Sagittarius 11° (December 3)

I may be officially pushing my luck a little but if it turns out that the schedule loosens up that would be a very good thing, because then life could be more integrated. In the meantime, I will do my due diligence but will otherwise let myself be guided. It is exactly what is called for now and there is no real substitute for allowing life to unfold on its own terms. Touch wood: things tend to trend toward the better, while I must recognize that certain patterns repeat, and I must take responsibility for that part of it I suppose. I’ve spent the morning in the kitchen, roasted a chicken and brussels for dinner, meanwhile repurposed cassava pasta with beans and some broccoli for lunch. Have a client in about ninety minutes so I thought I’d get a jump. Publisher got back to us and we might have a wee more wiggle room which would be just fantastic. Keeping feelers out there for something fabulous. Things do have a way of working out and though I am not giving over to magical thinking, there is something to be said for letting unseen powers, those proverbial mighty forces, play their part. If one never holds the intention of doing harm then there can be nothing ever truly wrong with any outcome I suppose. We are covering all the necessary bases and there is truly nothing more than that which can be done, so no use worrying over any of it. The point is I will be finished with what needs doing before getting on any kind of boat. Only now I don’t have this giant fear looming over me and if I need to take time out to make a move I have the power to do so. 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1231-1235 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.

From a classical standpoint the first-born children of the gods are the archetypes of the first sign of Aries—both war gods, Ares and Athena (Roman: Mars and Minerva), these front-liners are two sides of the offensive/defensive warrior coin. Life being foremost a battle for it, we send these toughies forth.

The biblical archetypes are Adam and Lilith (the first wife of Adam) who was too like him—they battled for the top sexual position—and no compliant, though ultimately more dangerous, Eve. The symbol for Athena and Lilith is the same, a delta/triangle about a crossed staff. Athena despised her warlike brother Ares, familiarity in nature breed contempt, perhaps.

Anyway, all of these figures are alphas, as Aries people tend to be. Alphas being what they are, they tend to operate solo as a rule, not being the best team players on the planet. And like the first born gods they energetically draw upon, they approach life with a certain carte blanche. (White, along with red, is the Aries color. ) Full license, a blank slate. Think of Adam going around naming everything as if he was the only person on the planet. Ahem. Aries people (again, people of any sign are the most vivid example we have of that sign’s energy) tend to act this way. They don’t ask for permission, and rarely for forgiveness.

If you were the only person on the planet how would you act? Well I find that this time of year is a good time to contemplate that thought. Consider the indvidual shoots fighting their way through the soil, feeling the pain of being born—we are all of us, for the whole of our lives, like those bursts of life. Our attention needn’t be likewise undivided. We are the only ones. You are the only one. You are free of comparison. There is nobody with a better job, more famous friends, a more successful business, a more touted podcast, more hits on their websites, more likes on their posts. Life is hard enough to embody with singularity. And, as such, it can be the simplest of things.

Without compare, we can focus on what our singular purpose might be. Without consideration, we have license to “name” everything we see and encounter and experience. We can call a spade a spade. There is no competion. There is no contest. There is no race. (Insert double-ententre inference here). There is no rushing. There is no deadline to doing the one singular thing you were born to do: Become yourself. This is the true meaning of the sign of Aries’ rule over “birth” and “selfhood”. We must imagine what life would be like if we were the only one on the planet. What would we do then? Who would we be if there were no second opinions or outside influences? How would we dance if nobody were looking? Surely, we would embody our birthright. It would be second nature. There would be no clock ticking. We would simply be. The Aries motto is “I am”. We would go at our own pace. Again, life would be simple and though it mightn’t be always easy, there would be nobody stopping us from making it so, as best we might.

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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.

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I’m a big believer in self-reliance. Believe me I have tried to not be but for some reason it doesn’t tend to work out all that great. Which is strange because people are constantly asking favors of me. When others do, I tend to comply, feeling it an opportunity to help pave the way or speed the trip of people in want. But I’ve got to say, I don’t typically get the same all-in reaction in return. Don’t get me wrong—it doesn’t make me bitter nor have a come to change my ways and withhold my help when asked. It’s just that, objectively speaking, I don’t meet many people like myself. That sounds egotistical in some twisted way but so be it.

Anywig, I tend not to ask for help (which can be it’s own “issue). And I will admit that I have waxed martyry in my day, but mostly not. I just find it so much easier to d.i.y.. Also desired positive results tend to taste all the sweeter. The man who wrote philosophically on this subject, most notably, is a Gemini not an Aries (I’ll let you guess who that is). But energetically speaking the notion is Arien. Self-reliance is most selfless. Just imagine if we embodied this principle. Nobody would have to pick up after your tweets.

If you want something done right…I’m tempted to finish that sentence with….hire a millenial. They seem to know how to do things quickly and easily, and now they do it with stickers, but I’m not sure they do it right. Am I self-reliant or am I a control freak. Am I hardworking or am I carrying some cross around. Uh-oh. I do know I tend to take on more than my fair share. Back in the days I waited tables I used to hope no other servers would show up so I could work the whole restaurant myself. I had recurring dreams of waiting tables as many servers do. But for me they were good dreams. How many Quinn Cox’s does it take to screw in a light bulb? One. No joke there.

Being self-reliant is a nightmare under this particular government administration. People with whom I have zero in common elected this baboon-bafoon to disempower the individual and create oppression on a scale we haven’t ever seen in this country. The marches and protests seem to have died down. Everyone is back to their distractions? Every day I spin the globe in my mind to alight on some place in the world I can feel as free as possible. I don’t think it’s here anymore. At least not for awhile. And I am self-reliant enough that I haven’t worked for anybody else for the last few decades unless it was as a freelancer who could walk at will.

So what is self-reliance at this particular instant in history? It’s hard to say. I suppose it’s not letting the government oppress you or the news of the oppression of the government depress you. But self-reliance isn’t escapism either (not even the good Pisces brand of seeking soul-asylum). Self-reliance is being a warrior in keeping with Aries’ martial archetypes. Self-reliance is health and fitness and personal well-being. Self-reliance is taking just what you need and no more as to create a deficit for others. Self-reliance is, in fact, taking a stand for those who can’t do so for themselves. Never do we have so strong a sense of self as when we are warriors for the freedom and happiness of all sentient beings.

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I was really put off by one of the performers this year in particular as said artist was the most high maintenance of characters we’ve ever encountered. Every week for months there was some drama. This artist alienated the entire creative team weeks before they ever met. On the eve of this artists arrival, while I’m between shows of other artists (a thought that would never occur to this person) I was having dinner and this artist called and started off crying and saying “I have a really bad feeling about coming”. Now, as I said, I had preemtively addressed every issue, and there were many, that this artist could have had, and here this person was about to say that they weren’t coming—I just knew that’s what was going to be said. So what did I do? I’m not proud, but I pretended we had a bad connection and hung up and then texted them to say all sorts of positive reassuring words and inviting them to come to the shows if they got into town. But I was resolved right then and there that I was done with this person. Anyway their show was last night and I couldn’t enjoy it in the least, despite the great talent this person possesses. As I’ve said talent is not enough.

Yesterday had this pall of sadness too, as that poor boy got fatally attacked by a shark on our beach. The whole thing has me spooked.Anyway, I was looking back on some writing I did and figured I would just let that be my entry today It’s from a year ago spring, or thereabouts:

Louis Alphonse, Duke of Anjou, would be the legitimate pretender to the French throne, who would be Louis XX.

Aries is the sign of the Self. But this is not to be confused with selfishness. It’s more like putting the oxygen mask on first before you can help others. But help others you might.

As I watch the mostly older white men on the right shuffling in and out of meetings in D.C. all I can think is that they couldn’t be more divorced from the concept of helping or serving others. They don’t even pretend anymore like they might have done forty years ago. Reporters are seen as an annoyance. It’s like these lawmakers are part of some royal family. Meanwhile, the British royal family, for instance, is suffused with the understanding that they are born to serve the people, despite their trappings of wealth—and really they’re not ostentatious.

I was reading Edmund White’s  The Flaneur recently, one of a thousand books Stella has put in front of me knowing I half-jokingly admit “I don’t read.” But it was a thin book and it was about Paris and I could knock it off in a morning. There is a bit about a loyalist bar on the rue de Rivoli. And how the crowd there wants to bring back the French royal family, such as it is. The notion seems absurd at first. Until you realize that the royalists’ argument is that a royal family would do more for the people than those elected. It’s starting to make more sense to me.

Just because the people in power didn’t get there by divine right doesn’t mean they don’t act like it.  Perhaps its not a divine right endowed upon them by a god but rather a lobby but they still act like they are appointed as if on by high. And they tolerate the rest of us whom they seek to oppress. Noblesse oblige now seems more modern a concept than what is passing these days for democracy wherein those who have don’t feel obliged to provide to those less fortunate. No. Even the income-based Affordable Care Act (that’s the name of it) where the rich pay a little more to cover those who have not is too much to ask from these entitled assholes.

Not that Britain is any great shakes these days but, despite the fact they have a royal family, they are way more (social-)democratic than we are—their health care and education system is a testament to that. Remember the Age of Enlightenment? The Social Contract? Reason? (All Apollonian/Libran terms in my astrological view). How about the Declaration of Independence? The founding fathers took a page from the royalists’ book: They were going to play the role of father to the nation and thus take care of and provide for others as an outcropping of their own inalienable fullfillment of selfhood.

Now we have to look at Paul Ryan’s smug mug. Or that giant orange pig face which, I’m sorry, shows signs of constant drug abuse. We have to stomach the chinless droolings of Mitch McConnell, the ignoramity of Rick Perry, the impatient, “tolerating”, violent insouciance of pretty much the entire GOP. We’re sorry to bother you we’re just trying not to starve, be enslaved and die. Sorry. We know you’re busy being paid healthcare on our taxes and getting lobbyist kickbacks and book deals and industrial contracts. Our mistake. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

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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.

Sagittarius 10° (December 2)

I woke up rather late and that is really okay. I’m still not on a fast track and there will be drama this day. I think I felt that innately. First let me say that I got myself back to sleep after being up in the night by invoking all that are available to me. I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before but I am definitely wrapping myself in certain protection and power and I don’t have to go this process alone, that is a misconception. Eminences have made themselves known, not to me but close, in the past and it suddenly dawned on me that I can open some major channels. Sometimes you have to back off to go forward. We sent a note back to the publisher with guidance from our agent and so that will just have to play out the way it plays out. In other news it became clear that my anonymity was blown but I do think that it will have a positive effect. We shall see. All is a question mark and I need to step away from all of this, as I do. We will go and get a tree and put it up and make ourselves a lovely final dinner of faux pasta until after our next trip to Cambridge. I am slowly going through, taking inventory of the contents of the basement and cataloguing on route to moving. I don’t want to have to think about any of this, really, until September at the very earliest. Sometimes you just have to step away and let some information in. I do think that I am on the right track on that score. We are narrowed down when it comes to where to look for a place to hang our hat for awhile. And thus we are open to any synchronicity that might strike. The tree went up the lights went on and we had a magical evening. I am lost in real estate porn and it is becoming quite the distraction I can ill afford, so I will have to sacrifice this particular addiction to move things along. I’m happy to be back in more spiritual a mode in the face of all this nonsense.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1226-1230 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 was asking myself today what would a perfect day be like. I think it would be me rising for an hour by myself, having some tea or water, and tweeting out some S +C thought in the morning in regard to the cosmic weather or positioning. I might then go and read of my old Blague on the Sabian Symbol, and more about that symbol in general. Then write a few lines about it for the Blue Book. These thoughts may or may not be represented in the new Blague, or I may again link back, looping through again for another year. Anyway I would open my daily Blague file and have it open most of the day just to keep writing into—various thoughts and what not that can go in this direction or that—and QC would tweet/gram about that and share S + C and vice versa; as well as anything Stella, product, and the tweets of our closest friends and allies. Afterglow would do a tweet and gram per day, only. At noon, there might be another tweet or gram from S + C on various theme(s). I would have an early morning yoga and lunch. The day would consist of the hours between 2-7, for the purpose of the collection, and then one would have a soup or small salad, 10 being my ultimate bedtime. Work from 6-8 or nine, yoga then lunch until 2 then a good 5 hours of dedicated work for the collection; of course clients fall into those hours as well. As does any administration regarding projects with ad agencies or other fashion companies, that don’t have a product component, but might want to feature us in their shops as well.

