing to do but now I can listen up and just kind of say anything I also wanted to communicate how ******* sick of this year I am both Stella tenant and Rebecca Luker died today which really freaks me out. I went through more boxes in the basement to sort of survey the landscape and discover one whole giant box which is perfect for dishes it was just filled with old show posters so that’s all getting out . Ask went through all bunch of newspaper clippings to get rid of the bulk of the paper so that also feels quite productive I think it’s going to be a relatively easy thing just slowly put things into boxes and it should feel rather cathartic to take off the top layer and then once we know how much time we have to figure out the rest of it Meanwhile I got poo to do yo. 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1331-1335. 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.

Got home yesterday. Here for a total of forty-eight hours. Totes bushed. We escaped Connecticut and stopped at Olga’s for lunch in Providence. Weather still crappy. Just making some quick stops to get some sustenance in house. Otherwise, I’m going to post some more past musings on the Sabian Symbols and what stories they have triggered. Consider this a fortnight of reruns.

4° Aries is characterized by the Sabian Symbol Two Lovers Strolling Through a Secluded Walk and for some reason I find very little interpretation of this from outside sources; which is probably a good thing because I’m feeling the need, today, to remove the training wheels and to employ my own spidey sense, meditating on these symbols, to come up with my unadulterated interpretations. My strongest inkling about this symbol is a sense of repair and of promise. I believe that the lovers can represent the part of ourselves that longs for a flesh-and-blood other; but I think the imagery also points to a would-be love of self. In the zodiac there is the astrological first house of self and the seventh house of other; and we are bound to look up the house of other not only as it relates to another person, but also to one’s own personality, and the development of our character, in all senses of that word.

To me, the process of knowing oneself is accelerated in our significant one-on-one relationships. Those with whom we partner can be a mirror, or sometimes they can represent parts of ourselves, qualities, which we feel we lack. The adage that “wherever you go there you are” is brought into sharpest relief when we are faced with the constant presence of another invested party. We can actually avoid ourselves and our own issues more readily in solitutde. In isolation, we aren’t necessarily reminded if or when we’re being irresponsible to ourselves. On the flipside, we do tend to bring our best selves to relationships with someone significant. As an evolution from 3° Aries, where we are part of, representative, of a group, collective or community, here we bond with a like-mind, a kindred-spirit. Perhaps we’ve singled out from the group someone we wish to pull away for a walk down a secluded lane, just we two, away from the rest. Whom would we do that with? Probably someone whom we feel is most like ourselves. So this symbol and, by extension, the perceived energy of this day, might be about recognizing our self in an other. In 3° we aimed to see our own personal divinity as being part of the larger divine—our Atman in the Brahman. Here we recognize the divinity, the likeness, the kind-red spirit in a fellow or a lover. And our ability to walk the same peaceful path.

But let’s again consider the figures as two parts of our one self, first, from the perspective of masculine and feminine energies. We are all walking-talking yin and yangs. A man has a feminine anima, a woman a masculine animus, trans or third gender people, perhaps, have it all together. We don’t want these energies to be polarized, we want them to be integral to our experience, moving us in the same direction. This is true not only of the masculine-feminine dialectic within us, but of any so-called opposite feelings or forces. We don’t want disassociation of self on any level. We want to be honest with ourselves and to find unity, harmony, literal integrity, especially wherever there might be internal division or schism. We want to have a good talking with ourselves. In fact we want a private inner dialogue going on all the time. We want to be honest with ourselves. We want to confide in ourselves. For, is that not the true definition of confidence?

If we see two people, presumed lovers in particular, strolling down a secluded path we might suspect they’re seeking to share some form of intimacy, sexual or otherwise. We sense they want to be alone. Perhaps they have something secret to discuss—the walkway is isolated for that very reason—they might need to hash out a problem, confront one another, and seek repair. There is always something to repair in life, with others and within ourselves. I promised I wouldn’t do this but I do see this Aries 4° as being akin, in many ways, to the fourth sign of the zodiac, Cancer, cardinal-water, associated with flood myths, the most famous of which involves (re)pairing animals two by two and putting them on an ark (synonymous for promise) and sending them on a journey toward deliverance, in reparation of a spoiled, broken world/experience. Perhaps these lovers on their path are making a promise to one another. Maybe that is the upshot to whatever subject they needed to privately discuss. If the goal was repair, the promise might be never again to do whatever caused the rift or damage. Perhaps the promise is one of deeper commitment, the seclusion providing the perfect setting to propose a marriage of sorts, or some new covenant, marrying intension, determination, goals, purpose. If the lovers are symbols of parts of our one self in conflict, would we not make a promise, a pact, with to ourself to do things differently moving forward on our life path? The two individuals might be our lower case self and our higher Self or power. Cue that song from Carousel.

I just perused a list of famous people born this day and it’s not a day of very showy Aries people. Indeed, those born this day seem uncharacteristic of the sign. Even the few super famous figures are distinguished as being rather retiring and private people. I will venture to say that I feel today has the energy of a time out, when we have a wee off-site meeting with ourself to regain our inner harmony and equilibrium. We might understand on this day that the most important relationshiop we have is that with ourself and we are taking time and space to get ourself together, examining where it is we might be coming apart, and making the necessary reparations to feel whole. Yes we recognize that we are made up of polarities, that we have two sides to our brain and to our personality and that they work better, and are larger than the sum of their parts, when we blend them into a singular Self. We are always/never alone. Wherever we go, there we are.


