Capricorn 28° (January 18)

I have been awake all night and I have to be very careful of my health at this point. The fucked up thing is that I will not get to bed tonight either until at least two in the morning. So will be about thirty hours of sleeplessness which isn’t great. There is an upside to this week though already as I have my ducks more in a row than expected and now it is really just over three months where I need to be my most vigilant self. I imagine, in that time, we might have more news on the real estate end so I’m just going to totally go with that flow. And, so what: I have to write for fourteen hours a day for a few months? It will be totally worth it. I can still knock this out of the park if I am rested, and that remains the plan. I have a total inventory of all our belongings pretty much at this point so that takes off a good deal of stress in itself. Live is just a series of boxes. It used to be a series of beds. I am going to put all self-indulgences on hold for a while and put all that time I waste into ninety minutes of yoga as the world warms up in the coming months. I mean, winter is a third over and that is very good news to me. I am making a lovely marinated shrimp for dinner which we will sautée and serve, simply, with salad. Last Tango in Halifax added yet another season and suddenly I feel like I’m watching oldie television. It will be back to Lupin which I also love. Desperate for the return of Call My Agent. First an Inauguration on Wednesday and the return of the show on Thursday.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1461-1465. 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 had a dream last night that I was at a Roches concert and it was Maggie Roche’s birthday so we were all to gather backstage, afterward, to have a little party. The venue was a cross between the old Bottom Line and Joe’s Pub, back in the day, before they made renovations. I awoke at 5:20 and had opened my laptop by 5:40 and the first thing on my FB feed was a posting by Suzzy Roche talking about how she once wrote Mother Teresa to ask for permission to perform a Christmas show and send the proceeds to her and her charity. She didn’t hear back but performed the show anyway. Then months and months later a response from Mother Teresa arrived, delivered without a stamp!!! I could read snippets only of the letter on FB but it talked about the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing and it was very thankful and offered blessings and was signed by M.T.  Then, somehow, Suzzy lost the letter and has been looking for it down through the years—the letter was dated 1988—and had never found it and it haunted her seemingly. And then just the other day Suzzy entered her apartment and there on the floor of her living room was what looked like a folded piece of paper which she almost picked up and absent-mindedly threw away. But she looked at it and—yes, you guessed it—it was the very letter.

I immediately posted about my dream and then directly seeing her post. I mentioned in my comment to her that it was Maggie’s birthday in my dream and in that moment I “realized” (or at least this was my flash) that Maggie, who left us over a year ago, must have had a hand in the rematerialization of that cherished letter from Calcutta all those years ago. Though it’s not my cosmic experience primarily, I felt it perfectly fit one of the original criteria of this Cosmic Blague, which was, is, to relate experiences of inexplicable nature along with the Universe’s “jokes on you/us all.” This is no joke (a phrase I can’t not hear in my brain as spoken by Kate McKinnon in an Australian accent from the movie Rough Night). If you haven’t seen that film, by the way: You should.  Anyway there was a sense of faith being restored upon waking today. What I didn’t tell Suzzy (because she’d think I’m a weirdo) is that she and her sisters have factored into my dreams for decades. I have been a huge fan ever since I first heard the record in my college freshman-year dorm. And I saw them at least a dozen times over the years in various forms and am friendly with Terre whom I love and admire and respect deeply. I don’t know Suzzy personally. The sisters occupy different spheres. But Suzzy is a Libra like me. Terre is the opposite sign of Aries, which isn’t all that opposite to Libra at all. That was the most pleasurable bit of productinating I have ever done! Now to get back to the actual work at hand. Wish me luck people.

Of all the cosmic things that can, would or do happen, yesterday likely proviced the most cosmic of occurances to date in the present writing of this Blague (there have been some freaky experiences from the past that I’ve recalled here as well). The day started out innocently enough. We had gone to L’Artusi for a late anniversary celebration on Thursday evening so we were slow to emerge yesterday but decided that we would stick together and tackle chores and hit marks together. First off, I must say, that the two topics I brought up en route here on the train the other day were: Nicky and Sean from Tea & Sympathy; and my lamenting about Pastis and wondering what happened to it. So last things first: Stella informs me that Pastis is actually reopening early May (hello, when is it now) on Gansevoort Street, literally around the corner as we are on Washington between Gansevoort and Horatio. So we walked by there en route to the bank yesterday morning and saw they are nearly (but not quite) open. Fine. We also spotted a place to grab some lunch salads later. We headed to the bank to send a wire transfer to the UK, then strolled onto Thirteenth Street to see if those criminals were there. They were. I peeked into the shop which wasn’t yet open. We decided as we headed down Greenwich Avenue to send them good wishes despite the pain they once caused us. As we strolled by Tea & Sympathy I casually peered in as best I could against the glare slowing but not stopping; still I could see a figure with wooly hair crouch down and point to outstrecthed arms and index fingers at us with a twisted expression that just screamed: Oy!

Out rushed Nicky whom we likely haven’t seen in a decade in the flesh. And it was as if not a moment had passed in all these years since we were a regular fixture on the block and in the shop. She quickly caught us up on the news of which I’ve had some inkling—about maybe having to close shop due to the greedy owner of the building, well, buildings, plural that make up that side of Greenwich Avenue from Twelfth to Thirteenth. It was a vivid lament as is warranted. We bemoaned the loss of the culture in which we lived in this neighborhood dating back to the late eighties and all through the nineties well into the aughts. And then the conversation swung the complete other way with Nicky rattling off jokes just as she always did back in the day. Then Sean appeared and Nicky exited and he told us all about their house up state and showed us pictures. We said we had to go. And he countered before you do have you heard…I said I think we have and listed the punchlines Nicky had just delivered. Oh, right, he said but I’ve got some more. The jokes were all incredibly funny. We then went our merry way down to our favorite wine shop on Washington south of Morton. In and out. Then back up Washington to the flat when all of a sudden the thing happened…..

We were going to be meeting our designer and so we were need to crack a conundrum in the creative process, an impasse to which we were coming time and again, hopefully before seeing her. The operative word was star, in that we were discussing how to employ the shape vis a vis our own logo which is also something of a star, or what we call the aster. Anyway I don’t want to give anything away. All you need to know is we were conversationally on the star…when…up the street as we were walking we saw what appeared to be a white balloon in the shape of a five-pointed star hovering in the air in the middle of the street, such that I thought it must be attached with a string to a car or a street sign; but it started to float up and fly around and we suddenly realized it wasn’t a balloon at all. As we approached in descended and pretty much landed out our feet. We stared at it, just a foot away, but still couldn’t make out what it was or of what it was made. I reached out to touch it and realized it was foam, bubbles, like that which would have escaped from a washing machine overloaded with detergent. And then it lifted into the air again and flew past us hovering high above the middle of the street before flying past third, fourth floor windows and disappearing over a roof top. It was nothing short of weirdly miraculous. Thankfully S. took a video of the whole thing.

Our designer, A.,who is over from London, arrived and we chit-chatted and started in on the work at hand. And we said to her we have this miraculous thing we have to show you. And she said, “oh, did you have a Christian Dior moment?” And for some reason we just let that comment sail by like a star made of soap suds. I don’t know why we didn’t question what she exactly meant by that. So we worked and talked and got to the impasse we two had gotten to, catching her up in thought to that point, so we could tackle it together and unknot the problem so to make it into an opporunity, when we said. Okay, so, this is where we were in our conversation today walking on Washington Street so we broke out the video that S. took. And A. immediately said what is that white star? It was so obviously a star that even from far away, looking into a tiny iPhone screen, it was a perfect five-pointer. She was as astonished as we were. And then she said well really that was a Christian Dior moment. And we were finally like wait, what does that mean.

Apparently Christian Dior was deciding whether or not to start his own eponymous company and he was walking along the sidewalk when suddenly out of nowhere a brass or bronze star landed at his feet on the sidewalk, le trottoir. He took it as a sign that yes he should start his own eponymous collection and thus did. I will stop there.

Okay so picking up from where we left off yesterday, today being Sunday. On Friday night, after A. left, S. and I went over to Chelsea Market and picked up some Miznom to bring back and eat. We were overstimulated by the strange phenomena of the day and we stayed up talking till midnight. I had asked S. who, if any entity was behind the star incident, who would it have been (having an answer myself ready). She said Laurie and that was exactly what I was thinking. Our friend Laurie died of cancer a month after her thirtieth birthday. It is to her that Sextrologyis dedicated. Through her we met Rob Weisbach who originally bought the book (although his imprint at Morrow was dissolved when Harper Collins bought Morrow and he left before our book was published). Laurie died a decade before, but we stayed close with Rob.

Laurie wrote an unfinished novel which is hinged (see the Dior story from yesterday) on a character who finds a penny on the street and the story unfolds from there—in her manuscript she taped an actual Penny. We have the unfinished manuscript in our possession as her boyfriend, Peter, who took care of her till the end, gave it to us. In the novel there is a couple, inspired by us, who buy a farm. In 1998 we bought a property on Cape Cod that was called Mimosa Farm. IN the first week there we went to the local bookshop and Laurie’s best friend from her creative writing masters program at Binghamton, who we only met once at Laurie’s funeral, had moved to the same town and opened a book shop. That was cosmic kismet enough, no? It really doesn’t end there. It continues. A few years ago S. did a solo show at Joe’s Pub and while backstage waiting to go on she silently, secretly dedicated the show to Laurie. Peter, whom we hadn’t seen in over a decade, was on his way to the train for East Hampton; and suddenly stopped in his tracks. He had seen on Facebook or somewhere that S. was doing a show, and he was overwhelmed by the sudden need to ditch his Hamptons plan and to beeline down to Joe’s Pub. Imagine S.’s reaction when she saw he was in the audience, after dedicating the show to Laurie. So Friday night we spoke all about this the two of us and went over the entire timeline of Laurie’s illness and, S. thinks and I agree, processed the whole thing for the first time in twenty five years. Because it was twenty five years ago.

Yesterday we woke up had breakfast and we were meant to meet Alice at 1030 at Ted Muhling but we checked and the shop didn’t open till later. So we decided we would meet at 1130 instead at de Vera on Howard Street. Fine. We were early and kipped into Rick Owen (A. was also apparently early and was browsing around Open Ceremony). We went into de Vera and had a momentary misunderstanding and snit so I decided to go back outside. The shop is amazing but it has some heavy energy and I think it was messing with me. So I just gave us both a little space. I actually walked around the full city block and came back to the side of the shop–through the window I could see A. and S. were looking at jewels. I sat on one of those water valve things under my umbrella as it was spitting. I was probably sitting there for a minute before I heard “Oh my god.” And, will wonders never cease this weekend, it was Peter! with his daughter Praise (who is twelve and we’ve never met her since we’ve only seen Peter that one time at Joe’s Pub in, like, at least twenty years) and with him was another Rob, not Weisbach but Birnbach whom we hadn’t seen since Laurie’s funeral. Can you imagine the shock. I told Peter through hugs and kisses and welling eyes that we had spent the entire night speaking about him to which he was like: Naaah. I said you’ll see. We went into de Vera (which means “of the truth”) and S. started nearly shouting no, no, no, no, as she rushed toward Peter and hugged him, then Praise then Rob. It was too much. We filled A. in and she was blown away. Turns out Peter knows de Vera—they had had dinner together. So it wasn’t as if he was just walking by. He was headed to de Vera at the exact same time, practically as we planned to arrive. Can You. Dig. It?

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.

Capricorn 27° (January 17)

I am absolutely not sleeping. It’s at an alarming juncture. The days are all blending together. We have chat with Tim today which will go well but I’m surely losing my noodle

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1455-1460. I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

The summer plans are starting to firm up. And we found out we’ll be traveling mid to late July for our overseas jaunt. Looks like we will be sailing from Sicily which is kind of amazing. It won’t be the usual crew this summer which is a bummer but one should always remain open to new experiences and people and at least we will know a few of the folks. It is pretty great to have these milestones because you can see how much things have changed. For years it felt like not much ever did, but as we move forward, I see an acceleration in my accomplishments. In the meantime I have some major axes to grind. Here is a missive I just sent off.

As you can see from some correspondence below, the Afterglow Festival had several talks over the years about creating a Playwright’s Residency at the FAWC and to fundraise $30K to that end as directed by M. Actually the conversation dated back to a meeting I had with MM before M even took over. I met with M twice in person and he had suggested we raise this $30K and then, when I began to follow up, he changed the story on me (it was in fact like he forgot our whole conversations or at least that was his stance to avoid, I guess, following through on what was a solid plan.

Since D has taken over the Provincetown Theater, he has created a solo-play festival (which is the main thrust of our Afterglow Festival) and has even booked upwards of four artists (some performing the same works we premier) in effect poaching these artists from Afterglow which is a thing one learns to avoid in Tiny Town. Now I see that he is creating a Playwrights Residency with you along the very same lines as what Afterglow and FAWC discussed doing over the last five years. Our Playwrights Initiative already had bothDW and TK on board as advisors to the would be programming (and residency) we sought to collaborate with the FAWC on.

When I tried to get back on track with M and get an understanding of how it is our plans could be “forgotten” or go by the wayside, he became very defensive, and (the symptom becoming the cause) seemed to blame me for my reaction to his sudden reversal of our plans. Anyway, I wanted to go on record with these emails. And you can check any past log books to see the actual four times I visited the FAWC to discuss this. Once with MM, once with S.V., and twice with M, who finally green-lighted the endeavor and then conveniently back-tracked.

I know there is nothing you can do about it. And that you will continue to do this thing I proposed to FAWC, now, with the Provincetown Theater. But I thought you should know of all the hard work and planning I had already put into this and the Pulitzer Prize winning professionals I already on board as the Advisory Board of this Playwright’s Initiative. I will add that over the years I have cast D as a reader in Afterglow shows and even allowed him to direct a solo play that we premiered. I have involved him in what were our Theater Forums (which did in fact result in the positive overturn of the PTC Board and ultimately led to his being appointed Artistic Director. D has been well aware of our programming as well as our future plans. He surely knows our roster of artists. And mention of our plans for a Playwrights Initiative with the FAWC was announced in past outreach to our own board and sponsors, which is something I ran by Michael Roberts in 2015. It was ONLY when I ASKED Robert by email (again see below) if I could specifically say to possible donors that we were raising a separate $30K for this residency he said we should model on the Ohio group that he seemed to forget the entire two in-person conversations and back-tracked, proposing a watered down September event (which was impossible since it was the EXACT same time as our annual Afterglow Festival which happens each September.

You will hear years-old frustration in my note here today. And I must say that seeing a notice of your collaboration with D and Provincetown Theater has certainly stirred my passion. Because I have passion about this and I’ve worked hard on this idea over the years and engaged top people to help me and, as you know in non-profit world, so much of ones free time and energy goes into upwards of eighty hours a week at certain points in the year just to pull of the miracles we do with fundraising and programming and all the rest of it. As we have no brick and mortar, I was so happy that the FAWC had been interested in working together. And it was one thing to have those promises dashed by Michael four years ago, it’s quite another to see my idea now emerge between you and another entity.

I’m feeling my inner Penny Arcade today which means I’m a bit sickened by sycophancy and the loss of true artistry to the cult of worship and venal reward. Continuing the good fight to help truly progressive, emerging and veteran performing artists find more and more audience in a sea of gentrification. Translation: Time to crank up the fudraising machinery for our non-profit festival, series, and overall presentation work. To that end I will be working on this as a starter, editing it, massaging it into place. Something like:

Happy Spring 2019! I hope this finds you well and thriving. As the daffodilsclose out their seasonal performance here on Cape Cod, I too am in a spirit of renewal and thus reaching out to you and other hopefully returning Sponsors of the Afterglow Festival. This will be our ninth year; and there  has always been something magical about that number for me. So much so that, back in 2010 when I started this endeavor, I named the parent non-profit company of theAfterglow Festival, 333 Inc., nine being the number of the muses. And in our first year (though we comped many sponsors, colleagues, students and seniors) we ended up selling exactly 333 full price tickets! This was more than a fun fact for me—it still feels like something of a sign. And here we are, nine years later, hoping to continue to make some real magic.

In the ensuing years, the Afterglow Festival has preserved Provincetown’s birthright as the birth place of modern American theater and performance. The festival has premiered and developed scores of solo plays and pieces that have moved off-Broadway and to famed stages around the world—musical, comedy, dance, opera, hip-hop, cabaret and uncategorical genres—by artists who make headlines for their art and social narratives.

We have presented over seventy artists since 2011, many of whom have gone on to stellar career success on the stage, in film and on television. It was at Afterglow that much of our resident and visiting audiences first heard of artists like Bridget Everett, Cole Escola, Our Lady J, if not members of our own advisory board like Taylor Mac, Penny Arcade, Justin Vivian Bond, John Cameron Mitchell and other now more renowned performers. Afterglow has created a home in Provincetown for these vital artists who feel a spiritual bond to the town, to its theatrical heritage, and to our local audiences who embrace them.

Over the years, Provincetown has increasingly attracted big-name acts in season that garner desired revenue for the town’s for-profit venues. Then, suddenly late summer, the Afterglow Festival takes stage. And for the past eight years, Afterglow has won audience trust for its curation of superb live programming by performing artists they’ve probably never heard of, as evidenced by the steady growth in the festival’s annual attendance. Likewise, over the years, the costs of producing a festival like ours (including venue rental, travel and lodging for artists) have also increased, but with your help we may continue to bring tomorrow’s headline performers to Provincetown every September.

Afterglow is supported by Joe’s Pub @ the Public in NYC, where we have presented, for the benefit of our non-profit, group performances by the Afterglow “family” of artists. And in collaboration with the American Repertory Theater, whose directorship was impressed with our reputation and achievement, we launched our Afterglow@Oberon (formerly Glowberon) series, now entering its fifth year, bringing our artists to Boston-Cambridge audiences as well. The series has contributed to Afterglow’s overall outreach and praise by the media, from the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, PBS-WGBH and others.

Under a new 333auspice—Glow, “A Moveable Festival”—funded through separate grants and support, we began creating ancillary performances and small tours throughout New England for our arists who aim to entertain audiences with their works and seek to expand and evolve social consciousness more ubiquitously with their message. All of our artists, as it turns out, are activists of sorts who proliferate positive change in our communities, from local enclaves like Provincetown, to the global one at large.

As we champion the Afterglow performers whose careers have begun to soar since first appearing with us in festival, we continue to introduce and incubate new crops of gifted artists, giving them the opportunity to create, present, premier and develop new theater and performance works here in Provincetown; making for them an artistic home; and providing them sacred stage space to experiment, express and explore their art and craft.

I sincerely hope that you will return this year as a valued sponsor of Afterglow; and that we might welcome you to our shows, introduce you to our artists, and otherwise share in the joy that your valued patronage provides for our hardworking, devoted and talented performers, be they emerging or established, whom we are humbly privileged to present in festival. Afterglow 2019 takes stage September 10-14 at the Art House Provincetown, with special opening night festivities, on September 9, for artists and sponsors alike.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

It’s about 3PM in the afternoon and I hope to get enough of an interesting Blague hammered, here, with some speed and accuracy as I have myriad to-dos on my list today. What I’m most interested in doing is communicating to myself what marks I must hit on a daily basis, from May to September, as this is the time of year where I add a huge chunk (producing my non-profit theater and performance festival) to my quotidien grind, which by rights, should be anything but. I must admit I don’t feel particularly unshaky as my inner ears continue to have a mind and life of their own. But it does come down to more than that. There is a certain level of sobriety that I feel needs to be achieved; not in the traditional sense (although certain abstainance is always a good idea at intervals during the year) but moreso in light of my interpersonal relationships. I’ve pretty much spoken up where and when it has been necessary; and I’ve surely given both B. and D. (oh, and Sven, too) a snootful to suck on (and up); but beyond that I really don’t feel as if I am at war with anyone, or need be. I mean I never want to be at war with anyone, but that has not been my fate overall. When you are working in any kind of public arena you will brush, bounce, bump up against others who will (try to) use or exploit you in some way. I have had artists come to festival for instance and purposefully tell their friends and other would-be audience to stay away because they are “working in progress” and otherwise collecting the same stipend I fundraise for them, disallowing us from recuperating any monies that we do put out. I find that sort of thing reprehensible. Just as I find people at other venues poaching artists to be a sleaze move.