I believe I may have to get my PhD from the Sorbonne in Metaphysics. It will only take me about ten years but so what? I too will have become somewhat astute at this sort of thing and Stella can help me; or I was thinking Harvard Divinity School for some kind of spiritual degree. I know it sounds crazy but why not. Stella is well on her way and she managed to fit it in some how. There are crazier things to consider than that. I don’t want to spend very much time in New York City; I have a morbid fear of doing so. It would make so much sense on so many levels and yet sense isn’t really what motivates me or rather sensibility isn’t. Sense does very much in the Jane Austen sense—ha, ha! I know there is a balance; and for one more year at least we will do first things first. And that means combing through the existing existence and eliminating majorly.

I need to ritualize saying goodbye, even to objects; well especially objects, actually, in many cases. I feel I can say goodbye if someone is watching me do it. I know that sounds crazy. And I could just record everything for the camera before dumping it, which let’s face it, I was always going to do. This is me hanging on to ephemera within an emphemeral existence. If Einstein can die who the fuck is going to miss me? Some people but not many. I’m not a crowd pleaser to be perfectly honest. You have to really know me to love me and most people really don’t—know me, that is.

I had this journalist aggressd me today and I was really having none of it. I took screenshots of her spew and sent it directly to her manager. Then saw she apologized so I wrote said manager to say never mind. Forgiveness is all. It really is. But fuck these people who think you owe them…for what? I don’t owe anybody anything and they owe me nothing in return. I am on top of my shit and I juggle a lot of shit, so don’t come knocking at my door or my Facebook Messenger LOL to wipe all your poor pity me angry insecure bullshit. I don’t have time for that. The voice in my head is a righteous black woman. And it’s not the Maya Angelou type of righteous, or even the sort of peturbed and put-off voice of Nina Simone; no the voice in my head is way more sort of worldly wise Southern, proud, warm and loving, but still not taking any shit. You hear me boy? Oh I hear you voice in my head.

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I am determined to do less and be more. That is one of the tricks of our trade, and what we tell clients at the most relevant times. I do long for a time when I can get back into all my books and such. I think I will celebrate this birthday as a turning point. I have really been living in so much hurt these last four years and I am determined that it will push me into a much more zen and vibrant place. I have not always kept my side of the street clean and that is the truth. But what is also true is that, due to my upbringing, I can have very bad taste in people. When you spend your entire childhood trying to get affectionate blood from stoney so-called loved ones…stoney is the wrong word: Mean people is more correct; when you try to be liked as well as loved, in effect, you cut and paste this dynamic on other relationships moving forward. It’s a terrible burden.

As a young adult I went deep into spiritual reading as a way to find an even deeper connection than the ones that were rejecting me. It reminded me of something I’ve written before:
Sometimes you spend all your days and nights thinking of other people. And the cosmic joke is those are the same people who take you most for granted. I wonder sometimes if I removed myself from friend/family dynamics if others would feel the miss. I doubt it though they should. Then again they might be relieved not to have to deal with me. Apparently, I’m not easy. I think I’m super easy. And very nurturing indeed. Others differ on that score.

The Vitametavegiman episode of I Love Lucy was on this morning at the ungodly hour at which I awoke. Lucy was my babysitter. Before I could talk or read I was imprinted upon her. I used to think her name was Lucy O’Ball because I hadn’t yet learned that Lucille was a word. But she is part Scottish so that’s cool. I don’t think I’m long for the past world. I’ve been milking it forever and it no longer serves. I would watch Lucy and think I will always watch Lucy but something about me says I can’t watch it any more. It’s too far in the past.

And when you’re suddenly old, as old people are, the past no longer holds the same appeal. It’s not cute or comforting. It seems vividly archaic and scary. One must get away. And so one must. TV in general is a problem. But for the fact you can see great things. The grand irony. I watched Louis C.K. last night flirt with bisexuality. He wasn’t stealing my act because I don’t have one. But it was fantastic and amazing to see him delve into territory—all the while keeping his straight safety line—that I’ve, in my own small way treated.

He does this bit about being knee high at a football game where the “urinal” is a trough. As the son of a father who had season’s tickets to the Giants games where, yes, the urinal was a giant communal affair and, when you’re eleven (that crucial age) when you pee, dicks are too close to eye level. Unlike Louis C.K. I didn’t glance side to side. But I was aware of some “power”.

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.

Sagittarius 9° (December 1)

Someone got up at four-thirty and brought me along for a ride as well. It is now four hours later and I haven’t gotten any work done as of yet and have to do way better than that if I’m to make the magic as needs making. The hardest thing to do, really, is just get in. But that is why I am here today. I am really frustrated as I attempt to enter. I can’t seem to get my brain around it all. And what I said yesterday about disposition feels hard to embody today but I am trying. It would be so easy to escape but I fear what I might sacrifice in so doing. I suppose I should let things be sticky and just work my way through from there but lord it isn’t easy I can tell you. 

In social interaction as a couple with such a mate, she plays the role of translator, but with nary an eyeroll. She may mistake madness for genius in a partner, drawing on her classical archetype as spiritual champion to an ideological hero as she might see him or her. That’s just some of the sentences I wrote today as I get my brain around this entire process. I’m a few days behind in terms of posting posts. We hear from our publisher today and my anxiety goes through the roof. There is so much on our plate right now and I know I’m being tested for a reason and I am ready to rise to the occasion. It would be wonderful to find a way to land, but really, right now is about not getting sidetracked and staying the course. I pray to Athena, the goddess of helmsman, that I will be able to sail this ship. The beauty of that metaphor is that there is no shirking of daily responsibility, in order to get to the final destination, one must make watery tracks every day. This is what I have on my mind and on my plate and I have to make hay while the Sun shines as I race against the nippings of the dirty dogs at my heels. I have all the power I need at my disposal and the trick is to let oneself be guided.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1221-1225 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.

My particular spritual father isn’t Hemingway, it’s Fitzgerald, a superior writer, though obscured, in large part by his own reputation and (thus) a fellow Libra. I love everything about the myth and the man, whom I know less than the myth. But I have always thought that we would have made great friends. I can feel his pain if not his genious. And just imagine the two of us, traipsing around Paris, on a lark and on a bender, young, tan and full of the dickens. We would try to impress and outwit one another. We might buy each other ties as presents. We would meet our wives for dinner with inside jokes. Where had we been together all day they might ask? The answer may include the words bars, hammams, parks and haberdasheries. He may have bought me this hat on a whim. We are more than friends Fitzgerald and me; just this short of lovers probably. In a couple days time we might disappear without a trace to the Riviera for nearly three weeks sending one funny but not so amusing (to some) telegram. There would be rumours which we scoff and in which we each, secretly, revel. We can’t decide between the two of us who is the most good looking. From the inevitable sizing up that happens when you share a hotel room, I know mine is bigger.

Scott really is an amazing person. That one night, downstairs, when I ordered les grenouilles, he was absolutely on fire. A little manic I’d say. I think he wasn’t being square when he said he didn’t drink in the day. It really seemed he had; and I have a pretty good radar for that kind of thing. We had had a perfectly normal breakfast, although now, come to think of it, he was rather quiet and monosyllabical and yeah, cagey, I suppose. After my little walk to get cigarettes and postcards he was already gone from the room, which felt a little loaded with unncecessary deceit. Anyway I was headed to the beach and got one of the last lounge chairs. It would prove to be the hottest day of the week and I had to run to the water lest I scorch my feet. The families were gone by midday and didn’t return in the afternoon. I had my lunch en place. By the afternoon only half the chaises were filled and there wasn’t a kid in sight. La Rentrée happend within the span of an hour, this extinction burst of families crowding the beach were all, apparently, just taking in a little bit more on their last morning before checking out. I made eye contact with several of the adults and probably made it obvious on my exiting the plage that I was staying juste en face. In my perverted mind I imagined some of those beachgoers being so enamored that they followed me or planned to show up in my hotel bar in the next two hours. About which, it turned out, I was right.

I had smoked half a pack on the beach in my frustration and my lungs were literally hurting—I could feel it in the shower—like when you get waterlogged, as a kid, from staying in the ocean all day. So I was rather lost in self-recrimination as I descended the hotel’s sweeping stairwell, muscle memory walking me across the lobby’s marble floors, around giant potted palms, to the moulding-mirrored doors, still closed, leading into what at first seems a tiny hotel bar until you see it is a long, narrow bistro, to the right, leading through blue light, cooly reflecting off checkboard floors, ceiling fans blowing the high chalk walls rolled the hotel’s long narrow bistrot, spilling through its sidewalk café. So long it was that the square of light that marked its entrance, still at the bar where I stood, would appear to fit within the circumference of my watch face…

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Want what you have. It’s a cosmic spell. Wanting what you have inspires three-fold appreciation. Peter Frampton, Donovan. Taurus are evasive. Henry Cavill. Bjork & Yorke. Charles Daniels. Christo Jay. Dane Chenery. Reginald Johnson. Paul Nesbit. These are names I come upon. To be honest I was in part making a list of black people in Provincetown as I know very few which isn’t a shock as we unfortunately live in the whitests of places. Not that I have very much against the whites (except everything). I do think one of the things I’m most lacking is a bit of socialization. I think I’ve forgotten how to be with people on some level, such is the solitary life of a writer. I think that’s also why I do things like festival and such. Just so I see more people. The consultancy is even going through a phase where most clients live a world a way, some of them, and we do appointments by Skype.

So I have to start working out some bits. I mean, really, I suppose, bits, or attempts thereat, will comprise the bulk of this Blague for the next few days. Let’s just say Provincetown is a tough town. For those of us who live here it is a tought town. Foc’sle. Alex Carlton. Bu The I Dint Haaa. The town has changed so much so fast Ryan Murphy has only managed to buy four houses. R.P.’s opposite of the P.R.rs. People moving out people moving in. All because of the fo-ore of their skin. It reminds me of the white exodus of the early 1970s, where the whites left the city to the largely black population moving in. The gays are the new white people. As you can see I’m not quite there yet. Bits are now just junked up, gluey, gunked up in my exhaust pipe. And so this is a bit dada-tastic today but that’s okay. I’m not really myself yet. I took in so much over the weekend and then I overloaded myself again over these last two days.

This administration is feeling like so much leading up to that explosive “going away party” Cerse Lannister threw. You don’t make a ton of friends doing what I do. Some here might ieven call me let’s just say Tenacious. I prefer to call it Absorbing. This is a Cancer man thing. As the sponge, paradoxical: Yes like a sponge, taking it all in, but also absorbing meaning irresistably enthralling, someone who sucks you in. Charles Daniels. Omar Neil. It makes me nervous when people, newscasters say, well, especially newscasters, but also politicians all kind of pundits, when the can’t get through a sentence without slightly mispronouncing and then repeating, repeating what they say; so that the pattern of the discourse is like this (hand motion); I get so lost in anticipation, angst really, sometimes total panic, of when they’re going to make their next mistake.