Finally Christmas day has arrived and I will make some shirred eggs which will gross everybody out because they will strike them as too wet to be properly cooked or edible. That’s okay, I’m making them anyway—after an embarrassment of gifts being opened. My goal today is to have a Jewish Christmas so we are checking into a hotel suite and walking from Back Bay to Brookline to see The Favourite at Coolidge Corner. It will be packed. We have reservations at a Japanese place but I truly want Chinese. We will also pass by what looks like a promising Thai restaurant. I thought the performances in The Favourite were all very good; but I didn’t love the movie in the end. It was like Peter Greenaway L.I.T.E. And it didn’t stick with me. Tant pis. The Japanese restaurant was a joke—rude and dismissive atmospehre—and we left. The Thai restaurant was dizzzzgustingly dirty. So we started walking back toward Boston, figuring we’d pass the Chinese restaurant that gets good reviews. It was packed and we waited fifteen mintutes just to talk to the “hos”t, during which time we decided to get takeaway. The “host” tried for that entire time to run one credit card that wouldn’t run; meanwhile the rest of us were a gaggle of people who had checked in and were waiting to be seated; people walking in off the street; people waiting for takeaway; and those wanting to put their name in for a table. And everyone was unempathetic and rude and pushy and randomly asking strangers (us) what the hold up was as if we knew. Oy. Finally I said to the “host” can you attend to other things beside that one card and your huffing and puffing? We just want takeaway. Oh that will be an hour wait. Fuck this. We stormed out.

Now we had had a reservation for a fancy Christmas dinner at La Voile a serviceable French restaurant on Newbury Street, originally, for 5PM that day which we canceled to celebrate the Jewish Christmas idea which bombed. We called them. They said they could put us at the bar. We hopped a cab. What they didn’t tell us by phone was that they were closing then in fifteen minutes. We casually sauntered in and were stuck in a corner at the bar up against a two-top down below, behind us whose faces were competing with our coats for air space. The bartender moved us to high table, in the bar, instead and said we should get our order in since the kitchen was closing. What? Wow, just in time. We ordered a beautiful red and some soups and salad (if foie gras fringed with greens can be considered a salad). Anyway it was delicious. I had chestnut soup on Christmas day and it was infused with truffle and the true spirit of the day. Fuck Jew Christmas followed by Chinks. I have never been so happy to be a lapsed gentile than at this very moment. Singing Silent Night silently and in French in my brain, I was definitely going to draw out this experience and so ordered dessert. I thought doing Jew Christmas would feel so anonymous and sneaky, but duh: Brookline was packed with god’s chosen all scrambling for tables with prepackaged chop sticks. Meanwhile, here on Newbury Street, it was a sparkling ghostland at the early end of eight PM as the closing of this, one of the only restaurants in town to be open on Christmas, and thus it was here I found that feeling I was chasing. It wouldn’t have happened at 5PM in the place. But it was accidentally happening now; and so after a chocolate confection and single espressi, we only had three or four blocks to walk back to our awaiting suite and sleep.


La Stell had a series of appointments in the hood and then went to see the Nutcracker today so I am catching up on a little writing, including this. I’m making a great many contacts and will connect, about Brian, with Greg and Kline and Smith. I will rant about terrorism and my fears will be given rise. That’s really all I can say about all that except for the fact that the shower in this suite isn’t working properly and the maintenance guy will walk in without asking even though I have the Do Not Disturb sign on. Anyway, I was given a key to shower in another room while they filled ours with Draino. I will go to Eataly and get some delicious La Stoppa. Stella brought me back dinner from Meyers & Chang = hooray. I will fall asleep by 7 PM. It has been an exhausting two weeks of travel and intrigue. I will return to inserting some musings on the Sabian Symbols from the past a/k/a “reruns”:

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.

Tut Tut

Capricorn 1° (December 22)

OK so that was a funny night and yesterday was fantastic because and I can’t believe I didn’t write about this yesterday but our we sat and did a tiny little meditation ritual for the conjunction and yeah following up on what I said yesterday started a really kind of a good energy in a sense which is ironic because I actually didn’t wake well I fell asleep early ish watching that Keith haring American Masters and then I woke up at 1:00 o’clock in the morning and not only did I know I couldn’t get back to sleep but I kind of didn’t wanna go back to sleep and so I watch the Pamela adlon show which was really great but the point is I never went back to sleep so I watched the Pamela adlon show I watched the whole first season and then 45 episodes of the second season so yeah that happened and then I was like Oh well you know kind of figure out my day and then stello it’s like remember we do have a client and did forget actually um parked whenever we have client day they always have to make the client activity the most important thing so here I was thinking I was going to like you know figure out a way to sleep in the day and do some writing that was already going to be challenging enough but with food preparation and all the things that we have to do now that we’re in our little individual spaceships floating around but now I did I watched the entire program and then I just made my peace with the fact that like I’m gonna give over to the client and I did kind of mini hour 40 minute meditation on my own to sort of like balance out my energies and that was really pretty godamn great 

Is an Aries whose motto is I am the most challenged at simply being they do need a lot of attention delete do need an audience but it’s different from tourist horses cultivating an audience Ares is coming at you tourist is taking you along with or even going with you strange enough 

I feel like what we don’t talk enough about is this whole onslaught weather by laptop or phone booth which are probably not even probably most definitely listening to you because like suddenly you’re like you know Reuben sandwich and then it’s like we have the best Russian dressing and sauerkraut and Rye bread for you but also just these horrible like China 19 count on messages Chinese people or the ones that are like you better your Social Security card is you have to contact us immediately take Oh my God like Pelican I got one of those like in a video game or something like constantly these obstacles like or I’m like having to constantly not respond act you’ve ever accidentally opened something just because like you know your hand is just like this past and yeah but I like the ones where they send you your own email address like you’re getting email from yourself like why would you click on email from yourself first of all but like are they trying to like trigger like a narcissistic impulse like hoe that’s me did I ever contact me well that’s certainly enough too.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1326-1330. 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.