And then 3pm becomes 4:30 and you find you strayed away to make beds and vacuum the whole house and get the chicken stock going and shoveled the ashes out of the fireplace and flossed your teeth and put a sweater you need for New York into a delicate cycle and called Barneys New York in Boston to see if they can recommend a place to mend cashmere. And in that time you’ve also tried to further hammer some performing artists into slots for the coming festival and series seasons. A kingsized mattress was delivered. Did you know they come in boxes now? And so I’m having someone come and take the exiting one away. Also I think I found a service in New York City where I can ship my moth eaten cashmere to be fixed and they will ship it back. Something called AlterKnit. I have to ready the festival website for givers. I need to work through a casting list and get these shows booked. May is going to be a combination of reading through old Blague entries, writing a new one, working on rejigging the proposal, getting brain around sample material and format for all of the signs. Only on weekends and in the evenings can I work on the festival I think. There are only so many hours in a day. By June the rejigging and the sample content should be complete. And there should be notes on what might make a good show. And then June will be piecing that show together into some kind of script for myself and then I have all of July and August and a third of September to get the rest into works. I should be able to finish the HA books completely in July as my daily work on the boat which could be a lot of fun. August will be all about rehearsing and hopefully getting some musical accompaniment going. Maybe I can have Drew or someone come up and visit. But probably better to get a player here that can handle it or see if Matt would like to do it. The point is that we have a number of possibilities for pulling this all off.

I won’t even be thinking about the new circuit, either, until May or June. And that can be in the course of any given day. I will reach out to Becca at Endicott and see if she would like a repeat performance by one of our artists. I need to also put a letter out to the artists to tell them what I’m on about. September would be a great time to start talking to the corporate folks about fundraising for my “circuit.” I need to build allies systematically. And it’s all about units of time. One of the secrets of success. The difference between multitasking and seamlessly juggling is a very fine line that much is certain. Anyway thanks for letting me vent the disparate thoughts in my head today. (And spewing some resentments I’ve felt over the last couple of days) It’s been most helpful, dear reader, and I promise I’ll get back to more cosmic things soon. But some days I need to just be a human being.

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.

Capricorn 26° (January 16)

The blue meanies are creeping up. I am losing time schedule wise and I’m a bit lost in a swirl of anxiety.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1451-1455. I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

It’s Easter and we are in the sign of Taurus. I have the return of my positional vertigo, on the left side only. I forgot about it until I drove today to the fam. We only stayed a few hours and after another attempt we got off in Boston and I switched places with S.. I’ve got to get to the bottom of this which I’m determined to do. It really is starting to freak me out a bit and so I have to do all I can to keep whatever weirdness might ensue at bay as best I can which is to say not causing it. Sometimes not everything is meant to be understood. You dig. So I’ve told you before I think that the voice in my head is a black woman. I think that’s a really good sign.

The move from Libra to Scorpio is like a long day’s journey into night. Just as the first uber masculine energized first sign Aries is followed by its opposite uber feminine powered Taurus, here, on the other side of the Zodiac, Libra, the sign of high consciousness, is followed by Scorpio, the deep dark recesses of the subconscious. The only sign with co-rule planets, Pluto and Mars, the former being very much the underworld version of the latter: Pluto, or the Greek Hades, with his eponymous subterranean abode is the embodiment, as is his female counter part, Persephone, of not only our own subconscious but that which is still universally so: as yet unearthed truths, mysteries, discoveries, cures and clues as to the nature of our universe.  And whether in their own mysterious interior, or in that of those in their lives, or people, society, in general Scorpio people are determined to get to the bottom of what’s making everyone and everything tick. Thus, they are the first to tune into theticks of people, places and things, seeing their way into that which others might be (consciously or subconsciously) hiding and that which is kept hidden, secret, taboo culturally and sociologically.

Scorpio is the fixed-water signs–fixed signs being the second in a trio of signs—cardinal, fixed, mutable—that make up each of the astrological quadrants. Scorpio is the middle sign in the third quadrant, that which correlates to the intellectual and experiential realm of life, how one relates to other individuals and groups. One of Libra, which kicks off this quandrant, is We are (opposing the sign of Aries, I am); while Scorpio’s mottos are We have(opposing the sign of Taurus, I have) and I desire. Fixed-signs, fortify, intensify, concentrate and distill. Fixed-water translates to ice, minerals, crystals and, by extension, gems wrought by subterranean heat and pressure. Macrocosmically, gems, jewels are a metaphor for the as yet hidden meanings and wisdom and other such discoveries which effect us all, collectively, as well as repressed bits of ourselves awaiting to be mined. Scorpio people tend to be probling of others but rather sphynxlike themselves, guarded. The sign has many totems—the scorpion, the spider, the serpent, the lizard, the dragon, all of which lie in wait—the phoenix too which rises and falls, like the eliptical path of planet Pluto. Rising from the ashes is a metaphor for regeneration, which is the partcular power associated with this sign and it’s transformative planet. The eight house rules sex, death, sleep, all mechanisms of rejection; yes astrology includes death in this, creation/destruction being part of the same ceaseless cycle of rebirth. The symbol 8 is the lemniscate, the symbol of infinity.

Pluto and Persphone are chtonian deities, inhabiting the underworld; as archetypes for those born under the sign, it speaks to Scorpio people’s severe penchant for privacy, default suspicious demeanor, their relatively goth perspective that sees them recoil from scenesters, showoffs, socialites or the like who seek outside approval, something Scorpio people rarely do, and sometimes to a fault. Pluto is also god or riches (why rule by the rich is called Plutocracy). Pluto’s jeweled palace is heavily guarded. IN medieval myth, this theme carries through: Precious gems are guarded most fiercely by the dragon, just as our own demons of fear, shame and repression might surround those of our own wisdom and desire and which must ultimately be slayed. Scorpio people are the most in touch with their secrets, even as they keep them guarded, and they can seem wrapped up in themselves for the very reason that they are dealing with their interior world, first and foremost. Externals are all secondary. They are also more aware of what their personal demons might be—whether or not they succeed at eridcating them, they certainly don’t avoid them; that said, they are loath to share their private struggles with others. Sometimes they revel in their hidden truths, leading secret lives invisible to would-be prying eyes. The god Pluto wore the original cloak of invisibility, and, metaphorically speaking, Scorpio people tend to rock that article of concealment.

Of course Earth Day is Taurus. Somehow that makes me happy. What happened on this day was that we had ad hoc meeting moments most of the day. We sometimes schedule and postpone actual meetings about specific business concerns or, say a budget meeting, but somehow have these bouts of brainstorming where neither of can turn it off, which is always fueled by a busy schedule, as if you’re just sneaking in thoughts in something of a panic. While I”m thinking of it. Oh I just wanted to say this aloud. It occurs to me. And all that jazz. Been watching FosseVerdon and it really is a treat. Michelle Williams is everything and I never use that turn of phrase because I think it is stupid. We had a shared meeting with our new agent and S. spoke to Alice earlier. I think we should head to the UK as early as possible. I looked into flights to Sicily and there is nothing direct. So I think we might choose to go through the UK. Anyway we can save money and piggy back where the piggy backing’s good, we will.

The Sagittarius Experience

The third quadrant of which Sagittarius is the third sign is all focused on the mental plane, Libra being highly conscious and Scorpio deeply subconcious, then comes Sagittarius which is expansive enough to include the two. All mutable signs (again, the third in any quadrant), somehow combine the energies of the preceding two signs. Here Sagittarius blends the brilliantly concious with the cavernous subconcious into a superconscious or supraconcsious (I really do need to look those two words up). Only William Blake, a Sagittarius, would write a Marriage of Heaven and Hellor Sagittarius Samuel Clemens rename himself Mark Twain, a play on the words, the mark (or point) between. Sagittarius is mutable fire which translates to wildfire, particuarly the kind one finds in the sky, that is to say, lightning. Named for the wild-eyed lightning wielding king of the gods, Jupiter is not only the chief planet size wise in our astrology, all other planets fitting super comfortably in it, it also signifies the energies of growth, plenty, generosity, optimism and expansion in all forms, but especially that of the mind as it relates to the spirit. Fire symbolizes spirit so all the fire signs focus on the metaphysical level. It’s the most shamanistic of signs. It’s the stream of consciousness. It’s psychedelic and bent on breaking beyond boundaries of perception. It is about connecting the mind with the spiritual plane and is thus associated with visions and the pineal gland, the seat of the third eye.

Knowledge, philsophies, belief-systems all belong to the Sagittarian estate. “Knowledge is Power,” said Auntie Mame, a modern emanation of the female archetype, the sister-wife of Jupiter, Juno (Greek: Hera) who was goddess of women, but of power and knowlege too (as e’er this particular twain shall meet?) as it was her divine gift to bestow omnipotence or omniscience (or both) upon Paris who didn’t choose her best-in-show in his eponymous Judgement. Supreme power is what makes Jupiter/Zeus and Juno/Hero the couple to beat on Mount Olympus. And like Jupiter who can shoot lightning fire from his finger tips, Juno, too, possesses the ability to radiate outward from her entire being in such brilliance that it blinds and sometimes completely combusts those who behold her thus beaming. And speaking of knowledge: Historically, Sagittarius women in the greatest number comprised the list of most successful, world-renowned women writers to achieve global recognition. Austen, Dickinson, Cather, Wharton, Sand, Alcott, Emily Bronte the list goes on and on, proving how the proliferation of knowledge, to be an author who catches like wild fire at a time before the telegraph, and not that long after the printing press, is tantamount to greatest power and influence over the minds of many. And how else could a woman become a global sensation but to radiate outward in the expression of her creative intellect. The sign shares an “opposite” axis with Gemini, the buzzy mutable air sign of information which feeds into said Sagittarian knowledge. It also takes the dual energy of Gemini and combines it into somethint tertiary—again, that mark ‘twain.

One such person Hera burnt was Semele, the pregnant mortal mother of Dionysus. But she didn’t have to do it herself this time; instead she tricked her into asking Zeus to revel himself in full glory, which had the same combustive result; and Zeus had rescue the unborn Dionysus, sewing him into his own thigh (the body part ruled by Sagittarius) to finish his gestation. The thigh is the body part ruled by Sagittarius and the myth speaks to the struggle for power between the sexes, too. Jupiter gives birth to his own son, now, usurping the most feminine power to bring forth life. And Juno detests Dionysus more than any other god. Her dislike for him symbolizes the uneasy power strugle between the traditional ancient force she embodies and the would be usurpation of this power by the patriarchy whidh is personified by this “new” male god, inheritor of Jupiter, or his own youthful (re-)incarnation.. Dionysus is a most Sagittarian archetype in his own right, being the god of extremism in a number of forms. He is the ecstatic god of the orgy and, of course, wine, the classic drug of choice for expanding ancient minds, debatably associated with disorder.

We do see his character in famous outré male figures like Nero, Blake, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Ludwig van Beethoven and of course Twain who came and went with Haley’s comet. There is something of the wild man in every Sagittarius, a nod to being the sign of the Centaur, thus half beast; while Dionysus represents nature asmale, he is god of ritual madness and religious ecstacy, a liberator and rule breaker and the only Olympian god to have a mortal parent. He isn’t pre-civilization wild, but rather embodies liberation from the restraints of existing society, the return to a natural state. Thus his rites entailed the drinking of his wine and frenzied dancing, opening up the consciousness to altered arguably higher states while recapturing the wild animal state of being as well and a return to primordial nature. Though it mightn’t have appeased Hera, Dionysian cults and rites were mainly associated with, and driven by women, along with slaves, outlaws, foreigners and the otherwise marginalized. The rites included dancing to rhythmic beats, flinging ones head back, so to break on through to the other side. Sagittarius is the energy of lightning flashess of genius, where it borders on madness, blowing ones own mind. We still see this same triggering of ecstaticism in evangelical churches, in voodoo practice, and in native american rituals. Sagittarius is the sign of the jazz, rock ‘n roll and the Beats (itself a combined duality of being beaten down and also beatific, raised high, all at the same time).

Right there was this guy in my dream last night who was kind of priestly looking. I think he was from Chatham or some place like Cornwall or some dream composite of the two. And I felt this mixed vibe from him, like he was crushing on me but also this disciplinarian figure that had some kind of power over me. Whatever. I never want to have to fully interpret any dream. I love robin’s egg blue. I’m on call this week for clients. I’m looking forward to waving some wands over people this year. It is time for some graduate-level self-actualization. Meanwhile little by little. I have many thoughts swirling today after the talk with our agent and what work needs to happen to get to where we want to go. I also have to do a little reconnaissance on the foreign rights side of our history and see where we are with everything. I think that’s enough to ask of myself in the coming days. Sneaking in little moments is a very good idea when it comes to any activity on the signs. So today I’m delving the world of Capricorn.

I

The Capricorn Experience

Capricorn is a correction itself to the excesses of the previous sign of Sagittarius. It is the cardinal earth sign, one symbolic interpretation being a mountain, something conical offering containment with alone or in a range. The horn too, akin to a mountain (the Matta Horn, or mother mountain), as befits this sign of the goat. Capri-corn literally means goat horn, the cornucopeia, or horn of plenty and the container of said bounty. Coming off the sign of Sagitarius which is expansion, growth, more, more more. Capricorn says enough is enough (Donna Summer is born under the sign). Capricorn is the energy of containment and restriction and thus of preservation. Mountains symbolize permanence if not the eternal itself. This fits the sign’s rule over the astrological tenth house which rules traditions. The planetary ruler is Saturn, named for the deposed god of the good ol’ golden age, (Greek: Cronus), who carried a scythe or sycle, with the planet symbol itself, even, recalls; he’s the prototypical old father Time, his Greek name linked to the chronological. His wife Rhea (Cybele or Ops, mother of the gods) is the mountain goddess in her mountain fortress, her diadem a turret; and she took god form, as Amaltheia, the mythic goat whose horns contained ambrosia, which she fed to her infant child Zeus, whom she hid away, so he might escape the fate of his elder five siblings who were swallowed at birth by Saturn who had a prophecy of usurpation by his offspring eternally hanging over his head.

Rhea means ease and Cronus is a deposed god, now, over the hill. Capricorn energy is retiring, retreating, restoring, reserved. It is the power of restraint, one such superpower Capricorn people possess. Capricorn is quality over quantity, a mountain of personal reserve. Talk about staunch character. The golden age which the Titans Cronos and Rhea ruled was thus called because it was a paradise devoid of any vice or lack where gods and men lived together, the latter for a monumentally long time. Arcadia, the hilly home of the goat god pan, remained a sort of bucolic remnant, an echoing of the golden age. There was no ambition as the world was endlessly bountiful and provided. At their best Capricorn people embrace a similar mindset, refusing to struggle, though nobody works harder. Their emotional landscape is steep and rocky and not without some major landslides, but this inspires their development of sure-footedness and stamina. Endurance is the Capricorn way, which is the true metaphorical take-away of the sign’s grand-parental energy. We save up for retirement, just as we keep our reservoirs pure, whether real or symbolic of own resources, or those of our cultural tradition.

The Capricorn motto is I usewhich is to day I don’t waste, neither time nor energy, or fritter away that which is worth preserving on that which doesn’t take, but might only get, one higher. The goat is built for the ascent but here’s the rub: Capricorn is the Sea Goat, and it has this fishy bit, which carries paradoxical meaning. Water sybmolizes intuition something Capricorns have in abundance, it also signifies emotion which we hope will fuel the Capricorn, not drag them down. The Sea Goat is also the perfect being to inhabit a metaphorical moutain-lake environment, the reservoir formed by restrictive power. Shan-gri-la, like golden-age Arcadia, where nobody ages. Just as the cardinal-water sign of Cancer, the axis-sign opposite Capricorn, is the source, Capricorn is the resource; and just as Cancer is associated with the archetype of Cinderella, so is Capricorn personified as the fairy god mother, a female personification of one’s higher power. Capricorns, whose birthright energy is faith, tend more than others to be one and the same with their higher power. And on the male side, we associate going to the mountain with, among other archetypes, old Moses, who let’s himself go grey via the experience, just as baby Moses, going from mother to mother along the (cardinal-water) river, is associated with Cancer, ruled by the Moon, the mother principle in astrology. Just as the fairy godmother comes with strict instructions (the sign of Capricorn at the very top of the Zodiacal wheel, at twelve o’clock, the stroke of midnight) so too does Moses receive and thus deliver a list of rules and regulations, restrictions—shalt nots!—to lay on us, ten to be exact, the number associated with Capricorn. God also told Moses to build his tabernacle out of goat hair, one might guess, because of it’s enduring, eternal qualities.

We tackled the budget today which was great. What a fruitful meeting numbers might provide. It’s so unvague to balance and divvy and project, when, even in numbers later changes entail entering new digits and that’s it. The creative meetings are far more challenging though ulitmately more fun. We have a Skype with our friend Pete today to which I really look forward. The trick as ever is to get ahead of that thing we call the eight ball. I don’t need maybes I need yesses. I mustn’t tolerate certain people because they are part of the so-called community. If I rub people the wrong way that’s always code for me calling others out on their bullshit. Those who seem more tolerant are typically more fawning and looking for some kind of pay-off, making compromises so to get what they are gunning for. I’m not that person. I must go higher and lower. I think I mean that. I must go deeper not lower! That’s the difference. When I say deeper I mean into my own creative performance career. It is the thing that I am most uniquely engineered to do (but for reasons I haven’t given full focus) while I let go lightly of people, places and things. I plan this summer to know a great many of them, new folks that is. I also need to get some new people on my board of directors. Anyway let’s talk about some Aquarius bric-a-brac.

Following Capricorn, cardinal-earth, which correlates, among other things, with the old-guard and the edification of tradition, comes the eleventh sign of Aquarius breaking through all that with avant-garde aplomb. The energy is both revolutionary and evolutionary. The sign’s ruler Uranus is the awakener, sudden and sweeping. Named for the god of the universe it points that which is ahead of its time—the eleventh astrological house rules the future—and and all that is new to explore, and what uncharted territory, metaphysical or otherwise, one can boldly get into. That Aquarius people are known to be quirky or freaky is more than pop-astrology, it speaks to the mutant energy of the sign. Aquarius is the future in the present, the sudden and sweeping mutation, the oddity, by which, nevertheless, the future unfolds and, literally, all species evolve. Darwinism is thus encoded into the ancient Zodiac—those crazy Mesopotamians! The male and female Aquarian chapters in our book Sextrology are called The Visitor and The Vision, respectively. The former refers to the alien quality of the men of the sign, in particular, as if they are visitors from outer time-space; while the latter speaks to the revelatory energy of the sign, something which women of the sign, especially, embody.

Even the fact that Uranus is named for the Greek god of the Universe, while all the other planets bear the Roman verions of their mythic namesakes, suggest something of a departure from the norm that characterizes the sign of Aquarius. Uranus, meaning sky or heaven, has many a debatable and probably composite etymology. We derive the modern word urine from the name, and most root words have watery origins and associations, like “to moisten”—it is said that Aphrodite emerged from the sea fertilized by Uranus’ castrated bits (Saturn struck him down just as he was later struck down by his own usurping son, replacing him as chief god). Uranus is associated specifically with dew, which parallels Aquarius woman’s association with the goddess of the dawn. Ruled by this starry god the universe, and placed opposite Leo (ruled by the Sun) on the astrological wheel, Aquarius is associated with distant suns, a single star, if not the infinitely sparkled heavens filled. In the Tarot, the Star card depicts the astrological Water Bearer.

I have drafted most of next year’s Haute Astrology books. To be honest, I could put the entire enterprise into works within a fortnight come September. And that’s pretty much what it is I intend to do. Next on my plate this week is to tackle outstanding grant things. To get all foreign rights information to my agent for review. And then begin to reshuffle the new book proposal based on notes I have for doing just that. I have only one client this week, someone whom I feel I haven’t spoken to in so long, actually. Such that I’m really eager to reconnect. As I am to all the people. I will be putting things out. This is the time of year where I can start to be social and that feels really good. Just wearing t-shirts and jeans and a simple jacket. Yum. Everything I bring to NYC is going to be lightweight and roll. I bought the smaller size Away suitcase (in green) to match my bigger one; and now, because I’m determined to use it, I have to trick myself into wearing nothing but the same thing for days on end. Which, let’s face it, is what I end up doing in any case.