They say…well somone says something but, having stepped away, i no longer remember what I was going to say, let alone, them. I have two weeks to drop a suit size. Sorry that thought slipped out. Maybe I should just stop here.

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I should focus on the two signs of Scorpio today, but I won’t. And I, I mean Marthe, should focus today on doing some hotel write-ups and, in the process, I should make some inquiries as to places that might be so kind to host us. The thing is there actually time to do this? and I should make it part of Sunday’s focus? I think I need to stop, drop and regroup: and take a look at my big black book.

Oh the sense I feel remembering fashion weeks in Paris and Milan; duh, of course that’s what we’re doing. I don’t know if I can truly stomach New York again; but I know I need try. I will work out some math in the morning but it should be quite easy to accomplish; meanwhile staying uptown will be a nice change; and I look forward to catching a vibe.

All I’m doing really now hinges on how it is I conduct myself henceforth. I do have to be careful about my relationships—it’s an area where I’ve been cavalier in the past. And I would do well to begin building back a few bridges. Though I dare say the bulk of what moves me is the ability to work with people more readily on creative projects. Something is beeping outside and it’s driving me a bit bonkers.

We did some local morning radio today, which was fun, and then strolled and had ourselves a wee Kofi; we got into a nice chat with Tim about product and learned that Chris Mart. has been in town this whole time; who knew? We did some box office jazz hands and headed home and realized we wanted to go beack that evening to P to see Midnight at the Never At.

The play happens in a sort of limbo state of afterlife where you can build your own existence, or at least a room in this case, from your memory. The setting of the play, thus, is the back room of a Greenwich Village gay bar called the Never At in the 1960s where there is a little stage where the main characters once performed a show at midnight called Midnight at the Never At. What I realized is that limbo and memory go together and it’s very Pisces in that sense, the triple goddess in triplicate, numbering nine, the muses whose mother is Mnemosyne (memory). Mnemosyne would be a nice name for a luxe supper club, itself. I do love a luxe supper club.

But that’s all of a same piece as all the feelings that are bubbling up of late; I really could cry a lot if I set my mind to it. I have such pangs in my heart and viscera; such sadness and regret and anger being released, chaos of emotion distilling into wisdom.

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I don’t like talking about the orange menace, but my question is: if he has a short list of twelve people what does that tell you? that he considers pretty much everyone in his inner circle not to be above suspicion. Think about that. He can’t trust even the ones closest to him; it’s the same reason why he throws everyone under the bus; he doesn’t think anybody likes him so like a sixth grader he’s going to dump you before you dump him, because you were going to to it anyway.

Who here has ever had a panic attack? Who here has ever had a panic attack while driving? Who here has ever had a panic attack while driving, feeling like you’re going to have a heart attack or stroke, and then a commercial comes on the radio for stroke rehabilitation? Time to pull over. But I find this sort of thing to be one of the ways the Universe likes to fuck with us. Prankster that it is. That’s a cruel joke for sure but sometimes it gives us funny ones like:

Besides what it says about the Cape Cod demographic, Provincetown is High School. Commercial Street is the Hallway along which many people share lockers.

I know I need to back to find more of these and bring them forward and work on them. I just, most of them being on a Provincetown theme. Like you really can’t get away with being a total a-hole in Provincetown. Trust me I know. (Laugh maybe? And a little bit more about me if it’s funny.

I mean if you’re an asshole to someone in a big city, you know it’s not that small a world; or if you live in the suburbs, say, and you have some kind of run-in or whatever, it would be isolated and disconnected and alienating but…in Provincetown which is Here if you get into a sit with someone, it’s like that scene in Grease and you’re like Rizzo and everybody knows you’re knocked up by the time you get to Tim-Scapes. That reference will only make sense to some, my execution of the analogy not withstanding…

There seems to be a hurricane coming our way. That would really be the icing on the cake. Well I guess I’ll then have to do some recovery relief. I mean, really, what is one to do? It actually isn’t the end of the world. I would live to fight another day. There is in fact enough to do by just doing it

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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.

Sagittarius 8° (November 30)

Rude awakenings, but I’m ready for them. No sooner had I put an email together hitting all the major points needing hitting when the knock came at the door and some douche with a badge and no mask had a little piece of paper for us. This was actually good news because it meant FF had finally retained someone that our guy could talk to, so I’m seeing that as a positive. Still it was jarring in an otherwise already jarring time. I had ended up sleeping in, good thing. I’m not in the least struggling but I will say I am shuffling a lot of information right now through my sieve for a brain. I made a lovely cucumber, feta, tomato, olive salad for lunch and a red pepper soup, which we had with blue cheese and crispies. I am still not back in, but I must begin to be in the next twenty-four hours. The weather is dark and dire. There is a storm kicking up. And by the time we meet with a client from London in the afternoon the wind is whipping. It was a good session and on days like these I’m so grateful for this kind of connection. The absurdity of friends posting about their privilege on social media is so extreme and so disappointing. There is some Martha Washington quote about misery and happiness being products of disposition and not circumstance and I wholly agree. I’m looking so forward to finding our little place somewhere and I am increasingly drawn north in that thought form. I am willing to take responsibility for my own disposition. It is good to know that certain things are very much within our control. Sophrosyne, self-restraint, is something that I would like to explore for Aries woman. Skill in handcraft to describe Athena and Hephaestus. Philosophia a love of wisdom. Fire spirit, holy spirity. Allegory of wisdom and strength. Cardinal equals primary (first) initial and initiation. Jakob Bohme. Anthroposophy of Steiner. Dianic Wicca. From Natura to Divine Sophia. Taurus possesses a great appetite for life and is the most sensual. Appetite, eating, consecrate but really rules the gullet. White witch families running antithetical to lizard king broods. Set in 1998? Funn? Cosmic joke backstory can be more mystical for instance like in our live shows. We have said that we met at summer camp for gifted children of our ilk. For everyone of those tired old Bushes….what if the show started in the present with word someone wants to make a TV show of our life and so we have to go back to where it all began to go forward. I know this started out sensical and then became a bit Dada, but really you have enough to read below you don’t need this part to be perfect, or do you?

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1216-1220 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.

Yet another splendiferous morning on the beach; and as I enter the final stretch with festival plans and fundraising in particular I am potentially in very good shape right now, if I can just stay the course and keep my wits about me. I have already done what I do: Which is to Once the hub-ub of the next ten days is through I will begin to focus on getting pictures framed and junk dumped and other such things done that fall under the heading of going through the debris of the past fifty-five years. How did I get to this place it seems so very surreal. And yet here I am. Well not quite yet so we’ll hold that thought. I don’t have the support I once had on any level from would-be sponsors; so I need to pull it out now, more than I have.

I have to find a way back to the magic that could help me pull out this festival at the last minute. So I”m going to tap into “The Eight Days and Nights of William Willing” which is the name of a treatment of a novel I wrote many moons ago on what became a well-worn theme; but, hey, what else is new. I know I will drop the ball and that I’ll have to work my way back from some kind of edge because I know I’m wont to go there. The question is how far off track am I willing to go and how much energy can I put into working my way back. But now, I’ve promised myself, that I would do double duty and introduce my festival alter ego Marthe Svenjördt and to her writing as the new concierge of our website. Here are some of her restaurant “reviews”:

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I slept a whole hell of a lot. And spent the day getting super caught-up on my fundraising. Honestly, I really have done all I can do—the rest will have to be maintenance. It sounds like S. had quite the time in New York filled with kismets. She saw Siobhan and JVB and other friends; but she also got put back in touch with Andrea Liberman, who has her own store of Greene Street, as she should do. She ran into our artist friend and designer, Emily, and Woody Allen and Soon Yi walked into the bar where she and Griet were having a something. It sounds to me like she had one of those visits that are one in a million.

Wigstock looked kind of boring from the outside (pictures on social media); so many people in the community bitch about the commercialism of Ru Paul, and yet this enterprise, spearheaded by Neil Patrick Harris, seemed devoid of soul. But I dunno, I wasn’t there. JVB looked beautiful in the pictures.

Anyway it’s past 9PM and Monkey Business with Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers is on. It really is a bizarre film. Ginger is always so embodied and does a ton of interesting things. Cary Grant is terrible and ad libs way too many words and antics. He actually ruins the film. Also the guy who plays Lloyd in All About Eve is in it—I was just thinking the other night that I’ve never seen him in another film. He’s soave and interesting. (Hugh Marlowe) They film also has a bunch of kids in it, including that kid that appears from time to time who has a deep voice. I see Dean Stockwell in it too, only he doesn’t utter a word.

Anyway in the movie Cary invents a formula that makes people become younger in behavior anyway. It also cures the onset of farsightness and should bursitis. Ugh. And there is another scene in it that I see I Love Lucy ripped off. That’s the bummer of I Love Lucy: If you live long enough you see that the writers “borrowed” ideas from other films, plays, sources.

I once met Mädchen Amick back in the earliest nineties and she was awful. She was dating Alessandro Nivola who apologized to me for her behavior. I bring this up because Drew Droege, doing his Chloe Sevigny at Wigstock, namechecked her in his very funny bit.

It’s now past midmight and I cannot sleep. I’m doing everything I can to keep my side of the street clean, as they say.

I hate tall men, not all of them but most. I recently learned that in Europe, and maybe it’s true, too, in America (I wouldn’t know) that in bars this is the trend: Tall men get picked on the most, in the outplaying of a scenario that goes like this: Tall buff man enters bar with friend. Other men want to beat up becuase he’s tall. (And a conquest?)

I am going out on a limb—and I’ll be sure to alert the psychological community—but I would label this the Goliath Syndrome. Aren’t we all just perfect golden Davids if we can slay someone whose being suggests he could snuff us into dust. I’m going to say yes.

I did a bunch of drawings and encoded them with letters then promptly forgot what the letters stand for so the drawing will be as mysterious to me as everybody else until my pre-dementia un-kicks in.

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.

Sagittarius 7° (November 29)

As mentioned earlier, you can enjoy and engage in this book fully, gaining fuller insight into your astrological self than the one chapter dedicated to your particular sign. Like other books on the market that actually require you to have your own natal chart in hand in order to process the information the author is providing, TK can provide you a wealth of knowledge and guidance, if you have your chart handy. There are a couple of ways you can approach this. First, you can take the basic information regarding what signs rule what astrological houses in your chart. For instance, if Virgo rules your fourth house, you can apply the Virgo chapter(s) and their archetypes to the aspects of your life that fall under the pie-slice of fourth house rule. Or you can take the planetary approach and determine which planets, which also rule aspects of your life and self, fall into which signs and thus apply the contents of those chapter(s) to the realms of those planetary rulers. (There is an at-a-glance glossary provided at the back of the book to help guide you in this, while there are countless books out there which focus solely on the signs’ relationship to the planets and the astrological houses.) 

When it comes to the practicable suggestions sprinkled into every chapter, though they are especially designed for individuals of the particular signs, there is nothing wrong, and everything right, in anyone of any sign taking them up and trying them out (especially in relationship to those areas of life determined by planet or astrological house as determined by your individual birth chart). Our hope is that every reader will get the most out of their individual chapters, foremost, as well as insight into their loved ones by spying into their chapters, but ultimately work all the practical magic the book has to offer. You are, after all, as your own birthchart vividly illustrates, a snapshot of the entire zodiac itself, not just one sliver of it. As we like to say: People are pies! You have all the signs, planets and houses, elements, qualities, polarities and archetypes in you—you are an ever expanding, upwardly spiraling universe all your own. So, have some fun applying all the chapters to the various aspects of self to which they relate, bearing in mind that your primary chapter illuminates your primary path toward self-actualization on your own hero’s journey through this most precious lifetime.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1211-1215 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.