Open Sleigh is the name of the show we are performing tonight at Joe’s Pub. We aren’t really rehearsing this morning because last night got a bit messy. Exhausted, I fell asleep at like 7 or something and did miraculously wake up feeling rather rested. The vibe, though, wasn’t conducive to plowing into one last rehearsal; rather it was all about backing off and, in our separate corners, coaching ourselves to bring the best work we can to the stage individually. Unlike when you do solo work, you have a responsibility to a partner on stage; and when a piece is largely improvisational (just following certain guidelines in your separate mind) one only hopes that the direction the discourse will carry you will be flowy and/or jazzy or both, at turns. Anyway…we shall see what we shall see. Meanwhile the Blague reruns continue…

Okay, so, the Sabian Symbols. I can’t say they were invented, but rather perceived by a Libran astrologist by the name of Marc Edmund Jones (1888-1980) with the help of a clairvoyant called Elsie Wheeler. Stella and I first came across Jones in our formal astrological study through the London Faculty, but he’s an American, from St. Louis. To paraphrase that substitute for our own brain we call Wikipedia: Jones was interested in formulations he observed in nature and in the environment—as a fellow pattern queen, I totally relate—and he developed his own systems of thought. He was influenced by Christian Science and Theosophy (me too—the latter not the former) and set out to reformulate astrology. He devised the seven (Libra number) patterns in astrological chart interpretation we use everyday—and he published The Sabian Symbols in Astrology, “a book that renders a specific symbol and interpretive character for each of the 360° of the zodiac” and then, of course, he’s a Libra renaissance man, he wrote screenplays for early movies, became a Presbyterian minister and got his PhD from Columbia. You know, as you do.

So the Sabian Symbols: It’s fairly esoteric stuff. But here it is in a nutshell. There already existed a symbol system, associated with astrologer Alan Leo, that derived from occult divination, via meditation, and “intermediaries” (ooh, scary) working with an early Egyptian schema, from which the zodiac is originally based. If you didn’t follow that it doesn’t matter. Jones wasn’t into that existing system. So he and Elsie Wheeler, who had become his student and turned out to be pretty wildly mediumistic, headed to San Diego for energetic reasons—okay‑and he basically numbered 360 index cards, one for each degree of the zodiac, from Aries 1° through Pisces 30°, and kept shuffling them so neither he nor Elsie actually knew which was which when they were set before them; and she got pictoral interpretations via her spidey sense and they wrote them on the card. I think it all happened in a day. I hope you’re getting this…

Each degree on the astrological wheel was thus assigned an interpretation. For instance, the interpretation for today, 0-1 degree Aries is: “A Woman Just Risen from The Sea; A Seal is Embracing Her”. Seriously, that’s it. And, actually, this one I get (and to think Elsie didn’t know that this was 0-1° Aries is totes cool; because we have just left the mega watery womb of the sign of Pisces, ruled by Neptune, whose trident is that of the Great Triple Goddess of the Sea, and “emerged” into the sign of Aries, associated with birth and life, a pretty bloody affair—Aries rules the blood, governed by Mars, the war god, life being the ultimate fight. And, so, okay, this Sabian Symbol suggests that the energy of this day is about the birth of the new—something real, tangible, perhaps even if just a thought or emotion. And there’s that seal. I immediately hear Donovan’s “Celia of the Seals”. From what I know, seals are symbolic of inner guidance, privacy, insulation and protection—they are slippery and don’t like to be pinned down— while they are also emblematic of an amorous nature, as this animal is fervently driven on that score. This makes sense too: The sign of Aries is about individuality and being true, if not just plain old keeping, to oneself; and of course, Mars ruled Aries is about lust and libido, as well. I read somewhere that the seal was also approval. But I find that just too punny for words.

If I were to embrace the noble lie that the Sabian Symbols are “true”, which I’m going to do, for the most part, for the purposes of this year-long exercise, to see what doors of perception doing so might open, then my own Libran psychic take on this image would be thus: Today is a day of emergency. We are stepping into a new life, dripping from our past experience, perhaps, even refreshed by it. So much so that we needn’t go back. We must seek to stand on solid ground today; we must be delivered from the murkiness of our past experience, having let any primordial soupiness formed a new directive. On this day, we are one with a new mission—tell me about it—and we are reminded by the seal, who does indeed inhabit both the inner (water) and outer (land) worlds, that we can go forth “trailing clouds of glory”; for, yes, the water can also symbolize our original state of divine being which we mustn’t lose in our earthly pursuits. I find it wonderfully paradoxical, too, that the first moment of Aries, the premier masculine sign, is mainly characterized by the female experience. But that has some pretty primal significance too, as all life begins as female, doesn’t it? And we all come from the mother. Perhaps, we are more that seal, slippery and heavy lidded, fresh from the womb. Perhaps we are clumsier on land than we are in the sea. That is to say, we are bound to stumble and make mistakes in our terrestrial endeavors, a bit out of water—we aren’t from here per se, and we inhabit this planet but for awhile, bound to return to the sea of vast divinity. And hopefully we can avoid being clobbered and skinned alive by stupid, venal, brutish people driven by profit and greed. So maybe today we are meant to reflect upon and embody these thoughts. Just as we enjoy a more banal understanding that we have just emerged from winter and we can let ourselves be, like the season, fresh and new, full of promise and burgeoning growth. Are the notions of emerging from some divine womb or our winter cache really so dissimilar. Is winter not better viewed as a time that incubated us anew, rather than something we were dragged through. What was bred in us this winter that we can now activiate, what purpose can we now personify? Is getting where we want to go not generated from a deeper sense of coming from somewhere utterly divine. If we can embrace our own divinity, would that help us seal the deal of fulfilling our worldly destiny. Are we not the intersection of the inner and outer world made manifest—are we perhaps the seal that can open between the two.

