Pisces 9° (February 27)
Another version of one of my favorite drag names, a relative of Colin’s perhaps. Once again, I won’t get all I need to get done done. It’s always such a mystery how bordelique things can become when alone. Doing a bit of grooming today. Also going into the basement where I realize there are still old clothes and costumes to take to the dump or good will. Still not sleeping and I will end up napping in the afternoon which is good. Feeling a bit expansive even though only getting a little bit more done on the work front. I’m definitely feeling the pressure and actually I got caught in the headlights with the cover tries coming our way. I’m going to let myself take a load off and, what with the nap, I will end up being awake most of the night bingeing away. Here at least is a little bit of needle moving: Nobody can achieve more in the course of a single day than this quicksilver lady who often projects an impatient demeanor, her the rapidity of her listening skills outstripping the forthcoming communication capabilities of most. She only wants the facts and for others to get to their point or plea. Gemini’s motto I think being followed parenthetical (fast). The third astrological house associated with Gemini is that of, among other attributes, community, communication and commerce, mostly experienced, intimately, in small circles. The sign’s planetary ruler Mercury fits the bill, being the planet with the quickest and tightest orbit around the Sun, being named for the messenger god of communication, commerce and immediacy in both space and time— he is god of the crossroads, the local street corner, as well as the fleet-footed, winged deity who can be here or there in an instant. Regardless of sex or gender, Gemini people all inherit Mercury’s canny, streetwise, cunning, but where men of the sign tend to channel his more trickster elements of personality as god of artful, dodgy dealmakers, charlatans and thieves, Gemini woman, despite her own shrewd gypsy soul (pin in that), is more forthright an operator, a word that shares its etymology with opera or opus, simply meaning work, something from which this busy bee never shies away.
The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of Blagues, nos. 1656-1660. 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.
Alors…I think I slept well enough and awoke (again I’m on a tear where my posts are talking about yesterday) and took a bath and I thought fuck it let’s go shopping. So we had a little breakfast (with that honey incident) and headed out. We weaved through the West Village and came upon new Reinstein Ross store and saw these incredible metal awnings (which turned out to be at the Hermes shop which we didn’t realize for some reason at the moment) and then we made a rezzie at Pastis for noon and continued strolling up through Chelsea and ended up getting to Comme des Garcons at ten fifty-nine, a minute before they opened. We were basically in there for the next hour and I ended up buying this crazy ass duster that will be very steampunk for the party as well as two pair of trousers that are in a very similar material to the CdG coat I already own. The duster and a few things that S. ended up buying (which of course look fantastic on her) were all about to go on sale at forty percent off while my trouser were full priced; and in the end all of it would be shipped to us to save the tax and the discount worthy stuff held and ran through the till once Friday (sale day) arrived in any case. We still have more to get but it looks like we are interpreting the Steampunk theme of this party as “steampunk inspired pieces that you might see on a modern catwalk;” and why the fuck not, really! We did get lost in that store and rang Pastis to say we were going to be a wee bit late and they held a corner table for us which was nice and I had half a roasted chicken and S. had the salade Nicoise. My stomach is being really troublesome by this point but I’m not letting it slow me down, really. And it is a busy day ahead because we are to meet our potential new publisher/editor at two (with our agent in tow) and then we have a client at five and won’t finish until close to eight o’clock, so I am pacing myself to say the least. We got back rather in the nick of time to freshen up before descending back to the lobby where we sort of just stood there beofre this women with ashe blonde hair, looked like, said “I think you are whom I waiting for” or some such with a really nervous laugh that nearly bordered on the Arnold Horschack variety. We knew she was a Virgo but she challenged us immediately asking did you know I was a Virgo when you wrote your sample chapter. We sort of said we did and didn’t and kind of blamed our picking that sign on Meg and kind of tried to change the subject which we would do more than a few times in the course of the conversation that was to ensue. We surely didn’t know that we would end up spending nearly three hours with her all told. Good thing.