We were out the door at 6:30 and it was quite good walk. Not as good as tomorrow. I just know these things. Thinking about the gaslighting thing. And of course my mind made a joke of it. It makes sense that John Derian has a nineteenth-century aesthetic and vision because, as long as I’ve known him, he’s operated by gaslighting. It just might be something that Marthe Svenjördt could get away with.

Jokes of intros for curtain speaches. Definitely doing the Provincetown thing and the Wellfleet Jewish joke. Perhaps add a thing in about surfing.   Maybe also the Manafort joke. I can’t watch tv anymore because you know it’s the same repetitive story and images on a loop. The one image that unfortunately stuck with me is that Manaforte walking shot where he shoves the cameras out of the way. His body language is so sick.

Went to the PAAM to see the Biala and the Helen Frankenthaler and both were amazing. It makes me so proud that we have such good art right here in river city. Sorry. I’m a bit punchy. Grabbed some salmon with cauliflower and spinach salad made dinner.

They used my sleigh joke tonite on Insecure. I like the show although it does sometimes seem to move sideways. I just hope nobody really caught it because it’s one of those jokes that’s so up from grabs Zeitgeist wise. Anyway, right now this Blague is designed to get my head on straight with only thirteen days to go before this fundraising year turns into a pumpkin which people in New England tend to put on door steps way too early. They probably do it in New Jersey as well. There is plenty of time when there is “collection time.”

I was struck in the letters Helen Frankenthaler wrote that she and Bob (Robert Motherwell, her husband) were working 18 hour days. Nobody ever really works 18 hour days. 12 maybe but not 18. There is a lot of faffing about in an 18-hour day, and one is so damn tired, they’re beat before they’ve begun. Like waking and baking, remember? How it used to just make you tired for your whole existence. Did you ever wake and bake? You’d walk around like a zombie. But there was that comfy cushion of it all. I liked pot before it became a super drug. Not that I liked really fatiguing dirt weed or anything; but I did like the kind of pot that didn’t make me feel like my arteries were about to explode sending me crutching, kneeling in the shower, running water over me bargaining with god if he would just make it stop. I don’t find that kind of marijuana very fun. Oh but I was talking about “collection time.”

“Collection time” refers back to when we worked in fashion and S aka L had her own sporstwear collection. Designing two seasons a year for a young designer is actually a lot and despite the unavoidable faffing about that was part of the picture (due to her partner, a too-rich-and-thus-totally-dysfunctional-and-immolized-creature who would show up to work wearing two differnt shoes or carrying the trash she was meant to drop down the incinerator in her building but instead took for a ride on the subway to their 40th street studio and showroom. Anyway….”collection time”, two but especially the one week leading up to the show/defilé required one live on about four hours sleep. Apparently, Helen and Frank got in a good six hours, which isn’t terrible, and they considered putting together party lists as part of their “work.” I do love both painters though I must say. But their party list reads like…oh never mind…there is no good way to make this joke without seeming completely anti-Semetic.

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Another beach walk first thing this morning. The bittersweetness of the season has already descended. It was one of those magical mornings where the light twinkles like crazy and you feel like you’re inside Wrinkle in Time or The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The walks have been spectacular although they are surely touch on the feet, I must say. I believe I can begin to make myself easy, but to do so I should dedicate this Blague, today, to my to-do list and just record all the random notes that have once again began to crowd the surface of my desk. We have one appointment today with a client in Munich and then I have a phoner with one in L.A.; though it’s cliche to say the one in L.A. could very well flake out and just not call at the desginated time. (As expected.)

I will aggragate all random thoughts and I will tie up all loose ends such that all runs like clockwork starting now (it already does). I needed to get sparkler level from Bai and perry’s and figure out who to approach vis a vis missionary sponsorships and update that doc, which I will do today. I will keep writing until my nerves calm down and I’m in the final stretch and trying to make sense of it all. I think I’m managing okay, all in all. And on deeper thought, I’d say, pretty well. I will sketch in Thursday for Hotels and Realtors, as they are an untapped but important source I ignore most years for fundraising because they are just so dire. Also the hotels already pay tax to help, so the best I can hope for is a little accommodation and anyway, theirs are the perfect places to peruse to make sure they have cards and such. Seaglass is especially on the to-do list.

I will indeed be introducing Marthe to the world tomorrow so I’m excited about that. I’ve put together three different mailers that I’m hitting everybody with and then next week I’ll go even wider for support. I have to also make a third doc for Brian King that combines Nefa Info up Front with Poster and Bio Info and send to the Nefa peeps to make sure all looks kosher. I can borrow from the Endicott release on that score.

Ugh I just got a note about our upcoming court case vis a vis the accident we had three years ago when some stupid idiot while texting plowed into us going a mile a minute while we were stopped in traffic behind a long line of traffic. I hate insurance companies and these kind of sick venal institutions that try to fight you for money when it is all their fault. I don’t know. I really am losing my faith in this country and the way things (don’t) work here. I used to be so proud of our functionality, dating back to Rondald Reagan who was a horrible person and president. Even his son, junior, seems to think so. What are you supposed to do with these kinds of people I mean really?

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.

Sagittarius 6° (November 28)

Astrology itself is something of noble lie. That is to say one must buy into the notion that the movement of the planets and their relationship to one another has meaning, without having any proof. This is especially true of one’s natal chart, which is a snapshot, a freeze frame, of the planets’ positions, at the time of the individual’s birth. Once we accept this conceit, however, we enter into a world that functions quite scientifically, with rules and math and endless associative, interpretive meanings. Reincarnation, too, is a sort of noble lie that is nonetheless at the center of major religions and belief systems. Like astrology, it can’t be proven but it is the basis for an entire world of philosophy and codes to live by, Karma chief among them. Of course, any belief in God or gods involves the accepting of a noble lie. None of us (that we know of) has ever seen God, and yet nothing impacts our human existence, our morality and our judgements, not to mention the wars we wage, as does our notions of this or that invisible God. At least we can actually see the stars, which appear to us all, nightly.

In a sense, our brand of humanistic astrology involves the acceptance of both the noble lies of astrology and reincarnation. That is to say that you were born the sign you are (with all the intricacies of your individual birth chart, pin in that) to learn a whole set of life lessons endemic, primarily, to the estate of your particular sun- and sex-sign archetype. In this view, astrology, and particularly, the humanistic branch thereof to which we subscribe, is foremost about personal evolution of the individual in this lifetime as it relates to the more esoteric notion of the evolution of an individual’s soul, over many lifetimes. And you can certainly enjoy the exercise of exploring the former application, without accepting the latter, should you find reincarnation a spiritual bridge too far.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1206-1210 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 (not according to the above date, which would make this yesterday, bacause I had to do some justifying since there are 366 days a year, nearly, and only 360°) Sunday morning and my high school friend David came to visit with his girlfriend Tracey. They are both biologists and very interesting and we have great conversation and food and wine and song together and it is a joy to be with them. A rare, true joy. It was supposed to be really lousy weather but they cam anyway and the whole weekend had a sneak-between-the-raindrops kind of feel.

I was about to close the roof and windows of our old Mercedes which we’d taken for its yearly gas-up and spin through Provincetown when our friends pulled up about 7:30. We had some lovely Lambrusco and I had made two chickens and potatoes and green beans; and we drank Rioja and played music, singing until three in the morning. I don’t remember falling asleep, but I awoke at seven with a start remembering I never closed up the car. It was just starting to drizzle; I made it in time. But I couldn’t fall back to sleep.

Bacon and eggs, trying to start this Keto diet I still have to read about. Then we headed to the beach as it was quite nice out, certain we would never get onto Newcomb Hollow, that the lot would be full. It wasn’t. Crazy. So we went for our full three-mile walk and drank lemonade and saw seals and a whale and various sea birds. We then went into Wellfleet town and harbor and settled at the outdoor Mac’s down by the water. They ate proper lobster rolls and tofu burritos and broiled salmon with steamed vegetables while I ate a bowl of chowder. Poor me.

We came back and tried to nap; but that didn’t work; and it began to pour, pour, pour. So we cancelled our dinner reservation at Baie; but then we had to shop for food and wine which meant Provincetown anyway, so off we went, just the three of us. S. stayed back and got collected. We did our one-stop-shop at Perry’s for pasta, nibbles, sauce, wine, Labrusco, cheese and crackers; and then Dave reasserted the art stroll, which was something they were really keen on doing. Tracey is a collector of sorts, so it was nice to see her enthralled. We got a spot right out front of Ken Fulk’s house and hit a half a dozen galleries. Tracey really connected with Pete Hocking’s work which made sense. And today they set back off to Ptown and purchased one before heading back to New York City.

The synchronicities also abound(ed) this weekend. Because the first night they were here I was saying how my favorite record was the David Byrne and Brian Eno: Everything That Happens. I have of course sang songs from this album and it has inspired me show-wise. Then last night, while we were eating our buccatini and marinara we enhanced with artichoke, S. said that while we were in Provincetown she saw that Neko Case had put on Instagram that it was the tenth anniversary of the record’s release and that is was in her top five records of all time or something. These things always happen to me.

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It was interesting running into Shania. It would be fun to hang out. I feel an affinity there that I don’t much feel with other people, always have. And I find it to be worth exploring. We are officiellement now working the Keto and I think it will yield some good; the thing is I don’t eat much differently, anyway. Ah, that feeling you have as a young person when you can eat and eat and eat and nothing would happen to your body; I didn’t know I would miss that visceral experience quite so much.

I was thinking this morning how I just need to move through writing on my subject rather than thinking about the world of agents and editors and publishers. Oh, my. I’m just going to continue to create and go slow; my rushing ahead is only ever about fear of not leaving no stone uncovered to cover my ass-ets. But this has funneled, along with other obsessions, into a full river called Hypervigilance, and it no longer serves me.

I know I will slowly be moving mountains this week. I have much in the way of writing and editing and emailing to do to pull off this festival. Doing so as best I can at this point really does constutute success. And I have to keep the book-writing going as well. On that note I muse on Aries:

He can’t deal with rejection in the least (while his so-called opposite sign of Libra’s whole being and existence is hinged on negoatiating it, along with all things one-on-one relationa)l. No sign takes what life may bring more personally than does Aries. Impuslive. He sees the world/existence as possessing the same qualities as he—that reality/existence is impulsive, competitive, dog-eat-dog, raw and rather random.

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

Vulcanalia the First Day of August. I once wrote a whole thing about this. It was a for a variety show we hosted as opening night to the Afterglow Festival in 2013:

Quinn
Enlightenment. Revelation. A Turning point.

Stella
A turning out.

Quinn
To everything, turn turn turn.

Stella
This is a great turn-out

Quinn
This is a real nice clambake

Stella
A revelation is a turning out of cosmic Truth and Grace

Quinn
And a turning out of Self to receive it (Stella puts arms up in Y) See you are the chalice. You are the holy grail ready to be filled

Stella
Giving up and over

Quinn
Surrendering

Stella
Total faith

Quinn
Belief

Stella
In Love

Quinn
Love, Love, love

Stella
A Sudden, Spontaneous Connection with the Divine

Quinn
Not organized Religion

Stella
A word that actually means to re-link, the root word lig as in ligament, connective tissue

Quinn
A re-linking implies then that there’s is a disconnect (aha moment)

Stella
See, that’s the enlightenment part.

Quinn
And as far as the entertaining goes, it’s not just that we love to sing and gotta dance and (Jimmy Durante) tell jokes just like everybody does.

Stella
Ah, well, everybody should. But not every body does.

Quinn
It’s that the performing arts and spiritual practice, ritual, used to be one and the same.

Stella
All coming under the heading of “lifting spirits” if you will.

Quinn
Re-linking our own indivial divine sparks with the eternal flame of the All.

