Scorpio 11° (November 2-3)

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

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

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1081-1085. I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

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

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

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

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

=====

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

=====

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

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

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

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

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

=====

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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