Things went smoothly enough despite the nervous laughter and the fact that she does an impersonation of one of her dogs, the girl one—she has two cocker spaniels, a male and female, both with first and middle names—in a weird, exaggerated baby voice that absolutely inspired redirects of questions to try and snap her out of these canine interpretations in performance. And she really was lovely and there were synchronicities such as the fact she summers in Wellfleet where we live and that alone inspired a million directions in conversation and she seemed really engaged and interested just as she was rather self-interested but never in too narcisissitc a way; if anything she might be self-deprecating. She has a big personality which can be a very fine thing and one had the sense that as far as eggs might go, she would be a good one. And she seemed no bullshit and very honest albeit to a fault perhaps. I mean it was TMI but I love people that are humans. And Virgos are all too human. I actually have a friend who is a Virgo who owns a shop called All Too Human. Reminds me I should reach out to her as it’s been awhile since we’ve had any contact. We did an event at that shop last year and it went really well. I’m going to see if she will do a repeat of last year’s event. Anyway the other shoe dropped when our potential Virgo editor said that she wanted to get feedback from other departments and there was resistance from some folks in their foreign rights department who dredged up some old emails from…what?…fifteen years ago. The fact is that during our process of writing Sextrology back in the day, our editor “lost” a quarter of our manuscript at the gym, our editorial director accidentally sent us an email, a month prior to publication, meant for someone in-house saying “don’t tell Stella and Quinn there book isn’t going to be hardback” which it was meant to be. Our marketing director created a whole book tour before she was meant to leave her post and we found out that she had actually fabricated the entire tour and none of the stores on the list had even heard of us. We found a rogue Argentinian version of the book for sale online when we had no deal with Argentina which means Harper wasn’t minding the store. In other words we have a laundry list of complaints against Harper that we have forgiven and then we find that there is someone there holding a grudge against us for advocating for ourselves. We were first time authors orphaned by our original publisher whose imprint was dissolved when Harper bought Morrow just after we signed our contract. Harper inheritied our book and we didn’t know anyone we were going to be working with at Harper Resource which no longer even exists and they treated us like absolute garbage the entire time and now here we are listening to th TMI lady telling us that there is bad blood still? To be fair she was very nice about it and pushed back against these accusations. And today we realize that the person who said this stuff about us didn’t even work there at the time we were publishing our book with them. Anyway….
After the meeting with her I had loach which is a word an old friend used to describe the feeling one has when other people are talking about you behind their back. And we had a new client who was this lovely, fluid fellow with a beautiful spirit and that sort of helped counteract the yuckiness that I was left with. To be honest I left the meeting feeling I don’t even care if we do a book or not at this point. I have so many other things going on in my life and I have forgiven so many others over the course of my existence and if they don’t want to forgive me that’s fine by me. I really don’t give a flying fig to be honest. I love the elements of my professional life that I have ultimate control over and I don’t need any validation or permission or anything from any outside sources. I was so happy to spend nearly three hours with this client because it is always in giving to others (paid clients though they may be) I always feel better myself and that I am contributing something to the world. After the appointment we decided to just walk around the corner and have a reassuringly pricey dinner at Claudette which, like many places in New York City, is really just a fancy diner, this one on a French Morrocan theme. I had lamb tagine (which wasn’t a tagine at all but just a shank on a plate (apparently they do that when they run out of the exotic crockery.
It really is quite a bummer but my screen froze on Friday, which is the twenty-second of November, and I had written but not posted today’s and nearly tomorrow’s. The entry for today was quite elaborate and I will never be able to replicate it. The sacrifices, though at first unwelcome, that we can might see as ritual sacrifice to the unseen gods who sometimes want exclusive access to our creative goods. I am reminded of the time I went to Florent on a hot day and sat there for hours. I had taken along every notebook in my possession and went through every page an annotated my body of work, earmarking this for a future novel or stage or screen play. Such are the losses. In Virgo we see loss and in Pisces, it’s so-called opposite sign, sacrifice. The loss may be physical, material but it’s sacrifice is spiritual. Indeed Virgo is about turning the physical or, more accurately, the actual, symbolized by its unique mutable-earth quality-element combination. I do believe I want to write this book when I come up with sentences like that. There is so much to say. What I can tell you about the loss of the material for this day it does feel great because of the skill that went into the previous version posted here before disappearing post a frozen laptop screen. He saves and quickly plugs in his laptop.Still, I can transmute that loss into a belief that I can herein create something that is as “good” if not better than what came before. Virgo is turning lemons into lemonade, lead into gold. And Libra is all goodness and light as we say but let’s think about the concept of good. We think of it as the opposite of bad or evil. There is the common good, which is a hallmark of Libra’s balanced and equitable nature.