It’s fine to call myself an actor but it has been so many years since I’ve actually acted in a straight play and I’m a bit nervous about putting myself back out there. It will be fun to get together with the theater folk again, not just in NYC, but Boston too. And to see what might be affected by some determined action and attitude. I talk about feeling behind in my schedule but, truly, I don’t know anybody who is more hardworking and directive than I am. I hope that doesn’t sound boastful. But really I mean it. Truthfully, truthfully. We are on the brink of making a necessary city move but I’m not exactly sure where it needs to be exactly. Anyway I need to rethink some Pisces thoughts

Pisces is the final sign of the zodiac and, as its opposite facing Fish suggest, it is a sign of complete paradox. It is all and nothingness, the alpha omega, the womb tomb of existence. Pisces is the mutable-water sign, symbolized by mists, fog, foam, (French: écumefrom whence derives scum) and, thus, both potent life-giving primordial ooze and the miasma of dead and rotting matter. The twelfth astrological house has been called the dust bin of the Zodiac; but, we would add, with a focused imperative on recycling, as befits list last turn of the wheel that Pisces portrays. When Pisces George Harrison wrote and sang that life goes on within you and without you, he was expressing from an archetypally connected place. This misty mystical, mutable-water sign portrays non-material existence, something which we scientfically now know is the whole of all existence, so-called matter only truly being various densities of said energy. Ruled by planet Neptune, named for the god of the sea, portrays the cosmic energy of dissolution. In Pisces we are dissolving, seeing and venturing beyond the seven-hued veils of Salome, over Iris’ rainbow—both, among the archetypes of the previous sign of Aquarius—having now entered into a magical place, a lucid dream world, a blissed-out state of Nirvana, or some other such transcendent realm. Neptune and Pisces at once represent the estate of purest imgaination, and also delusion and hallucination. Lest we forget that magic and imagination share the same etymology as imagery, any sort of which is ruled by the twelfth astrological house, that of asylum or theasylum depending how you look at it.

In our book Sextrology, Pisces woman and man are called The Dreamand The Drifter, respectively, and, of all the individuals on the astrological block, they are best at giving in or over to life on life’s terms, dissolving into the here and now of their circumstance, if only sometimes treading water, seeking foremost to avoid struggle (all of which requires a great sacrificing of ego). At the same time, paradoxically, the are most able of people to sustain a belief in certain transcendence, whatever their particular brand of sublimity might be. No wonder the sign’s motto is I Believewhich is more than just a spriritual knowingness, it is a power, Pisces’s super power, that works it’s magic on reality, making it malleable. This is the true meaning of the mutable-water assignation, and of Neptune’s dissolving force: If all we perceive isn’t truly fixed, but fields of energy blending, one into another, than the so-called substance of being is determined by the energy we are, and that which we are putting out there via our belief. If we dissolve the impediments to them—circumstance and limiting thoughts—and we remove the notion of space and time (trusting in inevitability of the manifestion of our belief) that which we belief in, primarily our self, is already coming into being. We all have this power. For Pisces people it just happens to be frontloaded. They more readily give over to the plot of life as it is already happening, like a lucid dreamer must do if s/he would have the dream continue (any lucid dreamer will tell you that if you try to impose your will on the dream it will dissolve before your mind’s eye).

Pisces are the most accepting of what is and thus able to make the greatest changes toward what could be. Acceptance is the threshold to Love. Not the personal or romantic sort, but the truest, purest spiritual form of Love as the animating force in the Universe. The great primordial goddess of the sea, from which she emerged, is Aphrodite (Roman: Venus), later demoted to a lower-case love-and-beauty goddess when she enterered the patriarchal pantheon that struggled to place her. We also see her, in emanation, as the wife of Neptune, Amphitrite, his famed trident originally being her symbol as the triple goddess, as is the shamrock, the lily (Aphrodite’s sacred flower), the fleur de lis. Another name for Aphrodite is called Mari (the sea) and she is thus cognate to Mary, Stella Maris, the star of the sea. Both Aphrodite and Mary have sons, Eros and Jesus, who are embodiments with Love. Eros, which means love, like Jesus, is the eternal babe, yet he is also the oldest, most primordial of the creation gods, just as Jesus is one and the same with the father-creator. Aphrodite and Eros took fish form and we know all about the Jesus fish from certain people’s automobile decoration. All this to say that the philosophical concept of Pisces is thus: That if you were to remove all physical manifestation from the world (which isn’t physical but energetic or spiritual anyway) what is behind it all, the very backdrop of existence, is, essentially Love. And someone once supposedly said something like: blessed are those who believe without seeing.

Pisces rules feet which, metaphorically, speaks to Pisces people being parapetitic. Of all the signs, Pisces are the least moored to their origins, both in terms of their actual home and family rearing, but also in the assignations that go along with it. From birth, nearly, Pisces people move in a desired direction of character and bearing, most often fancying themself to be erudite, if not encyclopedic in their knowledge, with a certain lockjaw upper crustiness. They are indeed fancy. And we don’t use the word lightly. For Pisces people it is an actionable verb whereby they art-direct their own personality and, really, they’re very being. They always embody a departure from their roots and they will stay in motion (unless, paradoxically, they isolate and roam around an inner world of their own making instead). It is the belief that they can be anything they want to be and, to look at the feet, again: before we can walk on water we best believe that we can. Science ultimately proves many a belief. Like: all isenergy; and energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So the primordial soup, expressed by Pisces, is all that is and will ever be. Pisces people seem to personify this notion. They are not attached, as a rule, to people places and things; on the other side of the paradox, they are the most empathetic of beings. In Sextrology we joke that Pisces woman, in particular, rely on the kindness of strangers, being embodiment of the Blanche du Bois archetype (she wears della robbia blue which is the color of Mary’s robe); but Pisces people, regardless of gender, are at home with people, strangers, even as they travel the world. They tend to treat everyone equally, which might seem strange to their significant others or even their children. It’s as if they understand the impermanance of existence better than the rest of us.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree point of the Sabian Symbol may at times be one degree higher than the one listed here. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365/6 days per year—so they nearly, but not exactly, correlate.

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

Capricorn 25° (January 15)

Today I will do a major dump run and much in the way of cooking including egg drop soup. This evening we will chat with Monique and Mark. Flounder and fingerlings and brussel sprouts for diner.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1446-1450. 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 really can be quite a handful sometimes. I’m very reactive at certain moments and in certain circumstances, any internal logic to it being something that has eluded me. In truth it always comes down to feeling unloved or rejected. Add to which, being duped/extorted for money by some theater honey great pretender, are you getting my drift? You know the type. Charming. Princely. Never seems to do anything wrong in peoples eyes. (An accident just occured where I found myself writing about a person of a sign that I was originally planning to write about today and yet here, literally I am delving this character, and I feel I might be illumining the character of the sign, most universally, while just venting about this particular pill of a person in my estimation right now.) Anyway, I went over the top reading him the riot act. I seem to keep on doing that. Blowing things up. But I will justify it. Ooh. Libra. Justice. Justify. I get it. I do. I am the Law of Recompense. When people fuck with me and then I forgive them and then they block me out that bugs me. I get it. If you think through being a douche-bag who gets called out by a righteous Libra for said doucebagery,  who then also forgives you, you don’t want to see that person. I wouldn’t want to see me. Libra takes that Taurus mirror of vanity and shines on you—take a look, beatch.

And for the first time I truly don’t effing care. Why should I have to sugarcoat to save other people’s skin when those people could give a flying woo-woo about anything me. Since the world is going crazy, anyway, too, I’m thinking what the fuck. I want to take up all my righteous Libran space. I want to be a better diplomat (Libra domaint). This shit is going to be cut and pasted, for real. I dreamt of my aunt’s house in Lyndhurst, I went around to the back and looked in and it was sliding glass doors and empty I think and so I went around to the front and I think entered through the garage? or up the stairs? not sure. I think because my cousin Joseph and David Verm I pretty much had the composite “big brother” that I wanted, frankly. Now David has disappeared off the face of the earth (not for real I hope); he got sober and I think very Jesusy. Leading up to his going to whatever rehab scenario, he would be drunk on the phone hiding from his wife and kids. And I remember him post and positive about life. And then I don’t know what the fuck happened. I vaguely remember talking about Bob not giving Jim a certain promotion and how that caused tension between our family camps. David’s a Capricorn. Joseph is a Taurus. I am a Libra. That combination is a recurring theme in my life. That and Virgos. Every best male friend I ever had has been a Virgo, I’ve had like twenty some-od Virgo best friends.

I get out of my own way everyday. That is something I wanted to say. There is certain amount of Gertrude Stein I cannot live without, everyday. Coffee. Frivolous morning time, “I Love Lucy” on Amazon Prime. The Poetry. It’s a Moo Moo. All the Headlines. We are sinking deeper and deeper into the miasma and we have to hold hands and find our footing to pull ourselves out and it off. Under attack. Overshooting in the cause of freedom will never be enough. Life. That’s what I say. Do what you wanna do. Stop in the name of love. If you leave me now…baby I was born to…da-doo-ron-ron-ron, da-doo-ron-ron.

Back to the second beginning of maturity. It all makes sense. This is already enough. Why push it? There is nothing to be had from ushering along any directive. By the same token it does yield spare, most poignant, how would you call it? Things? We are that stupid. No. We are that stupid. I told you, I told you, I told you all those years ago. I told you in the back seat of the overly air-conditioned Cadillac in the summer of 1969, I told you, going over the Polansky Skyway something you would now never be able to do. And so callous

It actually just might be easier to continue to improvise than it would to come up with some major plan. But the weirdest thing is: I just don’t have all that much rattling around my brain. I am ever slightly challenged in starting my fundraising but also in casting the festival this year. But that always ends up coming together so I’m really not going to worry about that right now. The important thing to do is to move the needle or as we say the spoon. Anyway it does feel good to make some progress and get all the proverbial ducks in a row. I have started an inventory for the various subjects I am covering per sign. I don’t know if you know this but we actually have a proposal in works for a great new book which I am actually quite excited about. So here some thoughts on the sign of Cancer..

If the first (cardinal-fire) sign of Aries is big-bang creation and (fixed-earth) Taurus is the garden, Eden, and the (mutable-air) sign of Gemini is a snapshot of  munching on that apple of sudden consciousness, the Fall, then Cancer (cardinal-water) is the Flood to wash it all—cares and sins— away, to re-create and recover. Flood myths promise passage, deliverance, a simple, cool change, and promise itself. Moon-ruled Cancer is the energy of hope without which there can be no possibility. Someone wise said that. Water symbolizes emotion and intuition. The process of recovery is indeed an emotional one—the Cancer motto is I Feel—one that involves getting to the source of our human emotional being, which is where we tap into our higher power (represented by Cancer’s so-called opposite sign of Capricorn, not actually opposite at all but a higher septave, the relationship between the two providing mountains of metaphorical and metaphysical wisdom to be mined. Cancer is the source, the most vivid interpretation of cardinal- (originating) water; while Capricorn is re-source the mountain lake or reservoir. Cancer people are gushing and Capricorns reserved. Cancer is Hope and Capricorn is Faith.

And they say hope floats; and we venture to guess that whoever they are, they unknowingly tapped into a certain zodiacal understanding; Back to recovery: something we are all in all the time: Cancer people personifying this concept—Noah was a drunk, so he understands the notion of the Fall on a personal level. His personality is hinged on the transition from Gemini to Cancer. If the Fall is about experiencing life as a sudden split—Geminis are the most, and mostly benignly, split-personalities—then the Flood is about immediately moving toward the repair of said split. The whole thing about putting animals together, two by two, onto an airk is about re-pairing. And what is an ark if not a promise, one which we mainly hope we can keep to ourselves. The Cancer symbol can be interpreted as a crab, but also as two peas or seeds in a single pod, in either case floating along, not determining the direction, going with the proverbial flow. All of this, too, being a metaphor, to use a recovery phrase, for living life on life’s terms.

Life, to the Cancerian ideal, is in toto a process of recovery and rehabilitation, repairing any faulty infrastructure in our upbringing, especially, but also any family history pre-birth.  We all decide what we want to retain, and indeed recover, about ourselves, and that which we wish to be washed away, typically elements of self that block or undermine that which we are determined to take on our journey. The fourth astrological house of Cancer is a mysterious one because it rules both the home you come from and  the one you create for yourself; it is, in this way, a verb, a sign of action and movement as befits its cardinal status. Cancer people, as a snapshot of the sign’s energy, are on a journey from birth to mete out that which they want to leave behind from that which they want to characterize their future promise, their early conditioning from their own self-providence. On a less personal level the Cancerian experience is what we collectively pass on—customs, mores, folkways—which is no way divorced from the notions of putting things to rights, securing cultural identity and stability— and also real and metaphoric inheritances from family traits to heirlooms and property, actual real estate. In the Greek flood myth, where the pairing of Deucalion and his wife Pyrra, alone, withstand the entire wiping out of humanity, it is the goddess Themis who appears to them, having made it to the other shore, at the point of recovery, to instruct them on what to do next.

The fact that the authority figure here is female is fitting. Cancer is ruled by the Moon, the symbol of which is a crescent, a nod to the waxing and waning, which controls the ebb and flow of tides and all earthly liquids. The crescent also speaks to passage and a state of becoming, and therefore of potential and, again, the magic word, here, promise. Cancer via its ruler Moon are all about natural laws and rhythms, which emerge as feminine in cosmic thought. Unlike Venus, the other feminine planet in astrology, which stands for the power of attraction and ironic passivity, the Moon actively receptive, as oxymoronic as that sounds (all signs having their own brand of paradox. As a cardinal sign, Cancer puts out, but what it puts out are feelers which are, by nature receptive. And this is what Cancerian people of all genders do to varying degrees and in different phases of their psycho-spiritual development. The world of emotion and intuition, both forms of feelers one can put out, are the domain of mother Moon.

Themis, herself, is a mysterious Titan goddess whose name literally means “to put in place.” She is the incarnation of the will of the gods, the divine law and order of things, and what must be put in place, in our human experience, to adhere to this mandate. All flood myths are hinged on humanity displeasing (the) god(s), after all; so it follows that those who (have been chosen to) survive are ones who will live in compact with this divine will. Themis knows the future—she created the Oracle at Delphi and was its first oracular diety. After the duplicity of Gemini, Themis separates fiction from fact, demanding open honesty, something even the ancient gods thought made the best policy. Themis is a Titanesss, belonging to a pantheon older than the Olympian gods, with Zeus/Jupiter as their king. Zeus’s Titan father Cronos/Saturn ruled the golden age when there was no vice of any kind and perfect bounty and humans remained youthful, living hundreds of years. Zeus was her only consort—and remember it was he who ordered the flood—and among their children are the Horae, meaning: the right moment, embodying the correctness of order unfolding in time. And Cancerian people do seem to ultimately flow with the go more than the rest of us, though they may perhaps at first, in early life, more than most of us to let go and float on the great, ever-unfolding. Cancerian typically experience a sense of being held hostage by their childhoods emerging with a sort of Stockholm syndrome brand of affection for their parents whos lifestyle tends to run counter to the Cancerian’s natural order of things.

Speaking of being rhythmically attued: The Moon of course rules Cancer and it represents the mother principle in astrology and myraid other esoteric disciplines. Mother is the source of life, deliverance and nurture; Cancer’s cosmic energy of cardinal-water (cardinal is initiatory and forward moving) echoing that gurgling fountain, spring, source of the rivers running to the sea. Likewise the Moon rules the tides, natural, ordered, ebb and flow, oe’r the estuaries of our existence, the same natural unfolding and right order that Themis and her progeny prescribe. And Cancer people are the most capable of sinking into those natural or cosmic rhythms, as they are one with the same, synching with the process of life and the expectation of its right unfolding. Where the mental sign of Gemini might employ the power of positive thinking or other such tricks as befits its clever and mischievous Mercury rule—manipulate, bargain, wheel and deal, if not pull a few fast ones—to ensure certain successes, Cancer people picture that farther shore, the culmination of goals and fulfillment, meanwhile digging in, in Crablike fashion, keeping their head down, letting time and tide take them to the next correct moment along their journey, content to let it be a cumulative one.

Ironically, as much as the Cancer digs downinto his tasks at hand, in the here and now, the rate at which a Cancerian’s outer circumstance changes, in the main for the better, tends to outstrip other sign’s trajectories. To boot, the Cancerian might do the exact same job for eons, their usual routine altering little for decades, success finding them in their own, often very private process of making their dreams come true, seemingly on their own terms. One might argue, the Cancerian themself, that it’s much the opposite—that they live life on life’s terms, taking what it gives them, day to day, making hay while the Sun shines, and lemonade out of any lemons. They rarely chase success, nor do they overthink or strategize—they plot a simple course and patiently tack their way, becoming a font and fairly verbal gusher, of wisdom, knowledge, creativity.

Headed into Boston this morning and felt relatively calm. Dropped S in Cambridge and checked into hotel. Spoke to J and worked out some stuff. We have our final show tonight of the series’ season and we will do our usual and have a litte something first at Waypoint and then head over just in time. It totally forgot to cancel a hotel reservation, but thankfully there was no repercussion for doing so. I’m going to put something together for the festival this year in such a way where I can do it in my sleep. I have got to start making things easier. Putting more Leo thoughts to “paper” today:

The cardinal-water sign of Cancer, with its associative flood myths (symbolic of recovery), is followed by the fixed-fire sign of Leo, which is about the re-establishment, or restoration, and self-creation, metaphorically and metaphysically speaking. The fire element symbolizes spirit and the fixed quality speaks to a concentrated, stationary, magnetic quality. Fittingly, the ruler of Leo is the Sun which is the fiery center of our planetary system whose creative energy is life giving. The Sun symbol, a dot within a sphere, speaks to a sense of wholeness and being centered. One body part ruled by Leo is the heart, which is the center of our being, and it’s etymologically linked hearth is that which offers warmth and protection, gathering others to it. The heart does likewise, metpahorically speaking. The sign of Leo is a cosmic snapshot of this energy and Leo people themselves are personifications of it. Where Cancerian emotion (that sign’s motto is I feel) moves us toward change, promise and deliverance, the sign of Leo is the promise delivered, fulfilled—Leo’s motto is I will. The inspiring emotion of cardinal-water now gives way to fixed-fire, which is strong and steady burning passion, the eternal flame that burns within all of us. If Cancer is feeling Leo is passion, which is a sustained fire, requiring tending. Cancer is the want for doing while Leo is the will to do so. Leo is the creation, the building upon, the edification of our self-perceived purpose fueled by our will. Our willingness to bring about its full 360° realization. Another body part ruled by Leo is the spine, thus our backbone, our might of will. Not surprising, the Strength card in the Tarot features the lion, king of beasts.

Leo people are pillars of self will, which is always an inner battle that builds a personally moral strength. Leo people are the least likely to allow others or any obstacles to stand in the way of their creative or passion projects. And so they can seem, generally, guarded, so focused on the edification of their inner castles, that they seem an impenetrable fortress, exhibiting retiscence. We think of DeNiro or Madonna or, even, back in the day, Lucille Ball on Dick Cavett. One might suspect more warmth and simple affability from the Leo character until we remember we are dealing with some superior, near monarchical, sometimes tyrranical comsic energy. Leo does comprise our ability to rule the lesser, more beastly attributes of our nature which begs the quesiton: Are Leo people guarded against others or their own self-identified weaknesses, thus themselves. It symbolizes the divine right of kings (and some pretty fierce queens) that burns within all of us. To further delve the meaning of the rulership over the spine: Leo is about standing to your fullest height, embodying the energy of pride, a word that also comprises a group of lions. Leo is where our nobility lies, and as embodiments of that fact, Leo people never let their own majestic compartment slip. We liken cardinal-fire Aries to big-bang creation; and fixed-earth Taurus to the garden, Edenic bliss; Gemini, mutable-air, is the heady consciousness that charcterizes, the fall; and we said Cancer is the flood and also Exodus, the parting of the waters. Leo, it follows, is the age of miracles, the biblical book of Kings like young and gleaming David (who slay the giant, i.e. his own beastlly or monstrouus nature) and Queens, too, like Bathsheba, associated with feline energy, Sheba, like Cleo, being a de rigeurname for your pet kitty. Cleopatra, another Leo archetype, incidentally, means: Glory of the Father. And, whereas the Moon (Cancer) “the source” is the Mother Principle, in contrast the Sun (Leo) is the Father Principle, “the force”, representing opposite views of the universe, existence, as feminine or masculine, repsectively, goddess or god directed. Mother Moon is nurture and Leo son is authority.