Stella
You’ve seen it happen. Whether a performer on stage or your math teacher in class suddenly blurring-out, becoming a pure aura of energy against the green blackboard.

Quinn
Oh, beam me up, Scotty. Or to your ancestral Edinburgh home.

Stella
To be sure. That divine energetic connection will be made. As above so as below.

Quinn
If we journey inward, microcosmically we find tiny central orbs being orbitted by even smaller orbs, if we journey outward, macrocosmically, we find central orbs being orbitted by smaller orbs….and

Stella

We are stardust (a la Joni)

Quinn
Yes and Hu are we, (realizing they have come full circle in conversation)

Stella
Huuuuu (singing)

Quinn
Hu-mans! Hu. H-u is the most ancient “name” for “god”. It’s the divine sound of the universe. We are man and we are hu. Both animal man and divine hu put together but…

Stella
there is a disconnect

Quinn
…which we can relink by chanting, singing Hu, the

Stella
singing Hu activates our upliftment.

Quinn
singing Hu draws us closer, in our state of consciousness to our divine being…and so we going to re-lidge, here and now, theatre and temple, stage and sacred space as well as our own man=ly sides—and I promise you you have one….

Stella
and you my dear are totally good to go

Quinn
with our Hu-sides, all together, and and and we will also connect our divinely dual individual selves with each other so I want everyone to hold hands or lay your hands on one another in some fashion, those on the aisle can grasp the shoulder of the person in front of you and Stella and I will grab hold here

Stella
oh I know, you hate to be touched, that’s okay there is a simple remedy for that. You turn it out. When you don’t want to be touched, right, you recoil, your energy goes in.

Quinn
So just turn it out

Stella
I use this technique especially on the subway. If someone mindlessly or intentionally rubs his leg against mine, or if i’m straphanging on a crowded train and I feel some lumber rising into my own sacred spaces i don’t recoil but instead I Turn It Out and express the full energy of my being from the area and, well, my whole being really, and the power of my energy emanating forth first relieves all my stress in the situation and it actually disallows any intrusion, repelling unwanted advances….except in those rare instances where the connection is more than you bargained for and you end up getting off …the train…a few stops earlier than planned and then have to call your girlfriend later to apologize for having had to miss your lunch date but, as I say that rarely or really never happens, but when it does you know the energy was gooood…..well it’s like you with telemarketers.

Quinn

yah, yah…(increasingly pleased with himself) well I did figure out the best way to get off those pesky call lists. It’s very easy. The phone rings. And it’s like: hi it’s Ashley from Foreclosure Village or whatever and instead of hanging up or yeah recoiling in some way you Turn It Out and start getting into it like oh yeah Ashley. oh yeah I am so glad you called right now cuz I was just toying with my own foreclosure was actually just feeling…..ad lib…..all kinds of pressure building up and I would totally love for you to talk me through the issue that needs to be worked out before it blows up in all our faces.

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.

Sagittarius 5° (November 27)

It has been over a decade since we’ve come out with a book, in printed form, from a major publisher. Our first book, Sextrology, subtitled The Astrology of Sex and the Sexes hit book stalls in 2004. In it we explored our philosophy, which asserts there are twenty-four main archetypes, not twelve, determined, in binary terms, by sex, and that men and women of the same sign were embodied separate and unique astrological characters. The book really was about the sexes foremost and sex secondly, although we included sexuality by sign as it is an integral part of personality analysis, in this case, as determined by the stars. It’s a funny thing about time because, as we explored the spectrum of straight and gay sexuality in our work, something that hadn’t really been done before in popular astrology, our book was considered groundbreaking; now, however, these years later, the social dialogue surrounding gender and sexual identity has developed so rapidly and intricately, that Sextrology strikes some people as dated and too binary in world of increasing fluidity, for lack of a better word, in sexuality and gender. 

Although we have ourselves always held a flexible view of gender and sexual identity, as a collective, we simply weren’t talking about these things then the way we are now. And we have, since the writing of this book, gone back into our older work, making necessary changes and additions to text, so to reflect where we are all now in the conversation. All this to say that, because this new book follows the same basic binary structure of our previous works, we want to be clear that we are inclusive of all genders in our text. If, for example you are a Taurus woman, whether cisgender or transgender, you should make that your primary chapter of focus. How you identify is what is important here. In any case, we have intended this book to be read in its entirety by everyone, and we’ll provide you suggestions on how to do so at the close of this introduction. Before we do that, we’d like to explain how we found our way to writing this book at this time.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1201-1205 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’ve decided on a new tack for my intros which I think I might have mentioned; but anyway nobody is reading this but you and me so you’ll forgive if I repeat myself.

I get on the plane feeling better than I have in my life. I was so happy that I began working steadily starting in September on our Christmas show for Joe’s Pub because we have never had a bigger, more appreciative house; and though we were spot on for the holiday, with song and narrative, the performance speaks to our larger scope, now, as individual storytellers with, in my case, burgeoning, and, for S., continuing solo show work. And here it is, January, and we are starting a new chapter of our lives. The plan is to spend a couple months solid here, building the consultancy, which we’ve also been steadily working on since September.

Good thing we had pictures taken this Fall because they really make a difference in approaching French press and so forth. We will let out the Paris flat when we go to Venice; and make a list of those who we can gift the place too—Pete & Ted, Susanne, Pascale & Matt, others, over the coming months. And in summer, we will really work out something with someone we meet, maybe through Susi, to let people in and out and otherwise caretake for us in our absence. With money coming in now, salary wise, we should be able to have half the full amount down for our New England house, within the year—I have and we have been saving . And, with all our outreach in regard to our products, we will in the process of building the event business along with the other elements of the brand. I can’t wait to get to the apartment but I’m going to enjoy this plane trip, having sorted out a way not to travel like cattle.

I will have a car waiting and make my way to the flat. Tomorrow I will shop for some foodie basics and flowers as we will have at least two clients the day after and three more by the end of the week. We are going to focus exclusively on our own design ideas for the coming months, and I’m putting together a very short list of performers for Afterglow 2019—Frank DeCaro, Molly Pope, Dane Terry, Bridget Barkan, Stella Starsky, John Jarboe, Jibz Cameron, and then a smattering of biggies. Easy peasy.

We will enjoy Spring after traveling, and get into a steady rhythm, focusing on the major design markets and other times that press and buyers and potential clients come through this beautiful city. We will coordinate with P + M and J + N and J + L and maybe D + G. The Nelsons could take the apartment at some point. There are many Americans and others in Paris who will likely come and see us. I need to reach out to Wachsberger in any case.

---

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.

Sagittarius 4° (November 26)

Either yesterday or today is Henry’s birthday—to be honest I always forget which. Pascale’s is October 26 so I can come up with a mnemonic device, once and for all, for getting that particular bit of shit together. Okay I have writing to do. Anyway today is Hen’s B’day so it is the same number as P only a day later which is good to know. Last night was a bit of a blow out. I had a pretty psychic-y time with a client and am pretty much “caught up” if there is such a thing. We are having a bit of wine for the holiday and then resuming our teetotalling until Christmas, which is good for brain clarity, right now when I need it most. There is no more wiggle room really and that is as it should be. I’ll have a bit of blueberries then spend the day making dinner: homemade cranberry sauce, quinoa that is meant to taste like the stuffing of yore, sweet potatoes, rutabaga, roasted potatoes, green beens with shallot and toasted almonds and a chicken, no turkey, as it’s too big and neither of us really like it. I watched a bit of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang out of nostalgia. Sally Ann Howes is an underated and underappreciated talent. She was just thirteen when she began movies and I think she was only seventeen when she did Anna Karenina (or was it Mme Bovary?) I forget. Was chatting on FB with that guy Kyle who takes all the crazy pictures and putting finishing touches on dinner. S. and I were talking about how you work all day on a meal like this then sit down and basically it’s done within minutes. I think we both might be feeling more lonely than usual at this juncture. We watched Room with a View for the four hundredth time. I actually surprised myself that I knew the dialogue by heart. Anyway, I will have to get right back to it tomorrow which is actually fine. I want to at least draft an introduction which I should be able to do pretty easily. The trick with it is to pretend I’m explaining it to somebody else. 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1196-1200 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.

Day 16

It’s weird waking up in a hotel in the airport, especially in Vancouver, where you are basically at check in. I went to the pool but it was a drag due to father and little daughter taking up a lot of space. Never mind. Sauna would have taken too long to get hot. I got dressed and we grabbed coffees fro Starbucks, heard of it?; then finished up and headed out; I hate a smoked salmon sandwich from that chic plane, yesterday.

We were able to fly through inspection and plop into the lounge where lunch was just setting up. I started with soup because these places always put the soup out first. Thai Chicken. And they do the bar last. Bloody Mary’s have been spoiled for me since the boat, but….Check in was a breeze. I had the beef. I watched the Shape of Water? We arrived in Toronto and it was a bit rocky, both coming and going. It killed the mood. That and the Canada Air lady who looked like the character Stevie on Schitt’s Creek which is a Canadian show. Oh I give up. She was a crueller de ville. We cleared customs and it was off to Boston. Pretty quick through baggage and finding driver.

It isn’t a so happy a thing when you get home but it’s not your home, it can be an uncomfortable limbo. Am I making excuses. No. So what I was cranky. Sue me. I’m already thinking about the press release which I hope to have complete by, say, next Thursday. It’s a guilt thing on some level. I will drive S. to NH tomorrow and somehow it might be fun.

A frosty morning of eighty some odd degrees. But we get a smooth start, heading up 95 to veer off, just before Portsmouth to head to what is referred to as camp, sort of. N. has rented the house on the site of what was her and S.’s aunt’s lakeside property. Their aunt is no longer with us; in fact neither is her original house; because not long after she died lightning struck it and it burned to a crisp. Her sons had a new house built and then sold it and that is the house S.’s family has rented. It is ideally situated on Great East Lake, to be sure, but, when I go there, I was so glad I had already arranged not to stay. It was small and stuffy with plaid and leather and I get a panic attack just typing about it let alone living in it with one, two, three, four, five, six, and one eight-year old, inlaws. I, who got not much done on the boat, need to head back to Reading to tackle some things.

I drove back down listening to Yacht Rock and upon hearing Cool Change by the Little River Band I knew the songwriter was a Cancer with his looking “at the full moon like a lover.” I stopped in Lynnefield at Whole Foods and got provisions. At this point I’m feeling exhaustion but soldier through. I get some wine. I stop in town for a CVS run and make it back to the house, feeling a bit like entering the batcave, given the garage scenario. Anyway, I’m not a suburban fellow in case you cannot tell. The guacamole I thought I bought turned out to be tomatillo something (with a little avocado but it’s not the same).

I caught up with Brad, West of the Rockies. He said he’d be dressed a certain way and then someone else was dressed exactly the same, walking in front of him, with white sox in sandals. The recognition came slowly. And to this day my instincts about this being some extra are correct, though I can never fully remember the exact why; all I know is that the dream never lasts long.

I never want to have a colostomy, needless to say. And I never want to be odorous on purpose. Sometimes a dinner of chips and tomatillo dip is enough if not more. I keep turning the temperature down and I think it just automatically keeps going up, which turns out not to be the case; as B. is controlling it from his phone or something. Whatever.

I will begin on booking the artists travel and get some laundry done in the meantime.

---

After the strange synchronicity of yesterday, I am in an expansive mood. I am happy there is cold brew and I keep turning down the thermostat. This morning might be the last even luke-warm bath I’ll draw. I don’t need anything in particular and I’m getting into the solitude. What’s that Madonna song about San Pedro? That gets stuck in my head and other places and I’m on a jelly roll. And lo and behold here we go again. This reminds me of the Lance situation. Delibery. Really not since Ghana. These are the fragments in my head. And it’s impossible. There has never been anything even remotely like it; but somehow it always happens. I cannot explain how as it seems to defy every law of nature. And then briefly you find a way to make what shouldn’t be interesting and it’s kinda cool.