Being the sole cardinal air sign, we are in the realm of ideas and social principles that connect us to others, Venus (union) on the astral plane. The Scales are the only inanimate symbol in the Zodiac (literally circle of animals). It is the exception and it strives to the exceptional. Cardinal-air translates to light and enlightenment. We are in the world of beautiful notions, high ideals, principles, ethics and aesthetics. The phrase fairest of them all, so physically resonant in the sign of Taurus, also ruled by Venus (on the earth plane), in Libra, points to justice, karma, and all such goodness; but it also expresses astral Venus’ starry notions of beauty and goodness in the abstract. Art is considered beautiful, but moreover good, when enough people agree it is, when there is some kind of silent and sweeping vote one way or another. Now none of this factored into what actually occured on the cay in question. And I’d like to get on with that train of thought. Happy though to have expressed these thoughts. They will go in my book notes.
Okay so it’s Wednesday the twentieth but the look of the heading date above. But you see I am in a pattern at that time of writing about the day previous. So here it is Wednesday but I will recap, once again, what happened on Tuesday. We went down for breakfast. I believe I had the oatmeal because my stomach (which does recover I would have been happy to know) is in complete agony really—I don’t want to feel that way again. I try to pay but as usual there isn’t a server in sight at this place lately. The dour hostess is passing by I say can I have our check. She continues her frowning and just turns, goes to the service station, snaps somethings around, and comes back with a check in a leather folder and slaps it down without saying anything turns and goes. We say thank you she says nothing. S. notices she didn’t bring the kind of check you can sign to you room. So I say excuse me—she’s at the register—could you bring us a check we can sign to her room. Increased frowning of disapproval, a palpable rolling of eyes attitude, more snapping around, then she slaps down the second check that much more pointedly without a word. We again say thank you and she says nothing so I call her back by saying thank you very much for your charming service; she then comes back, gets in my face, leaning in and says: my child just died and I’m trying not to cry. At this dramatic shift I reach out to touch her arm, she violently pulls away and storms away out of the room.
Yesterday morning (Wednesday) I awoke and it was six forty-five when I went down to the lobby. I asked the desk, which turns out is being run by yet another clueless being this place seems to like to hire, if they were serving coffee in the lobby, he said not until seven, and then he went on this weird rant about the neighborhood, a salad of words that included Sixth Avenue and tourists and expectations and Starbucks. I said well what about the restaurant. He said no they (the staff) have all just come in and they’re setting up and a second salad of getting in their way and tourists and expectations. I shot him a look and proceeded to the restuarant where I found behind the bar the maitre d’ in her flannel shirt and boots asked her if I could get two Americanos. She said sure and I followed her to the expresso machine and told her what had happened the morning before because I knew she asked S. during lunch with A. I told her. And she told me that the hostess had said it was the anniversary of her losing a child I don’t know how many years ago. Which is still the most horrible thing in the world. But it’s like I said to Stella this is the perfect Curb Your Enthusiasm experience: Larry goes to breakfast he asks for a check the hostess brings it doesn’t respond to thank yous, needs to bring another check, more thank yous no responses; Larry finally says thank you for your charming service, the woman gets in his face and says my child just dies then comes back for lunch and she’s laughing it up with, sorry, other women of color and Larry finds out that the loss of her child didn’t just happen. It has the kind of tension of a Curb show because how far can Larry realy push his argument in the face of a loss of a child. It’s kinda perfect plot wise.