Authority is a primary watchword of the sign, which goes beyond its face-value meaning of simply being in charge. It is more precisely about authorship—Arthur being a medieval echoing of the young king David, both being divinely appointed—which links to Leo’s astrological fifth house of creation, or more precisely “co-creation with god.” Arthur’s round table is the Sun symbol once again, often called the table of Hestia, who tended the fire in the center of the palace hall of Olympus, where the other twelve gods were in a circle enthroned, like the twelve signs of the Zodiac the Sun passes through in a calendar year. In Greek mythology, Helios is the Sun god-king; and as exalted as that might sound it’s a heavy responsibility, which comes with great Leo power. The moral navigation of being a ruler, like David or Arthur, weighed heavily on them. And like his sister Moon, Selene, does every night, Helios must drive his fiery horse-drawn chariot every night, maintaining a steady course, bridled with heavy responsibility. So is the life of a truly good monarch, the paradox being that they are at once the pinacle ruler but in complete devoted service to their subjects. This helps us understand the default frame of mind of Leo people in the main. They are divinely endowed with a healthy ego and yet they rely upon others loyalty and very audience to maintain it. Where the first fixed sign, Taurus, needs to garner an audience, Leo rather grants them.

Leo people are best at giving themselves license, authority, here, adding up to a simple green light. Leo’s have pride in themselves because their main objective is to make themselves proud. If that Cancerian flood myth spells promise (ark, in both senses of the word) then Leo is the keeping of it, the fulfillment of the compact, a word one associates with the rules, say, of a new settlement, which is the perfect metaphor for the Leo experience. The fifth astrological house is that of legacy, and Leo people more readily set upon building their “keep” as it is a signature pledge they make to themselves. Whereve they fix their fire, their passion, they will then build their world around it, seeing that it will provide, too for others on whom they in turn rely to help build their castles, lest they rest on sand.

Had a chill morning and met S. for a pho lunch. Then we had a meeting with some branding folks we know to see if we are a professional match on our projects. Then we took a long walk down Commonwealth Avenue, through the Commons, over to Charles Street and up Beacon Hill. We did a little jewelry shopping and then headed up the hill on Chestnut and worked our way over. A old man approached us—he didn’t give his name—but he did name drop his wife, Pamela, who cautions him about stopping to talk to people and delaying whatever errand he is on for them. He was dress all in black—shoes, slacks and a very fine knit turtleneck sweater that looked quite expensive but, I imagine, dates back to the 1970s if that’s possible. He spoke about how they bought a house on the backside of Beacon Hill in the 1960s for nothing. Can you imagine? This occured after they returned from living in Calcutta for years. Funny because we were thinking of having Indian food that night. It was something of a sign. The day has been all signs actually. I had an “episode” earlier today that involved a sneeze and my shoulder getting stuck up around my ear, and I’ve been rather sore all day. We strolled some more—checking out some mewses that (I want to call him Charles or Edward) told us to peruse; and then ended up walking back through the Commons where we saw a white squirrel that wasn’t albino. We had a refreshment at Bar du Midi and then strolled back to the hotel and had our supper at Uni. It was a fun day all in all with lots of food for thought (and just food in general).

Whereas Leo is fueled by pride, which is an imporant positive energy until it isn’t, Virgo’s superpower is humility which, by logic of the upward spiral that is the dynamic (not static flat circle) upward spiral of the Zodiac, is stronger than pride. We’ve said it before but the planetary ruler of Virgo is somewhat in dispute; traditionally it falls under Mercury’s rule, which also governs the sign of Gemini; while others believe it is ruled by Chiron, once a planet which was pummeled by asteroids and “disabled”; and others still believe there is a planet Vulcan out there…or rather inthere, orbiting between Mercury and the Sun, and therefore near impossible to detect. Wigned Mercury, the trickster, messenger god, is a perfect match for the mutable-air sign of Gemini; and it’s fitting for the mutable-earth sign of Virgo too, in a sense: Mercury embodies the two forms of magic—the tricky sleight of hand brand that matches Gemini’s mercurial and prankish nature, but also the more substantial form of alchemy which is the primary watchword of the sign of Virgo.

Alchemy is akin to medicine, in both cases ridding the substance/body of baser elements; and Mercury’s staff, the Caduceus, is, to this day, the symbol for the medical profession. Mercury was called Hermes by the Greeks and we speak of hermits (alchemists working in secrecy) and all things hermetic, meaning: relating to an ancient occult tradition that encompasses alchemy, astrology (hello!) and theosophy. Chiron, too, the wisest of the centaurs who alone among them rose above his beastly nature was taught by Apollo the art of medicine and herbs and is credited with the discovery of botany and pharmacy…….

He was in fact unrelated to all other centaurs, sometimes depicted with human front legs. He is mainly an abomination, at least according to his mother who, at birth rejected him and left him to die. He is akin to Ganesh, the original elephant-man god whose festival coincides with Vulcanalia, which is the first day of Virgo, August 23. Vulcan is the Roman name for Greek Hephaestus who wasn’t born lame but made so by his dismissive father Zeus who, enraged at his son siding with his mother, Hera, in an argument—flung him around the world which he circled endless times before landing and henceforth living without the use of his legs.

What the mythical Mercury, Chiron and Vulcan share is that they are all, like Ganesh,  healers. Hephaestus-Vulcan is a potter god, a smithy, an alchemist as befits Virgo’s malleable mutable-earth sign. Despite infirmiry he doesn’t wallow but channels his disability into invention, spending all waking time at his forge, in his workshop, making all sorts of nifty tools, weapons and devices for the betterment of men and gods alike. Virgo’s sign mottos are I work and I serve. Like Prometheus who elevated mankind by gifting them with sacred fire stolen from Olympus—this mirrors the move from the fixed-fire sign of the Leo god-kings (and some fierce queens) to Virgo with its everyman assignation, mutable-earth speaking to the evolutionary effect the stolen fire is meant to have on man. As part of the punishment Zeus doled out for this theft, he had Hephaestus make, out of clay, Pandora who with her infamous box brought all vice, first disguised by virtue, into the world.

Hephaestus is an ironic god of the human condition. He understands humanity and knows loss and humility, rare in a god. He knows that one’s reactions to loss can go either way, from victimization to victory, from self-pity or -destruction, from dysfunction to contribution,  to making lemonade from lemons. His crippling becomes the nature of his godhead, his superpowers deriving from being parapalegic if only a metaphor for being cut at the knees. This is true alchemy, the undergoing of personal change on the most human of levels. What is alchemy but getting the lead out? And, both metaphorically and metaphysically, Virgo is about undergoing such internal alteration, not sitting there like a lump of clay but making yourself useful, purifying oneself, removing our baser elements, obstacles, in the crucible of one’s own conscience. Hephaestus is more acurately the god of the human conscience and he is, like Ganesh, a remover of obstacles. The sign of Virgo rules the digestion which is also a metaphor for said conscience—munching on experience it metes out the nutrients in our life from the detritus. In the sculpting of Pandora, Hepaestus utilizes the best features of each of the goddesses, making her a composite of these. Pandora means “all given.” We see the archetypal roots here of the Virgo male character which can lean toward the Svengali, being (a sometime male-chauvinist) Pygmalion, the Henry Higgins molding his Eliza Doolittle; and we see, too, the roots of the Virgo woman being something of a borrower herself—of all the women in the Zodiac she is most likely to cherry pick elements of style and even personality from other women she admires. It came come as a shock to her friends to see her morphing into them before their eyes. Slowly though she will morph out of being a collection of traits into a unique composition of influences, which is true of all of us to some extent. She will also let herself be Svengali’d (if we can make that a verb) doing little to stop it. Get it?

The Virgo virgin, however, is not that Pandora but rather the goddess Kore (who will become Persephone once Hades-Pluto abducts and drags her into his underworld), the “daughter” and thus the maiden-form of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, coinciding to Virgo’s late-August-early-September time frame which ends the first half of the astrological year, at the Autumnual Equinox that began at Vernal Equinox. Demeter is also called Pandora, but here it means “all giving.” She giveth and she taketh away. That is the power of the Virgo woman, in particular, who makes herself useful in the lives of others but, if unappreciated, she will remove herself, leaving those who’ve come to rely on her lacking. Virgo’s mutable-earth status speaks to substantial change which doesn’t happen in a flash. Virgo reminds us that we are all works in progress and their brand of spirituality is devotional at its core.

We were supposed to shop together today but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it so S. went off on her own and I met her for lunch at our local seafood lunch spot. We had a client in the afternoon and thought we mightn’t want to do the restaurant thing again so we bought some picnic items at Eataly, prepared foods, which turned out to be terrible. So-called roasted sweet potatoes that were absolutely raw. We watched High School Quix Show (my favorite local Massachusetts program) and Beat the Press with Emily Rooney and Antiques Roadshow and an American Masters on Garry Winogrand. I was so tired I fell soon after it began only to awake with a start around two o’clock. So I watched, on mute, a program on flightless birds (which I always associate with the sign of Virgo). It was hosted by David Attenborough. They showed footage of him when he was in his twenties studying them and o.m.g. what a total babe he was—it’s sad to gay crush on an old man when he was a twink but wow he was so hot. I got to thinking: Someone should make a fictionalized bio-program about the Attenboroughs. It would be fascinating. And I’m not doing it. Anyway my mind goes to Libra thoughts today.

The sign of Libra is distinguished by being the only sign in the Zodiac that has an inanimate symbol—all other signs are represented as humans or animals or a combination of both. The word Zodiac means “circle of animals” sharing etymology with the word zoo. There are some straight-forward inferences in regard to Libra’s inanimate symbol Scales and some twisty turny ones as well. For starters, Libra people can be conceptual and they are motivated and edified by their principles. Planet Venus, which rules Taurus on the Earth plane, here rules Libra, the cardinal-air sign. Air symbolizes the invisible world of ideas and also social experience, as e’er the twain shall meet. Names for the goddess of love and beauty, Greek Aphrodite, the planet endows natives of this sign with and aesthetically driven mind and a love a beautiful, starry notions. Cardinal (initiatory, directive) -air translates to light, itself a word that has many conceptual meanings. In Greek mythology, Apollo is the god of light and a slew of abstractions including law, reason, order, harmony, balance, music, poetry, prophesy, all of which are very Libran in nature. All things being equal, the Scales speak to order and justice, of course; they also refer to music, there being seven notes to the scales. Libra is sign number seven—light itself is made up of seven colors—and the day sacred to Apollo  is October 7, which falls into the sign of Libra. In the previous sign of Virgo we emphasized function and the increase of purity, as symbolized by the virgin; now we are focused more fully on design, especially a design for living…and doing so in harmony.  The symbol of the Scales also recalls a horizon line with sun setting or rising, hours when the evening star Venus is visible, although setting is more fitting. Libra begins at the Autumnal Equinox, when the there is equal day and night; but the equinox also signals a midway point where the nights will be getting longer, the sunset, if you will, of the year.

The literal take on evening is not lost on us here, given Libra’s democratic energy. The sign’s two mottos are I Balance (myself with others) and We Are, both pointing to certain equality, just one of related beautiful principles associated with the en-light-en-ing sign of Libra. People born under the sign have delicate sensibilities and they eschew any so-called ugliness in their lives, which can make them activists for change on the one hand or avoidists who remain in ivory towers on the other. We have cited the character Amelie from the French film of the same name as being a modern Libran archetype as she works as an agent of karma, in a sense, the effect of the cause, retibution, as justice would dictate. Libra is all about leveling the playing field and elevating the social discourse and hopefully the conditions in which we all live. The beautiful notion of democracy derives from the energy of the sign, Apollonian order bringing to mind gleaming column-lined temples or the neo-classic halls of justice which emblemize Western civilization. Apollo is no nature god; like Athena, he is an urban deity, but an even more precious one than she. Many a Apollo myth, like that of he and Daphne or Cassandra, end in him being rejected by the objects of his affection. It would seem that his lofty expectations are too much for the earthy nymphs and even the more rarefied goddesses who still like to get down and dirty, something Apollo doesn’t seem capable of doing. Dickens’ Great Expectations is a retelling of the Apollo myth; Pip forever pining for Estelle to return his affections. Rejection and disappointment are major themes in the life lessons of the Libra man, in particular; while all Libra’s grapple with frustration of experience not being up to snuff or second-rate. For the Libra, who often needs a perfectly clean, ordered environment to work in or who will change hotel rooms or restaurant tables until the vibe or feng shui is just right, there is always the sense that things could be that much better.

For the Libra, who often needs a perfectly clean, ordered environment to work in or who will change hotel rooms or restaurant tables until the vibe or feng shui is just right, there is always the sense that things could be that much more soignée, conceptually, beautifully balanced. For these children of lyric Apollo—the very invention of the word stems from the god’s playing of the lyre—all must be poetry as much as it can be. Deterining whether it is or isn’t is a conceptual exercise, art being a battle of opinions waged against would-be abstract absolutes. Art hangs us in the balance, puts us on the Libra scales. And like works of art themselves, Libra people may divide public opinion. For all their understated elegance, Libras, being defacto personifications of principle, come on strong. On the other hand they can suffer from insecurity and tend to take situations, circumstance experience more personally than others. They can be intense in close relationship in that they were born to partner and naturally bond very deeply, synergy being the subconscious goal, to the point that the relationships itself will take on its own, third-party entity. And we’re back to the myth of Daphne and the other of Apollo’s love objects, male and female, who rebuked him whereupon he turned them into trees. He cursed his priestess Cassandra by giving her a certain gift prophecy, an aspect of his divine domain, which, paradoxically, nobody would heed or believe.

In the history of the pantheon, Apollo is not an early arrival. Scholars note that much of his artsy estate originally belonged to Aphrodite/Venus, namesake of the sign’s planet ruler. The second half of the Zodiac begins rather ironically. The so-called opposite sign of Aries (self) to Libra (other), Aries is a masculine sign fittingly ruled by Mars, followed by feminine Taurus ruled by female Venus. The second half of the Zodiac begins with Libra a masculine sign ruled by Venus, followed by Scorpio, a feminine sign ruled by Mars and Pluto. And so these feminine attributes of beauty, grace, love are conceptualized via the masculine, mental air sign of Libra into sexless starry notions. Apollo is not warm and cozy, and, despite his gleaming perfections, he is not his father Zeus’ inheritor—in fact Zeus fears Apollo will overthrow him. Thus Apollo is akin to another light bringer, Lucifer or Luke Skywalker (a rather parapetic interpretation of the cardinal-air insignation of the sign!). Apollo’s introduction to the pantheon coincided, too, with the ideal (a very Libran word) of the love between males being a higher form of love than the heterosexual variety in keeping with a cultural shift that now favored patriarchy, particularly in Athens, as opposed to feminist Sparta, where women had far fewer rights.

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.

Capricorn 24° (January 14)

This week is turning into a giant blur.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1441-1445. 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 I have to go back and regroup on the Pisces stuff I wrote and circle back around to Aries again such that, in the next six days, I have absolute completed drafts of all our books for the year ahead. I’m in the process of taking inventory of what I’ve said about each of the twenty-four sex-signs since I wrote Sextrology; and what new avenues I can open in the exploration of the signs and the people born under them. That’s the goal. Then I’m going to move into the search for material in the Cosmic Blague mines or vaults (a very Scorpio notion). None of the above happened. Instead I messed around all afternoon. I did write this though:

Year on year I reach out to you in hopes of even the vaguest form of reconciliation. As so many of my friends have become your friends over the years I’m often asked: “Why do you and Billy not speak?” It’s a difficult question to answer. It isn’t because of my confronting you about doing drugs in the Zipper Factory dressing room (when it was no longer ours but the next act’s) plus your going around Stell and me to get a gig there because that blew over and we were friendly(ish) for years after that (case in point the below exchange).

I mean the real answer is because you broke off all connection when I texted you to say “I’d like to punch you in the nose” when I heard you had brought heroin to turn on Nath Ann and Vivian. By the way Vivian didn’t tell me that (Viv did NOT want Stella and I to know it originally) but it was a mutual friend of JVB’s and ours who did tell us (much to Viv’s consternation). I know that later it became an anecdotal piece of entertainment but at the time I did not think it was funny and I was severely pissed at you (given my own experience with your more “pushing” inclinations).

But I don’t tell our mutual friends THAT either when they ask because the true story involves other people. So what do I tell them? Mostly: You’ll have to ask Billy. The truth is neither Stella nor I ever did anything to you but call you out on bad behavior. I know I’m not perfect and I could have handled things more delicately. But we never did anything to hurt you. In fact, we did everything to help you dating back: introducing you our NYC friends, giving you a computer, giving you clothes,  making you meals, paying you for even the smallest rehearsal (mainly as a conceit),and  promoting your talents  which you have by the bucketful, to everyone we knew

To my mind you found the smallest excuse you could to dump us as friends and I must admit I found it VERY hurtful at the time. But me being me I guess, I still reach out, pretty much annually, to try and repair what can be repaired and you just ignore me. The definition of insanity being what it is it’s probably crazy to think I’ll hear back from you. Maybe you can at least provide a better answer to the question: Why it is we do not speak?

Pisces is the final sign of the zodiac and, as its opposite facing Fish suggest, it is a sign of complete paradox. It is all and nothingness, the alpha omega, the womb tomb of existence. Pisces is the mutable-water sign, symbolized by mists, fog, foam, (French: écumefrom whence derives scum) and, thus, both potent life-giving primordial ooze and the miasma of dead and rotting matter. The twelfth astrological house has been called the dust bin of the Zodiac; but, we would add, with a focused imperative on recycling, as befits list last turn of the wheel that Pisces portrays. When Pisces George Harrison wrote and sang that life goes on within you and without you, he was expressing from an archetypally connected place. This misty mystical, mutable-water sign portrays non-material existence, something which we scientfically now know is the whole of all existence, so-called matter only truly being various densities of said energy. Ruled by planet Neptune, named for the god of the sea, portrays the cosmic energy of dissolution. In Pisces we are dissolving, seeing and venturing beyond the seven-hued veils of Salome, over Iris’ rainbow—both, among the archetypes of the previous sign of Aquarius—having now entered into a magical place, a lucid dream world, a blissed-out state of Nirvana, or some other such transcendent realm. Neptune and Pisces at once represent the estate of purest imgaination, and also delusion and hallucination. Lest we forget that magic and imagination share the same etymology as imagery, any sort of which is ruled by the twelfth astrological house, that of asylum or theasylum depending how you look at it.

In our book Sextrology, Pisces woman and man are called The Dreamand The Drifter, respectively, and, of all the individuals on the astrological block, they are best at giving in or over to life on life’s terms, dissolving into the here and now of their circumstance, if only sometimes treading water, seeking foremost to avoid struggle (all of which requires a great sacrificing of ego). At the same time, paradoxically, the are most able of people to sustain a belief in certain transcendence, whatever their particular brand of sublimity might be. No wonder the sign’s motto is I Believewhich is more than just a spriritual knowingness, it is a power, Pisces’s super power, that works it’s magic on reality, making it malleable. This is the true meaning of the mutable-water assignation, and of Neptune’s dissolving force: If all we perceive isn’t truly fixed, but fields of energy blending, one into another, than the so-called substance of being is determined by the energy we are, and that which we are putting out there via our belief. If we dissolve the impediments to them—circumstance and limiting thoughts—and we remove the notion of space and time (trusting in inevitability of the manifestion of our belief) that which we belief in, primarily our self, is already coming into being. We all have this power. For Pisces people it just happens to be frontloaded. They more readily give over to the plot of life as it is already happening, like a lucid dreamer must do if s/he would have the dream continue (any lucid dreamer will tell you that if you try to impose your will on the dream it will dissolve before your mind’s eye).

