Scorpio 21° (November 13)

I was pretty much useless today. Couldn’t even be asked to cook anything. Thank goodness for tinned sardines.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1131-1135 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.

Our daily walks are the saving grace; and I need to embrace them all the more. I have over three weeks until my high school friends come to visit and the vanity in me is determined to get a little edge in the rest and exercise department. I’m weird I know. It’s been such a dark time in our country and I can’t help but feel really strung out by the bad baby sitter. People seem a bit crazy to me, which I know puts my own sanity in question. But I think when you have a bully running the show it gives license to other bullies. I want to get out in front of all these feelings, but it is terribly challenging. Two words: Nova Scotia.

Seriously the smartest thing to do might very well to figure out a way to get a house in our neighborly land to the north. I can’t believe we would go so far as to alienate that country of all countries. I’m not saying anything earth shattering here today I know. And I worry that I’ve lost my sense of humor. Everything feels like its happening in a dream, or rather a nightmare. This must be the last time I do certain things the way I’ve been doing them. I need to drum up more easeful support for my efforts or simply stop doing them.

I’m in a place where I am trusting very few people; and in regard to my visiting friends I think these two thought forms go together. I think I need to be around people who knew me when after spending far too long being around transient narcissists. There is that one narcissist nemesis who I despise with most fibers of my being. The one who infiltrated my world to meet and ultimately befriend my more influential cronies in the world of art and entertainment. And he’s done very well for himself, convincing them of his worth, showing only the bright colors (although he also offers them heroin, the fools) all the while playing (St)Eve Harrington. Someone should do a campy remake called All About Steve. There is a film of that name but it’s not the same story. Anyway…

There is something about the Taurus narcissist, especially. The sign ruled by Venus, rubs me, a Libra, also ruled by Venus the wrong way. Mine is masculine sign and rather objective and Taurus is subjective—look at me! I want to be looked at to, but more appreciated, and not so much for my talents as my ideals, I suppose. I can’t stand injustice I can tell you that much. And I can’t stand the feeling I’ve been or am being used. In the end I feel disdain for a character like Steve. But really I become so disappointed in my friends who fall for that sort of thing. Anyway, this phase of my life is ending as I embark on all new things. It’s like I tell clients: You really do have to let go of the vine you’re swing on sometimes in order to grab at a new one.

All I really want to do today is listen to full CDs. What is the best way to do that I wonder. I should ask Tony Grimaldi, he will know. I actually still can’t believe that my high school friends are coming to visit. What I realize we share is that we are all super savvy—we’re plain old smart that’s for sure, and we all have a ton of references, but we’re also kind of slick. Maybe it’s because we grew up on old movies with fast dialogue and all had parents that were determined, to varying degrees that we would make something of ourselves. I do hope Tony arrives a day early as, of all the fellows, he is the one I really know the least and could use some alone time with. We shall see.

I am at once really looking forward to getting back into the hot room and also dreading the hell out it. The dread is pretty real. Meaning, I’m actually scared I’ll keel over. I’m going to have to be so, so gentle in this process of reentry. And meanwhile, I have been walking about two-to-three miles in the sand which is great. But these are all just words. The fact is I feel as if I’ve lost a part of my spirituality. That might sound strange. But once upon a time, in my early twenties, I was the guy reading the Vedas and the Upanishads. I think my doorway into spirituality was ironically J.D. Salinger as I wanted to be one of the Glass family; and they were all spouting Buddhist and Hindu and Christian and other forms of mysticism.

I associate these early glimpses of burgeoning mysticism with alone time on the beach at the Jersey shore where I would take my beach chair and my slim Salinger novel and a course catalogue from B.U. for, even, the first year of school, and all the Chronicles of Narnia I borrowed from my friend Ken, as I had never read them. And that was my literary stash and my comfort, taking me through the day, wiggling my chair with my ass to face the sun all day long, until there was a sort of click in of said heat, light and sea spray, and the world all faded to a blue wash, blood pressure probably dipping below normal. I would just space out and not smoke cigarettes, which, unfortunately I had been doing since I’d been eleven (god help me). And I just felt a sort of peace in waves of spare sentence structure and childlike imagination and eastern religion all mingles together with the smells of Hawaiian Tropic oil and greasy hamburger smoke wafting from the nearby boardwalk grill.

There was a very bearable lightness of being at that age in any case. And I suppose I was naturally manorexic—that is to say I liked to go long hours without eating because it gave me a bit of a high, airy sensation. But it was just the sense of not having to be anywhere. I began working my first job at fourteen, but at seventeen, the year before college, I made the conscious decision that I wasn’t going to work that summer. I was going to walk the one block to the beach. I was going to space out in the sand and read. Sometimes I would wake at dawn and creep out of th house and swim in the bit of water that was like a cover, next to the jetty, all pink with the rising sun. Just me and the gulls and the occasional imaginary shark—Spielberg was truly a buzz kill. Then I would emerge, no towel, and tip-toe run back to the house, drop my wet things, wrap myself in a towel and eat fresh cut cantaloupe my mother would have in a bowl covered with foil in the side-by-side fridge.

I didn’t know then that so much of what I considered to be hopelessly middle class would be looked upon, in hindsight, as luxury. I doubt my parents ever made as much money as I do, by my wits, in a given year. But I can barely make ends meet, without kids, while they would have had plenty to spare, there, for awhile; that is before economics began trickling down. But more than that I had freedom and autonomy. And I don’t think it’s age but culture that has whittled those things down to a nub. Cellphones were the start. We can’t be anywhere where nobody knows where we are. Sometimes after the summer crowds leave I can walk out onto the beach in Provincetown and just stay there, no satellite to find me, for hours on end. But I don’t have whole summers to do that as lucky as I am, not having a job where I work for anyone or punch a clock. If I had to punch a clock I would surely punch a more than a few people out cold. I know myself. I don’t like to be told what to do and/or when to do it.

It’s Sunday and I’m wistful but also, maybe a little at my wit’s end? I truly have news fatigue and so I’m taking a major step back. I’m quite proud of the fact that I’ve put many major wheels in motion and my only wish now is to keep that momentum going because it is so key. I know that in just a matter of days I should be firing on many cylinders again, as is my custom. I don’t want to overdo it today, being Sunday. So I thought I’s put some inspiring words I recently encountered as part of an exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, a town which is very much on the radar for me…

…but again, I must keep my head where me feet are, and not try to plan some inevitability that is impossible to fully shape…I need to get where I’m going, immediately, and then make the most of where my imagination might take me. This coming year might prove to be the most interesting of all, whereby we travel back and forth as needed. I will need a surrogate in Boston to work some magic. Brian King is actually the perfect character to step in and speak about how Afterglow was created by myself and a group of artist friends including John Cameron Mitchell, Justin Vivian Bond and Taylor Mac, all of whom sit on our Advisory Board. Like: “Hi I’m Brian King and I’m filling in for Quinn Cox who is in Paris…etc. Lay it on thick.

I’m looking forward to closing the loop a bit on the consultancey whilst taking it to the next level Anyway, here, a poem by TC Cannon whose art show was absolutely mind-blowing. More about how Salem can factor in, anon….

Money laundering is on my mind, because everything anybody is saying anywhere is going to amount to that in any case. It’s the disjointed, dysfunction, deconstructed reality that’s infiltrating my real and etheric body, making me feel crunched out to the core.

So I don’t feel like it makes sense to even be speaking in complete sentences as I am now. Instead feel the need to jumble, and so I shall:

This Blague consists of daily horoscopes. Then I insert a bit of writing from the recent past, things I want to bring forth and elucidate and expound upon. This would consist of my analysis, frankly. It is in a way a mechanism for writing.

I could do the same thing, reading Sextrology. Would be fun to do a Sextrology book club and expound upon what was mentioned therein, chapter for chapter. Great way to get new ideas. Also to discuss the fifteenth anniversary edition, which will be fun to do. It’s difficult to force oneself to do it but I think it really, but it would be the easiest thing.

I think we really are naturally good at branding. It’s just a matter of our having been derailed, and rightfully so; we had given it our all for quite a long time, and the spark necessarily went out. In some way, it felt like the last time I cared about looking telegenic; I don’t say that wistfully, only truthfully. It was time to live without that expectation that national exposure was just within reach—to be fair after so many years fielding so many producers and making so many reels and sizzles, it fizzled out.

I’m in my fourth year writing this Blague. I have untold material here. And shall continue to have, I guess. But we’ve been over this and over it. I’m on call tomorrow with two clients. There will be lentil soup and salmon and little else. Heard from Joe’s Pub today and am super excited we’ll be performing our Christmas show there again this year.

The theme is going to be all the ways we slay, all the signs, and what our divine powers for doing so are as per our star-sign

I remembered the transgender concept for Nextrology. Trans people of the sign explore the inner polarity between the male and female as embodiment or enactment of signs energy. Others are more about their opposite male or female character across the Zodiac, an external polarity.

I feel the weight of a thousand broken relationship and the interconnectedness between them, imaginary though it may be, banging some kind of drum, plotting my undoing. Yeah that’s not a real thought. It’s just dread of any kind put into words mayge. I don’t know really. This is the day I do have two clients by phone and spoke to Dave. And nearly turned a corner, but not quite. And then there will be a day to come that will be even more a burst of extinction. I’m gearing up to win some things. And I always win some things. I have a dream and it would be super nifty if it actually came true. When did I buy Priorat, or was this something else? I think it was, actually; and that I had some leftover for during the week. It’s possible that I did. It might even have been the following day.

I do believe I can start marrying this with some thoughts that need generating in any case. I believe I’ll do that tomorrow. Today was a day for meditating and releasing all the pain and tension in my body. I lay on the sofa in the living room for what seemed three or four hours, lost in the psychic surgery I sensed my body needed. I spoke with Dave.

It is soon time to tell the artists: Dear X As the Afterglow Festival in Provincetown celebrates its eighth year, and we enter our fourth year presenting our autumn-to-spring Afterglow-at-Oberon series at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, we are making plans to create a circuit of venues in New England and throught the Northeast.

 Simply called Glow, and tag-lined A Moveable Festival, we hope to create tours for artists through this would be circuit of venues, such that dozens of artists can move through dozens of performances spaces, cultivating audiences in smaller cultural cities and towns, while providing artists with bookings and the ability to connect more widely and more intimately with these audiences. All with Afterglow in Provincetown at the core, continuing to be an incubator of progressive works from emerging and evolving stage artists.

 This year, we received a tour-planning grant to do just that for a New England-based artist—there is a subsequent grant we’ll apply for next year to help with the actual tour; and we will apply for another planning grant for a second New England-based artist, and so forth. This has provided a motor for us to reach out to influential theaters, universities, museums, arts centers throughout New England in establishing these tours and to open up the larger dialogue about touring any and all artists who have performed under our auspices in Provincetown and Cambridge.

 Honestly, I have been pleasantly shocked at how many venues already knew of Afterglow and its work; and what I imagined might be pie-in-the-sky places have enthusastically welcomed the notion of our creating programming for them as we would for other venues, bringing a sensational string of artists through their doors on a steady basis…..

It trailed off there. Oh well.

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.

Scorpio 20° (November 12)

I have some reading of the existing chapters to do today. And I will draft the front of book matter as well. Or at least place it in some kind of order. S. will head out in an hour and I will do a wee toilette, then I’ll drop off the carbage around 9, back at 9:30, and ready for my day by 10:30. I have a pretty stocked fridge. There isn’t too too much to say nor should there be. 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1126-1130 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.

Was a wonderfully lazy day. I lay in bed and watched a pretty bad movie, Game Night. Formulaic. And anyway, in the midst of Jason Bateman backlash, his schtick is wearing a bit thin. I do love me some Rachel McAdams though I must say. Anyway, I was wondering how the Jersey boys would feel today and it seems everyone is still up for it; even though I imagined the whole thing unraveling. But for now it is still on which is cool. My mind starts to race about whether or not I’ll be judged by folks for my lifestyle or for my house which is really weird because in the end I could live in a cave and it would still end up exhibiting an enviable aesthetic. I am sort of recovering today. It is a holiday weekend and I know I’ll end up working tomorrow; so for now I’m just doing lists in my head, really.

I need to schedule day to scan all our press to date and start getting rid of hard copies we don’t need. I drafted a letter of agreement for Brian which I need to finalize. I need, in the coming days, to focus on an artist or two per day getting all their materials sorted and onto the website and such. And I have to update the sponsor bit on website too as I bring in funds. I want to contact Preservation hall and speak to David Drake about our tour. Also the cotuit Art Center. I had a thought about Sandra Bernhard and asking Mitch for her contact in a way that wasn’t cringey but I’ll hve to re-remember it. It was a similar formula to dealing with Andy Cohen I think.

I’m glad Diane Borger was able to come see Fauxnique. I tried to wipe a little bit of slate clean but I wasn’t convinced it happened, if yo kow what I man. But I will write to all the A.R.T. folks and let them know they are invited to Afterglow. I just need ten columns of ten people to make up a hundred hundred dollar sponsors. I do still need to get a good letter going to venues. And it was funny looking at the Czars site how so many PR are looking for writers; I need to know what that means exactly. I should really make it a focus of mine to work the mens magazine angle.