Okay so three things are happening. Number one I’m re-writing text that originally occupied this spot but which I lost due to a computer crash. That’s one. Two I had already been a “day behind” plot-wise in that what I was writing on this given days, and several previous, was about the day before. But thirdly, now, writing you from three days later than this date, I have fallen further behind such that I am now writing about what happened two days ago. So I just did that Curb Your Enthusiasm bit and added information that would be new to you—that the maitre d’ had reached out to S. and that the hostess was yukking it up with customers. But instead of going back into yesterday’s post, which was writing about the day before, I’m going to continue the story from when the hostess left the room, two days ago, and try to catch up on that day and also yesterday, and maybe take a couple days to do that, even, as this post becomes further and further fleshed out and beefed up.
So we are talking about Tuesday here. And this post is Thursday’s. And I am writing this on Sunday. So I am staring at three empty Blague posts to do past this one today so to finish out Sunday. At the same time I am behind and still have to recreate some text I wrote and lost, but now I have more room in which to flow it (these empty Blagues I’ve yet to write) which is a good thing because there aren’t as many “events” to recount being that we returned home to write and do little else but banal activities. But where I left off was the hostess storming out of the room. And at that moment the pretty French woman from the elevator, who at pastries for breakfast yesterday, and whom I had seen in the lounge, later, with a swarthy guy speaking French, they both came in and sat in a small booth. S. recognized him as this movie-maker she loves and whom I also like. So on the way out I went over and said hi there just want to say we are big fans and he was very grateful and flattered and he asked what we did and we said mainly astrologers, that we met in France, and did a book which didn’t last with Flammarion and were on a French TV show where, when I froze, they sent in a cloun. S. had mentioned we met there and she studied at the Sorbonne et tout ca. I then said something about his being on our “dinner party list” you know, if you had a dinner party and could invite anybody who would it be. We always said he and Charlotte. Anyway now I don’t remember if that happened in the morning or in the afternoon. Because we did go upstairs for a bit. A. was coming at 10 but she was going to be on the phone from 930 downstairs. We were watching the hearings so it was fine.
Anyway we came back down and Yvan was still there and the conversation continued and he asked for a card and S. went to fetch one and I sat with A. who ordered a breakfast of smoked salmon and such. I had another coffee, still. S. came down and dropped a card and we had a great meeting and we really talked through the whole V.D. situation and we signed all our contracts and combed through some design questions that had popped into my brain in the night, which weren’t specious in the end. And A. had to get back to work and we decided, right, let’s go back to Pastis for lunch why not. I made a reservation. We had a lovely lunch, I the Nicoise, S. the chicken paillard salad. We then went and got a gifty for A. at Hermes, which turns out to be the place where I had photographed the metal awnings the day before which I just showed to A. this morning. How did we not realize it was Hermes—I guess they must have had metal gates lowered. Anyway we returned back in time for a phone chat with Meg?…oh no that’s not right. We already had the phone chat with Meg?—see this is what happens when you lose material and have to recreate it—my memory is no longer one hundred percent on this. Whenever the call was it kind of doesn’t matter.
We had a client, whom it was great to see. I had a call with my osteo guy to discuss what’s going on in my neck. I was not surprised to hear. We are definitely coming back in a few weeks for this party. They are getting the parts together at the mechanics, I just need to contact them Friday (but I won’t make contact when I call in the morning and I won’t call back). Just like we returned to the scene of the lunch crime so are we going back to Claudette for dinner. We are creatures of habit and like to mitigate our surprises and my stomach is so bad today I have this weird instinct that I should have a vodka martini. We go to the resto. I have that martini. Then scallops and we get the Bandol again and a pot de creme (I think it’s been on someone’s mind since they saw it on the menu, too, at Pastis). We have the clean tajine discussion this night I think. There is a homeless woman outside to whom we give money but S. is freaked out and thinks she’s buying drugs with it and will overdose. We go back to the hotel and now tomorrow (Wednesday morning) is the day on which I began this actual post, writing it into the Thursday’s slot on a Sunday. And When I write tomorrow’s post I will begin again on that same day, now, two days later.