Pisces are the most accepting of what is and thus able to make the greatest changes toward what could be. Acceptance is the threshold to Love. Not the personal or romantic sort, but the truest, purest spiritual form of Love as the animating force in the Universe. The great primordial goddess of the sea, from which she emerged, is Aphrodite (Roman: Venus), later demoted to a lower-case love-and-beauty goddess when she enterered the patriarchal pantheon that struggled to place her. We also see her, in emanation, as the wife of Neptune, Amphitrite, his famed trident originally being her symbol as the triple goddess, as is the shamrock, the lily (Aphrodite’s sacred flower), the fleur de lis. Another name for Aphrodite is called Mari (the sea) and she is thus cognate to Mary, Stella Maris, the star of the sea. Both Aphrodite and Mary have sons, Eros and Jesus, who are embodiments with Love. Eros, which means love, like Jesus, is the eternal babe, yet he is also the oldest, most primordial of the creation gods, just as Jesus is one and the same with the father-creator. Aphrodite and Eros took fish form and we know all about the Jesus fish from certain people’s automobile decoration. All this to say that the philosophical concept of Pisces is thus: That if you were to remove all physical manifestation from the world (which isn’t physical but energetic or spiritual anyway) what is behind it all, the very backdrop of existence, is, essentially Love. And someone once supposedly said something like: blessed are those who believe without seeing.

Pisces rules feet which, metaphorically, speaks to Pisces people being parapetitic. Of all the signs, Pisces are the least moored to their origins, both in terms of their actual home and family rearing, but also in the assignations that go along with it. From birth, nearly, Pisces people move in a desired direction of character and bearing, most often fancying themself to be erudite, if not encyclopedic in their knowledge, with a certain lockjaw upper crustiness. They are indeed fancy. And we don’t use the word lightly. For Pisces people it is an actionable verb whereby they art-direct their own personality and, really, they’re very being. They always embody a departure from their roots and they will stay in motion (unless, paradoxically, they isolate and roam around an inner world of their own making instead). It is the belief that they can be anything they want to be and, to look at the feet, again: before we can walk on water we best believe that we can.

Edith is born today as is Samuel Beckett it’s a good day and an unusual Aries day. I look forward to feeling all caught up on here so that I can start to channel what I’m feeling on any given day. Five days until Tori Scott returns to Oberon. I’m looking forward. Here some Aries thoughts

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 and most shriekingly selfish and demanding, others be damned. There is a lot to unpack here. The cardinal-fire sign, which translates to a spark (of life), our ignition and animation, also purpose, the Aries personality can be impulsive and reactionary and unbridled—think Jack Jack in The Incredibles. Mars signifies pure energy, that fight, spearheading goals and otherwise taking life by storm, but it also translates to the other adrenalin effect, flight. Athena mainly stays above the fray, employing strategy and diplomacy and prudence to support her 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, unapologetically, with a certain vigiliance. It’s as if they can’t separate what might appear to us to be selfish-from a self-originating sense of duty toward the fulfillment of their objectives. Aries feel they were bornto do whatever they aim for—that it is in their blood— endowed (and sometimes burdened) with an outsized mantle of import such that the pull of said goals feels heightened to that of a spiritually calling. Or maybe it’s vice versa—that Aries people, by virtue of their ardor, lend their pursuits this exaggerated sense. The point is singular Aries doesn’t second guess it.

In our book Sextrology, we likened the Aries woman to the female sheep—hey Ewe!—who keeps herself aloft, on her climb, watching male rivals vie for her below; mostly this speak’s the the Aries’ woman’s ability to raise herself above arguments in wise Athenian fashion, if not pit opponents against one another to elevate her own position. And though there is the usual overlap between the sexes of the same sign, you still might say with confidence that, as a rule, Aries man tends to be embody the warrior most often on the frontline, while Aries woman is cooly strategizing from her metaphoric war room. She may may adopt lambish air if only to pull the wool. Why sheep?, you may ask. Well, besides the warlike qualities of the Ram, in mythology, the war god Mars evolved from an agrarian shepherd god, really a male fertility figure. Athena, who may partly derive from the more ancient Minoan snake goddesses, armed as they are with serpents, and the bird goddesses like the wargoddess Inana, also Ishtar—Athena’s breastplate , the arguably sheepskin aegis, bears the venomous snake-haired head of the Gorgon; and she is associated with the owl, her wise totem, whose form she takes. Athena emerged as a defender goddess, among other attributes, a palace goddess, inextricably linked to Athens, although her Pallas pre-fix is more suggestive of a phallus, as she is appears, in full masculine garb, as male, and there we have those snakes again.

We likewise link Athena in the biblical line to Lilith, Adam’s first wife, predating Eve just as Aries precedes Taurus, whose own archetype isEve and other such “innocents.” Lilith and Adam split up because they both preferred the top position, and she too was winged with other serpentine qualities. Goddesses of feminism all. The symbols for Athena is a triangle or diamond shape set upon a cross—these portray yoni power above all. It is not a passive symbol of reception like the Venus glyph with it’s circular womb above a crossed staff (hymen), but, like Mars’ own genital “spear-and-shield ” symbol, it is one of definite action, even if on the defensive, blocking, a hard-knocks nod to the Ram, which, in nature, thus vividly defends its flock. The gender dialectic between men and women, cisgender or transgender, in this premier masculine sign (air and fire signs are masculine) of Aries, is  not one of masculine to feminine but a spectrum spanning from the purest objectifying masculine to the to most potent feminism, refusing objectification.

No surprise the sign of Aries rules the head—we enter the world head first, as a rule, and Aries people never abandon that trajectory. Mars and Athena wear brand plumed helmets, she having emerged fully formed from father Zeus’ head. This speaks to the Aries experience, suggesting they come into this world armed with their sense of purpose and ambition. Athena is the goddess of helmsmen and the Aries personality is pinioned on leadership. Mars starts wars, the first to charge into attack just as his more ancient shepherd status saw him likewise leading his charge, that is to say, the sheep in his keep. Leadership, initiation, action, ambition are all Aries’ strongest suits, coming on strong in situations, for better or worse.

In near direct contrast to Aries, which precedes it on the cosmic wheel, Taurus, the fixed-earth sign, is ruled by Venus, representing the metaphysical Feminine Principle in the cosmos and astrology. Fixed-earth is likened to a fertile garden replete with flowers, and points to the power of attraction. Planet Venus energy is thus centrifugal, working in the opposite fashion from centripetal Mars, whose symbol recalls a shield and spear or the male genitalia—the Venus’s symbol, a circle over a crosed staff, conversely depicts the female reproductive system, specifically, the passage to the womb and intact hymen, symboloizing innocence. Innocence, and the loss thereof, is the main theme of any garden myth, particularly, as it leads to certain temptation, again that power of attraction. The gods (read: human archetypes) associated with Taurus are the earthy nubile, pastoral nymphs and youthful male flower gods. The premier nymph myth is that of Io, who was turned into a snow-white heifer by Zeus to hide his affair with her from his wife Hera who knew what was what and only pretended to assume Zeus was giving the pretty cow to her as a gift. Hera was going to teach Io a lesson (mainly about men). The fairy tale of Snow White is a retelling of it all, with the beautiful but jealous queen her thakes the form of a wicked crone bearing poison apples. This is a direct lifting of Hera doing just that in Greek myth. It is notable that the Venus womb symbol also recalls a hand-mirror, vanity being one of the sign of Taurus’ primary pitfalls—the sign’s color green itself has a shadow side to its fresh and earthy garden variety.

The power of attraction is one that appeals, foremost, to the senses—sight, touch, taste and smell—and, thus, the appetites, assignations of the sign of Taurus which rules the throat, the gullet, as well as the voice, symbolizing talents (song apealing to the aural sense) another attribute of the sign. Taurus people make up the most sonorous vocalists on the planet. 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 not, nor do they spin, the bucolic 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 objectiveAries, the natives of which are focused outward, perhaps the least self-conscious of individuals, the navel (or mirror) gazing Taurus takes a subjectiveapproach 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. It may strike one as 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, as goddess queen, herself, , (Isis), now on par with Hera/Juno isultimate empowerment, characterized the myth of  Europa. The Io and Europa myths are like call the response, signaling a reversal. Io’s descendent (by Zeus), Europa, returns to Europe, back across the Bosphoros, on the back of Zeus, her lover in most beautiful Bull form, transfiguring the narrative, where the female is no longer the silly cow. Instead Zeus takes on that bovine mantle, yoked in floral garlands, transmuting Io’s shame into into Europa’s honor. In the biblical myth we have the same reversal: Where the femile inhabitant of the garden, Eva (Eve) sees her own original sins be revered by Ave (Maria), the glory of womanhood and innocence, if not virginity, restored.

Remember we said Taurus rules the senses and appetites, thus, we might say, all of the earthly pleasures, in 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 the most, often purposefully (people-) pleasing population on the planet. They offer endless delight, exhibiting myriad talents in multifold forms, their eyes and ears attuned to audience reaction, making endless corrections to their work, art or enterprise to achieve their one goal: to appeal, gain favor and make bank. 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.

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!).

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 Sun. 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 dual angels and insects and the beguiling fairies. The horned Puck is Oberon’s messenger as Mercury is Zeus’s.

Quicksilver Mercury speaks to the 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, “conductor of souls,” the only entity who can travel from heaven (Olympus) to hell (the Hades realm) and back again. He is the dual(istic) god of the crossroads, the dealmaker, forever coming and going, and he rules the characters one finds there—merchants and theives, magicians, , barkers, buskers, and every assortment of savvy streetwise folk. All such characters collectively add up to, if only metaphorically speaking, describing the fast-talking, clever Gemini people, the Zodiac’s truest 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, who, 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, among 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 immortality or divinity. 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, yes, mortality and immortality. In fact, being booted from the garden, one is no longer granted everlasting life, let alone youth. 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, the 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, like a moth to a flame.

Whereas Aries is objectiveand Taurus is subjectiveenergy, Gemini combines the two, we have an energetic two-way street, input output, transmission. The energy of Gemini is literally electric and, moving our way down from the  Aries-ruled head and Taurus ruled throat and neck, Gemini rules the lungs, and also the arms (wings) while Mercury rules the nerves which you might say is the electrical system of the body, along with the wiring, those neurons firing into synapes, in the brain. Gemini people are surely nervy and they most easily get pushed to the exhaustion point on that score. Like Mercury, the mind is a trickster and it is literally formed by whatever thoughts are prevailing in our immediate enviroment as we are growing up—the third astrological house of Gemini rules early childhood conditiong as well as our sibling and sibling-like relationships that of our boon companions, such associations forming us the most during these formative years when, if we have the proper rearing, we might have the right choices made for us.

Peter Pan who eschews the word of grown-ups, needing both the company of other lost boys, his mini mob or gang, to reinforce his position as mercurial ring leader and, by the same token, he needs to infiltrate the minds of these other individuals, manipulating and forming their frames of mind to match his own hinged, as it is, on not wanting to grow up, living in a place that won’t recognize the passing of time, the ticking of that clock (inside the croc), forever wrestling with his shadow side which is determined to get away. Perhaps the shadow side of this dual figure is his repressed desire to face aging, death, morality, determined as he consciously is to keep on whistling in the graveyard; perhaps this is the only way he can fly, soar in his ambitions, via the power of positive thought, which can ill afford the entertaining of any limits, even inevitably natural ones. Geminis prefer to live by their wits and can be something of a rogue, a word that combines the good and the bad, into something hopefully benevolently badass. And it can get a little ugly, just as it might hit the heights of beatific experience. The individual who wrote the poetry of Walt Whitman or the person who sang the songs Judy Garland did might possess such divine insights or gifts that are beyond their human ability to bear them.

You’ve know doubt heard of Kubler Ross’s five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance; well, the whole of Gemini’s life is number three: something of a bargain (as it is for all of us but, again, Gemini people personify this point along with other Gemini experiential points) which needs negotiating, both two sides of the bargaining table comprising the Gemini personality. Gemini is forever making deals with themselves—rationalizing, letting the ends justify the means, allowing for a little hell, some guttersniping, so to reach intended heavenly stars. As such, Gemini’s are the most immersed of all people in the happenstance of human existence with it’s endless interpersonal interaction, details, to-do lists, dealmaking and minutae; and embracing this street-level, well, level of life (instead of struggling with, or feeling dogged by it, like many of us do) they actually elevate the experience of so-called quotidien existence to a more exalted state-of-being. Which begs the question: why do we label these certain aspects of life to be that of mere or banal existence? Compared to what? Why aren’t the workaday elements of life viewed as something sublime if not spiritual; for that matter why do we not view the entireties of our lives as spiritual existence. How did we get the idea that the workings of this world are happening on some solely physical plan devoid of the divine? Well, the answer is simple: The messaging stems from the Judeo-Christian story of that fall from grace, that boot from Eden, (and associative myths world-wide) which the sign of Gemini represents as a metaphysical and metaphorical snap-shot.  The point is we only know this life, we cannot be sure that another one awaits us, so why not approach even the most prosaic elements of it from the perspective that it is all part of the divine choreography we are dancing? The classic gods, with their super human characteristics, lied and cheated and raged and fell into depressions just as we do, chief among these being Mercury, a god of petty mischief and pranks, and yet a divine being all the same. Gemini’s apple doesn’t fall very far from that tree.

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.

Capricorn 23° (January 13)

Spending the day doing more packing and dumping, as it should be. My brain is pretty fried from all that has been going on out in the world. I feel like the entire planet is holding its breath. I want very much to forge a path here today and that is what I intend to do. My world is becoming increasingly uncluttered and that makes me very happy I have a great deal of road to hoe in front of me but I am determined to let it be as easy as can be. I have to watch my calorie intake again because I seem to be going in the wrong direction of the scale. I am not concerned as much as I have been about the domestic situation and MP seems to be a very cool guy while the opposition seems to be lame as can be. We will get notice of something being filed I’m sure and then the conversation should resume. I am not going to be put off my game I can tell you that right now. We will speak with movers and go from there because we can always find something if needed.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1436-1440. 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.

Breakdown: Today is our wedding anniversary. It’s thirty years. And neither of us seem to want to celebrate in any kind of grand way. I know we are private people and make nary a fuss about ourselves but honestly it is a very big deal. I haven’t really been in a celebratory head, strangely, feeling rather strung out and stretched thin by self-imposed busy work that constitutes getting a jump on things for the year. But I am rounding one particular bend now and it can be very painful to do so—writing is a blessing and a curse. Because there is no particular thing on the agenda I don’t feel like complicating matters here by trying to dredge up subjects to survey. I have enough on my plate to send me into nervous overload if not another word that might make for a scary pairing.

It might be cool to start the show on the subject of writing a new book. (Maybe I should write about Gemini woman. She is such a complex character and one which represents both the gift and the deal. That everything happens all at once in life. That’s one of the truisms.) And how I had to write and do all these things simultaneously and how I started getting strange neurological symptoms. That I had stopped working with outside “agencies” which literally was tantoumount to outsourcing my own. That publishing took the hit in 08 and 09; we had book deals and a design business and gigs writing horoscopes for silly money all kinds of places, and within a span of a year or so, most of those gigs dried up, our partners in the design business pulled out, publishers cancelled deals, and we had to grab onto whatever freelance flotsam we could to remain afloat, which we did en route to reclaiming said agency. Ari Emanuel gives Charlize Theron your book and she wants to make a TV show out of it and there are meetings and agents connecting us with writers and then a year goes by before you realize that Charlize and you have been told them same lie: That the other one of you wants to do a scripted show only while, for both parties, the opposite was true: we wanted to do a reality show. And you never know why WME lies to you both but when you broach the subject you’re dubbed some kind of problem child that was fun. Meanwhile you’re on talk shows and your new book has come out and there is hope but it definitely doesn’t seem to float.

But you’re you and you never fail so you pull at your bootstraps in a most Yankee fashion and you shake your Scarlett O’Hara fist to the heavens, while munching on a root vegetable, that you will never be in this position again. And you sit down and decide, right, we are going to do everything ourselves. And for starters we’re going to focus on the core of this enterprise and that is helping people, consulting them, and experiencing a hands-on rewarding process of making a real difference in others lives. And you say screw those magazines that no longer pay you to write horoscopes or features and you do it anyway, offering it up, free, for several years, to your readers. And you just forget agents and managers and lawyers—who needs them. If somebody wants a book from you they will one day organically, without effort, come into your live and tell you they are already a fan. And if you really want to relaunch your design business than others will invest in your doing that. Meanwhile you love to perform and help other artists make their way; so you start a non-profit and produce festivals and performances series and for nearly a decade you will do this because it feeds your soul. And then you wake up one day and all those things that fell away suddenly, and simultaneously, come back, greenlighted into your life and here you are a little bit overwhelmed. But that’s okay.

Because you will work your way through the miasma. And you will prioritize—first things first—and you will chip away, chip away, and sculpt your own multi-faceted Michaelangelo creation, from the inside-out. I’m going to spend this week mapping out all I want mapped out. I will have notes on how to restructure one of the proposal’s I’m putting out and can get that part sorted and have a new draft of the proposal proper by the end of the first week in May, realistically. And then spend the next three weeks writing the sample material. That means that between “now” and mid-May, I will have already scoured a good portion of the Blagues for material while making comment as to constitute new Blague. I’ve said things like this before but the process keeps needing to be refined as we merrily troll along.

I want to get my brain around a sort of list of priorities to discuss with our agent without overwhelming her because there is so much to do on that score. For starters I should look at the emails I would have sent to Tim B. regarding numbers and such; and to get an idea of where we are to date in terms of sales. Also we should discuss the Haute Astrology books and the prospect of making a deal for them. I want to talk about Sextrology and what can be figured out on the scroe—an inventory of all our foreign markets, plus the notion of updating (new edition) for HC. Hope all is well and looking forward…I want to go through all the notes, and sort of take, first a managing editor’s approach to the proposal, deciding what physical blocks should remain, move around or be removed altogether (we can decide what removed bits become fodder for the sample content and what should be totally cut).

The goal would be to get the proposal bit itself, then, in prime shape, start to finish, for presentation along with what will become the sample material. We would like to turn that bit around rather quickly. When it comes to the creation of sample material it will have to enter a bit of a queue as we have a number of projects currently in process that we would like to finish before giving complete focus to creating the sample content. We are going to look at our schedules and make a conservative determination. It might take a little time because, instead of saying any old thing, I think we will really take the opportunity, in the process of writing the sample chapter, to truly map out, as best we can at the onset, what might truly comprise the full range of marks we plan to hit in all the chapters, perhaps down to sidebar details and so forth, and be a bit circumspect in the process of creating would-be sample content instead of drafting what might be more like could-be sample content. To be more deliberate so to pave the way, creating more inroads, into speeding the plough on what will be the actual book-writing process.

Today (the day I’m writing this not the day listed above) has been another painful one. But the pain is put in my way so to transcend it. There are certain individuals that have passed through my life and caused me a lot of agita; and they have somehow converged within a large slice of a certain population where I once found community. One of the situations entails a very ill sycophant who over a decade ago used me as a stepping stone to meet certain people—the other was an old friend with a sadistic streak who gaslit me up the wazzoo. Somehow the worlds which they two entities inhabited became one and it would seem the gaslighting has become something akin to that green stuff they lit aflame in whatever episode that was of Game of Thrones, which is an ironic reference I didn’t even think I was making because there are people involved with that show who pepper this conversation.

But what is a person to do. I’m not the kind to try and defend myself against bogus slings and arrows. I’m the rise-above-it kind on this planet who will forgo friendships rather than fight for them. I cannot dignify such scenarios where the mercenary have thrown me under the bus; if people want to believe I’m the bad guy in such cases I will certainly let them. It’s just the way I am and what I do. I will always seek the higher grand and bid good riddance to old baggage. Still it hurts when you have to do it. There is no avoiding that. In one instance the sycophant gave my friend (to whom I was that stepping stone) heroin. This made me so furious because this bad apple had once tried to feed me anough percocet on which would could overdose. He’s a pusher, that’s what he is. And instead of running for the hills my other friend tried the fucking heroin.

Meanwhile I had been so furious when I heard (from yet another mutual friend that pushy pusherson and brought this friend a vial of death that I texted the sycophant and said I rather tame and metaphoric “I’d like to punch you in the nose” for giving so-and-so drugs like that. I became the bad guy. Meanwhile the friend who took the pushing once told me, when I politely asked if he minded my contacting a musician friend with whom he previously worked, to fill in for a gig that he would be very hurt. Well this sychophantic pusher (who is trying to collect famous friends, you see) was once a musician friend of ours who pulled a major fast one on us, which the other friend knew about; and yet that didn’t prevent this friend from succombing to the worship of said sycophant. If you could follow all that you deserve a medal. Anyway, I will get over all this in the end. I’m already over it. And they can all have each other (in the end, I realize, they all vibrate at a very low level despite appearances on social media); and I suppose I am more saddened to learn that the friend I thought was better than all that really isn’t.