This is a letter of agreement between Afterglow and Brian King (& What Time Is It, Mr. Fox?) as concerns the piece “Gravitational Fool”, in the execution of a NEFA planning grant and showcase, and subsequent tour, with or without the receipt of a subsequent NEFA grant. Afterglow will pay a total guarantee of $1500 to Brian King and company as “artist fee” for their rehearsal time and performance of the showcase; and keep an additional $1500 in reserve from which Brian King and company can draw for the purposes of reimbursement for work conducted or expenses incurred by Brian King and company, as per Brian King’s discretion. Invoices and/or receipts will be provided for reimbursement…..

That’s a start anyway.

Up and Comer!

I’m in love with Jodie Comer which means she’s probably pretty butch. Though I married a statuesque brunette, as a child I was continually attracted to blond tomboys. Jodie Foster was the basic model of all the girls to whom I was attracted, from Jennie Hoey as a young child growing up in Jersey City—she swung perilously on the swings and hung upside down on the monkey bars and did all sorts of fearless non femmy things. The there was a string of blonds, fourth grade: Martha Bader; fifth grade: Diane Arpert; sixth grade DeDe Bartley; Moo Quackenbush and Audrey Smith in high school; and that girl Lisa who played lacrosse, hackeysack, ultimate frisbee and the like at University.

I’m a bit obsessed with Calabria right now, which is weird I know. It seems there are some fairly spectacular beaches there and I do trace my family from there so…for sure we are going to take a trip there next year, likely in keeping with our thirtieth wedding anniversary. Thirtieth, wow. We were meant to go to Venice on our honey moon—we actually might just make it this time. Anyway I’m going to keep researching the places and get a handle on what’s what. None to shabby to be able to get to Rome on a whim too. If I have to be in America then this part of the world is great. If I don’t have to be in America, there are so many places to discover and explore.

I keep trying to add pictures from my voyages to the Blague but they don’t seem to want to play a part in their present format; I will go back and beautify these installments as the fancy strikes. Today being Tuesday post Memorial Day we had a great meeting and really got cooking on weekly minutes. It will take through the weekend probably to execute all we have put in motion but we are doing a-ok. I am currently on a pause from writing next year’s weekly horoscopes while topic number one today was putting this year’s books on sale since we are five months in already. That coupled with an announcement of our summer consultancy should make a nice mailer this week on the Starsky + Cox side of things.

Robert Duffy, Bryan Rafanelli, Marlo Fogelman, Heather Wells, Andrew Joseph are running through my mind. As are which magazine editors to contact, which bridges into Paris Consultancy.

I will never get to balancing my checkbook. Not this week, anyway. We had a lovely donation from the Nelson Trust whom I will have to thank on Monday. I am admittedly spread quite thin but I believe myself to be hitting all marks, as well as being preventative. I’ve let my writing slip a bit again but I’m already catching myself up. There are so many books to read and so much minutiae to dig through. And yet it’s getting to the point where the story is writing itself…and I am the story. It’s a place I’ve been wanting to get to. But I have to be careful not to become over elated.

I am looking back on words and pictures and seeing there was a rather specific time I felt at my happiest. I believe it might have been four years ago, the winter of 2014, when we were in L.A.. I think it was one of S.’s favorite times too. We were on a super health kick that I remember. In some ways I’m still there and in some ways I’ve lost it completely. I’m so tentative when I write here and yet I’m quite aware nobody is ever reading this—can you believe I do this everyday? Well I suppose there are others who do the same. As a matter of fact I know there are.

We have on client this afternoon so my mind is a bit divided, but we are getting our brains around consistent exercise and I’ve been tearing my way through clutter, getting all cylinders ungooked in preparation for some seriously determined and diligent dilletantism—my way of saying that letting myself be spread thin is often a choice whereby I prep each spoke of the wheel of my experience and then pull the mult-trigger all at once knocking several large projects out of the mark en meme temps. I’m so fortunate that I get to have Paris in my life whenever I want it; and someone there to help me navigate the residential aspect of the city. Next year Venice. That is one thing for sure.

When our clients listen to us they do tend to succeed. Does that sound like hubris on my part. Maybe. Oh right I had a dream about Ken Horgan owner of the Pilgrim House in Provincetown and also tennis pro. I’m going to visit upon him for various reasons.

Honestly that feels like enough for today.

It being Wednesday today is a big client day. It is in many ways the diaspora day as each of our clients today have Central American roots. I felt really empowered speaking with all of them. One of our clients who has been struggling in the attempting of some very big things seems mega balanced. Others are raw and others are ready. All are both. I’m slightly wondering if I’m testing the boundaries of client-counselor privilege. No I’m not! That is a total joke.

I actually like the blurred lines that exist between clients/friends. It doesn’t upset me in the least—au contraire—I’ve always been able to mix business with pleasure. But it’s funny I do feel like swooping in and making things happen in a big way for some of our clients. I know this has been on S.’s mind but we might ask for a good deal more in retainter and really dig into people’s businesses and visit them and go through their day with them and really deconstruct them. Ut oh. This is the TV show.

Been talking with the boys about their visit:Me: Didn’t we used to call weed beige

Tony: Mostly it was Beans  Beanage

Me: Beans yes i do remember that term especially before first period Art lol we sort of just slipped out a back door in the 500 wing and I think we created a lot of cigarette smoke (I did) to mask but you me and ken were baked most first periods

whatshis face hated me. ms. nelson and ms. serra loved me tho

Oh, hi. I do have a family of regret. Want to hear it? I regret not having that ultimate preppy boyhood experience. I regret not being totally relaxed and having a father who was confident in his own skin and connected to his community. I was lucky I moved where I did as a kid, but I feel like I barely did. Like we found some nice suburb where we had good friends and perched ourselves in a newly built house in 1972 right on the highway so that it was easy for Him to travel to work and back. There was no safety to begin with. Not the kind of safety that is purchased through generations of staying put.

I was looking forward to a little alone time today and honesty, though the daily constitutionals have been fantastic, I lack the basic feeling of the suburban man, tooling around in his car, going to the bank, the post office, the hardware store. So I did that this morming for two hours; I could have done it for two days.

I got the bug in my ear do do some stuff like buy some paint and lighting and be all sort of proactive about my abode. I bought a whole bunch of colorful paints, in pints, and I’m going to thus experiment as I go. As a signpost I saw Tim of TimScapes who always calls me “power neutral” and i was wearing a light grey shirt with white jeans and charcoal grey sneakers so whatever but I was buying paints in the following colors: bright grass green, teaberry pink, navy blue. vivid lilac, as close to Hermes orange as I could muster (so it was more bright) and some chalkboard black!

What I gleaned from the meeting with Steve is that people generally get to the point of having a buisness plan like ours when they already have some money people lined up; so as we move the whole operation back another six months, we have to speed up our process of finding investment. We have to be clever an unapologetic about it and speak the truth in reaching out in this first friends and family round. As far as the next conversation went this is what I had to say about that:

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.

Scorpio 19° (November 11)

It is Ed’s birthday today and we shall give him a jingle around 10. It’s now 7:30 and I’ve been up since 5 but didn’t fall asleep until 12:30, so yeah It’s going to be a bit of one of those days. There will be room in the schedule once I get cooking, so I’m not going to worry at all. I need to produce about four to five pages a day on average to keep this party going. And I need to lean and relax into it in the process so to play the long game. Look, larger works of art or whatever have been created in less time. It is all about focus and really nothing more. There is enough work under my belt to let this flow and be creative, and still enough time in any given day to accomplish what needs accomplishing. So I will get my brain around some of that today and spend the next hour or so organizing my pages for the day. And then I might just focus on a structure for the intro in the afternoon. Going to make a lovely egg drop soup for lunch. And roast some cauliflower and sweet potato (to mash together) and stir-fry a packet of cabbage and co. that is typically meant for slaw. A bit of Asia today. S. off tomorrow to Boston which brings trepidation on a number of levels. But one cannot live fearfully right now because it is already a fright. I will get some crazy glue. That was a non sequitur in a sea of them. I used to have time to play Bananagrams. Now I don’t even want to. I wonder how The Queen’s Gambit is affecting the sales of chessboards. I will spend four hours today on the next chapter, proper, and then an hour or so on the introductory words. 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1121-1125 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.

Awoke at the Merchant in Salem, dreaming some demon was trying to have sex with me. Actually a little something might have gone down, but I definitely woke myself up before full possession ensued. I think. We’ll see. But it was a spooky house in a spooky town. Remind me to tell you the story about my first trip to Salem, freshman year. We sat on the terrace but there were windows which were people’s rooms and we can actually sense them shuffling around so we went downstairs and there was a breakfasty type thing like a frittata and yoghurt and it was nice. Coffee was eh but coffee is always eh and I love the place. But I was buzzing about yesterday’s meeting and wanted to get some thoughts down and here they are…

Great to see you yesterday as always and I think that it was all in all a productive meeting. I trust that, should we come to terms with Endicott, it can tick some boxes in the planning process for the tour itself. I am going to raise some red flags here in this note but don’t be afraid LOL. It is all designed to be preventative, efficient and to keep this train on track.

This grant of 6K is for the planning of a tour to include at least three New England venues. One has the option of presenting a showcase in the planning as part of the process but the showcase shouldn’t be overstated for a number of reasons. Ideally, it is designed to be something to which one can invite venues that would be part of the tour. And of course in most cases it would be the first iteration of a piece—not the case with Gravitational Fool—so we shall continue to hone our own unique reasons for doing this, some of which we’ve already unearthed.

Though in the presentation of a showcase we are open to ancillary elements (workshops, talk-backs) we must be very careful that the showcase be part of speeding our process and not become a cul de sac wherein we waste time and energy. We must remain efficient and precise and preservation of time and energy which both equal money. You said upon parting yesterday that you need to check that “presenting at schools” isn’t frowned upon by NEFA. Do that straight away!

Several red flags inevitably went up for me yesterday all on the theme of what we all can do for E.C. and what is a suggestively a disaffected student body; also, and this is because B is N’s boss, the meeting ended with him directing us to immediately jump through hoops to get stuff to Becca. Whoa Nelly. Cart Before Horse. I am sensitive to her being his boss, and I also see my way through that for Afterglow. First, WE must be clear: This showcase is about furthering GF’s development and, yes, in so doing, we are happy to interface with students, etc. But that can’t be our primary focus, even if it is Endicott’s. And I dare say that this sort of thing will need to be funded by them. 

The showcase itself will need to be ticketed in any case and we must go into it as a means of extending the lifeblood of the planning process, and I will work that out. Though we are not bound by the “artist fee” as per Adrienne: As mentioned, I am still keeping that amount earmarked as such: as remuneration for the artists in the “production” of a showcase. The rest of the money, which is NOT a lot (we have to keep reminding ourselves of that) will go to Afterglow’s planning of the tour and the administration, meetings, travel, promotion thereof. Every moment Afterglow puts into this is on the clock; so we want to be preventative of how long conversations are, how much time is spent on things that are not germane to this particular process which must be streamlined to work for us.

Remember, at risk of sounding like a broken record, Afterglow doesn’t spend time writing grants because we don’t have the bandwidth. Likewise, the work needed to be done in the execution of a grant received must also be afforded by said grant. That’s why ticketing will be important, we realize, in so far as AF’s take will continue to allow us to keep this process going until it takes off and becomes both artistically and financially fertile.

Again, not being alarmist but in the spirit of being surgical in this process, this is how we propose we proceed.  (Consider this my own workshop in Arts Administration entitled Horse Before Cart!

======

The thing about being confronted with a rage addict or to use the more colloquial term, and the perp’s own words, hothead, is that you second guess your own role in what goes down. Did I do something to make so and so so angry? He showed up and it was tense; and then he desperately apologized which was such a relief; he was holding a large tool box in one hand and buckets in another so he couldn’t prevent my hugging him, something I’m sure he had never experienced with a man before, probably not even his own son. He also apologized to S. and pressed the issue…you’re sure you accept my apology. Absoultely yes.

I was writing and sitting outside in the haze and was chatting simultaneously with high school friends Mike and Tony. I was musing about a boys weekend here on the Cape when S. came to announce she’s going to Toronto for several days at the end of June; so I impulsively swung that information into my conversations with these guys and they were like let’s do it—so they’ll come, along with two other friends, Dave and Ken, hopefully while she’s in Canada. Fun.

It felt like a day off though more of a derailing as, even though we were now okay, the run-in with the rageful really shook out some things. I think because I didn’t react it pressed a reset button on what would be my typical (outmoded) behavior in situations like this a/k/a father and/or authority issues. I feel different. I feel tired and sad and vulnerable but also real and unapologetic and strangely free.

After more than ones fair share of wine this Saturday night, what else to do but sing aroun the piano. I was deep into Baracuda and some other songs I’ve not sung before. I’m wistful about so much and yet I don’t feel at all as if the rug has been pulled out from under me. Typically this sensation is more bitter than sweet for me but not today and not this evening.

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.