I totally forgot to say that Yvan wrote back the same day and I hope we shall see him in Paris. We don’t have much of a set-up there for serving meals—although I intend to change that! This is meant to be Friday’s post. I am writing it on Sunday, but the subject of what I’m writing begins on the previous Wednesday and, by the time it’s done, I hope at least to be caught up through Thursday. So I got those early morning Americanos downstairs and brought them up so we can pack. My stomach feels markedly better and I credit my martini instinct of last night. We descended for brekkie with A. and I had the weird board with whipped ricotta, hardboiled eggs and sweet potato and kale. Strange combination truly. Then I had a chicken sausage. I want to remain full today as we are hopping a train. A. had what she had yesterday plus some taters and she loved the present be brought here. Now remember the day before we had this full on discussion about the person who introduced us and how we empowered A. to stand up for her and vice versa really; and also how the person who works for that culprit in London confided that we are all blameless and that V.D. is insidious to say the least. And penny wise pound foolish, we would have been so happy to have given to and remained open to working with her; but to be shaken down by someone in this culture of shakedown is just that much more an affront and so not on. Yvan’s screenwriting partner was seated at a booth herself, no sign of him today. We went over a major timeline for the jewelry and it felt very forward moving on that score. So it was time to get on the road. We walked through the lounge and to the front door of the hotel and A. asked where the ladies was and we explained she should go back through the lounge the way she came. We hugged and elevatored to the room to grab our bangs and go. In those few minutes A. had written that V.D. was actually in the lounge! Can you believe this particular synchronicity? I mean, it’s been quite a week. And we had J.D. and now V.D. and we got loached by the editor and my stomach hurts and the whole thing is feeling very depressing suddenly but I’m going to sail through that feeling. We grabbed our bags and checked out and managed to avoid her which felt like an accomplishment in itself.
Got to the train station with some time to spare. There was this Amish or I’m going to say even more strict sect Mennonite family that looked so super odd and inbred with the tiniest faces you’ve even seen and really small feet, all in black with bonnets and suitcases without wheels. Come to find out later when we get to Reading that there is quite a large community upstate, which I find terribly interesting. Our train was called at Standby and we did see some folks gathering in one area and it turned out they had information we didn’t have. Still we queued up in time not to be in a crush of people heading down to the train platform and we did find seats across the aisle from each other in the quiet car and I sat down and wrote a great deal of texts that would have made up the entries for November nineteen, twenty and twenty-one. And I have now caught up, by way of circular conversation to the day before the day of this date. Phew. So I was sitting next to this kind of dry, funny guy who wanted to connect, briefly, which was cool. We had some emails from our agent, also forwarding us a note from the would-be editor who came to the same conclusion we had. The person who was the problem at Harper didn’t even work there when we were publishing our book under that aegis. She also asked if she could approach a first pass list. There were two people on it from the old days and I said we were kind of spooked. She wrote right back to say that she already had enthusiastic verbal feedback that they did want to see our proposal. So things are starting to feel a little healed on the publishing front and perhaps we are not in some kind of pergatory after all.
We got to 128 and it was already very dark and raining and there would be traffic, but not as bad as I thought and so we listened to the hearings and headed to Reading to grab some La Stoppa and Pellegrino (and I was given a little fig dip for helping the staff with something). We got to N.’s and I think they might have been waiting for us a bit but it was super casual and we had some broccoli soup with cheese and salad and had a fairly calm talk. If anything I talked too much recapping what went down. I was talking about the effects of my new direction with medical treatment and the like. We are planning to see our doctors in Cambridge the next day which is one of the best places one can see doctors. In this way I feel very at home in this part of the world. I would have to be ill in New York City or need a hospital there. It really is most surely unglam. So Wednesday ends and we manage to sleep enough and thankfull I get another bath before leaving and I’m feeling very relaxed indeed. The debates were on but seem so beside the fact now. And tomorrow will be the final day of these hearings (for now).
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 2021 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved. Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2021 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox.
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