I read yesterday’s entry and it pains me and I cringe at the same time. It’s so obvious how hurt I am but really I just sound bitter. But, even for that, I must forgive myself. I am not perfect or blameless in most situations but if one stays in the hurt nothing will ever change; by the same token I think it is important to be vulnerable and honest about ones feelings. If I were any kind of dimestore guru (which I am half the time), I would mask my vulnerabilities. Blame is the premier sympton thereof. Good for Virgo. I am starting to feel some kind of flow on the book writing side of things. Anyway t’will all be fine; we shall make it so. I have already been the bigger person. I always forgive. I’m the one who reaches out with the olive branch always, even to a fault. So I really don’t have anything to feel bad about. Everybody has there reasons for doing the stupid things that they do. And when it comes to Taurus people, for instance, it always comes down to vanity and vaingloriousness. I’ve always loved that word. I think I take this opportunity to know what I know, to keep my head low (i.e. power through) and stop worrying about the world around me. I will continue to reach out and send love and all the rest of it; I needn’t mind what comes back. This is something a Libra must learn.

Anyway I woke up at 3:14 this morning after going to bed at nearly 11, but instead of just lying there I got up to get out of me what was keeping me awake. I already feel better although it is two and one-half hours later and here I am, still, having written a mere paragraph. Little matter. My head is getting sorted, between sneaks online for whether Melisandre will return to Winterfell or random listings on Zillow. The birds started in at 4:30 and now the cars are revving up on the road. I heard a fisher cat last night and I awoke from a dream about two ferocious felines on the bit of lawn between our old house and barn, which I had two cross, with two companions, one of whom was S., I believe, and one a younger girl, blonde I think. I ushered them along as I kept the big cats at bay with I think a towel or a blanket. It was clear I was going to be attacked by these animals and clawed and gnawed to death so I woke up. The cats were tabby I remembered in the bathroom which immediately recalled visiting a friend with two domestic versions.

Maybe I was somehow traumatized by that trip? I don’t think so, although it could be a sadness over missing our house as our visit was to a friend’s new abode. That friend had once visited us at ours, some twelve or so years ago, so perhaps that is the dream code on that one cracked. Not so deep after all. Anyway, my dreams have been crazy vivid of late; and I’m going to chalk that up to a bunch of things, a certain positive withdrawal from toxic relationships and my self-deriving thoughts on that and any number of subjects. I don’t know folks. What can I say? It helps to write these things down and, really, to be writing my way toward my successes. I have a pretty clear grasp of what should happen these next few years. And, one way or another, I will not only survive or succeed, I will surpass my own expectations (which are the only ones that truly matter).

Already today we had a meeting about business structure in regard to budget flow; a reconceptualizing of the consultancy moving forard; and a bit of creative brainstorming on overall design of both the company and the collection, on the product end. And I’ve also made a realistic schedule for getting things in motion on the new book proposal I’m working on and subsequent roll-out info. It’s still so early in the morning and if I can spend the next two hours rejigging some of the book chapter introductions for next year’s horoscopes then you, Dear Reader will be the first to see that. Dare I say this process might actually end up being a bit of fun?

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.

Capricorn 22° (January 12)

Heard from Dave his girlfriend is buying a house in Brewster. We start our own process this week. I am really not much in the mood to write things. I find that certain “moods” inspire me to a thousand ideas but then other “moods” in the aftermath leave my mind a blank…From the page to the stage, the sage of the age…Sextrology isolates the new book activates. Something about John Dewey that the self isn’t ready made by the choice of action…Mars as Id. Mars in Cap equals Classy in the Raw. Mars filtered in Capricorn takes that ajbectifying id energy and edifies it such that the primal energy of the planet coninutally sparks the enduring, endurance motivated Capricorn (endurance calculating the concept of the as a sort of fiery fountain of youthful sparky energy, secret sauce. Also explains capricorn’s warrior spirit and their like of camouflage prints.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1431-1435. 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 took two cars in to get inspected and our old girl needed all new brakes, basically. That will be a pretty penny. There is no rhyme or reason (feeling) to life these day; rather all seems rather random. And depressing I might add. Have learned that a close friend has been going through it; I had no idea. I am learning from experience that success isn’t necessarily a contributor to happiness. People are a mess and that is a result of some carefully tailored propaganda. We have to fight back, first and foremost, by not falling down deep holes. I write a few sentences and then I’m distracted today. I don’t think it’s just me. I’m finding that most people seem super scattered and incapable if any kind of commitment or follow through it is becoming a bit insane. People also seem more high maintenance than they used to. I think I blame social media for that. Everyone wants to be a star without doing the work, paying their dues. They want the perks and none of the process. The profit not the progress. And this has been a rapid change, I find in my line of work, over the past seven or so years. Oh, and everybody thinks they should have a podcast if not there own TV show.

Someone I know, and know personally, (we are actual friends) who has a very big job at the top of the food chain at a major media network contacted me in December saying they wanted to create content for me and I should (immediately—hurry up) put together a bio for their team. As I said that was December. So what you going to do? You can’t push people. Maybe they are feeling themselves (or their cocktails) when they reach out and touch others in that way. It doesn’t matter. No judgment. You still have to love people. At least that is my view. Then again I’m not as hard on people as I see them be on others (including myself). I am trying to move the needle which we call moving the spoon. Our ancient car which was supposed to come back today isn’t. I had such high hopes that my new mechanics wouldn’t work on Cape Cod time but alas. Today really feels like spring finally here—crocuses and daffodils are doing there thing. I made a minted pea soup that we ate over last couple of days, with tulips on the table. If that doesn’t make it feel like spring I don’t know what does. Lamb probably. But one really has to separate the animal from the meal in ones mind, which for some reason is easier to do than when it comes to veal. Though it shouldn’t be.

I’ve been doing a lot of casting this week which really wasn’t the plan but in the end turns out to be the right thing. Things are rolling along I’d say. But I would like to keep the drama to as minimum as possible. One more sentence or two and then I’m going to take a shower. I don’t not believe in just writing anything. I find it’s like putting down mulch or fertilizer. It mightn’t be the thing you want to see grow before your eyes but it does create an environment from which things can spring. I have lists upon lists to go through and I hope to get to some of them today. I am looking for the magic in the ordinary, always. I saw Heather Mattarazzo beamed in on Instagram. I wish I was better at social media. One can always hire someone but what does that say. I need to remind you I’m writing a bunch of these al at once. Let’s just say it is 4:31 in the morning and I now have four of these episodes to write à la meme temps. Nan wrote to say that I seem to be getting younger; I promptly pointed out that I don’t post recent pictures. I am concerned (as all telegenic narcissists are) that I’ve let my manner slip a bit but that is what April is for. Someone I know lost eleven lbs in thirteen weeks on Noom. I would try that but I don’t like the name.

I think Amy Schumer’s new comedy special is fantastic. I find Tig Nogaro (sp.?) completely unfunny. I might try my hand at all this myself in the coming year. I mean isn’t that supposed to be what this is all leading up to? I will first need to make certain sacrifices. I’m ready to do that. I don’t have any family of my own in either chronological direction; and I find the New England contingent to be conditional at best, save for my parents-in-law who are truly divine beings, in spite of their Yankee eccentricities or indeed due to them. I’ve always wanted to write the phrase or indeed due to them.

Well I cheated a bit yesterday by including an old to-do list in the Blague entry. But I had to remind myself of what is ahead these next few months. It is such a lot of work that I do non-profit, and I notice, this year, that my relationship to what’s in store has changed. That is to say that my actual brain chemistry seems altered, comparatively, in the face of the same task. I know that I am need of a total rehabilitation of spirit. I have been running, running, running and now I am doing so on empty. I know it won’t be easy this time around but it will be most crucial. Anyway I was thinking of the end of a certain summer, in my salad days spent at the Jersey shore. We had a large house in what now strikes me as a city by the sea, compared to the more rural setting in which I’ve lived these last twenty years (twenty years!) on Cape Cod. That very first day, sometimes post hurricane, the very first days of September, right before having to pack up and head north to school, the weather would one day shift. It would have been scorchingly hot for a fortnight and maybe with no more fanfare than a brief thunder storm, the wind would change direction. You might be sitting on a beach and see tiny tornadoes ripping through people’s “blankets”, a term used to describe the entire estate any one person or group thereof would bring to the beach. Little cyclones of dried seaweed and shreds of candy wrapper.

“It’s Billy weather,” my dear mother would say. I don’t know how she knew this because it was true. I also don’t know how she knew to say it, as if I had been alive for hundreds of years with a documented track record of my liking a sudden hint of autumn, a foreshadowing, in what might even still be late August. I would don a wool sweater, typically hunter green or navy blue, with glee, either over a red or blue or green pinstriped button color shirt or tee or sometimes directly against my allergic sunkissed skin. The scratchiness was a sacrfice to fashion or some preppy social construct. I think about that day. That day which probably only happened once and yet “Billy weather” would indicate a recurring pattern. It baffles me. Like it baffles me that, when going to study abroad in Grenoble, my mother gifted me a going away present of Joyce’s Ulysses she inscribed with the words “From one Irishman to another in France.” Did she read Ulysses? I doubt it. Did she know a lot about Joyce or just that he was Irish with a thing for France. I will never know. Why didn’t I ask?

These are the things that run through ones mind in the middle of a sleepless night. I think of Castor Wilde lying wide eyed nearby some centuries ago listening to the screams of the fisher cats and owl hoots in the night in a dark so dark and terrifying until the clock struck four allowing certian comfort to set in. I think about his cotton nightshirt, soaked at the collar, and the herbal scent he exudes. This is something he and I share. We seem to give off an air of eucalyptus for no known reason. He gives up hope on sleeping and flings himself afoot. He walks on air to avoid the creaking floor and witches stair down to the tiny square patch of landing at the front door flanked along its sides with thin columns of pained glass windows through its beveled whichness he spies a fawn nibbling on the wild strawberries in their patch of white and yellow blossoms. This is the place he is and always has been.

The men will soon appear. The place for the barn has been set just one hundred feet or so back and to the side of the house. Castor peers through the mud room window at the dew glistening blue on the grass. At that moment a coyote slinks through the yard all apologetically side glancing. There are no bunnies about. A yellow flicker is heard rapidly pummeling the iron cap on the chimney—it sounds like a mechanical, not a natural thing—wow this is hard. He is missing something but not sure what. Is it Jenny? Marcus? Childhood? No answer comes. He pads outside, the brick step like ice on his bare feet, but the air warm under the cold and floral. He sneezes. And some thought goes from his mind. He grabs the bucket and heads into the inner garden through the arch of unblossomed wisteria through the field of would-be wild flowers and down the path that separates the Wildes from the Woods.

The first thing you do, when you think you’re having a stroke, is to delete your history. The thought of being dead and knowing that people might see what you were up to online. I say people because I don’t have family. We maybe will tackle that later—this is a workshop so I’m not sure which possible avenues I’ll choose yet. And also part of this performance is about letting things that occur to me occur to me and I know that sounds artsy fartsy but you see I am a natural psycic which scared me in my youth, as it did my mother in hers. I am squandering my gifts. Certain spates of time can be characterized as epochs wherein little bits of your soul get bitten off. When you’re young you have a lot of soul to lose; but when you get to be d’un certain age and all is beyond not ahead of you, well, you’re pretty threadbare when it comes to affording any further loss of that elemental self. And there are other certain times in life (like now) when one feels close to that entropic erosion, as redundant as that word pairing might be.

I was reared (told they were geniuses of our age) on Gertrude Stein and Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Kandinsky and Mondrian and Miro. Nowadays I deal with cabaret stars who think they are geniuses and perhaps they are. I’ve always thought it and underrated medium. In 1985 I was moving to Paris and fantasized about singing new songs in an old style as a vocalist called Pan; some version of that fantasy did not not come to pass. I also thought I’d have four kids (I even had the names picked out); or that I would have a crepe truck (thirty years before food trucks were a thing); but what I ended up doing was not what I ended up doing and, then again, very much so. We had a lot to do this week; and I was not my best self. Spring does that to me every year; I tend to go a bit cuckoo. But now I have to get it all together and make sure I am hitting my marks with ease, joy, precision and a sense of unfolding. The Irish got it right with there let the road rise to meet you concept. Life on life’s terms, letting it meet you half way. That’s the proverbial ticket.

I’m most proud of Taylor Mac for mounting an original Broadway show. That is just something so fantastic. I’m proud of all my friends doing any number of things like one-offs and podcasts and one-offs; but I’m most proud of this major work by a friend-artist. Taylor always goes big or goes home and I have never known him to go home. Ever. If you can believe it Taylor was in the first ever show we ever ever (did I say ever) did back in March of 2005. I had just been at the other Kripalu which we call Crapola. And when I got back I shook my Scarlett O’Hara to the heavens and said as gods are my witness I will never not be on a stage again. So I forced my way into the cabaret scene with our little Cosmic Cabaret show in Chelsea at a placed called Elmo. It was a great show. We in some ways did more with that show then we had with any since—it was a series of shows based on the signs—the first ever one being called The Rage of Aquarius. Kenny Mellman and Rachelle Garniez and Raquel Cion and the Cucumbers, John and Deena, were in it. And even Richard fucking Barone directed it. Anyway, in it began the storyline we didn’t follow through about me being “the runt quintuplet” found days later. Skulking in the corner of the womb. Anyway I did a search for this phrase on my computer just now and what came up, or fell out, was this whole big two-person play about us and being truklus and going to Camp Blavatsky, all of which was based on semi fictional stuff. This was before we met Matt Ray and focused exclusively on music.

I really don’t know what went on today. What I do know is that things are complicated, psychologically. There are Skype calls with friends. There are trips to stores. There is the hiding of facts and the functioning of bad habits. Dysfunctioning, I think I should say. I don’t feel obliged to paint a rosey picture, why would I. I am an honest warlock if nothing else and things have not been going great around here, and mainly due to me. I’m a complex and complicated (they are not the same) being. I have much in the way of accumulated hurt and resentment. I have sangfroid and fomo and an inferiority complex that sees me continually strike up relationships with people who seek worship and are incapable of reciprocation. I have decades of the worst family drama your ears have ever heard and then the sudden end (death of parents and total cut-off estrangement of sibling, by choice—the thought of ever seeing that being again fills me with horror).  I write thousands and thousands of words a day. I am also my own cleaner, cook and overall handy man. And then I have an entire business, no, sorry, three businesses I run. And I’m about to chuck everything and take a deep dive into solely one (plus a dovetailing two) enterprise(s).

The rest will seem crazy but it is taken from talks this day on social media:

We will find out that Bernie Sanders is a Russian asset. Mark my words.you ask a psychic for facts? lol. no: as i said: he won’t show tax returns, he is now doing Fox News Rally, he never shows up to vote in Senate, he and Jill Stein divided the vote to keep Hillary from office. That is all. totally serious. I think both Bernie Sanders (who barely shows up and hardly ever votes in Senate and won’t reveal his tax returns and is now doing Fox News Rally) and Jill Stein as Maureen McCarron points out are both on the Russian payroll.Why did Bernie abstain in vote against sanctions against Deripaska (Russian oligarch) wake up people. Bernie divided the vote on purpose. Staying in the race. BS so obvious. and paradoxically that’s what they bet on. paradox. doing things that our rational minds would conceive of as improbable. but not. we are wise. we are awake.

We are watching. and we are ready. CASE IN POINT: GO TO ANY NAYSAYER’S (OF THIS POSTS’S0 PROFILE AND YOU WILL FIND THEY ARE BOTS. BOTS BOTS not even sophsticated enough not to “react” to the words Bernie Sanders” before understanding the context. BAM BITCHES CASE IN POINT: GO TO ANY NAYSAYER’S (OF THIS POSTS’S0 PROFILE AND YOU WILL FIND THEY ARE BOTS. BOTS BOTS not even sophsticated enough not to “react” to the words Bernie Sanders” before understanding the context. BAM BITCHES irst of all: I am a fucking psychic and not by choice but I’ve come to accept it and keep my mouth shut around your wives, boyfriends, husbands and girlfriends (for starters). Second: every one of you that denounces this post is blind and not like Tiresias who at least gained the second sight that is a gift and a curse.

I want a Woman. I’m sick to death of men and old men I’m sorry to be ageist but that’s how I feel. Call it self-loathing I don’t give a fuck. I have been “over affectionate” myself in this life and this Biden BS is just that. So let’s stop talking about the mayor and Beto (uch, sorry, personal feels). I want Elizabeth or Kamala or Stacy in no specific order. Although I think Stacy should get Senate. And EW should be our president with Kamala as VEEP and we look at 16 effing years.

Trump, Epstein, cronies are human traffickers. And all the girls separated from their parents at the border are product. Look into his eyes (if you can stand it); he is purest evil. Because we who are good can’t conceive of such evil, we imagine others can’t be as bad as they are. He is the baddest, the worst, the most craven of beings; and he’s in the White House. All that said, I trust in the powers of Good and it will all come round right in the end. We need to send Sabrina to Washington.

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.

Capricorn 21° (January 11)

All we can do is the best we can. I will get some things down on paper today if it kills me, which it just might. And yet that didn’t happen. It is now Friday of the same week and I haven’t written a single intro entry yet. Either. But somehow this week was strangely productive I couldn’t tell you for the life of me what happened but I have a new sense of clarity that can only come from packing up decades worth of belongings papers memories clippings scraps writing momentos into boxes that neatly and orderly categorize my existence heretofore and us the contents of my present mind. It is becoming more realistic to imagine a move. I have rejected my schedule making it in some ways tighter , playing chicken with myself as I am, and yet I think it’s doable because , well, why prolong the agony? I know where everything is , and there is a massive benefit to that. But, looking back, I think today was a good day all in all. I am deeply absorbed in Fran Leibowitz although I can’t stand Scorcese’s constant laughter—wish they had edited out that crap. Anyway I will be making a transition this week, Blaguing more here and less below, but for now I will let that be the bulk.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1426-1430. 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 must have some kind of inner ear thing happening because I am not myself, especially when driving. I have long had a thing about being on bridges, inherited from my mother. I’ll go into it in time. I understand Parker Posey, the way she wrote her book. Also it’s often easier in snippets. Thinking about the next chapters as places where the same elements will be deposited. Not doing things in order. How Scorpio really. I do love the book. I don’t know if S. has contacted her. Since we saw her over the weekend. Wow I am developing a different relationship with punctuation.

I will and should read my past entries more objectively. Don’t think about performance. Imagine if it would make a good reading. This is a funny way of writing for me. It’s bringing up memories. Of being at a clairvoyant’s house in Bradley Beach, New Jersey. There is a question mark in that experience. His hands were small and not clammy but cool. Those were the days. I don’t think I could have ever then appreciated what my body could get away with. And now I have to relinquish all this pleasure and send all desire to my brain (very Taurus to Scorpio) which is fitting since we will have spent the weekend with Parker and Vivian.

I feel compelled to tell you that this has yet to happen but I need to shut the fuck up. The whole point is to write the next several entries all at the same time and fuck with Time. I am aware that I used the same word twice in one sentence and made one upper case and one lower. But that’s me. S….that’s all she wrote for that sentence. I must not get angry, agrivated, frustrated. I must remain Galadriel. I am so hard on myself.

I like Athens better than Hudson maybe? I dunno. I get drained easily. We drove in today. Yes today and my nerves were off the charts. Advanced what? Can I rehabilitate from this. I will do the best I can. Only I mightn’t. I have been doing things, crazy things. Well, crazy if you’re very sane. That’s the thing about me. I’m kinda random. And that, I’m told, can be a good thing. But I am really struggling. What’s going on isn’t good. I feel like a boiling frog. And I’ve just spent another day admitting I’m not Marjorie (played by Natalie Dormer).