Scorpio 18° (November 10)

Power hypnotizes and power handcuffs. This is such a strange day politically. I am feeling stronger today than I did yesterday. A bit more sleep than the night before. I bit healthier feeling. Leftovers for lunch. Scorpions in a bowl. I don’t think anything will materialize this week, nor should it. I should be the biggest ever grownup in the room. I was perusing pictures of myself from just this past summer and I was seeing the return of my yoga body—also though I love my hair long, it really does overpower my small stature and erode any semblance of facial structure I might pretend to have. The freaking Republicans are enabling the orange toddler keeping a peaceful of transfer of power from happening. I think it’s going to get very ugly and I think Barr has been laying low because he has been plotting behind the scenes. Biden is playing the game, much like I am in my little word with my mini dictator, who has no power here and will soon learn the fact. I am using this as an opportunity to own my power. I have let people take it too much in the past. But I am not longer in that place. I will take a nap today, something I haven’t done in I can’t remember how long. Soon I won’t have to manufacture thoughts for this. They will be flowing through the work at hand. I wrote out a check to Ed Morehouse and put it in a Scorpio card that S. had in her desk. I will be losing the garden hose by this weekend. Thinking ahead it shouldn’t be all that difficult for us to renew stickers and I can always find a way to work that out. You have no idea what I’m talking about. Then again you’re not even reading this.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1116-1120. 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.

Drove up to Boston had hardly any traffic at all; and I dropped Stella on Newbury Street and made my way to Cambridge and parked in the hotel’s underground lot. It was only about 10AM still so I had to wait to get into my room—though not very long. Grabbed a bit of sushi for lunch and a beer and then took a nice nap because, for whatever reason, the insomnia is back. Was pretty well refreshed and was looking forward to meeting our friends Heather and Barry for a pre-show dinner at Waypoint in Cambridge. They are also sponsors of the festival so it was a nice opportunity to take them out and see the show together. Another friend, Gabriela, met us there.

Fauxnique really is one of the most spectacular performers and creatures on the planet. She really is so ridiculously good and unique. She dances on point, she changes looks before your eyes, she dances and lipsynchs and now sings so amazingly beautifull; and on top of everything else she is such a good person and such a good friend. We went back to Waypoint and I think the waitress was a little tipsy. Anyway, it felt a little like that. She was pretty effusive. It really was oodles of fun.

At some point this will all be a memory and I won’t have to worry about the quality of my content. Neither should I . All those years ago, in Nice, walking around, spending whole days on my own, having fun, going the rocky beach, wearing practically nothing, drinking beers from a man who passed by, making friendly connections. Going to dinner with a stranger, a missed connection I recall. I was too tired—remember when you were in your twenties and when you were tired you couldn’t push through—and I couldn’t show up for what would have been perhaps a date. Oh, well. Everything happens for a reason. That was Marc who worked at the Pas de Pot. I wonder if it’s still there. Or, indeed, if he still is. So many years of disease in between.

I don’t remember my Swedish friend’s name who was going to write me notes and postcard which he said he’d sign with a frog drawing, his signature stamp. Nothing ever came. No he’s just a no-color haircut, a vague shape in my memory. Square teeth. Flat stomach. That’s all I can, or probably should, recall.

========

Stella had appointments back on Newbury Street and I had a lazy morning and an early ridiculously fattening lunch and beer. I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately but I’m so gluttonous. I think it’s like denial that summer is basically here and I’m supposed to be a certain weight? Like I’m piling on a bunch of lbs as a sort of act of defiance. I have a feeling that all this chowing down is going to come back to bite me right in the giant belly. Needless to say, I was the passenger in the car today and was happy to arrive at Nan C.’s. It was just she and Vie and we had a blast. B. was away and he’s this great beer afficianando, now, and gets deliveries of craft beers, of which I never partake…but now, being on this beer binge, I had one of his tall cans. Honestly it made me more high than drunk and that was all I had all night long if you can believe it. I can’t.

We all four of us watched The Sound of Music and Vie had seen it before. Last summer I did a solo rendition of So Long, Farewell, sort of playing all the children at once, to entertain her when we were in Islesboro. I do love that house in Islesboro I must say. But even if they were to get it again from their friend (Kirstie Alley) we wouldn’t be able to go because we are off to Alaska and British Columbia. I am so super psyched about that you’ve no idea. Anyway we watched the movie and editorialized to our hearts’ content; and then I did a bit of a comedy act with my partner Siri, asking her all sorts of questions.

I asked her…Hey Siri, what color of your eyes? To which she responded: Quinn, I don’t have eyes, but if I did I’d be rolling them.

Went to Andover which is a magical place (not). It has that creepy sleepy nowhere Massachusetts town feeling. But there’s a Whole Foods of course, and we were making dinner for the larger arriving family. Chickens, Caesar, Rice, Veg. Nothing fancy. Of course we forgot a cake for S.’s mother because we don’t eat cake and never think in terms of cake—but we did buy two cases of wine for ourselves because we’re selfless.

It was a fairly easy day until a sudden arrival sent me down a spiral. I have a lot of trauma surrounding certain individuals and this guy is one of them. He doesn’t always trigger me—if I’m prepared—but nobody gave me a heads up so I reacted viscerally. But I managed to keep it together…ish.

The conversation turned toward Israel. Why? As we know it’s not an easy conversation to have but the number of Palestinians killed at the border these last few days might at least loosen the expected, usual rhetoric, but no. The combination of those organic reds I bought and the fatigue and a certain know it all tone and I was this side of losing it, literally, for argument’s sake. Oh well.

The elders are always fun. They are the best part in fact. They say really funny things that the only pretend have been blurted out innocently. Yeah. No.

These sorts of buildings, all grey and beige and greige, and the little-boxes-on-the-hillside feel just adds a generic flavor to the already suburban spookiness of the environment. Everybody is so close. All the “backyards” merge; and yet there is none of that neighborhood feel one had growing up in the suburbs in the seventies when kids were just let loose to wander and live or die. Even in Jersey City, before the great white witch exodus of 1972, we just went outside and came back when we felt that sinking feeling in our stomach that the sun was already setting.

Now it’s a world of play dates and kids otherwise living the way they did in and around Park Avenue, always; only now that isolated and by-appointment-only funtime is everywhere throughout the land. I suppose it’s worth not losing children to kidnappers and the like—no more milk cartoons out there are there? Then again…maybe sacrificing a few tots to the larger sense of freedom wasn’t so bad. I’m kidding; oh shut the ef up.

========

The topic is gluten a little bit to much for my taste today, but I smile and nod and agree we should try to back off it. I’ve been in this suburban land three days and now I must head to the North Shore as we have a meeting today at Endicott College. I worked a super good deal for a hotel we stayed in a year or so ago in Salem—the Merchant. It’s near the historic district and we love walking around and seeing the houses. It really is a best kept secret. As are some of the restaurants and surely the museum, which we’ll hit tomorrow morning. We tried to do something other than the obvious for lunch but realized we shouldn’t avoid it. So we went to Live Alive or whatever the place is called.

After buying some tarot cards and books at the Haus Witch we went for a number of strolls, taking breaks, back at the hotel in between, before setting off north to Beverly. It wasn’t very far at all. Something about the North Shore reminds me a bit of New Jersey and the area around Cannes at the same time. And the campus at Endicott was nice. We received a grant to produce a tour for Brian King and his band—of the show that premiered at Afterglow many moons ago. The meeting went well—the person at Endicott was really nice—and it was something quite unusual for me to do. I am not much of a visitor or outreach person despite the fact I produce and fundraise. That sounds ironic even to me.

The fact is I stay probably too much in my lane. In truth it’s all I have bandwidth to do. If anything I’m trying to figure out ways to limit multitasking while still hitting all my marks. I think I’m getting good at it. Anyway the conversation veered a bit and got a little cart before horse and by the end I felt like I was being tasked to do things I don’t want to do. Like share in Google chat. I share what I want when I want; but not in Google chat. I think what I learned today is that I am not only not a team player but I so don’t want to be. I felt a bit ambushed I must add, as the conversation was all about what we can do for the school, but I bided my time and let moments pass. Then, on leaving, Brian said something like I’m not sure we can do certain stuff with schools. (Which turned out to be true.) Now you tell me.

Anyway, S. was surprised that I wasn’t walking on air because on the surface the meeting seemed so positive, which it mostly was; but you know how certain people (Taurus people) assert their agenda through passivity, letting scenarios they’ve arranged play out, pretending guilelessness, well….I’m actually not sure Brian did this because he really does seem guileless and he is one of the kindest people I know. Still it’s sort of like letting other people hammer out whatever the issues might be. “I’m too important to be captured.” I wonder if anybody knows where that comes from. Well I’m not going to tell you.

Anyway, my mind was already arranging words into phrases to get the horse in front of the cart where it belong. But mainly I was thinking about food and wine (what else is new). We had plans to go to our favorite restaurant in Salem (and really the only one we know), this little Italian place (with a Serbian? chef…who used to work in Boston) called Firenze. The owner was in Seattle and it was a bit amateur night on the service; still we managed to find a decent wine and we had pastas for primi and a whole sea bass, kicking it old school. It was better than okay.

Our room was on the top floor of the hotel and was considered a suite; but it didn’t have any windows, just a skylite. But it had a giant soaking tub I was too tired to use until the morning.

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.

Scorpio 17° (November 9)

I really felt like absolute crap this morning. The celebratory aspects are already being stolen from us. I am needing to rework my wording to fuckface because me thinks it needs to be made clear that we are not messing around. He needs to know we have law on our side. It’s like I have my own private Drumpf sometimes, which is just bloody awful. Anyway now is about building up and back strength. Not for giving into stresses. I am in the business of surprising myself and surpassing self-expectations. I find infinite joy in the notion of getting myself completely in the driver’s seat without the self-loathing and recriminations. Everything must go and so it will. All I need are a few signatures and a signed check. I will get some moolah out to Edward. It is the right thing to do. And now to continue to build my resolve. This is what the next few days will mainly be about: moving from recovery into restoration. It will all be fine; and it will be a fine time to tackle what needs to be tackled. I think I finally have the right ingredients in place. The trick is to let is all come from within and to stay super clear-headed. It won’t be the cinchiest thing in the world but it is quite doable. I need to take a major step back from all that is happening. It turns out we will have some lovely salmon cakes and then a cassava penne with anchovy, onion, parsley and tomato. I was meant to receive a delivery from Eastham but it didn’t come. It was nice to sit outside yet again and enjoy this amazing Indian summer. Watching the rest of series which have been my drugs, in televised form, these past several weeks. I have pushed my schedule, stretching it to the limit, and can’t get away with another day. Pushing it as I am. And I so want the feeling that comes from hitting my marks.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1111-1115. 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.

On this day, which would be a happy one, wherein our dear friend Matt was to marry his boyfriend Gilbert, we jumped in the car quite early and drove from Wellfleet to Greenpoint which I love even more than I have in the past. It was quite a nice trip and we got our head(s) together in the sense that we distilled what it is we were doing in such a way as not to require any outside help. Every once in a while it’s important to get as much a grip as one can on these things. I won’t say that my theme has deviated much as of late and I am determined not to continue down this actual rabbit hole. All of this sort of nonesense will soon come to an end. Anyway we stayed at this hotel that was okay. We were in a large suite in the basement the first night but it wasn’t very relaxing.

The party was fun and it was great to see Taylor and Vivian and Machine and Rachelle and other folks we haven’t seen in a while. Rizo was there too. As was her very pleasant baby daddy. Charming folks in all. And we danced and drank wine and chatted. I got to meet Carmine and Adrienne whom I’d really not met before. And Amber DJ’d. Part of me wondered why it is I don’t spend more time in NYC since I had built a life there for twenty years and so many folks I know are there. But that is one of the age old questions to which there is no simple answer.

The simple answer to any question always comes down to two things: diet and self love as ere the twain shall meet. I did manage to take a nice walk and a bunch of fun pictures and find a “blouse” to wear which would shatter the illusion that I’m not a big fat porker. Okay, maybe I’m not a big fat porker but I play one on a podcast (if I were to do a podcast) which isn’t on the list, really. I’m determined to break the spell or curse or whatever it is that is keeping me down.

Vivian has invited us to come and see her show at Joe’s Pub. I believe we shall see if it’s possible to do so.

========

Had quick coffee at Bakeri and then we were supposed to leave after meeting Emily and Joseph, who live across the street from the hotel, for brunch. We had inquired last evening if there was a room but were told they were fully booked. So over coffee we decided that if by some miracle there was a vacancy we would take it. There was a vacancy and we took it. We moved upstairs; it was a smaller room but I liked it so much better. Went to Label, where we were yesterday for lunch, and in came Robert who, of course, it turned out, is part owner. So we hung out a bit. He intimated he might want to open something in Wellfleet; and, frankly, I could be convinced to go in on something like that.

We took a lovely walk around town. It really is quite more expansive an area than I imagined. I don’t absolutely love Manhattan Avenue, but it soon, too, will be gentrified. One can tell. Crappy houses are in the millions. I don’t get life. We had a gorgeous snacky pricey meal at Alameda and had way too much time before we had to get to Joe’s Pub until suddenly we had no time at all to be at Joe’s Pub. We had ordered a car, which didn’t show up. And cabs were not to be found, as it was raining. One swung around the corner, dropping guests off at the hotel. So we took it and it was driven by a twenty-three year old Sikh who was actually born in America and wanted to join the army because this country had been so good to his Indian immigrant parents when they first came to this country. Sorry but this is what being American is all about. Not about some orange fuckface draft dodger. That shit has to go.