That was the threefold dream I remember of today.

Somewhere I am happy for Young Jean Lee and a lot of other people. But it is becoming not only increasingly clear but urgent that I must focus on my own creativity. Seriously. I’ll get to lie in the sun a little and I really should make some fresh pasta with sour cream and smoked salmon; I don’t see why I wouldn’t. And I don’t much see why I wouldn’t eat it for the next three meals, if I chose to. Tonight for me will end in some kind of heap watching tele. And it’ll be a somewhat slow realization that I have gained a ton of weight now, being away a solid three weeks. Oh well. I might be a bit over my head. But when has that ever truly stopped me. Besides I feel there is more fun to be had.

---

There was something about Thom Lussier. He had a brother who had a wife who had a sister. Anyway, there was a Pisces man and he of course looked like a combination of Matthew Broderick and Don Knotts, as they all do.

What dreams may come. I need to make the focus of these book intros and the outline for the new Xmas show more, respectively, a love letter and a survey of superpowers. That really is the answer.

I did eat more of the pasta, sour cream and smoked salmon and then went to the store, this time myself, to get what I needed. I’m working through the day and trying to scrape something together but the words won’t come.

I haven’t bathed in hot water and its hot in here and I’m just going to try and make some shit happen and I fall asleep. And I wake up and I’m starving but I am not cooking, so I look up local restaurants, find a place and call an Uber. It’s time to catch up on the David Sedaris book in any case. And three hours pass and I’m closing the joint having steadily drunk a bottle of red.

My dreams were about this apartment that was sort of nowhere, kind of like Reading, no color houses; and some dark skinned guy with a kind of newsy cap and it might have been about Jersey City and Edna, our housekeeper, whose son started Kool & The Gang.

Very fitfull sleep, in and out. I’ve now seen not all but the same parts of Murder on the Orient Express three times. I watch the show about the Browns, Hard Knocks. The weather is really good but you can tell it’s switching it’s all switching.

Being on the boat is not even anything I’m thinking about. This always happens. It switches so abruptly that it will take a week or so before I begin musing about the boat again. I really could use a hot bath. What’s with this place.

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.

Sagittarius 3° (November 25)

After all I’ve had my fun. And there are no external hits to be had right now. Including from the wine cellar or social media. So I am letting it all go. I want to say I gave the work at hand my absolute all while it is happening. The rest is uncluttering, unfriending, merchandising, packing, organizing, casting spells, playing piano, giving to charity, researching, playing ukulele, dancing and singing, sleeping and reading and cooking and cleaning and shopping and dreaming and scheming while keeping the barbarians at bay. They have no power here after all. The age of the bullies is over. I will no longer be gaslit or available to the abuse. This has all made me stronger, especially mentally. This is the thing about being a Libra. When we are mentally fit, the power of our mind is muscular and mighty indeed. You do not want to fuck with me, because I am too nice, and when crossed I will cut you. It has been nice to connect virtually with more people but it is a very pale substitute for being surrounded by friends and family, a word representing a concept that has eluded me in this lifetime. But like this isolation I must accept it and channel it and let it deepen my self-understanding and my resolve. A sentence like that makes me think that it is that same brand of insight I must offer those in my chapitres. What then should we come up with. I know that I am in it for the long haul. I am not just writing one book. I want to write a book a year for the next twenty odd years. That is the way to do it. To always be writing and always searching the interior. All the more reason to live more remotely and have nature at one’s disposal. There are many roads and the all unfortunately lead to the same place, if you catch my drift. So what’s the use of worrying. Everything always takes longer than it should but at least, for now we are protected. I have just a few more minutes before I dive back into work and I guess I just wanted to say that, well, a couple of things: First, it does feel good to feel which so much of so-called normal life dulled us to doing. Second, that I’m pleasantly surprise how quickly my psyche adjusts to changes in lifestyle and I think back on the fact that I was probably at my worst when I was at my healthiest. Thin and doing a ton a yoga in a given week let me off the hook to indulge in winey dinners out and the like which really didn’t feed my spirit in any kind of significant way. The humility of our larger situation and being forced into doing for, and right by, myself feel like an around unto itself. Even as I have friends, the couple variety, specifically, I get marginalized be heteronormality because so long as “the gals” keep in touch with each other it ticks a box for being in touch with me as well. Which it really totally fucking does not. So my form of isolation, already magnified by not having any family to speak of, is made all the more profound. But you know what? Good. Because I am letting the darkness and isolation move in and me and allowing it impact my psyche, to pressurize it, like so much deeply embedded rock and stone, churning in the heat, close to the magna core, where diamonds are being wrought. And when I rise with them in hand they will be mine, all mine.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1191-1195 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.

Day Eleven

Well, again we woke up earlier than everybody, except Neil who had to be up at dawn today as we are getting a new pilot on board and Al will take us from Alaska into B.C.. We spoke to Neil about his Uncle Dave, the hairy potter, and he asked me about Afterglow and I mentioned the whole 333 synchronicity. And we deconstructed The Godfather. Had an ask from Ben and Rizo about booking something in Boston, which was a great excuse to reach out to City Winery in response. Not to mention the venue they are playing in Portland. All this sort of thing is coming together. And I had a breakfast parfait of fruit and yoghurt for breakfast.

I put out a ton of feelers regarding next week; and City Winery got right back in touch with me which is also great. Only thing is I had to stop the works because J. needed wifi again allow the newest version of the movie to come in, which is right. And anyway we’ve been sort of stuck in customs for the last several hours. It’s just that weird kind of day where nothing is really moving. We had cous cous and halibut and steak for lunch with a cauliflower salad which really was quite delightful. Apparently A. had something of an upset in that her tenants didn’t pay her, which is too bad. Jill and Flo left just yesterday and they are probably already back home now in Zurich. How fortunate we are that we live in a time of air travel. It’s weird to think that just one hundred years ago the miracles of our lives would be impossible.

Anyway, in the spirit of stalled momentum I thought I would insert something I wrote in my green journal by hand some days before we set out on this excursion:

I have been four miles on the beach every day on average, which is challening; and I haven’t been drinking or eating sweets; and yet I’m not losing weight. Still as I build lower body muscle my upper body is beginning to slim down. I am, though, shaped like a frog and there is nothing much I can do about that. I will continue to eat light during this next few weeks on the boat. I need to stay clear haded and abstemious for a number of reasons, all under the heading of confidence. Look, I know I’m a mental case, and that I probably have o.c.d.—all the more reason to give myself positive messaging. I won’t be able to spend the day on the beach today and just to act up my look a bit.

I am aware of the irony of having written that paragraph a couple weeks ago; and the nonsense of the last sentence is due to my inability to read my own handwriting; and there is more:

Today id d start with an annoyance frrom a new arist; psychologically I need to get ahead of all the projects. I have been spinning simultaneously it all comes back again to units of time. And this trip has got to be a mga reset for me. What if I think starting today that I will bring in 2K per day. I don’t see why I can’t affect that. I will be writing people in my downtime for contributions in the coming weeks.

This was followed up with:

I can’t get over the lack of support from the new crop a gazillinaires who have washed up on our shores. I need to start vibrating on a much higher level. And the intros for next year’s books should be a “general year ahead for the sign, drawing from old magazine features we have done. It will go on the list to outreach to magazines.

Anyway, I’m glad I got that bit of old diary entry unstuck as we wait here for some kind of go ahead to sail further south. The cloud cover is so thick and so low it isn’t even worth photographing anything outside. We shan’t even sit at the table tonight; instead it will be movie night, where we eat whilst watching, which is also great. Some folks are having a dry night. I myself am not.

Day Twelve

Last night was a bit of a blow out. I think because of feeling stalled, as I said yesterday, we might have gone a bit to far. We weren’t really supposed to. After a late night last night after canapés of beatroot and cream, and salami and truffle, and a dinner of squid ink linguine with shrimps, and some kind of berry pie, ate in front of the tele watching Godfather 2, puntuated with crunches of popcorn (I gave our cheesey variety we picked up in Ketchikan to the crew). Anyway when I got up to pee everyone but Aine was gone; so we finished watching G2 and drank more red wine and then we watched half of Bridesmaids with some brandy. She didn’t really watch the TV; instead she was texting her boyfriend I suppose. I kept redirecting her to the screen until I just gave up. Anyway it was nice to hang out with her alone; I was feeling a bit like she was angry at me since we got on board. Maybe because I suggested she not feed the dog while at the table lest Bronte not leave her alone for the rest of the trip. Anyway I know nothing could be further from the truth and that, if she was irked, she was irked in a way that friends can be with one another. I have true affection for her and I believe it’s mutual.

Anyway, I still got up early today, which was another foggy semi stuck day. They were peddling English muffins but I stuck to fruit. It seems the only time I have any wiillpower at all is at breakfast; actually that’s not really true. I seem to be doing okay. The whole John Derian thing has been bubbling up in me again. I feel so hurt at what happened. And I wish I hadn’t retaliated with such force as I had. The fact is he was an abuser all the years we were friends; and a gaslighter, which he continues to be. I’ve noticed a marked change in what might be labelled our mutual friends. But my challenge is to transcend it. I can’t be stuck in that sort of crap. I have such good friends and such a good consultancy and even the festival, though it is like pulling teeth this year, provides some sense of pleasure and purpose. I just want more of it. And who would have seen what was to come this day. Wow.

So lunch was a delicious chicken cacciatore with white asparagus salad and roasted potatoes and some kind of sorbet i don’t remember what exactly. I did a lot of outreach in advance of my work-time in Reading and that felt right to a point. It is easy for me to overdue this type of work. It’s where I get a bit addicty. Anyway this was the day I stayed in room mainly; and I sort of waited for my head to clear which it ultimately did. And then suddenly, with the time change I guess, it was dinner time and boy oh boy. We had canapés of crab circled in cucumber sheets—delicious and light—and then very lean lamb loin with veal sweetbreads, which I normally don’t eat, but did (also ate S.’s) and what seemed like drugged Rioja. The dinner theme was sort of creature-like, we all had masks, and we were supposed to come up with a name for our character and also a mythos. I got as far as naming myself (a leopard) Silenzio; and S. who was a deer/stag called herself Batchel. The conversation centered on what kind of man men are. We had the story about “dégage” and Mr. Big Voice which, thankfully, I didn’t have to employ; and J. told story about her creepy uncle. We were planning on playing charades but instead the crew had set up a game for us the name of which escapes me; but it was good fun and took hours to play as Rioja fueled conversation welted and weaved through our foggy, cabin fevered brains.

The next thing I knew it was nearly 5am and I had fallen asleep—and snored!—on the sofa whilst Aine and J. and S girl-talked for hours. The latest night of all and it ended with me munching down on a thousand pistachios as I made my way to bed to sleep for four hours.

Day Thirteen

The thing I have to remind myself is that I have gotten up quite early most days. True I have yet to get into a kayak or to go fishing, but it’s not something that necessarily motivates me. Perhaps in the next day or two before leaving I’ll ask for some kind of lesson on that score and see where it takes me. Ah, the perils of a city boy in the wilderness of Alaska and British Columbia. Today started off a bit on the slow side and on the late side. I did not rise until 10am; and S. stayed in bed. I was rather shocked to see J. at the breakfast table but she did go right back to sleep after. My arm has really been bothering me and today I noticed a giant bruise. I’m trying not to be Movie-of-the-Week about it but it doesn’t feel great. I can’t really exercise it as it seems to make it worse so the most activity I’ve done is slip in and out of a hot tub. I suppose I could request a massage but I hate to push my luck about these things. There were vegan blueberry muffins but I didn’t eat them.