Finally I feel as if I can get some value momentum moving. I know I have to be unabashed in the process. Unapologetic. I know one of the themes has been the re-reading of old works. I have to go back and remind myself how many days it will take I did the math. Something like I’ve written four years so thats something like 1500 Blague entries (oh good lord) so it would take me 150 days to read and reorganize ten Blagues a day so that’s five months which isn’t terrible but it isn’t exactly great either. Still it needs to be done. And I’m just the man to do it. I’m the only one in fact. I hated sharing a room with my sister when I was small in Jersey City. I did it until I was eight years old. I guess we were poor. I had no idea at the time. My parents always made me feel we had money until they were older when they made it just as clear they had none. I love the fact that a “whistleblower” can be called Newbold. It turns out that the youngest of the Pritchett children has globs of talent. Veronica Webb randomly started following me on Instagram.

So trailing clouds of guilt and regret I venture forth to Athens to see my gangstah friend Viv. I will drive as far as I can before realizing I probably shouldn’t be driving at all and then my lady wife will take over. I am anxious because Viv has two cats and I am deathly allergic but apparently there is a room where the cats don’t go where I can sleep. The irony is that I love cats and would own a hundred of them if I could. Viv will show me video of an English cat lady and I realize I’ve seen the video before. We will also watch Pen15 which I didn’t realize meant penis until it was explained to me. We had a little snack and then V. took a shower and we took a walk around the town. I really do kind of like it. The cats Pinky and Leather are totally cute. I realize that my room is connected to Viv’s roomate’s room by a door that is shut, it seems, by virtue of a towel being caught in the jam. Caught in the Jam. That sounds like a good title for something. We had a lovely dinner with Pete the other night, I don’t know if I said that. I am happy they are moving to Wellfleet and I psychically (or nearly) guessed which house. I want to be in love today.

It’s all I can think about and yes I can’t be so codependent. And I have to think about death which will indeed part us all. It is awful to think how perfect everything has been so far and to know it will end. What is the purpose of this life if it all ends in sadness. I’ve become terrified of things. Of people dying mainly. It’s just such a mental trap. I really should find a therapist. I will do that today. Only I won’t. I don’t know what today will bring. I only know I have to bring it, whatever it is. The lack of a better word is running out. I remember meeting that actor, what’s his name, Shawn Hatosy, at the Gansevoort in, what, 2006. It is now 2019. Although all day long I thought it was 2020. I was looking for a document I was keeping on artists for casting purposes and I kept searching Artists 2020 and was fretting that I might have lost the file but actually I was just in the wrong year.

We had lovely salmon that Viv made and a baked potato which I haven’t had in one hundred years, plus green beans and salad which nobody seemed to eat. This made me self conscious as I made the dressing. I reached out to Lea Delaria when she first bought the new The Club in Provincetown but didn’t hear back. Now I realize (of course) that all our friends (and one enemy) will be performing there. I don’t like (him).  And though I can’t control it I wish people would wise up to this disaster boy. He feeds people heroin and yet people don’t think he’s a problem. So codpendent. He has this creative partner—they perform together—who is the most look down your nose type of person. She judges everyone (look who’s talking) and yet she will put up with this drug pusher person because of the coat tails she is riding late breakingly. These down and out pseudo bohemians make me sick, cuz you know they would be the first people to have gold toilets. Case in point the Hitler in Chief. Oh well, it doesn’t help me to know the stuff I know I have to somehow transcend it all. New favorite drag name: Sinobial Fluide.

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

So as it turns out, came a text from the other room, we will indeed see Parker today which will be so nice. We have this funny way of meeting up with her. Honestly I thought I would see her again on lower Fifth as I did last time but apparently she no longer lives in the city but here we will see her after all which is a little cosmic blaguey.

The town is super cute and right on the river and the air is filled with ions. We met the roomate this morning who is very young and cute. All I could think was I hope I didn’t snore and keep him awake. We were basically sleeping in the same room. Tonight in fact, without the towel draped on the door and jammed into the jam, it will remain ajar and it truly will feel we are in the same room. I guess everyone drinks and drives upstate because everyone seems to come home around 1:30 from a town fifteen minutes away in a car after being at a bar-lounge. One more reason to love a walking town.

We had a little breakie, not much and all took showers and then headed to a sort of flea makret in Coxsackie (I think that’s the town). Viv bought some stuff we did not. Then we headed to Hudson for lunch and to meet Parker who greeted us with hugs on the corner and promptly guided us to her car where she had lamps for Viv. Only V. didn’t want any of her lamps even though Parker tried sweetening the deal by saying, not without irony, that they had belonged to Ryan Adams. She forgot her wallet so had to drive back to Ghent to get it—also she had to feed Gracie the dog. We had a lovely lunch at The Maker—chickpea smash sandwich—then did a bit of shoppage. I bought nothing but S. got some a gorgeous ring and perfume.

I read a few pages of Parker’s book that was lying around in the morning and was pretty hooked. At The Carousel, where S. P. and V. all found things to buy, the shopguy asked us did you read Parker’s book. I said I just started. He said I told her it was tedious. You did what now? That wasn’t nice. We also went to Marine P.’s shop. Her baby dady who was represented by a naive painting looked super familiar. I have to find out who he might be. We tried to think about dinner but it made people cranky so we went back to the house and just sort of chilled. As someone who makes dinner at home most every day of the year I couldn’t manage the thought of finding food let alone cooking it so it was decided, and not by me, actually, that we would take us al out to the little hotel on the corner at the river in Athens. I wish I knew its name. It was delicous in fact and we had a lot of fun and laughed our snoots off.

The ride from JVB’s in Athens back to the Cape was strangely short and smooth. Thruway to Mass Pike down 495 and over the bridge. We stopped for very few groceries and some flowers and otherwise hightailed it back to catch up on our stories. I made a simple anchovy onion parsley sauce for some lentil pasta, which isn’t the greatest, though it isn’t a guilt trip. And we watched what we call Schitts, Will and Toodles, Rupie Dupie and Bill Maaaah. Still, being the type-A characters we are: We unpacked fully and pretty much cleaned the house in the process. I feel a wreck from all the moving around and really need to catch up on a number of things I’ve let lag, like this bitch called my Blague.

The world is so fucked up that I think I have been succombing to a form (or more) of depression myself. As I sit here I am hearing reports about Alaska dealing with changes unseen for thousands of years. I don’t know why people (Republicans) don’t understand that they are making themselves and their own children and grandchildren extinct. I cannot believe theat there are so many stupid, venal people on this part of the planet, specifically. The problem is taking it all in and punishing oneself by trying to escape what’s happening. That is only them winning all the more. We can’t let them win that is the main point. And why should I make myself sick trying to anesthetize their bullshit?

I am excited to throw myself into my projects. It has been Spring for over ten days and it’s still bloody freezing out. I really am so fortunate to live where I do, don’t get me wrong; so no complaints. The more time I spend with other people the more I realize how sane and functional I am. Until I’m not. Which is often. I simply can’t watch the news anymore. Which is probably what the hard right wants. They have the guns. I can’t believe this is America. I don’t think I can live here anymore if things don’t dramatically turn. Why are we talking about Joe Biden kissing people on the forehead when the president so-called is a rapist. We are being run by a terrorist mob. All those last fifty years thinking it could never happen here.

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.

Capricorn 20° (January 10)

Picking up the pieces as best I might. I feel that I’m always in the same place which is getting a bit dangerous. I have to put my head down oh-so completely and not emerge at least until the end of next month, probably even longer. It truly is the only answer on all metaphysical levels. I can still make magic and increasingly so, I know, if only I put my mind to it. I don’t know how it is people can still be on social media being narcissistic or making jokes. It is just so much whistling in the grave yard to my mind. I am going to hold tight to my bootstraps and get this show on the road. I must make progress starting today and need not ever fall off the wheel. It is difficult to do all this while living in a bubble without any help with domestic pressures bearing down, but I am going to let this crucible work its alchemical magic on my in a major way. I think I’m going to stop here. I’m going to make a lovely shrimp risotto for dinner and get a chowder into works for the week ahead. Thank the gods for cooking. It is my only sanity pretty much right now.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1421-1425. 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.

You really must read the previous Blague (if you haven’t) before you delve into this one because I am in some ways picking up here where I left off there; also there is a certain energetic set up, I feel, where no matter what I put down here today (and trust me I don’t know where this is going) I literally just wrote the previous one (ironically starting this new astrological year a little late) and so they might end up being, energetically, part of a piece. To be fair, as you’ll see from the previous entry, I had some thinking to do about how I got to the point of embarking on writing a fifth year of this daily Blague, including how I started the first year exploring the Sabian Symbols (the corresponding link to the first year Blague on the Sabian theme will be provided below, all year long). So today is really day two of year five of the Cosmic Blague, and the previous entry also tells you everything you need to know to understand what this thing is, has been, at various intervals, over the past four years, while I try to give focus to what this new year should bring.

I had one thought of reading ten previous Blagues a day which means I would nearly read a full year’s entries in about five weeks a year. This means that it would take about twenty weeks—five months— to catch up to where we are now, today, and then another fortnight to catch up in total. The reason for this being that: Comes a time when I have to have even a vague archival understanding of the body of text four-plus years can create; and to sort of earmark the many entries for various written purposes, heading into the future. There is a wealth of material (along with a lot of slog and drivel) accumulated now in this most Cosmic Blague. And I wouldn’t be (literally) getting the most out of it If weren’t to mind and mine it at some point. This next half a year seems as good a time as any and, here’s the rub, it should inspire the daily writing of the new Blagues moving forward. The gods help us all.

I have to work these things through you see (as little Edie as that might sound).

I remember back in the early 1980s I went to see a “Music and Lecture by Robert Fripp” at the Paradise on Comm. Ave. in Boston. He was already playing music when you walked in, electric guitar, and recording it. Then he would play back the recording and play over it and record that. I don’t know how many times he looped around adding layers, but surely several. I get it. I do want to write more material every day and yet it is so important to know what I’ve said before, what might be material for books, performance, lecture or entrepreneurial projects. I know I recorded near every thought. So it makes sense to take inventory of, and to react to and thread through the last four years for the riches and the ditches, if you will. I’m sure there are many stories upon which I can improve. And you’re likely not going to read every Blague so someone has to do it.

That said, I want get to this leg of the process for at least till the end of the month. Which was the goal: To finish up loose ends before month’s end. Then starting April 1, start this creative taking of stock, here, with the Blague, but also just, of myself, in general. At the same time, I will begin to institute some daily rituals and such in regard to promoting this pet project, something I’ve yet to do in all the last four years. Otherwise I’m drafting some books and casting some performance festivals and series and otherwise seeking to express my dual nature as thespian priest, blending performance with certain piety of a decidedly pagan variety. Promises, promises. That’s the trick you see: to creat the right kind of structure to inspire the output of your creativity, some scaffolding on which to build a real or metaphoric (as ere the twain shall meet) body of work. Tall orders always in my world; but something about me has to be towering.

So I went to get my hair cut first thing in the morning which is the only way I can since my barber is open from 8-11 o’clock, only, five mornings a week. The early-bird crowd gets there at 7:45 or even 7:30 sometimes so they can be first in line—the haircutter extraordinaire takes his time—and the early-bird crowd is impatient and can get cranky and besides, like me, they’ve already been up for hours. As a tiny cosmic joke (French: blague) Neil Young’s Old Man was playing as I entered today, as I always do, with notebook or other would-be work in hand to keep me busy during the longer waits. Today there was just a guy in the chair and nobody waiting so it was an unusually speedy affair. I love this place, and the man in charge, and I leave at least a fifty percent tip each time which still means I pay twenty five dollars for a haircut that is the best I’ve ever had. Sometimes he gets phonecalls while I’m in the chair and speaks in an elegant Cuban Spanish to loved ones while looking at me apologetically in the mirror; but he never rushes off the phone either. Time is not this man’s master. And if he has no clients by ten o’clock he is out of there, in the warmer months, heading to the beach to go fishing, presumably for dinner. I have often fantasized about secretly getting a barber’s license and then spending time here sweeping up for free, trying to get my biorhythms to align with his so that when I am in my (I think late) eighties, I might have a steady cash income and every afternoon off to, well, probably not fish but who knows…maybe.

One of the aims of this daily Blague is to illuminate the extraordinary in the ordinary. (When people say life is boring or banal I wonder to what they are comparing it.) It’s all about perspective and surprising moments alone in places such as this with people such as the master barber, going at his signature pace, sweeping up himself between clients who are divided into two distincet categories: those like me who come prepared to work or make some notes or journal or meditate; and those who fidget and audibly sigh and moan or leave without a word. The times that has happened when I’m there, the master will shoot me a smiley look in the mirror as if to say “can you believe this guy” combined with “his loss” and “some people will never understand.” I understand. I love being here. We greet each other when I arrive. We shake hands when its time for me to take the chair. He never asks “so what do you want to do”, so if you don’t want to do the same thing he always does it’s on you to speak up. I can say I want something between a trim and a cut and for some reason that makes him laugh but not in a snarky way. Leon Russell, The Moody Blues, Journey and an otherwise mixed bag of “classic rock” will play on the radio (it used to be a current pop station with “funny” DJs and terribly overproduced current music with tons of trilling and no sustained notes) and I’m grateful for the solid musical choice. There are signs (zoom in on the photo) that tell you all you need to know for this or the next time, like “please come with clean hair.” Taped onto the counter in front of you, or rather diagonal to you—he keeps you at an agle—is his name written in magic marker onto brown craft paper that is taped down with the masking variety.

One time a chatty customer who was waiting while I was in the chair realized he might have been too verbose and apologized saying, “sorry I don’t want to distract you,” to which the master responded, “I can cut his hair with my eyes closed,” which sent a multiple message that I was a regular, that he was a pro (who could not be distracted) and, mostly, that he had an intimate relationship with my head with its double cow-licks and other idiosyncracies. Angled as one is forty-five degrees counter-clockwise from the mirror, one can sometimes stare out the window in a silent daze. Here there is no compulsion to talk, a rarity in this converted master-slave relationship; the experience is never lacking conversation for us; we like each other all the more because neither of us needs to fill the air with speak which, in this setting, is always so male-posturing and staccato. I will hear other clients ask pointy or rhetorical questions to which he will respond with polite economy. But we don’t need to pretend he and I. If I think about it it makes me laugh just how rough he can be. Maybe rough is the wrong word. Let’s just say he is completely unapologetic in the way that he pushes my head down or side to side, like a parent tiger keeping its young in a desired position, primally letting it be known who, exactly, is the boss in this relationship.

I had been going there for years before I remembered that my paternal grandfather, with to whom I had the most wafer-thin exposure (never mind anything resembling a relationship), was a barber. I remember getting my first haircut ever in his shop in downtown Jersey City in the 1960s, being plopped into the child’s “chair” which was a carved wooden horse of sorts, like a Medici version of the kind of plastic horsey you could ride outside the Food Fair by dropping a thin dime in the pay-mechanism, or the ones on springs you could jolt back and forth on at day camp or at some random park, some of them having lost their tension, causing you to flop too far to and fro and thus, undesirably, also, side to side. I don’t remember getting my hair cut at my grandfather’s shop more than once or twice because I didn’t; my tiny grandfather who was fresh off the boat from Calabria was immaculately tidy and wore a blue (I think) barber coat and had a back room—sort of an apartment really—where I’d rather play. (I have not thought of this since then, until now.) There was a narrow dark hallway leading back from the shop into a room that in my recollection was a sort of kitchen. I only found out this past year from a first cousin of mine, who is always the bearer of bad news, that it was something of a front and that the whole family were each, in their full- or part-time ways, bookies.

A world away, here, is this present operation. A formica and linoleum palace of blissful peace and silent understanding. The cape is unsnapped at the neck, the talcum scented brush does its usual thing, the large oblong hand mirror is stationed behind me with a smile that says I can’t say anything but “perfect(o)” or, preferably, probably, just nod while making the acceptable male version of a yummy sound. Today I said perfect with an almost Oprah affection. These thoughts of acceptability are in my own head. I could probably preen and pucker my lips in the mirror and say “oooh, fabulous” and he wouldn’t bat an eye. Instead his would smile at me as they do each time I enter and depart.

I was supposed to have known what I was going to say before I sat down. Typically I write early in the day before the bric-o-brac of quotidien life takes it’s toll in distraction; and especially on a day like today, the day before embarking on a trip for which I have neither packed nor prepared. And now we might be singing day is done and I’m just now here, after hitting myriad marks, multiple places, lastly in the kitchen, where, as is always the case, I get my best ideas and breakthroughs, mini or large. I like the word stout because it sounds like what it is. It’s onomatopoetic and that’s always tops with me. And I did get a newsflash while sautéeing oninion and brussel sprouts with chili flakes, anchovy and spanish almonds that I had the perfect entrée into today’s Blague, which has been on my mind writing since I hadn’t done this morning. Yet somehow in the journey up the stairs to my office so-called I lost that entry point and, I know myself, I’m not going to remember what it was. Correction: I”m not going to try to remember what it was. There’s little point in so doing.

Meanwhile, yeah, I’m heading into Boston tomorrow for an event at this terribly chic shop called All Too Human in the Back Bay. It’s the only real fashion and concept store in town and we are doing these “quick-n-dirty” readings for customers who get a discount that gets donated to the newer leg of my non-profit, simply called Glow (tagline: “A Moveable Festival”) that is hinged on creating a circuit (starting) in New England where we can present our “family of artists” so that these talents have more regular gigs in the region and we find and elevate audiences in places where our progressive performers have never gone before. I’m into it! Sorry it’s hard to concentrate because of the (non-) findings of the Mueller probe, also so-called. Oy. One must now completely not give a flying fuck.

I am now in reggae heaven listening to the radio. It strikes me that the men singing, song after song, seem to be so in love with god with whiffs of narcissism; that is to say, knowing how misogynistic the culture is, the primary relationship with men (at least how I interpret their song) is with (what maybe they don’t realize is their own) higher power. Ja.Women are relegated in the culture and one has to wonder why. I think the interpretation of sex by the male has been one of domination because they enter in; when the position of the female is, as the great receptor, the prime mover who needs a second sex as fertilizer. Even a no bull-shit man isn’t wont to define himself as such. Still there is something so special about good reggae that makes it the best mood music in the world. I could really sink deep into miasma of it—very good Pisces word, miasma. I will have to use that later when I’m revisiting some Pisces material I’m working on. Just one of those pin-in-that thoughts that arise and one writes with regularity in this forum.

From Boston we will continue on to New York this week, where professional meetings await but, also, where some long overdue social time will be had. Coincidentally a Belgian friend from S’s Dries Van Noten days just emailed her to say any chance you’ll be in town as she and her Italian husband will be visiting without their children and could we possible. Well, yes, indeed we can. We will be staying at our home away from home there and it has a marvelous downstairs lobby bar and restaurant that gets very busy; but we can reserve a space I imagine. And, oh, the Belgian connection. That does bring me back to the top of today’s Blague, reminding me what I was going to lead with: In a sleepless night last night I wanted to turn on the TV. Let me begin again: I’m a sucker for overblown historical drama TV series, the likes of which appear on Starz—”White Princess”, “White Queen”, all the ancient white people, “Pillars of the Earth” and anything with a Merlin or a Louis or a Henry in it—but I’ve run out (and I draw the line at something like Spartacus because it’s really just softcore gay male (or straight women?) porn.

But I did happen upon something called Maximillian which is about the eponymous son of the Holy Roman Emporer and his relationship to Marie de Bourgogne. Anyway it is in French and German and Flemish with English subtitles and so I can watch it with the volume on one or even zero (though I do require at least hint of sound—that goes for porn, too) so as to not disturb the one lying next to me as I binge from two to five a.m. Much of it is set in Ghent, the seat of Marie’s duchy, and the sets are perfectly that breed of ornate, gothic, minutely detailed architecture that one encounters in Flanders and I was brought back to our days in Antwerp at the summation of our youth feeling and sowing our wild Belgian oats. And I was musing on the people we met and thinking about all the friends S brought into our lives from her time at Dries. And then voila, out of the blue, this person wrote this same day, someone we haven’t seen in near exactly twenty years, to say that she will be in NYC then same few days we shall be this week which I love.

The funny thing about time: Olivia de Haviland is 102. So it is really just five Olivia de Havilands ago that, in the 1450s, Maxmillian and Marie were born. And it’s only a score and twenty Olivia de Havilands ago since the advent of the hippy prince of peace. Perspective people.