Got there to be the last in line. Slid right in. And synchronicity being the name of the game, Damian was at our table. Damian had just lost our friend Randy, which has been terribly sad; but it was wonderful that we were all together. Ray Rizzo was in the band though I didn’t get to hang out with him after. Spoke mainly to Viv and Elizabeth Koke and then the return version of the car that never showd up to begin with was waiting outside. It was another nice ride back over the bridge this time—we had taken the tunnel eariler. Needless to say, after two late drinky nights, I didn’t feel all that special in the morning; my nerves get shot with too much wine and no sleep and it’s not exactly conducive to driving on highways and bridges in aggressive traffice but that’s life.

Got back to the Cape in pretty good time and had a lovely evening…

========

We got to skip a day/date in writing, here because, given that the year is 365 days but only 360 degrees, every once in a while we catch up to ourselves doing a daily Blague. And when I say we I mean I. I have actually been speaking in the first person a lot lately perhaps too much. When I work with clients sometimes I use we to say you. But it’s sort of creeped in here. Which can be creepy

In thinking about what might be the new intros to the next year’s Haute Astrology, I think I will deconstruct them against the snapshots in Sextrology, and make them more evolutionary in spirit; in this way I might already be writing notes on the next book. It’s not a ground breaking thought but I thought it best to record it.

I’m in pretty good shape at this point I feel, when it comes to artistic projects and sort of keeping everything flowing in the right direction. It comes down to being prolific as best you can be, it truly does. Sometimes speed with writing especially can get you out of your head and just allow thoughts to flow straight down onto what looks like paper on the computer screen.

Whenever I travel I get really off piste with the Blague so I’m just going to let this be pretty unfunny or clever and just move on with my time. Although I will say this: That I at once feel a storm a brewing and also have my eye on the calm of its own eye. I definitely have a sense of being able to reel the energy, and the circumstance, in a bit at t his time. I really don’t have many good close friends in New York City anymore truth be told. I have some good acquaintances, though. And I have much to accomplish and connections are important no doubt.

Only a couple days on Cape before I pivet to the final performance of our series this year and a nice weekend away first with inlaws then to what is like a substitute to a spiritual home.

==========

A heavy client day today and meeting a new one. Our clients are always extraordinary and today shall prove no different. I am feeling the need at this point to get my energy clearer and more on point. My psychic-ness isn’t firing on all cylinders which is behind my ability to repair; however I notice that when I rid myself of excess toxins I am much more attuned; and my thick/juicy-ness isn’t all that compelling to the spirit I must add.

So we have decided to do a fifteenth anniversary, a crystal anniversary edition of Sextrology, which will be our thirtieth wedding anniversary which apparently is pearl. Could be really interesting to do some kind of re-launch. We shall see. I am inspired to be focusing on the world of design; and meeting up with our graphic artist, Emily, while in Greenpoint really got me thinking about product and the like. It’s time to get a bit entrepreneurial. As we like to say, now is later.

I am going to try to get back into working on some kind of solo show that I could do at some point in the foreseeable future. This new project and new grant are already quite time consuming, but I know that it will be worth it in the end. I will be able to create something of a new vaudeville circuit, at least that is the goal.

=======

Packing. Pivoting. Putting things aright.

My only hope is that the constant ringing

Spinning flinging

Is just part of the act and not the temple

To say not anything that circuits the mind

To climb directly onto the scaffolding with a series of pings

To see the sides shake from the inside

This is why I don’t come here often

It’s not about anything you have to know that

This is me soldiering on and through

If it were to win a prize would I be surprised

I would not.

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.

Scorpio 16° (November 8)

It’s 333 in the morning and I cannot sleep. (Time passes). It is now almost 10 and I finally fell asleep around 5, I suppose. There was a whack job on social media I was debating with before I blocked their crazy ass:

You fail to realize that anybody who voted for the melted pile of circus peanuts this time (as opposed to last time) knows what kind of criminal he is on so many counts, how many dead, how many children separated, how many institutions gutted so it is more than a difference of opinions that divides the two voting blocks and it is the racism and the xenophobia and the misogyny and the ableism and all the other ills of American society that have to be addressed. But we don’t have to hand-hold those who are on the wrong side of history. If they want to live under a dictatorship we can give them a list of nations where they can go.

Yeah. beginning with your original post. like for instance who is gloating exactl;y? i’m looking around and i don’t see people gloating. I see people relieved and hopeful and recognizing a win for sanity, and end to daily barrage of lies and gasligting. it’s bad enough we have to take it from the right, but it upsets me even more when this sort of thing comes from the left because i actually am a progressive. Biden wasn’t my first choice in the primary but he won the bid for the Democratic ticket and so he got my vote. I happen to think he’s an empathetic man who works hard for the American people. That is my opinion. I do not think he is corrupt or that he exacerbates ills (that is your opinion). You don’t provide supporting evidence for that opinion you just make it. Just like you made accusations against me and others in this thread. That is a menacing thing to do ergo you are a menace.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1106-1110. I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

Today has been a productive day but I am feeling my oats. That is to say that I don’t think I’m too old, afterall, to have spring fever in a big way. Speaking of oats: Must remember to make overnight version tonight as I am “off bread” and, for the next six days, especially, will be living on soup and sunlight. Thank you daily constitutionals by the raging atlantic sea which has actually only been fairly calm as of late. That will change. To live near the open ocean continues to be the goal. It has been a constant happiness.

The glory of this day is that I shall have a goodly amount of time to get things done; and will be fun to have a last Lambrusco night, before rest on Sunday and then a sobering week. My dreams are getting dark. And time will have a tendency to speed up. One must therefore do all in his power to stay on the side of light and health. Those dreams have a labyrinthian underbelly aspect, as if being perpetually in some kind of basement, deepest darkest subconcious where Mick Jagger in a hospital gown with a giant dick protruding and disembodied parapalygics, guts spilling out into their wheelchairs, are just some of the elements of this landscape, the colors of which are stereotypically black and darkest red. Dreams so horrific that they can’t help but spook you in waking life, making it feel like something sinister may be around the corner.

Caught the Hall of Fame inductions. Lauren Hill. I know but still. Lauren Hill. So glad I tuned in for the Nina Simone segment. Wow. All in all I am trying to see the progress and divine some clear paths, all of which should lead to sharing what we know about what we do and our gifts as performers and personalities for a greater good. Entertaining Enlightment™must remain one of our watchwords. I must challenge myself with this show this year or else I don’t know how I’ll feel particularly. I do need a new kind of sense of accomplishment, and although I know this may be had by upping my game across the board, in all I do, I feel the specific need to excel, singularly, in this one arena.

One must be one’s best friend to the fullest in exercising ones ability to be a friend from both angles. I know what I mean by that: As the giver and the receiver. Okay time to go.

=====

We didn’t quite make the right decision perhaps to walk barefoot with no jackets on yesterday but such is life: we were given a choice, when the wind suddenly changed to a light arctic, to turn back or brave it, happy to be able to walk on the flats and cross rivulets but at the same time courting Renads. We were sort of flagged down by a ranger who wanted to show us a plover egg. After straining with and without binoculars I just while lied that I saw it lying in sime kind of indent in the sand. Sorry but not sure I did.

I can feel the town of Wellfleet changing. I will reach out and connect to Harbor Stage folks and also the Preservational Hall here in town as I am curious about their programming and such. In all I just want to be connected to earth and sky this season, taking full advantage of time spent in nature, where, along with within, all the answers lie. Feeling a need to connect in similar way with community here; and as a rule my usual point of entry is through the stage door. That will be part of the m.o. beginning May 14 which marks our official return.

I was going to dive into new work today but my spidey sense says I should stick with the larger project at hand and not go off on too drastic a tangent. I had thought that certain deadlines were looming, but realized, as with most things, that they were invented. So I am instead just touching base these various projects to ensure they are on the right track; and then I can go back to the business at hand, which is writing next years twelve weekly horoscope books. It’s a time consuming project which has really taken hold with readers as of yet, but something urges me to write them as beautifully as I might; and to have them at the ready eariler than usual.

We head to New York first thing Friday morning and it will be a very long day of travel and night of socializing; and then a business-design meeting on Saturday morning, before a long drive back. It will be exhausting but it will be worth it to celebrate our friends’ nuptials. I managed to set up a meeting with the Harper Collins speaker’s bureau and have hopefully piqued the interest of a VP at a reputable radio outfit. Little by little we ascend. No climbing just elevation, if not levitation.

Did you ever see the Blake Edward’s film S.O.B.. It’s one of those films I’ve seen snippets of and always sensed, despite a sixty percentile Rotten Tomatoes ratings, would be good. Well, it’s kind of genius actually. There are a good many great moving parts. That sentence was intentional, and something you’ll just have to live with. Speaking of living, I am in the mind of living rather frugally (for reals but also) “on surprise”. And I do think this weekend will provide a bit of a reset, on many levels. I just want to show up and see what I find and be open to whatever comes. I also want to leave some time for shopping because Daddy needs some new threads.

Sometimes the realities, and even the so-called banalities of life provide some semblance of transcendence. I am self-denying in so many ways as to border on self-deprivation; this I know about myself. I am willing and able to allow my environment to become pared-down, and to accelerate this, as a process, by changing my clingy ways. The fact is I have hung on to physical things, that have have no purpose in my life, for ways too long; and it’s time to let go of such things and start to free myself from the consequences of the ties that bind of which I am not full cognizant.

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Baby seal on the beach today. Yes I admit privately I was worried it was sick or dying, but I had to go with “blissed out and sunning himself” so as not to alarm S. who was sick herself worrying about it—and anyway it was preening and yawning and didn’t seem stressed out or in distress, although it’s heart or breathing was making pretty rapid moves in its chest. Such is nature in any sense. And since I’ll never know I choose that it be happy and thriving and just in need of some sunshine. It was facing into it, like any determined sun bather.

One of my default “issues” I suppose we can call them is that: I never feel quite caught up, which is a terrible feeling. If I could afford to go and write everyday I would—and, again, I do because I do (at least) this Blague; not to mention delegate all the myriad tasks it takes just to be alive. Anyway, that is a theme that might need to be explored. I never really knew how to write a paper; senior year of high school I determined that I would be in honors-level english even though the year before I was in standard-level (the school had done away with the enriched-level I was in my first two years, and I’d been shuffled down to honors. My mother and I muscled my way into Mr. Mazza’s desirable honors english but I was so behind the eightball, as all these students had been in honors all four years. I didn’t know how to write a paper, while they had all been taught to do so; I got very average grades; however I did very well indeed on the AP test for college and thus got skipped out of freshman, college now, level where I would have again had a chance to learn composition. I never did and I spent four years dreading deadlines and falling short. It was only in the final semester of senior year that someone, a close friend of mine coincidentally, was called on to read their paper in class aloud as “exemplary” that I learned what teachers and professors had been looking for. She should regurgitated what all we learned in class. Oh lord, I had no idea that’s all we had to do. I thought we had to always find “something else” apart and beyond what we were being taught; to discover our own new slice of literary criticism. So I did not so great in college, mainly because I was constantly overachieving.

I’m ready to get beyond the thinking constantly that I’ve done something wrong. It really has become quite debilitating. Admittedly I do do a lot wrong. And who doesn’t? But I do quite a good deal correctly too. I just need to give myself a break and come down off all of it. That sense of dread and deadlines is so deadening. Right, that’s what I was going to say: I still live as if I have some paper due, on high alert, dreading and expecting to fail, even though there aren’t really circumstances instigating that feeling. I’m still dealing with symptoms of a cause that no longer exists. Well not utterly in that I am still a writer despite every attempt I have ever made not to be one.

I worked as an editor and a writer, I suppose, to keep retraumatizing myself with deadlines I suppose. I have always been immersed in words, it’s been one of my worlds. As a youngster, I didn’t much like science or math, especially, (now I’m, mainly philosophically, intrigued by them) because no teacher could ever why…why are we talking about x and y to begin with. What logic is this whole thing based on?Because they didn’t know. And history and language, English et al, were way more my speed. Especially English. I could diagram the biggest sentence you could throw at me with alarming ease. I loved language and had an erotic attachment to the semi-colon in particular. I loved myth and literature, where I felt history and language arts met. I loved all the symbology and metaphor and analagy and simile and I was also intrigued by literary signifiers, the i.e.s, the e.g.s, the sics and so forth. I thought of myself as a person of letters. When I went into magazines within a year of graduating university I became obsessed with the editors marks and the holy grail of that world, the blue pencil.

Being into books was part of the identity of being an ex-pat upon leaving school, and living in Paris one felt the need to emulate those who flanned the streets and sat in the same cafés a scant sixty years before we did in the mid-eighties. Technology was a thin line of light on the horizon; meanwhile we held tight to pencils, pens and notebooks we carried in leather briefcases that might also have a shoulder strap, which gave way at regular intervals as one clipped down wet cobblestone streets with sidewalks to narrow for two way pedestrial traffic.