Up on the top deck this morning trying to catch up a bit on writing while also just wantintg to sit in the sun and read magazines. The fog cleared readily and we headed to put the bow into a waterfall which is always nice. And as N. says maybe more about the captain than it is about us at this point. There were threats of seeing spirit bears (white black bears?) but it didn’t happen. There was also mention of a ghost town which apparently came and went. It is absolutely beautiful here but very, very remote. Still one wonders what opportunities the area has to offer—or one would if one were twenty not nearly fifty five. Good lord how did I get to be this old. No wonder I have some kind of ache and pain. Otherwise I feel as if I’m twenty five. Actually better probably.

I did manage to draft some letters to sponsors and sparklers for the festival and to put together a document whereby setting up travel for the artists will be simplified. I don’t think I’ll try to do any of that on the boat however and will instead wait until Tuesday at the earliest to make that happen. I will try to make that all work in just a matter of two hours; the only potential stress at this point is fundraising and the book intros. But you know what. It will be what it will be. And I will have a month when I get back to the Cape during which time I will amil to make $30K in 30 days. All the while taking our beach walks and otherwise trying to enjoy ourselves.

My nerves felt a bit shot and my arm was really acting up at lunch. I could tell because even holding fork in left hand felt challenging. Lunch was delcious take on fish and chips with homemade tartar sauce. And I employed liberal amounts of malt vinegar. There was (again I think black cherry) sorbet. S. tried to sleep during the day, several times, here and there, but to no avail. K. had a big breakfast of bacon and eggs. I could almost bring myself to have that tomorrow. Dinner was to be an astrology theme and Cat asked if we would deliver some kind of presentation, so I put my mind to it. Why not.

We had a lovely salmon jerky again and a warm goat cheese with bread sticks. J and I had bloody marys which were so smokey and spicey and dinner with red wine was venison Wellington and the pudding was something I can’t quite remember. Oh well, there has to be one thing that slips through the cracks, eh? The astrology bit went over a little like a lead balloon but that’s okay. Oh I know the dessert was a sort of semi-fredo with strawberries and a kind of icing. K. wanted to play charades but people were tired so I suggested we watch Romy and Michelle. Actually I wanted to watch K. watch it which she said “wasn’t too creepy.” Wow it is really dated as a film but still people enjoyed it I think. We went to bed relatively early and I slept weirdly knowing that Sunday would be my last full day.

Day Fourteen

The last full day of anything is tough, never mind saying goodbye to dear friends and the incredible holiday they provide by having us on a luxury yacht. I mean come on. It is such a gift and I pinch myself every time we come on this boat. I feel strangely used to it which might be a bit dicey for a close friendship. But there are few people I trust more in the world than these wonderful folk; and I cannot say how beside myself with joy I am at having had the oopportunity to do this.

S. was given some magesium last night designed to help her sleep and I think it worked; so I tip-toe’d out by around six o’clock this morning and got a little bit of writing done. Let’s face it: I’m not hitting required marks they way I need to be hitting them but what the hell. There is nothing I can really do about that. I needed this holiday more than I realized. And I have to say I’ll need a few days to recover from the fun of it all.

We travelled quite a few (six) hours down to the bay we are in now. I had fruit and eggs and turkey bacon for breakie; and I tried to get a bit of work done in the morning. Lunch seemed to be minutes after. It was light however in that we had lobster tails, king crab and scallops with a bean and greens salad with lychee sorbet for pudding. Then we had a few minutes to change clothes and throw bathing suits into a bag and head out in the tender for this tiny cover where there was a 1.2 km path up to a fresh water lake. A big lake it was, called Scaget or something, and the water was filled with pyrite so it was literrally gold. And there were others there, Canadians of mixed white and native blood.

We noticed some of the locals were actually floating atop logs, as if they were rafts or rustic boogie boards designed for no wave water. I was wheezing a bit on the way up which I think troubled N. whom I had to reassure that my lungs need to acclimate to woodsy environments, my brain deciding what is really an allergen or not. It settled pretty quickly. Still I could do with a bit of cardio make no mistake. I’m going to take the month leading up to Afterglow to go completely carb free. And after this trip, alcohol free as well me thinks. I could definitely need a break and so could my liver.

There wasn’t much time between tea and dinner which was actually a buffet and party for “crew night”. We all submitted stories about ourselves and divided into teams, N. on one and J. on the other. We won. Stories included being almost abducted as a child, peeing in the woods when a plane crashed just hundreds of feet away, sending a sexty pic to a coworker accidentally, and other less interesting things. Some of the food was pulled pork ban-mi, fresh summer roles, terayaki beef, bbq’d chicken, pizza which i didn’t get to eat, followed by all sorts of cupcakes. The galley staff were the real stars tonight.

Everyone got to elaborate on their stories and the crew learned much about their proprietors, I’d say. The kids were cute and funny and I really feel a stronger connection with them. We then watched the first Monsters Inc which I had never seen. It was totally cute. To bed….

And up too early

Day Fifteen

And up too early…for what needs happen today, but such is life. We drank naught but champagne last night which means I feel good if not a bit nervy. Woke at 5 o’clock and it’s seven now and I’ve just been sort of faffing about. I want to leave here with total optimism and I hope that will be achievable. I think Zak and Aine will and we will head to the airport together today. We will fly out of Bella Bella to which we are sailing now. I’m going to throw on some clothes and go grab some coffee now…..I just want to get my packing done and take a nap. It’s challenging being on different schedules sharing the same space because one person typically ends up having to drag themselves around in the wake of the other person’s habits, which I find tiring at best.

It was just me and A. at the breakfast table, N. came through to take the doggie ashore. I did not have the banana bread. Funny how people write a daily blog; but it isn’t always just me talking about what I’m doing on any given day; however, these past weeks, I have enjoyed just recounting, pretty vaguely, what’s been happening. Because it’s important to me: this time. I have never so thoroughly enjoyed myself (in both meanings of the word) as I have these past weeks. I am concerned about money and my shoulder but really that’s about it.

We did some packing and took a hot tub for a super short time; and then dried our swimsuits in the sun while I finally took a few minutes to read a magazine. Everybody has decided to go into the town on the island off which we are floating, but I don’t like doing things before I leave. I like to do nothing before I leave anywhere. I like to Zen my packing and my eating and my thinking and just let things fall into place. I will look at the pictures today. And I will be happy to go to lunch totally packed and just relax into this day. I felt like I was drugged almost, I was so relaxed. And I was curious about lunch which turned out to be jerk chicken and, uh-oh can’t remember. I know I had some kind of sald and roti which was a repeat and very delicious .We had the Haut Pecblah, blah bla rosé which was a return to the beginning of the trip. And after an espresso we got a tour of the galley and the engine room which was really quite something. We watched some Pixar shorts and then waited for S.’s white shirt to reappear and then the grand goodbyes which I really love/hate.

Zak, Aine, S and I were tendered to Campbell Island where we got a taxi to the airport. I had spent all morning online looking at the airline that flew out of Bella Bella, only to find that we were not on that airline but were on a special charter which itself must have cost a pretty penny. I’m always surprised and I hope I’m never not in a sense. We had to hang out for a bit in the “airport” and then Chris and…forget the other guy’s name, Karl maybe, (he was probably the pilot) walked us over the tarmac to the plane and we took some photos whilst boarding. It was luxe. Almost like nothing is luxe. It was surely the combination of this tiny plane from nowhere going to Vancouver and that pretty penny. We had wine on board and fruit and Zak being eighteen gobbled up the available food. It was my favorite flight of all my lifetime, seriously; just the four of us on board seated family style across from one another. S. stared out the window and didn’t speak which I’m used to, but I don’t think they were. But A. totally got it. She’s such a good person.

We landed in Vancouver and were taxi’d to our terminals which were adjacent but we had to part company pretty much straight away. Aine and Zak were in the international departure area and we were in domestic so we kissed and hugged and rolled our bags onward to the next connected terminal only to find our flight was delayed due to weather in Toronto. As it was we were going to arrive Toronto in the middle of the night; and have a three-hour layover. Now it just seemed disgusting. So we rebooked ourselves for tomorrow and rolled our way back through the terminal to the Fairmont hotel. They gave us a room for their supposed half a price. We had a weird but kind of good snacky dinner of crab cakes and chicken wings and Caesar salad and local wine and went to bed. Banal? Perhaps.

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.

Sagittarius 2° (November 24)

I do think that the alchemy is changing already and, after a short spate of panic, I’m ready to devote every waking hour to the project at hand. It will be my industry, my creative outlet, my obsession, my vacation, my dedication, my magic formula, my protective fortress, my ambition, my transcendence, my spirituality, my deep dive, my magic spell, my indulgence, my porn, my psychologist, my hobby, my art, my religion, and my partner in crime. I don’t know what I dreamt exactly but I do know that Gary C. featured in it and it revolved around having to get to a movie theater in time. It also centered on Paris in some sense, some magical apartment in a building with a series of them, my mother perhaps also living in one of them. There were wood beams in the ceiling. It was very fifteenth century meets flimsy 1980s drafty. The thing I learned already today, having been awake for only an hour is that: If you just stay inside a project then the ideas are available to you. I don’t necessarily feel like getting a tree this year. I mean, I do, but I don’t want the hassle to be honest. I am going to spend an hour a day throwing things out. And a half hour shopping online because daddy needs some stuff. I am forgoing all other things. All other needs. All other everything. An hour equals a page whenever it occurs and there are thousands of hours still available to me. Come July, when all will be in boxes, we will slip away, and make it clear that we are under a vast protection of terrestrial and spiritual forces. We will inform the legal team that we are dehors. So for the next four hours this day I will read three chapitres and draft the front-of-book material. Okay now my love project beckons.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1186-1190 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.