I can do this all day. And in fact I have, off and on. I’m wont to explore how people born on this day might personify this particular Sabian Symbol. But Facebook tells me I don’t know many people born on this day. In any case that provides me an excuse not to compare and contrast the humans in my life with my own interpretation of this symbol. I certainly don’t have an extra Birthday Book hanging about, so I will have to let this one-sided dualogue of a conversation dangle. Maybe you have people close to you born on this day and you can draw comparisons between them and “A Woman Just Risen from The Sea; A Seal is Embracing Her”. I have to go rethink my own purpose I’ve emerged with on this first full day of Spring. I suspect it might entail saying a lot less per day about Sabian Symbols in these posts and to make sure I get to some storytelling on the vast subject of what I find to be weirdly synchronic and cosmically jokey about this life.


So last night went really well. We had a decent (not huge but…) audience of over seventy folks. And the show went around ninety minutes so people got a nice big chunk of us. And then we met those who were to be met, upstairs, at the Library, which was super fun. Lots of good Aquarian energy in the room I must say. I was absolutely floored by some of the folks—Robby L. and Frankie F among them; Frankie really dug in with us for the remainder of the evening and she was so super funny; so much so that it lent to a comedic retelling later. Anyway I continue my remembrances:

I have to say I’m pretty darned happy to discover—and I do mean discover, because I am largely unfamiliar with the individual symbols in this system—that comedy has already reared its head in this process. For this Cosmic Blague is meant to entertain (the notion of humor); and it’s a wee synchronicity all its own that day two brings a little co(s)mic relief. Or is it something else? If yesterday’s first Sabian Symbol is about the emergence of new forms and potentiality and “the impulse to be”, then today’s symbol is hinged on our initial awareness of nature, the human kind specifically, which seems to be something of a joke that needs ‘splaining to us by some kind of funny man. One can’t help but think of the jester or the fool, one who, at court, can point to the ills of the realm, and even the shortcomings of the king, to be laughed off and away in self-reflection and self-realization. We have just emerged, full of new purpose, and yet we have to immediately check ourselves, first, by having a sense of humor about our intentions and our actions. We mustn’t take ourselves too seriously or be too rigid. The jester is a mercurial character in every sense; most significantly, he is versatile and adaptible. Perhaps what he reveals is that All is subject to change. We set out with goals in mind but if we aren’t willing to compromise, negotiate and navigate a variable nature—that of our environment, others’ and our own—we mightn’t succeed. We cannot control everything, nor should we want to. We should only meet our experience half way. Thus , we allow for serendipity and blessed synchronicity. To do this we might immediately have to let go of that which is unnecessary, as one discards in gin or poker, life likewise being a game of chance where retiscence or rigidity can be a recipe for failure. So, in some way, today might be about killing our darlings, already letting go of best laid plans and accepting the way life is unfolding, lotus-like. It begs the question: What do we gain when we lose, let loose or let go, whether it be by choice or design, and can we play it as it lays? I’m thinking about people born on this day in Aries and if they portray any such interpretation of this Sabian Symbol, just as I try to laugh at the cosmic blagues that have been played on me and what I’ve had to discard to get, what obstacles I’ve had to remove, or the sacrifices I’ve made, whether intentionally or not.

I’ve certainly experienced greater loss in my life than I have of late; and yet this past year I did see certain key relationships fall by the wayside. The cosmic joke about this experience was that it had the nature of a set up. That is to say that I had set my intention on having healthier relationships, less dysfunctional ones, overall. I was determined to represent myself more truthfully in certain bonds and to say no to invitations I might’ve accepted in the past for f.o.m.o. or fear of not doing enough to foster these so-called friendships. But the upshot was ostracization from such quarters for not being totally available, all the time, as I might have been, detrimentally to myself, in the past. Here I was trying to establish healthy boundaries and to rid said relationships of any codpendent residue; and that was perceived as a problem. I was accused of being parsimonious, unavailable, even erratic. To wit, I found my inventory being taken, dating back nearly a decade, by those who needed more ballast for their argument that I was ripe for the discard pile. In simple terms: Assuming I was dumping them, which I wasn’t, they had to beat me to the bunch and ditch me but good so it could be their move. You know how that goes. It’s sad and it’s painful but there is naught to do; and I am not without ego, and am way too proud and principled to dignify such situations with an attempt to disentangle the labyrinthian disinformation that characterized them. I simply walked away. But, not made of stone, it bothered me for months on end; and I wrote endless emails I never sent getting it all off my chest, which worked quite effectively to a point. I do indeed believe that I posses the plots of several plays in draft form, and some pretty Albe-esque dialogue to boot, should I ever want to manifest these thoughts and feelings and literally see it played out before me, not to mention devise the endings of my choosing.