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The zodiac is among the ancient systems in which we see a lot of wisdom and power. We have always had a fascination for such systems, as with panteons and the breadth of myth systmes including those of modern religions and the comparative dynamic therein; we also both grew up with psychics and astrologers in our lives; and astrology for us is a symbol system that is particularly alluring in that it is at once efficiently ordered and very confident as a system and also it’s rich symbology and imagery links directly to the myths we love so much, not only in the planets being named for the gods, but the symbolic estate of each sign being endless with imagery, totems, story, parrable. All of it our jam.

Starsky + Cox really are always all about the big questions.

Today was mean to be quite busy. It is a client call in day so we stay open. And we did have an appointment with clients (twin brothers) who aborted last minute. I did manage to make a foray into puttin next year’s horoscopes together and things are pretty much falling into place as best they can. I am a little backlogged on chores. And I have a pile up of notes and such needing sorting through.

I had this thought: What if we have it all backwards in terms of evolution and the species and we are actually at the bottom of the scale. I mean we are the only animal that can’t not live in captivity. We can’t survive in the elements. We eat anything not just what is in the “regular diet” of our species. We have addictions and create polution and are pretty much the reason for a great many diseases. Look at the other end of the spectrum, like the insects, for instance; imagine having a shiny green ectoskeleton and some fierce antennae that sensed things and the ability to fly. To me that sounds far more evolved.

I can’t tell if I’m the most or the least organized person on the planet. It has to be one of the two extremes. I do know that I have friends who seem to write a couple of novels a year; now that is rare I realize but they’re really good novels too; and I don’t seem to have whatever it takes to be that prolific. I try to hit all my marks but sometimes I feel I have too many, that I’m not focused, but scattered, rather; then again I think maybe I’m just someone who doesn’t put all his eggs in one basket.

I know it probably sounds paranoid but I can almost hear my liberties being narrowed; it makes me furious that the cheato in charge speaks for us when I feel completely opposite from him on all issues. I need this to be over soon-ish; it is a ruination. I jump to this because it relates to what I was saying earlier (yesterday?) about living on deadlines and the dread associated therewith. How come I didn’t feel unambitious when I spent my days watching videos and walking through the West Village or over to the Hudson to sun myself. How is it that I felt I then had all the time in the world. Wouldn’t that have been the time to hustle? In my late twenties, early thirties? Why do I feel I must do all my hustling now. Is the very reason because I didn’t do it then. I’m talking about the Clinton years, now. They were as unhurried as can be. I know I went for things. I created, I auditioned. I went to class. I wrote for magazines. I worked for fashion designers. I did PR. I started magazines. I worked as a field producer in television. It wasn’t like I was just sitting around. But I remember some summers being so slow and sleepy all day long.

There was that one particular summer. Maybe 96 or 97 not sure. I think the same year as Buffalo 66 and my writing for Detour and all of that. I remember we really didn’t have a sous; but I had worked out a deal to eat at Nine Jones restaurant in exchange for doing there PR which I did, best I could. I did the same at the Pearl Room. Not only did I never go hungry but I also never didn’t eat super well. But it was a drain, I must say. I mean, I was always having to hawk something. It was exhausting. It still is. Sometimes I feel quite lost. Like today. I look at people’s pictures on social media some days and I think how the hell can people party day in and day out and still have bone structure and be rocking some fashionable clothes. Two answers: hormones and Dr. Colbert.

Who me bitter? Never.

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I know a great many people born this day. It tends to be like that, don’t you find? I’m so grateful for the daily beach walks–omg I sound like a fucking broken record. I mean what the hell am I doing here if I’m only occasionally going to be brilliant. Do you think anybody gives a solid shit about what your day is like and how it includes “constitutionals?” Go fuck yourself, Quinn, really. You can do so much better than that.

To which I reply: What the fuck do you want from me? I’m trying to get at least three big projects off the ground while conducting a private consultancy with utmost clarity and professionalism, at the same time writing (in this case yearly) horoscope books and directing an entire performance festival and, you know, being alive without help for anything; actually I do most of the cooking and a lot of the cleaning and shopping in addition to painting whole rooms or otherwise making things functional and nice, just as my partner does in other ways, equally.

Life is Sisyphusian. I am a big Sisyphus. And though I always read the message of that myth to be just terrible and depressing, I now see it differently. I see it as expressing a very prominent aspect of life, a one step forward two steps back dynamic; which, let’s face it, is part and parcel of even the most productive and prolific of lives.

I’ve decided to paint the walls of my office an Hermes hue of dark orange. Suddenly I’m in love with dark orange again. And because the trim and doors are teal it will lend this real Howard Johnsonsy affect. Joey Arias is sober. Life was really quite sideways this week: The effect of putting things out there, throwing stuff at the proverbial wall; I’d forgotten how to do that. I love the construction I had. I think of Georg in The Sound of Music—”I’d forgotten”, music in the house? I think it was. It’s such a circular notion bringing in three time frames to say I had forgotten, as there was the middle time of forgetting a past but now we are beyond either one of those states of mind, further along the spiral, back to the same point further along the line.

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It was in many ways a typical talk with folks at the publishers. Assistant was enthusiastic and effusive and we seemed in a positive direction, which we still are, but then suddenly we asked a question that the assitant couldn’t answer so suddenly somebody else chimes in “being late to the meeting” all apologies (meanwhile she’s got to know that we know that she’s damn well been there the whole time listening in). It’s rather a compliment, actually, when that happens—always good to ask a question only a SVP can answer. But there is always that one line of dialogue, that particularly publishing comment that either begins with “Unfortunately…” or is tucked half way through, after the comma, “, unfortunately…”. I think they teach a whole course sophomore year called: Unfortuantely 201.

Enough of that in my life actually, thank you. I reached out to our publishers, for whom we have made millions to discuss some possibilities; but they weren’t interested in speaking with us apparently. The world is venal. And it’s not going to get better with that fuckwad in office. It will get a lot worse before it even has a chance to improve. I’m thinking today that the plan D’s might be better plan A’s. I am too easily taken off my game perhaps but there must be a difference between throwing things at a wal hoping they’ll stick and beating your head against it.

Anyway, I know myself, and I will rally. But this time I think I really need to rally quite a lot. My life seems like a runaway train and I can’t stand that feeling. I know it’s up to me to make changes; I am just right now at a loss on how to do that. I hope this is helping someone feeling similarly they are not alone. There is no point of my getting on here every day to say something positive just for positive’s sake. Sometimes things feel weird and scary. My reveries have been nightmarish.

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.

Scorpio 15° (November 7)

When Biden won the primary I was truly pleased, even though he wasn’t my first choice. I don’t think anyone other than a moderate would have won this race. I’m not a moderate, to be clear. I made this point early on and I was called a rape apologist and blocked on this platform by someone in my literal town/community with whom I’ve been friendly for over a decade. I had urged the Bernie folks especially to immediately snap-to, and not do when many of his supporters did in 2016—write him in, vote for a third party, not vote at all—which, let’s just say, didn’t help Hillary with the electoral college. An even closer friend with whom I broke bread fairly often left me the most vile DM calling me every name in the book. My candidate didn’t get the nomination but I immediately got behind Biden and you know what? Had I really understood how tight this would be, I would have supported Biden from the beginning because, even though I loved and believed in my candidate, I don’t think that we would have avoided another four years of the creature made of Tang. So I’m here to say, I’m not only over the moon that we Dems won the general election, I’m saying I’m so glad that it is Joe Biden, an empath of the first order. He makes me proud to be an American, and don’t even get me started on Kamala, who was my second choice to win the primary in any case. 

The other half isn’t sidelined, because as Biden says he will be everybody’s president. I’m sorry but there is such a false equivalency here. He who must not be named purposefully dismantled our instititutions and, because it has no empathy and is a sociopath (and is a criminal as we will fully see now) he actually delighted in hurting people. People of color, the disabled, women, immigrants, war heroes…need I go on? So it isn’t a matter of “sides” or “tribes”. It is a case of an administration not only tapping into people’s worst inclinations (racism and xenophobia, chiefly) but fomenting these things; and then let’s ad in Qanon, conspiracy theories, rape cases, paying porn stars hush money with campagin funds, the list goes on and on and on and on—and how about treason? His entire entourage was jailed or is convicted. So what? I’m supposed “to feel” for the people that voted for this monster to spend another four years destroying democracy in our nation? No. I will not do that. Anybody who voted for that thing has to reckon with themselves. I’m not going to hand-hold them through understanding that the biggest joke has been on them. That the Thing doesn’t give a flying fig about them. He thinks they are stupid and malleable and he said so at the onset of this fiasco. He knew that there was a large part of the radical right wing that would be easily misled by his constant barrage of lies. I didn’t like George W. but he wasn’t an insane person. It would even be a stretch for me but I understand why people voted for him. I even understand how it is people voted for the Thing the first time. But after four years of devestation? Anybody who voted for the melted pile of circus peanuts has some ‘splaining to do. The hoods are off as they say.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1101-1105. I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

Today came the realization of who should and should not be approached in our outreach with the design company. Bit by bit, piece by piece, it will be realized and it will be great; and we will get the dosh we need without jeopardizing any relationships that are truly priceless. Better to let the impersonal people who can support us pass into our orbit.

I’m super excited to be in NYC for MR’s wedding. I really do think it will be the event of the season. And it will be nice to see everyone all together. I am so keen to keep some kind of creative momentum going but I by rights and necessity must find increased flexibility. This really can be the best of summers if I let it be. I can feel healthy and be as fit as I might and I could put something rather beautiful up on its feet and be the last to say hello or goodbye this season. I truly feel that I owe it to myself. And I owe it to others to be closed-mouthed in the process. And that includes you, whoever you are.

Petty cash sticker on car sour cream send photos to desktop look up nature walks, hikes in Wellfleet. Re-teach myself backgammon.

I am so well aware today of my big picture and so grateful for the base circumstances that allows me to make my own schedule and live, quite frugally, by my wits which is way more important to me than having bigger pay checks that would have entailed being beholden to others.

Beltane, today, is the pinnacle of spring. It is all about fertility and conception. Bel is the Gaelic god of light, the bright one. Beltane was a good excuse to fuck who you wanted to as nobody blamed any lady who bore a baby nine months later. The trees associated with Beltane are hawthorn, birch and rowan. Hawthorn is one of the three trees of the Celtic Tree it is is highly magical. One decorates the Maypole with i—it signals sexuality. Birch is a female symbol which makes sense as you can see a female line and curve in it. Eostre (from whom the word Easter derives), the goddess of spring, is celebrated with birch. Maypoles were made of birch, as were brooms which play a part in Beltane rituals. Rowan is a tree of protection. The flowers of the rowan form a pentagram of sorts and they are used to keep the awakening fairies from having too much sway with we mortals.

We had our ritual of delicious draught and went to sleep very early. I sweat like mad all night but it was the kind of purge that felt right and necessary. I was quite happy it happened as it did. We had much ado this day and yet there was a strong sense of keep it all rather within our own desired reins. It is very easy to be organized and also can be simple to be creative, but one must strive only for happiness not for wealth, which is as much power as knowledge is of even success or acclaim. In that sense Aphrodite represents happiness in the Judgment of Paris, whilst Hera promises that combined wealth and power and Athena success and acclaim. Choosing happiness perhaps wasn’t to the Greeks what it is for me.

We are admittedly not going to take any short cuts this much is for sure. When have we ever, really. But boy oh boy do I want to open some kind of apothecary. I want to be a kitchen witch. I want to have products and talismans and all sorts of delicious things for people to buy. I want to have a reinvented version of Arcane bookshops and home decorating. We could have out of print books for sale at a high price. A place that appeals to the sophisticated witch—this is what I want. And I have the feeling that we can put the pieces together and get it!

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It was truly wonderful on the beach today. The forecast said 50s but it was really quite warm and for the second half of the hike I was down to a t-shirt. With the full moon, low tide was really low and the water was as calm as I’ve ever seen it at this usually raging surf beach. The thing about these walks is sometimes we solve every problem and talk, talk, talk. Either times, we walk in silence so soft and cushiony. It’s great either way.

I can’t believe we’re going to Alaska; it’s just nothing I would ever do, and surely the manner in which this will happen makes it that much more incredible. I pinch myself we have such good friends who treat us so well. Genuinely. But I do think of that line Max says in The Sound of Music, something like: “I like rich people; I like the way they live; I like the way I live when I’m with them.” It is a funny line really. And so true. Being around someone who is really rich can strangely enough be like being around someone who has an illness; you don’t much talk about it but it’s always there. Sometimes in caviar form. And sorry but: yum.

If I were loaded I know I’d be just like my good friends who are: generous to a fault. It’s quite a journey when Fortune strikes so strong and swiftly. I think of Juno as being Fortune; both S and our friend turns out have the same Juno paperweight from John Derian. Strange to type his name. He was one of my best friends once; or at least I thought he was. The sad thing is I suspect he wasn’t the entire time. I will turn seeds of our shared story into a story one of these days of this I”m sure. But first I have to get out of my own way. For all the writing, really. There truly is no excuse for my having written; though I have been writing here every day so what the fuck am I even talking about. I think what I mean to say is I have to use the same motor that drives me to write this into some bigger book projects very soon. Then again, maybe, that’s just where I am.