Day Six

Oh the dream I had—I had to wake myself up from at 5:15 this morning: I was yelling at Peter Belsky. I had two desks in his establishment which looked like a sort of chic lounge with modular red furniture. It was an entire store front with a downstairs where I also had a desk with more stuff. I almost have to jump to the end to describe the beginning. He knew I was there to talk. I kept waiting for him to finish with other people. In the meantime I made my way to the kitchen area where there were other people—it was sort of a party. (This all might flash me back to a dream I had about him many, many moons ago.) There were creepy, crappy people at the party, specific ones with whom I was doing mental and verbal sparring. All I wanted was a clean plate for lasagna while I waited for Peter to be done. Lynne had left me (she was driving a yellow taxi) outside and was to return in an hour. I had a real face to face confrontation with some hardbody guy who could have taken me a part but still I remained in his face ready to fight until we both backed off a little—I could feel that he was physically ready to do battle by way of his tensing the muscles of his core and inner thighs (I felt it as if it were my muscles that were doing so, which doesn’t make real, only dream sense). Peter wanted to get Nora Burn to be editor he had told my earlier and I went quietly ballistic saying she’s a no talent and I’ve been working there since 1987, the premise being I was meant to be editor in chief of this magazine that was always threatening to get off the ground. It was a dream of being undervalued, overlooked, being the one right there the whole time doing all the work and yet not the one desired for the reward of the big job whatever that means or meant. There was a woman, whom the hardbody was presumably protecting, who was real trouble and it was as if I was alerted to her being an anti-us by Laurie who, even in the dream, I believe, was no longer with us. Again I flash back to a dream dating to the early nineties perhaps, when we were losing Laurie, where this type of tightly packed and populated dream was set in claustrophobic quarters (the setting was the upstairs three bedrooms of the house I grew up in which must have doubled for the claustrophobic tenament interior of Laurie’s apartment on west 43rd of 44th to which I had a key back in the late eighties such that I could edit on the one computer DV8 owned. Anyway, I finished my lasagna….Lynne showed up in the dream in time to eat it with me/us…but this did not supercede the fact that I would still be waiting for Lynne to pick me up in a yellow taxi which was part of the original premise of the dream. Her arrival to the kitchen was through another (back) door in the space, while Peter at his desk, working with hipsters, was in the (store)front on the front side of the store, if that makes sense, where he sat at just one of the modular desks others were also sitting at, workers for him. Then I saw his desk was empty and learned that he was gone. And I went super ballistic. I went outside looking, I went all around. It was still to early for front of building Lynne to pick me up in her yellow taxi. I was fuming. Then I saw Peter coming down the road, after leaving me high and dry for over an hour, because now Lynne, too, was late, and he was driving a brown Deux Cheveux, contently oblivious as you please (stopping at a dumpster?) then we are at his desk. I’m aware of some of the women who sit around him at their desks because I think I already vented some about him in their presence; and then there was this hipster in front of me, perhaps the same hipster I walked in on as he was readying a shower for himself, half naked, when I looked for Peter in the bathroom before going outside and finally spotting him in his French car. I yelled at him for never following through on his promise! (That must be the psychological key to why this dream now.) That I had worked for DV8 since 1987…that I had worked on Seen (conflating him with Jonathan whatever his name was) winning the magazine a Graphis award…that I had been waiting around (apparently all these years) to finally function, paid, as editor in chief of what this next enterprise would be, my desk here (which I was clearing as I ranted) and especially the one downstairs filled with work already completed or semi completed. Now, awake, it might be seen as all the work I have ever done, designed for this sort of enterprise—all the work at The New York Social Calendar, all the lists of pitches for The Face and other publications, all that stuff I dragged (and still drag?) around all those/these years. And how he never paid me or anyone. I appealed to all the people in the room at their own desks, asking them, am I right that you’re all here working for free? And then I gave him the biggest dressing down in dream form I have ever delivered since reading my sister—when that happened it became talking/yelling in my sleep in that way where you’re talking through the veils between the sub- and conscious worlds. I referenced his family (wife and daughter) living in Wichita, Kansas and the expense of going back and forth, and the Deux Cheveux which he presumably had to ship from France, and on and on and on, citing his selfhisness and so forth. The Deux Cheveux could be Eric Delancy or Ryan Landry or neither. Anyway I railed on Peter and his expression was cryptic, a combination of really feeling the truth of what I was saying and not really caring and just waiting for it to end. Anyway…The lesson here is that I must be paid. And I must be valued.

Morning was crumpets—I didn’t have any. We travelled to Wrangell. We had a Turkish lunch of halibut (caught by K.) and beef kabobs, elbow macaroni and grilled aparagus with parsley, kale and sweet balsamic. We went into Wrangell. I bought a back pack and a tee-shirt. I am still in need of getting some work done!

Day Seven

Last night’s dinner was delicious Spring Rolls and Pho Noodles and Iced Coffee Cake. Ginger martinis, sake and white wine all in one go. And then it was the “Geese” night of Cards Against Humanity.

I did manage to finish the Norse Mythology book by Neil Gaiman, so that’s something. But otherwise I am really behind on just about everything. I don’t know what to do about it. Also I was feeling pretty rested and now I’m feeling rather shattered again which isn’t all that fun.

The morning was fantastic however. After a brekkie of banana bread: We went to see the Bears of Anan which is something I shan’t soon forget. It was a bit scary walking through the woods where we saw a bear climbing a tree; but the actual outlook where you could watch the bears catching and killing and eating salmon wasn’t at all frightening. There was even a bear hanging out under the wooden shack of a ranger station. But make no mistake—these animals are in no way acclimated to humans—they are definitely wild.

After watching them eat salmon we got to have Alaskan salmon ourselves. I left the skin on because it was perfectly done. And it was served with a salad of tun and canneloni and celery and squash roasted with basic and almonds. Gr-yum. Sak and Aine arrived in the late afternoon by seaplane and we had tea and flapjacks and then I tried to get a little something done before dinner which began with lovely cocktails—I had a dry martini—and oysters which were a bit cramy and delicious. Dinner was fantastic. Homemade parsely garanelli with a ragout of beef which was sweet, likely, with balsamic and almost bordered on bbq, with delious bread twists with olive and parmesan. After dinner there was an olfactory game planned with prizes of gorgeous colognes. Delicious Napa Valley wine and brandy into the late. Aine told us all about her new squeeze long afer others had gone to bed.

Flo and Jill have decided to leave early—Wednesday instead of Thursday, so I’m a bit bummed about that I must say. I really love them both and they will be so missed.

Day Eight

I have kept a rather low profile today, trying to get some work done and otherwise transcend the epic fatigue I feel. We are going up in a plane tomorrow to the Misty Fjords (a fantastic dragname) for J’s birthday and that should be a lot of fun.

I unfortunately realized that our graphic/web designer has as yet not gotten our site up and running; and he tends to disappear at crucial times, just as he did when we needed him last winter for a project. I feel I am too forgiving of shoddy work, but it’s selfish on my part, because I don’t want to have to go through the slog of finding someone new.

After breakfast yesterday I disappeared to tackle some of this work. I didn’t get very far unfortunately and the fundraising especially is uncharacteristically not forthcoming. I need to find a different tack. And it starts with a mental picture in my mind. So I’m going to try and re-write the headline. I don’t know why I got into a negative head. I am very sensitive to energy and I really try not to judge, lest I be….I get triggered easily working/interacting with people who remind me of my sister for sure. Next year I will avoid hiring certain figures. It was frustrating punching my way out of paper bags; I know I must have made some progress but it’s so hard to tell.

Breakfast featured waffles with black-cherry ricotta—I had none of it. Then lunch was Tandoori chicken, saffron rice, pureéd egglpant, burgies? (I don’t know Indian food the way the Brits do) and mango chutney, yoghurt sauce, naan, and pampadun. White wine. Then the kids and Aine went fishing. I went back to work. Went online and saw that my friend Ruben had done a FB Live from Ketchikan which is basically where we are! How cosmic is that? He is performing on the Norwegian Bliss.

More work. And my stomach was really hard and swollen and I knew this would put me into a bad mood unless I pre-picked out my clothes for dinner which was a Winter Wonderland theme, for summer in Alaska, which does make sense. I went haute lumberjack. Nibblies were amazing: a salmon jerky and chicken remoulade—like little chicken and mushroom stews inside fried balls. Martini. Then delicious white wine again.

We spoke about Lumos something to which I really want to find a way to contribute. I will bring it up again and maybe speak to Billy about it. Dinner was halibut with tomatoes four ways and baked Alaska for dessert. Movie night on the top deck: Passengers. I fell asleep about forty minutes in.

Day Nine

Not only is it the last day of the month and exactly six weeks to festival time but it is Jo (and Harry’s lol) birthday. And we have been talking about Caddy Shack since we got on the boat and I just say today is also the 38th anniversary of its release. These things keep happening. As if Ruben starring in a musical on the Norwegian Bliss we keep passing int the night wasn’t enough.

We had prezzies for Jo over brekkie. And everyone is sort of doing their own thing now. I am still trying to get work done but it isn’t easy. Anyway I am not here to work so it’s fine. I need to get my brain around how it is I can bring in all the money I need in the last month. I will go down the list and make a huge plea to all the big sponsors. But for now I need to focus on having fun and just keeping up enough as not to get ridiculously behind.

Lunch was a birthday party with balloons and hats and noisemakers. Fun. We had cous cous with vegetable and steamed cod with herbs and chicken kabobs also with herbs and a salad of lettuce tomato cukes and onion; dessert was a cocoa sorbet; champagne and Whispering Angel.

Then the sea plane arrived and we tendered to it and wow it was way beyond what I expected, thankfully, because I might not have gone if I knew how we would be flying over mountains that we sometimes seemed to barely skirt. We went through Salmon Glacier to No Name Lake where we landed and hung around a bit, the pilot immediately putting out his fishing line. We had listened to John Williams music and Enya and so forth on the first bit of the flight. Then on the second bit it was all kind of rocking out music. I only found out later you could turn the music off in your headphones. I actually got the feeling that the pilot might have had more than coffee in his mug. I took a ton of video. After taking tea upon return, we prepared for the Norse God murder mystery night. Jo was Hel and seemed very much in character, characteristically, as was David, as Odin, who never dropped the ball. It was revealed last night, as I suspected, that he will go into the acting profession. I imagine what it would have been like for me to have parents of such enormous means actually supporting a child’s desire to become an actor. I have to take that primal pain and turn it all around.

I can’t get over how much I am reminded of my sister. The triggers are harshly real. And that is enough said about that. Other than I must not be dragged into any fight that someone else might be itching for. I must go even deeper into compassion. Dinner was something of a blur because of the game. For canapés we had salmon jerky again maybe? And some kind of creamy soup as a shooter? It was a ball of confusion with all the “gods” sussing each other out; and the crew making very graphic appearances. Cleo who organized the evening stressed the feminist aspect of the stewards as Valkyries which was fantastic—the male guests were prohibited from making eye contact with them while the female guests were required to do so. I was Loki (exactly who I hoped to be) and I was of course the murderer, which nobody guessed, stressing the point: don’t avoid the obvious. Afterword we played a bit of Cards Against Humanity but it fell flat because I think we’re all now too acquainted with the several, now, entire whole decks of cards.

Day Ten

Woke up early and really would have chosen to fall back; however, today was the first day there was mist and a mystical feeling in the air, which is how I imagined the weather would be for most of the trip. We are heading to Ketchikan today and I’m looking forward to being in a larger town for a few hours. And then Jill and Florian and Graeme and Matt will leave, after Alistair arrives. So the day will be characterized by a natural human shift which might shake some things out energetically speaking. I need to do some timed writings which I’ll do right now, having already had a breakfast of smoked salmon (which was caught by the kids and A. the other day) on rye bread.

I’m a bit coldy today, which I hope will pass. I might hit the hot tub which might help….time passes…and it did! We went into Ketchikan and S. and I decided to avoid the commercial bit, so we headed up a hill into area people seemed to live. The town seemed a bit poor on the one hand with giant cruiseships (and the blocks of tourist traps the cruise companies own) on the other. We came upon a bridge and a waterfall with a wooden walk way so we took it. As it turned out it wove back into town, all along this walkway on stilts, to a more charming, but still commercial bit. There were some nice jewelry shops and a great book store and a cannabis shop and a cabaret venue, if you could believe it. We didn’t have much time as we had a rendezvous time back at the tender; but we ended up waiting another forty-five minutes in any case because J. got rockignized. But I had bought some cheesy popcorn so we snacked on that until the fam arrived and headed back to the boat.

Lunch was a bit sad knowing Jill and Flo were leaving. Pizza and arugula/beet salad and roasted vegetables. I know the Brits aren’t always super effusive, I don’t know about the Welsh, but I love Jill. And Flo gave me another kiss, and he’s Swiss! And we also said goodbye to Matt and Graeme, wecloming Al aka Cap’n Bumpyon board earlier. We then hopped back into the tender and went back into Ketchikan and tooled around for an hour and hit the highlights—cannibis shop, cabaret, bookstore. Then tea with chocoloate chip pumpkin cookies. Oh boy. Canapés were sushi and dinner was black cod and rice and a bun with bean paste for dessert. Conversation was all about trans versus gay. The kids, I thought, had the most interesting perspectives. And then we watched The (first) Godfather. I went back to our cabin to pee and never made it out again, face-planting into bed where I spent a good part of the night, apparently, snoring.

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.