Then this winter I lost my wedding ring. I’d lost about thirty pounds since I bought it and it was my own damn fault for not having it resized. There were moments of foreshadowing when I’d wake up with it not on my finger only to find it had been flung across the room when I turned abruptly in my sleep. But on one of the blizzard days in Boston a month or so ago I returned home from a walk with it gone from finger. I couldn’t quite feel my fingers because it had been so cold—it may have come off with my glove, or just fallen from my super shrunken frozen digit. I was very upset. Very upset. Despite the fact it wasn’t one of the set of rings we actually exchanged at our wedding, it had more significance still. I mean, we were married in 1989 so our first rings were what you’d expect: wide silver Robert Lee Morris jobs; mine was so thick i couldn’t bend my finger for years. If I didn’t have an allergy to it, I had an energetic repulsion. It never felt good on me and I stopped wearing it not many years after marriage. For more than a decade we didn’t wear wedding rings until one day…yes it’s about to happen, folks!: a big synchronicity is making it’s way into my storytelling, albeit not unheavy-handedly:

When Stella and I graduated university we moved to Paris where we established a group of friends with whom we are still quite close. Jo was one of that number and just over a decade later she would begin publishing a slew of books under the name J.K. Rowling. In 2005, she was already world famous of course and though we had been in touch with her, recently-ish, it had been a year or two; and so when we had a two-night trip planned to Edinburgh for the first time, from London where we were staying with our friends and godchildren, we weren’t about to let Jo know that we were coming, as it was going to be a quick thirty-six hours; and it would have taken some doing to reach her as her lifestyle had changed a bit to say the least. So we didn’t try. As it was, we had just one full day to explore the whole city and I was resolved that we shouldn’t even stop to eat—we should just keep moving and grab snacks and streetfood along the way. So, of course, being the Libra I am, by noon I was famished and wanted a sit-down lunch. We had stopped into Harvey Nichols—I think I needed to buy socks—and we thought, let’s go upstairs to the cafe. Well it was a crush. The place was jammed and the host pointed out that he only had one small table for two free, which was smack up against what looked like a univeristy student, scribbling away in her notebook, head down, and I asked: Is there not a more private table opening up? There wasn’t. So off we trundled, my left upper lip in a sneer, to sit down next to the scribbler twisting her hair. Stella didn’t sit but dropped her bag and beelined for the loo as I sat down, with my attitude, harumph. I noticed the scribbler was dressed all in shades of acquas and blues as I swivelled my eyes left and down. Nice boots for starters. And as I started to scan upwards, planning to sneak a peek, if I could, at the face, she was doing likewise, and our eyes met in a dead on stare. We both gasped or at least we thought we did. In fact we screamed, and Stella came running back thinking I’d had some sort of seizure or attack. Then we all three screamed more, quite audibly, which drew over the host and waiters who thought perhaps that the two Americans newly seated were accosting this lady customer whose identity was not unknown to them. While, in truth, the Universe had simply arranged a surprise lunch for Jo, Stella and me in so wonderfully easy a manner that we could never have planned for ourselves. We slammed our tables together and sat and ate and chatted for hours. Jo asked why it was we didn’t wear our wedding rings. We told her. And she said we had to go directly to her jeweler on George Street, Hamilton & Inches—she had just come from there as she was having a real golden snitch made for a charity event—and we were to tell the head clerk that “the golden snitch lady sent” us, and that we did, to which he, replied, “yes well, let me sharpen my pencil,” meaning let’s see what kind of discount I can offer on the two rings we’d picked out. I loved my ring. It looked like the ring. As in The Lord of the…but I lost it this winter after nearly exactly a decade.


Yesterday, S had to go to Frankie’s. And I had the day to really space out and make up for lost time. Met for lunch at Quotidien then had a little lie down before our appointment with an old client we hadn’t seen in many years. Like all our clients, this one leads an extraordinary life but perhaps a bit extra so than most. I don’t know. We had dinner at East Pole which was meh. Anyway continuing from yesterday’s rememberances:

But here’s the weird thing. First, since I lost my ring, it made the loss of those aformentioned people pale in comparison and it completely cured me of any pangs or angst on that subject. The second thing that happened was that I kept getting the phrase in my mind: The ring is a Horcrux. Now I’d like to say I know so much about the Harry Potter world that I could immediately rattle off to you what a Horcrux is, but I couldn’t, and I didn’t bother to even look it up until this morning, despite the fact this phrase has been being repeated in my brain since my ring’s loss. What I did have the greatest sense of, though, without knowing what a Horcrux really was…was..that somehow the ring being flung out there into the snowy world amplified a certain spiritual power and connectedness. I can’t quite put it into words but I’ll try: It has something to do with my mother who passed around the time I purchased the ring. Okay, however strange this sounds, my sense was that the ring, flung out there somewhere, instead of being on my finger, was taking on the form of a remote receiver, like a power station, and that it is actually functioning as a transmittor between not only me and my mother, but me and whatever powers from which I draw my own brand of psychic ability. And that the loss cum sacrifice of this ring, which I came to possess in the first place by way of a very lovely and entertaining cosmic joke, not only provided healing and closure on some pretty serious emotional pain, but it has become far more a source of strength and power than it ever could have been in my sweaty-palmed possession.

So, as I said, I looked up the term Horcrux this morning and it does serve a similar function to what I sensed my ring was providing, in that it is an object of power in which is hidden a fragment of the soul of the person who created it. The Horcrux anchors one’s soul to the earth if the body is destroyed and the more one makes the closer one gets to immortality. The upshot is they’re evil and only created by a Dark witches or wizards. Any opinions on my person from certain quarters not withstanding, I am a very white warlock and so I believe my ring to be the Light version of a Horcrux, designed not for some future immortality but for a very present sense of divinity. Interestingly, the Greek root hor- has two meanings: the first being boundary, as in the word horizon, which seems to define J.K. Rowling’s Horcrux, being that it is bound to its creator, and it binds him or her to the earth; the second meaning of hor-, however is hour, as in the word horoscope, something not unfamiliar to me. I cast my horoscopes as I cast my ring.