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I am totes sleeping weirdly. It’s not a deep fulfilling sleep. I need to wave a wee wand somehow. It was quite a morning actually. Delicious overnight oats with baked sliced apple and cinnamon. I stayed in the kitchen to make a black bean soup and we had b.l.a.t. salad for lunch. Got a ton done today by noon in between. Did a quick shop then back at it. Have all the fixins but for fish for Friday week. Love it. Preparing for our weekly meeting which got postponed from Monday. And updating our monthly minutes reveling in just how much has been accomplished thus far, even if just making the right inroads.

I’m actually a bit excited to get into the HA books tomorrow and work on the intros through the 20th when I focus mainly on turning out something sick to perform. I would like to draft something if possible by June 15 and then have a month to rehearse it before going off on holiday, again, I can’t believe it, to Alaska. And also Vancouver. The weird thing is—well not weird, this is the Cosmic Blague, after all—is S. might have a conference in Vancouver and we might fly some tiny plane to get there from some British Columbian isle. Timing is too good.

Confronting myself today in a big way, turning points times a thousand. The multiparodox of something big happening is that it usually coincides with other big things happening. As things heat up it’s that much more important to chill. And I need exercise so, even though it’s raining, the daily constitutionals must stand. Focus and simplify. That must be my motto moving forward, toirtose like, though I do make a great rabbit. Along with the wolf, I think, the rabbit has significance for the sign of Libra.

We had a fabulous meeting today in the loft. And I emerged with the overall theme of sheen, in a sense. Meaning a little bizzazz now seems necessary, a little revisionist fabulosity. By now many people have heard of Starsky + Cox and Sextrology and all that, but we haven’t been the best and making ourselves known, by choice. A private life after all is a good thing; I don’t want fortune or pain. I actually just want to double what I make now to be happy and I think it will be a challenge when I inevitably make more.

So if we were to double ebook sales and double our client base and double our private and charitable event intake, our speaking gigs. That’s it. Of course we have big projects from time to time on top of that, and collaborations, but really we don’t need them to have enough, the meaning of which keeps changing. I’ve said it before: I’ve been semi-retired since I started working at 14. Had ideas on the beach. Hitting home the counselor theme. And we have to start thinking of ourselves as broadcast gold. Which is our best clip?

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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.

Scorpio 14° (November 6)

So yesterday someone from the wizarding world contacted us. I suppose it was just a matter of time. The longest email on record, but not something we are going to do. It’s day four of the election, waiting on Pennsylvania this morning to deliver some fabulous chunks of Biden vote. I am fatigued from all of this. Our guy just pulled ahead thankfully. I can start feeling hopeful and maybe even normal again. Patience is what is being prescribed and I too need to be that much more patient with myself. There is no sound from the melted pile of circus peanuts. It is hiding upstairs somewhere. They have little to no success with their legal claims, its own party is backing off him as are Fox news. The pressure on the Republicans and conservative media will only grow—they will need to divorce themselves from its conspiracy theories. We are two countries is the takeaway. If we had voted in a progressive in the primary, we would be losing right now. As progressive as I am in thought and feeling, we would have shot ourselves in the foot if we leaned too far leftward. I’m going to start my day in the kitchen, working on menus and preparing food for the coming days. I will get four pages in the can today as well for sure. I will also lie to myself and not do it. It doesn’t matter. Wood is being delivered and work will happen. I jst need to keep showing up and keep backing off for now. Lots to be so grateful for.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1096-1100. 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.

Thursdays always feel a bit steely. Maybe it’s that Thor’s day thing, Jupiter and his lightning bolts. Thursday is a bit like wearing tight shoes. You know there is a reward for really pulling out this corner of the week, hopefully setting Friday up to feel like it should, one to kick off early. Of course, on Fridays, I kick off early to clean the entire house and cook ahead for the weekend.

We had two clients today, a Libra and a Sagittarius client from opposite ends of the world. It was a power couple of clients today actually, but not literally, the most currently overused word in our world today. All feels like ascension on this day, not an easy one but not overly hard won.

We will dip into Provincetown and putz around. Someone once said that life is a paradise for people with passions, I’m paraphrasing. By this time I am happy to be having pasta. I actually made linguine clam sauce yesterday, which I failed to mention, so this night, in pasta craving aftermath, it will be gluten-free chickpea pasta with red onion and anchovy and parsely. Food is an essential character in my life in case you didn’t know. We have a new cookbook from Sofra that I”m really excited about. I am going to blow through the remainder of my work day and sit down and read it.

So many wonderful things are going on right now. The expansive Jupiter energy also does tend to permeate a Thursday. And then there’s Ru Paul so quickly. I know people like to run down Drag Race but I still find it terribly relaxing. If I’m going to watch a Scorpio Queen of Television I’m going to watch RuPaul not Roseanne.

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Struck with the notion that my own interprestations of the Sabian symbols might, in itself, make a great book. We need to get in with a publisher with whom we can do more blockbuster books, more academic books, more poetic books and more point of sale commercail fun books. I also want Emily to start getting into our world of design. Emily for A.C.

Also getting a loan to open a local store which would be called A.C. and we can always move to a bigger one. We definitely need a commercial space to work from—and one where we can fall asleep if need be—and/or it comes with an apartment which would be solely for the Summer Consultancy.

Food today is a French Poodle. That’s what we call a souped up version of Poodle which is typically kale, quinoa, avocado and chickpeas. This night the chickpeas were cooked in a pan and slightly carmelized then mushed a bit, like peas, with vegetable filled bit of leftover soup. Delicious. The quinoa was also made in chicken stock and the kale was extra sautéed with garlic instead of steamed.

I had taken a wee tour of Orleans and got there what I needed. After dinner we sat by the fire sipping an organic red and talking, talking, talking about, well, everything under the Sun. I knew I would be alone the next day and that I wanted to make good use of my time. So often I just sprawl out like Oscar Madison for no good reason, spending half the time alone making a terrible mess, and then the other half already having to clear up in some kind of panic, which is silly.

It’s like some kind of boyish male rebellion that I suppose does get some ya-ya’s out: Drinking a little to much too earlywhile watching bad “action adventure” television, while still getting a little work done, walking around without anything on; leaving lights on in rooms all over the house; smoking; looking at porn for no apparent reason as it truly does nothing for me. To be honest the sounds of sex turn me on more than seeing it which can put me off as it never really looks as satisfying as it sounds.

I will make weird food like sauerkraut (and end up eating the entire giant Bubby’s jar) with healthy chicken sauces it, pouring some molasses over the lot, as it sizzles in the cast iron pan, slathering all with mustard, and eating it in a hurried passion. Drinking bottles of sparkler water straight out of the bottle, leaving trails of nuts or edamame, goat cheese crumbles and bread crumbs in the kitchen and dining room as I snack on the fly, suddenly, at intervals, all through the day and night.

I will shower outside which is good.

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It dawns on me, Saturday, that I all but abandoned the fortnight feel of what I wanted to set up while still in the sign of Aries. So now, I must awake and read a chapter a morning. We might call it this morning’s chapter. The Blague page simply stays open all day to catch ideas and record doings. We celebrated the sign of Aries and I will punch that up a bit. Then in a few days I shall be in the sign of Taurus—I know we already are but I”m not, which makes sense just to me.

I made this note about trans people combining the energy of the sign, finding balance between the inner polarity of the sign, while cisgender folks work the outer polarity that the sign has with its opposing sign.

So I will have to pretend a bit that I did this with Aries—dialoguing with the people that is—while I get up to speed with Taurus. I have made some inroads so it’s not too much a stretch. I can certainly play catch up on notes for the new book and such in the first fortnight of the month as I also put the HA books into place, at least that’s the hope. That is to say I’ll play catch up on the first two signs, I’ll put the HA books together, minus the needed front matter. And I’ll thus spend the second half of May focused on reading the Calypso Blagues and going through year one to extract some possible themes. So long as I have something June 1. I can pull the bell and I’ll have three full months to make all the other magic. It really is plenty of time I tell you. And if someone big pops into the mix, a real headliner, than tant mieux.

I am already sensing such a new vocabulary emerging as I consider the next book. And let’s face it I have a number of good book ideas inside my brain and a number of them can be ebooks which I self publish as well. I still like the idea of finding a good house that will do print only for some of these ideas.

As a writer I love the symbols of punctuation, the Chiffres et Lettres of things. I just falshed back to my Elements of Style book at the other one which my high school published and I loved so much. I really do want to find that book. I’m ready to reeive and to empty out all real and metaphorical file cabinets. I do want my real file cabinet to contain not too distant archives of things. We could buy some beautiful wood file cabinets. I will be posting about popular peeps. I want to get my nitty gritty work done in the morning.

But back to the new book ideas. It will be my job now to continue to flow ideas into the right places. It’s a metaphor for pretty much everything right now.

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Sunday nothing happened, or did it? I think not. There might have been some hope and there might have been a lot of buildup that was otherwise alleviated, but nothing occured quite. It was the be all end all, already, of television addiction; even though I didn’t quite surrender until evening, and overnight, into the wee hours. I mainly spaced out and went from room to room moving bits of whatever—plates, clothes, food—without much purpose. There were different birdsounds than usual outside, some ended up being atypical (love?) calls from our familiar birds.

I could be promoting Fauxnique’s show coming up at Oberon, or doing home yoga. I think I told S about Michelle T from the Feminist press. I wonder if I should throw parties or would it kill me. I came upon a notebook filled with scribblings from 20014 looks like. And a to-do list that had fourteen numbered items, one of which was to “call John Richardson, another “note to Goldwyn sis” which I guess meant to Tony’s sister.

I have fallen a litte bit behind on this and need remind myself, as I play catuch up, that, come tomorrow, I am reading through all my entries I made on first new C boat trip.

Meanwhile I can start going through and updating the minutes. And I do need to go back and find the things I recently wrote about Gemini and Libra and plug them in where they belong. The whole point is to begin charting next year’s planet moves as I read through these C Blagues and then back through starting at October 7 or something like that. Things two things can happen simultaneously, and any new thoughts on the signs can aris spontaneously, as they are already accumulating in any case.

Then I can sit with my planner, which should be quite nutsy boltsy for May that is to say write the HA books, moins intros, and just simply map out new bits for show, extracting from my reading and reworking these thoughts into drafts, while following original structure laid out. The only other thing to do is to have a meeting about Nextrology proposal.

In the afternoon Afterglow hours we must schedule resend of returning sponsors and send first round to new, missionary and sparkler sponsors. I believe I’ve already made drafts. I will also contact hotels but I have to negotiate that against writing a note about S + C summer consultancy And with that I also wish to write a very brief statement of fact that can double as a press release…something like

Celebrated authors and leading astrologists Stella Starsky + Quinn Cox have been conducting their “summer consultancy” on Cape Cod for over a decade. Modern mystics with an international following of clients, Starsky + Cox combine degrees in psychology and astrology and have been called “psychics to the stars” (Vanity Fair), “the favored astrologers of fashion insiders” (Elle), a word-of-mouth phenomenon (Time) and TK.

Starsky + Cox are authors of the best-selling Sextrology (HarperCollins), Cosmic Coupling (Random House) and their own series of Haute Astrology horoscope books. The have contributed to countless publications, sites and have appeared on numerous radio and television programs, most notably, as regular guests, on “Chelsea Lately” on E!

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Today was the kind of binge watch I live for. Recordings of “Trust” and “Silicon Valley”, which is knocking it out of the park this year, plus Barry and “Howard’s End” and Paddington2 and Wonder Woman, with some “Troy”s thrown in for good measure. As of Mayday, one doesn’t watch anything but dwindling “Drag Race” for a giggle. I can truly wait on all other things, televisual.

My sleep was weird and I was up during the night, and up permanently by four when I had sardines on toast. There was very little to clean up after being alone these days to make the world sparkingly presentable to the returning goddess who was truly divine in that she brought duck liver paté, le tur cheese and innumerable crackers. It was a binge day all around, though we shared just a little Lambrusco, a word that might appear most often of any in this Blague of late. And then just as quickly, it will disappear

Going wineless for the next fortnight. Fortnights are the best I can do without red wine that tastes of violets and manure—if you’re lucky enough to be invited to my house (once a fortnight) you might get to taste our gorgeous house red. In between times I am looking at reducing. So red and reduce, red and reduce. Anyway with summer here I spend a lot of time in the car between Provincetown and Wellfleet By The Sea.

There is so much more to write between 5 and 7 am….and I’m just at my computer these days at 7 so I must try to step things up a bit. With the warm weather and the extended days of light I can have had my outside time and still get a whole bunch of work done between the pm version of those hours, so six of one half a dozen of the other, a terrible expression invented by a so-so mind, I’m guessing. I’m also grasping, reaching, feeling somewhat overextended these days to be sure.

One of my first television heroes was Oliver Douglas. I remember already relating to his experience of being surrounded by crazy people—people of the town to which he insisted on moving—even his wife, who didn’t want to go there. And since it was his idea he was determined to make it work. I think I related to this because my family of origin—father, mother, sister—were all absolutely bonkers in their own way. And I was the odd man out. I said in my adolescent years, upon witnessing the opening credits of Superman two, when three prisoners are trapped in a prism spinning through space—to me that summed up the rest of my family’s karmic relationship, to which I was just an accessory.