We embark on a wee trip today, first to Boston, then to New York, then upstate to visit a friend whose new house we have yet to see. We have an event this evening in Boston at this terribly chic concept store where we will do “quick-n-dirty” astrology readings for the invitees. I actually enjoy these sorts of events as I find it very good exercise for our astrological minds, having to come up with a profile for person after person who sits with us for a few minutes each. I’m feeling this general uptick in interest in the Starsky + Cox brand—we seem to have become something of a “classic” for readers, especially, within the astrological community. There was a recent article in New York magazine where they asked a slew of well-known astrologers to name their top favorite books and we made it onto the list, chosen by our peers, which is extra special. Recently the site Refinery 29 “interviewed” us (and this piece is meant to appear this week). And I just did a search to see if it was posted yet and saw an article from last March pop up in the Guardian (UK) that was about how millenials are turning to astrology. We are not mentioned in the piece per se; however at the very end they list “the (astrological) app”, and “the (astrological) podcast”, and so forth and we, or rather our book Sextrology is labelled “the book” which is fairly fantastic. Anyway it’s just a vibe but I feel that there is a new momentum, resurgence, happening in our astrological world. I mean, we have plans on that score which are self-started but I’m feeling external forces rallying too—I suppose there is a connection between the two. At least that is a long-held belief and one which we proliferate. It would seem I am writing this entry to day in real-time installments—but am I? Hmmmm.

It was an easy drive up from olde Cape Cod with zero traffic and only a one or too zany Boston drivers almost crashing into us which is fewer than usual. It’s nice to have the Longfellow bridge open again so we can zip right across to Cambridge where I typically drop S. for her usual appointment there and then I sneak via Norfolk Street back to Massachusetts Avenue to cross the bridge and swing around to the Eliot aka home away from home (or one of them anyway). I have a great many ideas brewing in any case and, as with cooking, driving always inspires the going off of cartoon lightbulbs above my head, only, unlike when cooking, I can’t exactly jot anything down; so I just hope that I can remember all that’s coming up during this drive. The room was ready when I got there which is always a great boon and I packed in such a rush this morning, taking more than I need (and probably not enough in some cases) that I look forward to seeing exactly what I ended up chucking into my baggage. It will be a long night and I must pace myself today. I don’t have time for a proper meal before the event so I’m hoping that there will be some lovely finger food.

There was no food, finger or otherwise at the event. The only thing one might consume is champagne and watermelon juice, both of which will send my spiking and only one of which I will sip sparingly over the course of the evening. I wonder if you can guess for which I opted. We were early and I was wearing the only one “outfit” that I can squeeze into after this rather sedintary winter. Unlike the great S. I have not used the dark months wisely when it comes to the management of one’s weight. Oh well, I am a master illusionist at hiding the one area where all my hibernative intake takes the hit, working proportions via short square cashmere tee shirts and a buttonless, cardiganesque Margiela jacket (so-called) with its distinct non-label label designed to spark notice in the fashionisti that will assemble there, starting with the shopboys, one of whom said “I love your blazer” within the first five minutes of being in the store. Is the word blazer now literally back in fashion? It has been fifteen years at least since I even remotely resembled someone who might have a clue as to what was in vogue.

We saw a great many people all in quick succession and I was struck by how young and successful this particular succession was. It was mostly women which is typical, but there were young business owners and artists and designers and photographers and influencers and it made me realize how much Boston has changed. In our generation anyone with such ambitions wouldn’t have stayed in beantown but have high-tailed it to New York City or, perhaps, Los Angeles the second they finished school. But this group of kids have chosen to stay put here and, in our now virtual workplace, are making waves from this provincial northern perch. It cooked up some creative food for thought that’s for sure. A few of our own clients came to catch our eye, which was pretty much the extent of the interaction we could have with them as there was a queue of folk to flop down in front of us onto a pink cushioned footstool flaked with fuzzy pink pillows. All these prop elements had tags on them which, because I wasn’t thinking, I assumed meant they were for sale; it later dawned on me that they were tags from another store–Target, Marshalls, Nordstrom Rack—where they were likely purchased just hours ago as set pieces for the event and the should-beremoval of the tags was lost in the last minute shuffle. Thinking Edina Monsoon leaving the entire production of a fashion show to the last minute, day of. How fashion. To be fair I think the lovely owner of the shop, who has immaculate taste and has really created something special in Boston where nothing like this any longer exists (since Louis Boston shut down), would have just returned from a whirlwind buying trip in Paris and probably Milan. Anyway the event was triumphant and she did a great job. A tenth (what she offered clients as a discount) was being donated to my non-profit Glow (“A Moveable Festival”) and I know that even the clients of ours that showed made some pricey purchases, so I look forward to seeing what kind of donation will come our way.

We stayed later than expected as people had waited so long to see us. Many people took cards from us and I have a feeling we might have a few new clients coming to see us in the weeks again which would be wonderful. Nearly nine o’clock and thank goodness we made a reservation at La Voille because I was feeling pretty faded walking back up Newbury Street—nothing some moules frîtes couldn’t cure!

A lot on my mind today. We have two regular clients in the afternoon and it’s always fun and best to see them in person. I will spend the morning getting my head around the quick trip to NYC and what should be accomplished there. The day will end with a lazy elevator down to the restaurant in the building. No strain or stress. Just focus on the work at hand which is way more than enough. I have books on the brain as we sort out the agent situation. After leaving William Morris Endeavor several years ago I swore off approaching or even thinking about agents, and we focused solely on the parts of our consultancy and brand where we had decision-making power; and since then I’ve said to  myself (and aloud to one person) that if I were to work with an agent again that they would have to already know and like our work.

Recently a friend of whom I am very fond decided to make a third-act career change and become an agent as he was familiar and friends with folks who headed an agency—an agency that one of us (not me) had been eyeballing for some time and which, I later learned, had an agent whom (not me) had reached out to contact with no response back which is so typical. Our friend thought of an idea he suggested to his agency for a book on our general subject; and though it was an interesting notion it really wasn’t on brand and I had said what it was I wanted to pursue in book form, next, and that I had this giant proposal that I needed to work through with someone. As this career path is new to my friend and because I’m sure his focus is really on getting something to catch on his end I don’t think the idea we had on deck was something he was super excited about. And then out of the blue another friend said: you should work with so and so, an agent a friend of hers was signed with. An introduction was made and that desired response came back that she knew our work and was a fan and desired to meet us. Funny how the thing you say you’re holding out for can take years to materialize.

And there would be another synchronicity: We had a meeting with a top publisher at a house that would be perfect for us back in September when we were staying at the Lowell. The publisher said they did a book with these witches we know from Salem. It will turn out that the publisher we meet tomorrow will be the representation for this and other books of the same ilk. (But I don’t know that today.) We will have a lovely meal at Uni which is always such a treat and will watch a documentary on the women of Palestine and get some semblance of sleep before heading off in the early a.m.

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.

Capricorn 19° (January 9)

I feel myself spiraling down today and I will end up getting too sentimental and making too many phone calls. Sometimes you just have to let some days go by. Also, and this isn’t true of everybody, but we all do have our moments of, I won’t say, insanity. Both macro- and microcosmically I’m feeling squeezed; and yet I know that giving into these feelings is not the answer. I must have Faith, something someone else around here is more hard-wired for than I. That’s just a fact. I will try but I am really starting now at a rather low point. Still no place to go but up I guess, and I’m going to keep that in mind as I move through this. “Be not afraid of life,” someone casually said. But the truth is I am afraid and I fear that people in these United States aren’t afraid enough quite frankly. Anyway, I can and will do better. I think I still got this.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1416-1420. 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 find myself waking up in Boston on Saint Patrick’s Day, gods help me. The trick is to get out of here before a mob of paradiers make it impossible. The good news is: the parade happens in South Boston (imaginitvely a/k/a “Southie”) so looks like we’ll be okay leaving. I think I have some kind of inflammation thing happening in my ears as my balance feels a bit off—I am chaulking this up to the pendulum swings in temperature; surely it is not do to any lack of sleep as I have been conscious only little more than half the time this weekend. I got an clover emoji from an Italian cousin who was/ is obsessed with my late mother of Irish descent. I love these people from your past who never took a moment to give a hoot about you all the while you were growing up (in this case we are talking from adolescence up til now) only to do so from a decidedly nariccistic approach. An emoji to say that I still obsess over your mom for my own sick and selfish reasons—no thanks. Some relationships are just too long on the shelf to rekindle. That might sound selfish of me but I’m afraid it is how I feel. Anyway I want to revist something I’ve previously written to how I feel about it.:

Since as long as I can remember we have always called synchronicity: sign posts. A string of which one wants to characterize the majority of ones circumstance if possible. Sign posts are instant communion with the infinite/eternity. They say you’re on the right track, keep going. We’re always try to help clients open up to them. The night before last Penny Arcade participated in an art show and addressed the audience, touching on the subject of synchronicity. And how ones life should be all about it. The way she deliverd it was hysterical. I can only paraphrase: something like: If you’re not experiencing synchronicity with some regularity by the time you’re fifty you’re pretty much fucked. I could feel Stella mentally raising the roof and silently offering amen, as I was. So yesterday I found a journal from 1992 and thereabouts. I hadn’t opened it since. I had decided in the morning I was “going to do nothing all day” which, I find, can be a recipe for a) doing more than usual; while b) letting things happen to you. So I sat and went through this journal for a few hours and of course there were phrases I still write in journals. You know those. When you’re like, holy merde, I was saying that to myself all the way back then?…

The physical journal itself came to me in a magical way. It was an empty book, blank white paper, hard red cover; the only thing in it was a title of sorts cursively written on the overleaf, in pencil—to be revealed at a later date!—and the price of 50¢ in the same pencilled hand. I wrote in it during a difficult chapter in all our lives. So many of the loving lights in our lives were being snuffed out by AIDS. The pain was palpable. And its all over the journal. As is synchronicity which suffused my Sunday, yesterday. In real time the journal chronicled the years I worked with Tony Randall’s National Actors Theater. My first year I was an intern and something of a costume-changing live prop in the Feydeau farce, A Little Hotel on the Side, at the Belasco. The second year I understudied three parts, and went on for a run in one of them, in The Seagull, directed by Marshall Mason, at the Lyceum. Marshall was also directing Larry Kramer’s The Destiny of Me, downtown, starring John Cameron Mitchell. Marshall took us all to see it and that’s how I first met JCM.

The journal is this double helix of absolute elation at being on Broadway as a young actor in New York and of utter sadness, fear, dread, horror and surpassing anger. Finding and reading this journal brought me right back. As did, of course, Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart last night on HBO. Then an actor I hadn’t seen since she too appeared in A Little Hotel on the Side: Daniele Ferland, who was already a great actress as a teen when I first met her, appeared in the cast. More Proustian waves. And, in a particularly poignant moment in The Normal Heart, the mention of Wellfleet from whence I watched. Then Mad Men was waiting on demand. Robert Morse. That same Seagull year at NAT we performed a benefit for the company and I got to share the stage with that genius. I watch Mad Men religiously. But last night, as it began, I thought I’ve loved Robert Morse since I was a baby. (I remember thinking it was a weird-glorious synchronity meeting him at the time—but, as it was, I had been working on a Tony Randall impersonation at Gotham City improv when I first met him, so I wouldn’t say I was getting the feeling I was conjuring people to me, but I wasn’t going to discount the possibility either). So last night watching Mad Men I thought, I’m going to take to social networking today singing Robert Morse’s praises. And then a prescient flash. I have an inkling: this is going to Robert Morse’s episode. And so it was. And in such I way—I won’t spoil it—that makes the hair on the back of my beyond still stand on end. Yesterday was potent and affirming and fun…..

I feel like I’ve been flung off of a carousel run amok. But it was one I wanted to get off of so I’m grateful for the fact despite feeling a bit bruised by the violence of the landing. A typicaly Monday in many ways awaits. Yet I’m finding myself feeling anxious over silly things like getting cars fixed or other banalities of life. I don’t know about you, reader, but for me that is a sign of something underlying.

There comes a day, after a sleepless night, when the anxieties of life morph into purpose. The impetus to express what that is inevitably fades in the attempt. There is the retreating regret that it has taken fifty some odd years for some semblance of revelation to occur. It is alchemical, the shift. And it must be total.

I’ve always suspected that life couldn’t be lived in half measures, though I see others do so, seemingly succesfully, all the time.

For me, on this day marking [nearly] the first third of a year past my [redacted] birthday, I can be filled with recrimination for any so-called waste of time I caused or I can see it as an accumulation of fuel to further myself and “sin no more.” And just plan to live longer.

I glean in myself a dual purpose. A most original but heretofore largely ignored, save in spurts, dedication to the theatre; and one devoted to the continually unfolding discovery of my spiritual self. I enjoy the fact that stage and sacred space, theater and temple, performance and priesthood are historically and culturally linked, once one and the same.

Synchronicity is symptomatic support by the universe of ones realization and pursuit of their individual spark of purpose. [And though I fear I might not be on the same page, now, as I was at the start of this paragraph, I might find that I am, ultimately, with even wider geometric dimensions.]

It is important to be reminded of the connection of the theater-temple connection, to be sure, but I must now also include a new entrepreneurial spirit, and one of aesthetic and design, that has also been ignored. Just as any interest in the written word has been. So now we have more four-pointed intersectionality between the stage and the mage, the artist and the commercialist. All of which is coming together in quite a unique way.

I thus feel that I am zeroing in on something more complex but no less essential a design for living. And it is rather through the elimination of obstacles, not the adding of new thoughts and influences, that the doors of my future self-perception, from this present perspection, shall open.

I’m lost in a binge of The Man in the High Castle. I know it’s not great (neither to be bingeing nor is the program all that), but there is something unavoidable about it that’s hard to explain. And I know that, before the ritualization I have planned for the Equinox, I might require this final form of escape. I think I really pushed my luck yesterday and I have to remember there are severe consequences for letting my guard slip. There is a certain vigilance that I must, by rights, live with and by every day of my existence. And it is something which, if I choose not to institutionalize it, must be personalized with persistent attention. It’s just too easy when not in the right frame of mind to make bad decisions and the added stresses of situations (albeit, again, of my choosing) can warp ones resolve and understanding.

I am grateful for the fortune but I cannot waste this grace. I think that is a promise I can make to myself. Confidence, after all is confiding in yourself. I just (again choose to) do so publically. I always want to qualify that by saying something akin to “but nobody here here really reading” but I’ve learned that’s not necessarily true and I have made the mistake of assuming anonymity and have gotten sloppy in not disguising certain people, places and things which might put noses (mostly those stuck up ) out of joint. Let’s just say we don’t need to give people excuses not to like us; because they will take it, making the symptom the cause, and lay all the blame for their dog-eat-doggedness upon. you if you let them. Don’t let them. Oh I also watched that HBO documentary on “the inventor” Elizabeth Holmes. And so I tweeted: Is it me or do you think that Elizabeth Holmes—see HBO’s “The Inventor” had a weird obsession with @MiraSorvino ‘s Romy character?? The voice, the hair, the black “business-woman’s” outfit??…and really is “I invented the Edison” that much different from “I invented Post-Its”??

Anyway I harkened back to this a-musing memory bliss today:

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.

By day’s end today will begin another turn around the wheel and enter the sign of Aries. It’s Equinox, bitches. And there will also be a Libra Supermoon which means I have more power than you do. Seriously. (Not really). Client day extraordinaire and yet another day of reinforcing the feeling of loving what we do. I am very much internally ritualizing this new start; and, to that end, I am consciously tying up loose ends on the previous year. This is even more a time of change for me to mark than the (winter) Solstice is; and certainly more than the celebrated New Year’s Eve and Day which I always find alarming and depressing, respectively. Still not every marker between the past and the future serves as a clear break. There are lingering bits of information and some blurred lines to define and clean up. Such will be the transition here as I more into my fifth year of writing this daily Blague.

I was free-associating on the following and some point in the recent past and thought it might make for some meandering reading:

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t know what to do, always with all these random blocks of information that are embedded within the posts of this Blague. I will have to think about that moving forward. At some point I will have to read back, say, ten Blagues a day, dating back to the beginning so that I can make some notes on archiving—like a little legend of what needs to be flagged and for what possible purpose—what possibly finished work might evolve out of these seed beds of potential first drafts. I will ask myself (and answer myself) on this subject in the coming days. (Just another example of how it is these blurry transitions in the Blague, year on year, need clarifying to myself, first, and then to you all second.)

Happy First Full Day of Spring (Astrological New Year’s Day). Today begins the fifth year of my writing this daily Blague. The fifth year—can you believe it? Today I want to lead with the feeling of having high expectations (of self and others) and standards for relationships.

I feel myself a symbol of the season as I have a sense of emerging from some kind of gestative fog (mutable-water sign of Pisces) sparking into life in this (cardinal-fire sign of Aries and this..) advent of spring, so aptly named. I am reminded today of the origins of all things and particularly this Blague which has served so many purposes and gone through endless permutations. over the years. And I need to explain some of the past whilst making some projections, affirmations, straight-up plans for this Blague moving forward. To address the past history of this in order to move more mindfully into the future (and to more consciously invite you in.

The past: The Cosmic Blague started in 2015 and was that year hinged on the Sabian Symbols which are expressions of each of the 360° of the astrological year—your time of birth falls within one of these  degrees, which is a whole other thing. It’s the Cosmic Flav-a-flav. Then next two years 2016-18 I didn’t revisit the first year, then just this past year I included, with each new day, a link to the first year’s associative link for that Sabian Symbol “day” (realize there are five or six days more than degrees in the year cycle).

A hominym for this social very media platform, blagueactually means joke in French, so the creative challenge I set for myself here was to explore all possible ways  the cosmic joke manifests; I first wanted to raccount  my own comic/cosmic experiences, the seemingly too synchronistic occurances in life that punctuate it with power and divine order—extraordinary-story telling; secondarily, I wanted to channel my thoughts on how the universe is constantly taking the piss out of us—observational humor on a cosmic theme I suppose; and hopefully a combination of both things. That was the plan. But you can’t really wake up and necessarily do that everyday. So it was very helpful to use the Sabian Symbols as a go-to and perhaps rely on my musings on them to trigger all such entries as would satisfy my creative goals in this. I wanted it to be personal but in a formal way.

But after the first year, when I didn’t have the Sabian Symbols to rely on for creative fodder, or any words at all sometime, I either successfully managed to dredge up a story or two per week that satisfied my artistic mission, otherwise I began to start saying any old shit. It became a journal which is a word to use in this context to lend the endeavor an air of dignity. But that didn’t last long, the noble journal wasn’t always sustainable., and soon it became a diary for me to vent, a croakie book, declarations of hopes and aspirations and whole designs for living and accomplishing the (very Libran) ridiculous number of idealized tasks I set for myself. To that end, the Blague often doubled as a workshop drawing board for anything else I might have to write that day, and I would “throw up” a first draft of something that I would otherwise polish, elsewhere, for publication or distribution.

I didn’t always manage or choose to write everyday. Maybe I was busy doing other things? I would let some days stack up and then spend half a Saturday catching up. And then in 2017 something happened that derailed me and I let whole gulfs go by before sitting down to fill in the blanks—a major project at one point during an upset. Then forget it. You never knew what might characterize a Cosmic Blague entry. Bizarre takes on to-do lists, Dada manifestos assembled from notebooks and a million torn-paper “post-its” I hade made over the previous two years, every idea in my cranial firmament I had plucked from the ether for later purpose.( And in so doing I was also archiving all these ideas and starry notions. You see I never lost my starry notions along the way.

And so the Blague truly began giving me life. Because I was so committed to catching up I got used to showing up again. Not to say I don’t let a few go by (why even now I’m writing today’s Blague tomorrow—not a very functional way of starting this new turn around the wheel but never mind. I’m going to right now write “tomorrow”‘s Blague. And I’ll pick up exactly where I left off, so if you haven’t read this entry before reading the next one—you’ve me to blame—you’ve got it backwards.

Oh, remember: I am resuming the practice I initiated last year of including year one’s associative Blague entry which was pinioned to the Sabian Symbols associated with the degrees of the Zodiac. Mind you, the degree point for that Blague entry will be one higher than that in today’s Blague entry . The reason for that is that: the degree point for today is the starting point of a degree-period (0°-1° for instance) and the Sabian number for that is 1, so if we were to give you the degree number of 0°, that would pertain to the previous degree-period, not the one in which we are currently, this day, living.

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.