We had the worst weather for driving yesterday. It was so stressful. There was no visibility. And I was a bit nervy from all these nights out in a row. So we decided to stop some place on the water in Connecticut. It was horrible. First they put us on the same floor, in the same block of rooms, with a family reunion with a surplus of badly behaved, loud children who made the hallway their personal playground. No. So we moved to two more rooms until it was palatable. We ate in the “lounge” for lunch which was not good. They also had a “tony” Italian restaurant where we had dinner at it was almost worse. Couldn’t not wait to get back on the road. And now we return to more remembrances and inferences on the Sabian Symbols from Blagues past in honor of the fact that if I have to write another word I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.

Excuse me, waiter? There’s a Macrocosm in my Microcosm.I’m already sensing a pattern within a pattern. That is to say that I think the twelve signs of the zodiac might very well impact these 360 degress of Sabian Symbols in turn. I just read brief synopsis of the first twelve, and I can easily see how each of the zodiac signs, Aries through Pisces, influence the first twelve interpretations, in sequence. So, without jumping too far ahead, I’m going to be looking for that pattern to repeat. If this turns out to be the case, or just the signature basis of my interpretation, well, I’d be happy either way. I’d like to feel, of course, that I’m not just doing a Julie & Julia, serving up recipes of interpretation by rote, but rather just taking the title of the recipe and freestyling. But yes: 1° Aries was all about birth and emergence and objectivity (all very Aries stuff) while 2° Aries was about self-reflection and our nature and subjectivity (so Taurus) and today, moving into 3° Aries, the Sabian Symbol for which is The Cameo Profile of a Man Suggesting The Shape of his Country, the theme of which is intersection, identifying with community, sussing up immediate surroundings an understanding the playing field (very Gemini indeed).

As I communicate this theory I realize how laborious it would be to do this every day in my interpretations, so I will leave off it moving forward, keeping the nothin in the back of my mind. A cameo is a quick rendering, an outline, an immediate encapsulation and likeness. It speaks to our ability to know where we are and to what we belong. It is associated with the Logos, our ability to name and identify and give life to our identity within a context. Here, today, we identify with some whole and the larger life it expresses. Spiritually speaking it is the connection of our Atman with Brahman—also very Geminian considering that sign’s duality on the theme of divinity. Stop I said. Here we identify so much with a group or even a notion that we become it’s life. When we are representing some whole, acting as it’s agent, and I am borrowing, now very heavily, here, from my hero (and my Julia Child, if I were to have one), the great humanist astrologer Dane Rudhyar, whose birthday it is today (I just realized!), in saying that this Sabian Symbol touches upon leading a transpersonal life. That is to say that we are not mere spokespersons for our surrounding but the conduit through which the whole expresses itself. When we give ourself over to cause or country we do take on a Christ-like nature. We are the face, the “cameo”, of the larger portrait, the collective “country” or environment.

I’m kind of freaking out because, in my calendar, I had set aside this past weekend to work on the cause which I profile: The Afterglow Festival and The Glow Theatre that I founded in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It’s a non-profit arts organization and yet it’s so much more than that; and my assignment this weekend was to communicate, in written form, how much more it actually is so that I might inspire increased support and fundraising in an environment of increasing greed and obstacles. I know my boss (me I thought) is going to have me work nights this week accomplishing this task. But this Sabian Symbol meditation has inspired me and, as I say, it sort of freaks me out. As if the cause of what I’m doing is the real boss. That somehow it found me and made me it’s agent and I’m the conduit it through which it is finding expression and life. Because, really, it is so much bigger than just a weeklong festival in Provincetown or the starting of a sustainable new theatre company, it’s the spirit of the place that is seeking salvation: Provincetown is the birthplace of the modern American stage; this is a fact. And though it’s also noteworthy fine-arts heritage has remained intact for over a century, it’s theatrical heritage hasn’t been so fortunate. People buy fine art because they can own it and it lasts. When it comes to the seeming ephemeral nature of a theatrical experience, people can be short-sighted perhaps. In any case, in what was once a haven for artists living among the local mainly fisherman community has become an enclave of realtors selling second homes to people who barely inhabit them or who bought them for the sole purpose of renting them out to tourists to whom nearly the entire town and its businesses cater. Some establishments cut and run, making bank enough in the summer months to justify their existence; others complain that there isn’t enough year round business and they want more, more, more.

The glare of the on-season is rife with gimmicks and themes to attract collectives of tourists under the guise of diversity whilst really its just serial homogeny that’s being served up. Provincetown is like a great aged actress turned out to turn tricks. It’s artistic theatrical soul is in danger and in need of saving. And, for whatever reason, I’ve become a cameo for this country. Dane Rudhyar says this symbol characterizes Participation in a Greater Life. I’ll buy that. I feel as if my campaign for Provincetown’s theatrical heritage is akin to that of Save Venice. But instead of saving the town from literal rising waters—although something tells me those are coming too—I seek to rescue it from its baser nature and the voracious sea of mediocrity, mendacity and greed. I see a Provincetown, with all its lamplights glowing, all the year round, hotels and inns filled with theatergoers gathered together to experience the creation of theater. And I see theater as the single most profitable and sustainable industry that Provincetown can foster. The Afterglow Festival and The Glow Theatre themselves are just avatars championing what can be this whole industry. Sundance migh have started as a film festival, but it has defined an entire city and revitalized both it and our independent movie industry. I know Afterglow can do that for Provincetown and for the American theatre.