Green Acres, which played on the theme, perhaps of the grass being ever greener on the other side, to me was a metaphor for growing up in an alcoholic family where the crazies are normal and you’re made to feel crazy, gaslighted from the getgo. Green lighted and gas lighted. Bob Newhart, Bob Hartley, was the same, really. His wife wasn’t bonkers like Oiver’s, often aligned with him, which was a bit more comforting, but everyone else was off the wall except for his crazy patients who always ended teaching him a lesson.

If I were to consider myself a comedian, which I’d like to do—or at least a comic writer of sorts—I suppose I don’t keep my jokes secret the way others do, but pour them out daily, if they come via this Blague (means joke in French), which, the irony being, nobody really reads. And I’m kind of fine with that, strangely. I am secretly really quite shy. But this is a year where I really have to challenge myself and fail doing it or else I will go on feeling rather unfulfilled. And then those crazies hurtling through space in their prism, really will have won.

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.

Scorpio 13° (November 5)

J’ai beaucoup de chose a faire, et il y a toujours des excuses pour rien faire. C’est la vie. Demain il faut recommencer, sans question. Grace a dieu pour France Musique, it keeps me sane. I am only going to write a few sentences here today. I’m not really sure about D.. I think he isn’t as up front and honest as I require from a friendship. I don’t look down on people who get divorced of course; but there was something about his relationship with his spouse that rang wrong, that he was with her so he could have an out. There is a little gaslighting in that situation. I think some people feel that if they bond with someone who is unstable they always have an easy out. This will be the last night of this sort of thing. I am really ready to dig in and get the job done. I truly am. It aint going to be easy. But really it’s just a matter of writing a few things here like: Nobody possesses a greater appetite for life than Taurus man, the most sensual of the male signs in the zodiac. He XX is the very embodiment of sense and sensibility, inspiring and reacting to desired stimuli, in an ongoing effort to appeal to others’ wants, tastes and needs. Thus, he furthers his own aims, which he downplays and obscures, while providing what others mightn’t even realize they are lacking. He is a keen observer who will channel his skills and talents into filling what he perceives to be open niches of opportunity that promise to please others while offering him a stable platform for gaining attention, affection and momentum to keep his secretly ambitious wheels in motion. He is a master of seeming insouciance, having people believe that his achievements happen naturally, without effort. This not only disarms others but engenders even more support to help him along in his career or creative efforts, typically one and the same. Taurus would have you believe he is too pure a conduit of intellectual, aesthetic and artistic endowment to be self-promoting in the process of such expression. He might never outright invite patronage, but he is not above engineering others to take pity on him in the execution of his master plans. At his best, Taurus man will honestly dedicate himself to making the world a more beautiful, bountiful and blissful world in which to live, striving to provide an increasingly lush landscape of experience in which, the more the merrier, people might share, and admitting any personal benefit in so doing. The less evolved Taurus, however, is in it for his own gain, covetous of acclaim, material reward, and all forms of validation that serve as a poor substitute for self-esteem. All Taurus men struggle with the feeling they aren’t enough—it is the particular challenge of this sign’s path, paradoxically designed to breed out of such senses of self-deficiency. The true test of this is whether or not the Bull fellow can feel fulfilled despite any real or metaphoric mob of applauding fans. We are not telling you to change, Taurus. Your path is your own. But we want you to own your true nature and try not to disguise your intentions. For the truth is Taurus is the most evocative of creatures, a master of self-cultivation. Like a gardener he designs his persona to be appealing, especially to those whose attention he most wishes to capture.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1091-1095. 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.

Had a rather stress-free journey into New York City, and it was a lovely chilly day. Dipped down to TriBeCa so S. could pop into Ted Muehling to fix her earrings and buy J. a congratulatory gifty. Got to hotel and room was ready; and so we were able to have a little bite and take a wee walk for me to find something to wear. I found things to wear just not to dinner; so with a full suitcase I felt I still had nothing to put on. It’s a weight thing, which it always is, and I have to get over it and transcend this issue once and for all. Anyway, spring is here and with it comes my daily constitutionals; and it will be nice to get back to yoga in any case. For some reason this winter was harder on my body than others have been previously.

Dinner was at Marjorelle which was pretty effing delicious. I had the clams and the tagine of lamb. It was actually fairly reasonably priced for the three course menu; while I suspect the champagne that flowed counterbalanced that ideal.

All in all I fell back in love with New York this night. Seriously I haven’t wanted to spend much time with my ex city over the last ten years; but there is something about being in that uptown environment that seems at once like old New York, when I worked at magazines uptown, catering to denizens of certain zipcodes, and a modern new gilded age version in which we unfortunately now live. And the divide shall get more stunning still. But on this day I just wanted to enjoy rolling around a bit in some lap of luxury.

Though it is for sure on my mind that I need to pull professional threads through and start working some major magic. Ones personal life does, in many ways, effect ones professional one, and that can be a good thing. I am so fortunate that I will soon be back living along one of the most beautiful beaches in the world and I can let sand, sun and sea work its healing power. Oh, what a Lucky Man….

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The morning was mine to bathe and collect. I decided to go more causual on the look because it was going to be a long day and I wanted to be comfortable. I was looking forward to meeting Jessica and her boyfriend Blaine. To be honest I never saw her on the Daily Show but I did see her HBO four-episode series special which I loved. Our dear John Early was on it and he has never been better. I was hoping, still, at this time, that he might return to Afterglow, but in the time since, he’s had to decline because his TBS show films during that time. It’s going to be a lot of fresh talent this year at festival.

We had a second day (and would have a third) of smoked fish platter for lunch—I’m off smoked fish now, although I think it’s smoked salmon for lunch today. Irony.

Well I should start by saying that S’s celebrity citings included Daniel Day Lewis and his wife (we always see Daniel Day Lewis and he and I share a barber who says we have the exact same hair pattern—maybe we are related on the Irish side who knows); also Blythe Danner and John Leguizamo. And then this morning she shared the hotel elevator with Bradley Cooper. Another irony: He is occupying our suite which we wanted to move into before the marathon HP play today. Alas, we will not be able to move until we return around 1AM; so post smoked fish, we got dressed and took a cab up to 43 Street. It was a civilized mob scene already, forty minutes before show time. We saw some of the familiar faces that HP events bring around and some unfamiliar ones as well including Brooke Shields, Emma Thompson, Liev Schreiber and Anna Wintour.

We were also seated directly behind a certain billionaire whose home we visited less than a year ago to work our Starsky + Cox magic at his estate in Jamestown, Rhode Island. He seems like a decent man; though he was angling to meet the author which wasn’t unobvious; he has very aggressive facework which makes me feel sad for him.

The play was even better on Broadway than in the West End, mainly because we were seeing the original cast now. And it was fascinating to note how they refitted an entire theater inside the old Lyric. The audience ooh’d and ahh’d as one would expect and the play is paced very well despite its length. I had a champagne pre-curtain and one at intermission; and that certainly smoothed any lingering ruffles from last evening. And then dinner at the Lamb’s which was a dream. Like our own private experience of the first scene of All About Eve and its Sarah Simmons club—portraits of whom I assuemd to be Duse and Bernhart abounding.

Life can be so strange. Then again, compared to what?

Back for the second act and standing ovations and bows by the creators and off to a suite at the Lambs for a little respite pre-after-party. Was feeling high and reviews were coming in, all good. Then off to the party where I did a beeline for the danceflor and left my sweater, jacket and scarf on a nearby table. I danced for about an hour with guests and members of the cast, using my talent in this area to create some circle-around scenarios, then looked for my attire as it was time to go. Never found my scarf which is just as well as it was given to me by someone whom I no longer cherish. But the real bummer was that my ticket packet “fell” out of my pocket which was sad. I suspect someone swiped it to be honest. Even in that rarified environment an extra momento of this sort might appeal to people’s lower instincts.

My dancing self is now pretty famous in certain circles. For me it’s always a good way to sweat out a bit of the evening (in this case marathon all-day) fun before retiring such that I will wake up with no lingering remnants of the evening before. Which was the case, and luckily, as we had two new clients starting in the morning.

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A quick breakfast nibble and then two clients in our suite at the Marlton. Then that damned smoked fish platter again.

Then a walk in the old neighborhood. I said it the other day but I’ll say it again: I have sort of fallen back in love with my ex city. I just don’t know if it will ever work out for us to be together again. First of all, it would be a costly venture; second there is that sense of never being able to go back again. Still, in Springtime, with those bloody blossoms, the West Village is hard to resist. We had a glass of wine at Buvette and went wine shopping as well. Wine was the theme. It was lovely weather and a lovely walk and we dropped our things back at the hotel, splashed our faces, and went to see if we could snag a couple of seats at L’Artusi.

When you walk into L’Artusi the first thing you see straight ahead of you is a corner of the bar that then stretches back further. But our little slice of synchronicity today was walking in and seeing (and hearing) Brooke Shields talk about the play yesterday to her friend and the sommelier. I couldn’t resist. “So you liked it?” I asked. A ten minute conversation ensued. She totes got the pacing. She said she just bought the same earrings S was wearing—the ones S had fixed the day we arrived. “We’re twins, ” she said. And we pointed out an age-old irony that S’s sister N has all her life been compared to Brooke.

Anyway it was fun and jovial and life affirming as these synchronisitics signposts can be. We had a lovely meal at the bar which, however, is set too high for the stools they give you, and it wasn’t just shorty old me who seemed to think so. Then this handsome boy in a striped mariner shirt sat down next to me. He ordered a “no alcoholic cocktail” in an accent that was difficult to map; and he prayed over his food when it arrived. He then commented on the amount of potatoes that came on my plate with the steak I ordered. When we left he stopped us to say he had one more morning before heading back home in the AM and what should he do. We said go to the Whitney downtown. It turned out he was Norwegian Italian and was here for a “book festival”. I did a bit of research and he turned out to be a playwright visiting for PEN’s World Voices event in which I knew a bunch of people participating including Penny Arcade and Eileen Myles.

I friended him on Facebook but haven’t heard back.

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To say I have an overactive mind would be an understatement. I always loved the band Blind Faith, and especially “Can’t Find My Way Home”. There is a simple version of the song on piano by Joey Curtin. It’s actually a song I can play. And I love “Surrender” by Cheap Trick. I am constantly chasing thoughts and feelings, not one to be centered at all. Maybe that’s a thing about Libra where they are balanced but not centered. Gemini is the negotiation of opposites, one against another—they are the most polarized as people and sometimes bi- so. Libra is a blend, and so not always an easy one. It’s in some ways easier to compartmentalize, which is why Gemini can only deal with “the immediate” what’s right in front of them. Libra instead spans—inner life, outward experience and, one might argue, time; but then we have to define spanning time. I think it means something like acting in experience with a mind, if not a feel (for we are talking about Libra now) for for “the longbody” of life, as opposed to the immediate, Gemini being ruled by Mercury the god of both close-relationship, ubiquity, being quicksilver everywhere at once, and also the emphasis of the the present and the now, being perhaps slightly different things.

The present is something which can be mesured and expressed in outward circumstance whilst the now can only be innerly, maybe mystically intuited.

Anyway I woke up this day and had breakfast with Steve from the company that is doing our launch . We both had poached eggs and quinoa and S. had granola and yoghurt and ordered a basket of pastries. It was most enlightening and then we left the Marlton and headed to the Eliot in Boston which, since we always get the same suite, is like coming home; and it’s quite a good sense of it. I’m loving staying in hotels when I have to; so much less hassle right now than having some apartment, even short-let; because then I feel compelled to food shop and cook and nobody wants to do that.

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Dinner at Uni last night really was delicious. There is nothing like just going downstairs in your hotel to eat. And Uni is so good and I suppose needs to be quite pricey. I wish the Eliot had coffee in the morning. They don’t. It’s there most dire drawback. They could just install someone on an espresso machine inside the restaurant in the morning. I’m going to talk to them!

So after walking to Great Barrington on Newbury for coffee, we came back to see two favorite longerm clients; then we beat it and had sushi at Whole Foods in Hingham after spending $400 shopping…for two people. We got cheeses and Lambrusco and chilled the ef out. It was glorious as we gear up to May, so much possibility and positivity to look forward to. And May is a sexy time, too, no, lest we forget. Not that my own loins are so springy never mind surging. Did you ever hold a baby and feel your loins surge as a young, well, man I’m assuming, unless the ladies can do it to?

What’s a matter with me. Why am I so weird. I don’t know. I’m like a bonne vivant viper. Seriously I am so mean, and I don’t mean to be. I take things really personally. I learning not to but oh em gee which means something else when you type it: oh, em….gee!

This might be a funny thing to explore: Why it is that I am at once the nicest and cruelest person in the world. I got that Libra Medea Medusa thing going on, in male form, which is fitting of the Apollo archetype; for the god of light and truth and reason and music and poetry and all beautiful abstract aspects associated with his sign, (ruled by Venus on the astral (air) plane, ruled by the Scales the sole inanimate in the Zodiac), Apollo is also most cruel, his arrows causing searing pain, and his mythic punishments being pretty nasty (this is a hopefule statement I want to fully fact-check).