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.

Me And Magdalene

Sagittarius 30°/Capricorn 0° (December 21)

Yeah so, Monday, Monday. It can be a good day. If I can remember it not as a blur. Oh right last night we tuned in to watch JVB’s Christmas show which was really fun to attend. It has been quite a difficult year and the advent of some normalcy is really appreciated. I’m sure they made some good tippage—I’ve given all I can give, myself, this year (though I must remember to give to S’s organization). Today I really will get back into the book in earnest. It will actually happen. Not that I really did much more than just smooth out the opener of the next chapter and kind of reinvent for another page which is always annoying because I’m holding all this already written material but the trick now is just sort of marrying what’s there with what could be and that can be kind of a cool thing. It’s all about Taurus man and of course with a St two talking heads 77 and not because I was thinking outwords man but because somebody gave me a challenge to pick a bunch of albums from the year when I was 14 years old so I picked talking head 77 the clash daviau my aim is true by Elvis Costello and David bowie’s heroes and so we listened to those at dinner and then we decided to watch the Keith haring documentary and I was like wait a minute isn’t he a Taurus and sure enough yet he is and there was a keyword from listening to talking heads the album had some bonus tracks which were amazing and he kept using the word sensation and that fits right into where I am and my writing of that chapter and then also just like I don’t know what it is about Keith but you know really after Andy he was the next pop artist to mean to be popular to have as wide an audience as pop possible is pretty well it’s very Leo for in Andy’s case but Terry Taurus too and making him that much more accessible really not making so much of himself that’s the difference between Keith haring and Andy and that’s why the pop shop which never made money was so important it was like a public house so that was last night and yeah pretty fun and tomorrow may prove to be surprising on many levels oh I did continue my dialogue with Cynthia which is great also I need to make a list of people I need to contact wish a Merry Christmas and all that jazz used to make Christmas cards watercolors back in the day and sitting for hours and hours and do the same design but each one was individual and one year I did New Year’s cards I did snowdrops which was fun don’t do that again I wish I would have kept a couple for myself I don’t think anyone would have saved them they would Chuck them like they were just a hallmark card but I did put a lot of love into those cards those paintings I like being creative back in the day in that way I guess I could still do that I should really try to continue doing watercolor and I also love paper mache a whole hell of a lot.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1321-1325. 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.

Fairly lousy weather for our trip from Boston today to the far reaches of hellish Brooklyn. The journey takes one through concrete jungle at the end, past LaGuardia under construction. It is just the bleakest manifestation of urban life that I have ever experienced. But this has always been the case. Since I was a little boy, when my parents would drive around this part of the world, I would instantly become depressed, cornered in the back seat. There was a heaviness, a gloom, that I’d mainly feel descend into my sinuses. It was never sunny in this part of the world. If it wasn’t raining or slushy, it was hot and smoggy. There is nothing to recommend this part of the world. Talk about feeling like a rat in a cage. Even the terrible roads often have grim concrete overhangs. New York benefitted from some great PR, mainly beginning in the late seventies when Sinatra covered the eponymous song. But it has always been a backwater in my mind. The New Amsterdam rescued from the swamps extending into Bayonne, Jersey City and beyond to Seacaucus and other god-forsaken places to the west, just as the desolate sprawl extended to the Bronx and to Queens and Brooklyn and Staten Island.

I don’t know if I mention that I suffer from a certain bridge phobia which alters over time in intensity but has been quite bad as of late. It was inherited. Anyway, that was an added stress. But rehearsal went very well and lasted only a short time and then we headed (over Brooklyn Bridge, which isn’t the worst) to our hotel on East 64. Toni Basel was staying there. Otherwise it was pretty much a tourist spot, though we rented a one-bedroom apartment which turned out to be nice than I imagined. At this point we are pretty much rehearsing on our own and S. is doing her many errands and I am making my myriad necessary connections to extract the most from this week leading up to Christmas. We had a late lunch slash early dinner at Match—pea soup and steak tartare for me!

We headed downtown to see Vivian’s show and thought we were running rather late. Did you know that Uber added something like 100,000 cars to the Manhattan streets, which is why nothing moves anymore. No longer such a thing as zipping uptown or down. Anyway, there was a big benefit show beforehand, with Lance H. as musical director, and nobody was even going into JVB yet. Our seats were annoying—I have to remember that the seating chart isn’t that accurate when it comes to delineating separate tables. The show was fantastic as JVB’s shows always are. This one really was a topper. We had a slice of cheesecake and some wine and after the show headed back stage and reconoitred in the dressing room before heading, all of us, ultimately, for drinks in the Library.

There were a number of familiar faces and some new ones and we ended up all seated at a big sprawling table. I hung with Nath Ann and Claudia mainly and had a really great time. I was going to take snaps of lighting for our own show but I forgot. I mean JVB is so fun to be fully immersed in I just wouldn’t have split my brain in a way to “grab looks” but I did make some mental notes. A truly great evening all in all. Especially JVB’s rendition of Silver Bells and the opening monologue that descried how the show was accidentally titled Refridgerated.



I’ve decided that given the holidays and given my travels that I would dip back into the archives for material I may or nay not have presented here before. To be totally honest I’ve no idea. I was looking for a pack of stories but what I found wasn’t them. In part I found the following:

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

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

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

And then some which will constitute the next spate of entries that follow. And then, I’m sure, I’ll find a way to fatten them all up in the process of posting them. What I don’t want to do is overthink this. I have much territory to cover now and precision isn’t to be my greatest friend. I do still think it a wonderful idea to write a two person play about Paul and Julia Child; even if just as an exercise. Oh I don’t know kids. I’m not going to get to do everything in life at this point so I have start really picking and choosing. What I do know is that I have some past stumbles to right; that is one thing that is for certain.

======

I’m in NYC on this day, seeing clients as we prepare for tomorrow’s show at Joe’s Pub. Yesterday was rather tame. We walked around for hours in the morning, did our shopping at that market, Gracie’s or something, on Second Avenue, I think then had a solid breakfast at Pain Quotidien. We got some rehearsing in, made some lunch and then had a client with whom we had a wee wine after. We ate dinner in as well and it was a pretty chill day. Today, I’m feeling my oats a bit more and have a wild hair to tame. Of course this is never a good thing if you try to scratch such an itch. It not only gets you nowhere it sets you back. And all good judgment goes out the window. I’ll leave it there. Anyway, I had said a couple of days I go that I would revisit some old things I’ve written. This dates back to the beginning of this Blague.

The beginning is as good a place to start as anywhere. Better, I suppose. Like any first attempt at something there are bound to be mistakes and I will look back on this initial go at some point and cringe. But in just a few hours we will enter the sign of Aries, it being March 20, 2015. And my plan for this “astrological new year” is to explore the cosmic energy of each unfolding day from all different angles. I don’t know what those angles are exactly yet, but I have gut inklings and they’re fun to follow. I have a few notions in mind, as well, for ancillary stories and such that I will spew here. In fact it’s those notions that inspired the title COSMIC BLAGUE which, I needn’t tell you, is a play on words; as blague means joke in French and is also pronounced blog, so, well, you get it. I’m especially out to explore the notion of synchronicity this year, too, as it relates, for better or for worse, to the universe “acting funny”. When we feel we are the butt of some cosmic joke, or when we miraculously experience synchronicity, in both cases the Universe seems to have an intelligence and a desire, even, to communicate with us. And I’ve found the more you get into that concept, the more it does try to tell you something, one way or another. So I thought I’d share some of my experiences with what I’ve come to perceive as a droll if not an hysterical cosmos. The “Strange Phenomenon” that Leo goddess Kate Bush sings about, no mere coincidence; there’s that. And then we’ve those times when we feel we’ve actually conjured things into being, which isn’t so much synchronicity, but rather, perhaps, the working of magic along these same channels or celestial avenues that sometimes “coincidentally” lead to our door. So I’ll get into all that happenstance, but I’ll stay on track, mainly, by delving into the energy of each day of the year slash degree of the celestial circle as we journey, once again, through the zodiac.

Most of you likely know me as one-half of Starsky + Cox, authors, among other things, of Sextrology which is a popular “sexy astrology” book I wrote with Stella Starsky. If you’ve read it you might agree that it’s deceptively smart and sometimes pretty funny. The sex in Sextrology primarily refers to gender, not the act itself—our premise being that men and women of the same sign actually embody different sets of archetypes that speak volumes on their personality, emotionality, sexuality and gender- and sexual-identity. The most recognizable archetypes are the classic gods and, being that our zodiac is a western one, these gods veritably live within that mandala. The gods are gorgeous personifications of energy. We too are personifications of energy. And we maintain that people born under a certain sun sign embody a different recipe of cosmic energy than others born under another sign—generally speaking, breaking the entire population into twelve groups, or twenty-four, in sextrological terms. But let’s put people aside for a moment (although they are the most vivid representation of cosmic energy available to us): If there is a blanket energy associated with each zodiacal month of the year that manifests through all life and experience, then it follows that there are more niche cosmic energies specifically linked to each day of the astrological year. I suppose that was the 1990s pop-premise of that doorstop Birthday Book, from which we all got a giggle, glib as it was. But I know there’s more to each unfolding lotus of a day than the empirical notion that Marcello Mastrianni, Bridget Bardot, Dita von Teese and, ahem, yours truly were all born on “The Day of the Heartbreaker”; although a look at that list would certainly substantiate the notion beyond a shadow of a doubt. That was sarcasm in case you missed it, Sheldon.

So, as we start another trip around the wheel, beginning in just a few hours, I want to plunge below the surface of the observable and see if we can’t more profoundly delve each daily turn, turn, turn. I get the fact that, to everything, there is a season; but perhaps there are more specific purposes to each and every day. To be cosmically aligned with more subtle energies, those that, when grouped together in a monthly clump might be recognized as this month or that spent in one astrological sign or another, during which time, taken together, experience has the flavor of that sign, as do those born during it, might very well be possible. For the zodiac isn’t frivolous in my imagination, neither in depth or in degree. Depth-wise, it is a symbolically rich system encoded with myth and mystery—in terms of degree, each day of the year could have a sacred significance. And sure, if people (again the best living symbols we have) born on a given day point to what that significance might be, their collective roles and tendencies are worth considering. I will surely be exploring the Sabian Symbols—more on those later—which have long fascinated me and, I suspect, will help open a doorway onto what the larger point is of, well, each point on our 360-degree circle of 365-6 days. Astrologers examine the significance of the signs of the zodiac all the time, a month at a time. But getting down to the nitty gritty of the daily grind of the cosmic wheel? Beyond the light entertainment of daily horoscopes, it’s not really done. So I want to get into it. My sense is that I will feel more aligned with the cosmic clock and better understand what makes it tick, tick, tick. If nothing else, I’m sure I’ll learn something along the day and, perhaps, stay that much more in the moment or, at least, the day.

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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