And again Libra is a blend and it can be a lot for people. I own that. I have never claimed to be an easy character to deal with, truly not. Anyway, I am terribly flawed and given to fits of fury and flights of phantasmagoria. The trick has always been to try and tame this driving force. I know I put people off. Many people probably. I may be known to be prickly but I’m just as sweet and juicy a peach. And I make the bestest friend I truly do.

But I can be a stone cold bitch. One doesn’t think of Apollo as being warm and fuzzy. That’s more a Dionysus thing. I love the gods, all, and always have. I have always known they are immortal and I don’t believe the have the provenance to die.

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.

Scorpio 12° (November 4)

Today was a hodgepodge. Feeling optimistic about the Democrats pulling off the presidency although I am doubtful about the Senate. Still I feel we have some time on that score. Getting the word out there as best I can and really hopeful that I can affect something positive in all of this. I’m again in a holding pattern with wood delivery (that isn’t a euphemism) and I’m once again losing patience with this character called Chopper. I know I’m not going to get very far in terms of writing anything today. I’m so preoccupied and so tired of all the gaslighting and such. I was corresponding with a friend by email over someone from our childhood: In seventh grade, I was my friendliest with Mark B., and so Jay was originally in our orbit a bit too. We all smoked cigarettes but we weren’t 16, we were 12. I was sort of Nancy M’s boyfriend ish for a while. And so we were all “bad” smoking Marlboros outside 7-11. Needless to say, I wasn’t long for that scene and focused on being the drama nerd that I truly was. Mark and I were bedmates for a field trip to Philadelphia and, maybe, Gettysburg? Our roommates in the next bed who shall remain nameless (yeah right: Steve McThomas and Tim? Van Vleet?) were a little too giggly in the neighboring bed. Speaking of which (and segue back to Roger and Pete): weren’t they caught doing similarly on (same?) field trip? Or is that suburban legend. I remember that party at Pete’s, the very last days of school, in the back yard. He had a friend with him from Deerfield called Andrew H. who turned out to be in my dorm at B.U., He and I also tripped together, the second week of school. He was raised on Park Avenue, dated a Vogue model, was on the crew team and was so ridiculously perfect looking I felt like we were different species.  Remember tripping? Awwww. 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1086-1090. 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 binge watched Lost in Space, mainly to see our friend Parker Posey play Dr. Smith. It wasn’t great—in fact it bordered somewhat on Land of the Lost with a lot of running around and revisiting caves. But I haven’t binge-watched anything in about a year and the total zombieness of it all really felt great to give into I must say. I’m sorry world, but if you’re going to extend winter another month, and give me nothing but gray and rainy days, then I get to watch that much more television.

I am super excited about seeing the Harry Potter play opening on Broadway on Sunday. Fate has allowed us this as a perk for having a great thirty-two-year old friendship with so creative a talent and her kind and generous consort. Although events like this always make me wish I was thinner. But I yam what I yam. And the rest of the world will just have to get over it.

Speaking of television (as I was a few couple paragraphs ago), I’m really enjoying the Howards End on Starz. It’s fun to have a slower, more fleshed out version of what is surely one of my favorite stories (and films); there has never been so tragic a character as Leonard Bast, as I’ve probably said already in a recent Blague.

I just visited jkrowling.com and noticed she and S have the same paperweight which is designed, looks like, by someone who also used to be quite a close friend but who “turned” on us a couple of years back. I wish I could say I am over the hurt of that incident but the truth is I’m not. S is so much better and moving on than I am. But I am terribly sensitive when it comes to these sorts of things. One doesn’t expect sort of fourteen-year-old behavior from a fifty-five-year-old man; however, this man actually stated time and time again how he was a fourteen year old girl trapped in an adult male body. Now you’re thinking: So why do you care that you’re no longer friends. Good question.

I have never once in my life thought that I’d like to be famous, despite the fact that so many people I know are. I loved being an actor, which truly was a craft. I never thought I would make bank on it (which might be part of the problem). Anyway I didn’t have that kind of life. I had to work and scrimpt to get by. Also I never had the requisite confidence in the business of it all that I had on the actual stage. Who knows. It might all come back to me at some point. It would be nice to enjoy some kind of success at ths point as an actor and I do feel that I deserve that certain slice of happiness. Would be a challenge to go for that type of thing now but not impossible. Only for me it will need to fit a larger lifestyle.

People seem really torn about Lost in Space. They seem to either love it or hate it. Either way strong opinions are a desired effect and I hope the show runs a long time and makes Parker a lot of money.

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A show that answers the question how did you meet and come to do what you do.

Really it is about being within the construct of Time while coming to understand that all is one big “simultaneaity” happening in a cosmic instant which is exactly why it is that Quinn gets increasingly psychic and Stella, likewise, to borrow from the Baroness, “can see the future” in her own way. The trick is to just start picking stories from our individual and shared lives and plug them into a timeline until we find a string of stories that work as a show.

Starsky + Cox enter in darkness and station themselves stage right and left. A projection screen reads 1963, a warping, waved effect moves across it moving the image like a wind blows a flag or water ripples over a sign buried beneath it. A purposely blatant, if not bad, but kind of cool interpretive dance or pantomime begins, Starsky + Cox each go through their own pantomime of life experiences and pasage as the numbers tick forward stopping first on (possibly) 1973 (though it could be anywhere). A collage of sounds and music concide with each of their illustrative movements.

Some movements include being born, crying eating, making faces and noises, learning to walk, running away laughing, sitting on the toilet, taking baths, putting on school or Sunday clothes, learning at desks, kneeling at church, eating cookies, playing sports, learning dance, playing with dolls, doing cootie-catchers, being beaten up all things leading to age 10 if 1973 is the first number.

There can be dual monologues at this point or not. The interpretive pantomime can then become less innocent with sexual trespasses, more attempted sports or activities, trying drugs or alcohol, being teenaged stuff at the point the numbers reach 1981 Starsky + Cox can cross to each other, accept imaginary diplomas from one another, then walk off switching their tassle. More college type pantomime, more drugs, experience, learning, make up, music, dance The end point of this sequence will be 1983 when both sit down and we hear airplane sounds or the cabin crew doing a bit. The point is we are now on the plane to Paris both in window seats separated by a wide body.

The dialogue would begin by saying this is how we offically met but actually we were in this exact configuration before when the previous spring we went to see the English Beat, with REM opening, at Boston University, in a group organized by a mutual friend, though we were on opposites sides of the row in the auditorium and din’t actually meet. The character of the mutual friend plays a “role” in that ultimately he becomes a top plastic surgeon (whose job it is to remove wrinkles) he may make an “appearance” only in so far as he will be in Rome in Spring of 1984 when we meet the man who speaks in tongues.

Other stories would include the Harmonic Convergence, doing a Tony Randall impersonation that seemed to conjure him into being, maybe Graham Nash, taking liberties with truth and sequence, giving ourselves poetic license.

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I have an entire basement and office and “attic” to go through to rid myself of three decades of accumulation. I had planned to do this over the winter; and if you were to ask me why that didn’t happen I would be at a loss to tell you why. But I can’t avoid it any longer and will prioritize making this happen for myself. The trick is I keep waiting to do this as some kind of team and I fear that is never going to happen so I must now move on to singular thoughts and actions.

Too many things feel like the law of diminishing returns. And it is high time to take the bull by the horns and try to make some important things happen. I do not have the luxury to sit around and wait for some kind of permission; nor do I want to be in any kind of competition. I think it’s great that someone like D.D. is satisfied running what amounts to community theater. I would likely slit my writsts. I see these people who have spent thirty some odd years in recovery and they seem not to have learned anything but self-servingness. They seem the least woke people of all. Strange that.

Yeah I don’t think twelve step programs are really a recipe for recovery in the end. It just seems like institutionalized dry-drunkeness or whatever one is recovering from. Case in point we are meeting someone this week who approached us about doing a business project; only now it seems he’s turned the tables and acting as if he’s doing us some kind of favor. It’s all a bit too topsy turvy for my taste. But I am the Bob Newhart, the Oliver Douglas (do you know who that is?) the Larry David. These characters make for some good comedy in art but, in life it’s not that funny.

One has to take their cues from the universe, in that I am a firm believer. As such, I can only go higher and higher. And I shall continue to do so in a conscious motivated upward spiraling. It’s way too easy at this time of life to get discouraged and groan about wht didn’t happen. For no lack of trying, the list of failed attempts is far longer than that of sure hits in my experience. But that’s what it is: my experience. It is no better or worse than anyone elses. If you have certain success, especially in the arts (as they devolve into entertainments) you can continue to create (and delude yourself you’re making art) because people will buy into any crap you put out there. But that is, in and of itself, a dismal affair.

It’s better known as drinking the Kook Aid and sometimes the flavor thereof is champagne cocktails. I have never needed anything I don’t have. But I have failed to want very fully that which I do possess. To take stock, to appreciate to the utmost, is a recipe for one’s own value rising. This is what I tell me clients. Clients. I look forward to having many more clients in the coming year. In fact I will very much be making this my focus. I have pretty much decided to let much of everything else go and to become this tunnel visioned entity in regard to our craft and business. On the agenda today is to get a final draft note ready for sending to lecture and speakers offices and the like. I will review my notes with S on all of this Thursday morning. Today is only Tuesday after all.

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Barbara Bush was what she said of Geraldine Ferraro: “It rhymes with rich.” I know it’s de rigeur revisionism to cast the recently departed as some kind of saint. But the truth is she was in so many ways a monstrous woman and I don’t feel compelled to act or think otherwise. I am surprised her husband outlived her. Long lives, both; maybe it’s the hate that kept them alive. I think it would be naive to think he hasn’t murdered and that she didn’t know about it. Even if those you kill are faceless and nameless you still dial M.

Had a lovely meeting with our friend Tim with whom we might do a little business deal. Things to Google: Water based dichargers for printing fabric. For example there is a place called Forward printing. I would be very interested in knowing the pricing of the equipment thereof. There are so many interesting artists and graphic businesses and resaturants and so forth that might avail themselves of my printing skills. It all bolsters an argument for diversifying and sort of going into business for oneself, having a side hustle. So being both the production and the distrubition and the sales? Would be fun to price out. Just for kicks.

The truth is I am looking for a little diversity at this juncture. A side-hustle with a little substance. A way to generate some extra abundance while having fun doing it. While the larger ships come in. But I think that’s just a normal fantasy people have. Like I’ve always wanted to own a café. Will I ever actually own one? Perhaps. But it isn’t now. And I do have quite a substantial side-hustle in the festival I produce. The only thing with that is I don’t make any money, which, of course, was never the goal.

The key thing for me to do is to jettison, and yes it would be a sacrifice, things that have taken up a lot of time which no longer serve me. Moving through, today, will entail sending out another set of fundraising pleas, setting up (if not writing) two more Blagues before traveling to Boston and New York; having a draft of the letter to send to speaker’s bureaus, outlining the next six months in terms of what is happening when, speeding through making some notes for next year’s books’ intros, getting a draft of a contract together for artists; and create a graphic email-able card for our summer consultancy.

I have decided to remain very much in my bubble. I can’t do anything more at this juncture. I’m full up on the news of the day and I need to stick my head in the sand for an ironic breather. I will reemerge, hopefully, stronger than before. I am more upset about the woman who died on the Southwest flight than I am about the state of the world today. The whole big picture seems totally rigged to me; and it is forcing me into a more selfish mindset and modus. Not to say I am some kind of selfless being normally; but so much of waht I do is about furthering the efforts and evolution of others, whether with our private practice or in my charitable work promoting and presenting artists.

We are coming up on some serious me time.

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Left Aries this morning, the Sun did. And now it appeareth in Taurus or, should I say, Taureth. I keep my distance, almost naturally, from Aries while Taurus draws me in with a lot of temptations that can end semi-tragically.

I think I have been semi-retired since taking my first job at fourteen. I realized this when, this morning I said I’d like to semi-retire at fifty-seven.

The Leo woman thing can fall along a dichotomy between ultimate loyalty and falling out of favor. To be examined. Along with all the other gender signs over the next ten days as I put the pieces together on next year’s weekly astrologies.

Having said all I said yesterday, I think I’m going to make my side hustle acting. It’s something I can surely do beginning sort of now ish. I would like to restart that and tennis and skiing this year and I think that will give me a sense of accomplishment. Daily, it will be the piano and singing as per usual. It’s very important to have small ambitions, something I attribute the energy of Cancer and the fourth house, frankly.

I have a lot to say and I have a lot to offer, but still I feel that disconnect between this who I am and how others see me; I’m looking to examine how to bridge that gap. I also feel, as we all tend to do, a gulf between the way I live and the way I imagine my life to be. That is also a divide to cross. Or drop trying.

Today is the first Spring embarkation and I’m fairly psyched. We will set off the the ICA first and then to family dinner up nahth. I’m determined to hop in the car early in the a.m. tomorrow for New York where I’m hoping we won’t tempt fate and magic. It can be enchanting for about forty-eight hours and then the tide tends to turn.

Going through song catalogue. Archiving shows and so forth. Our tandem show can get into the metaphorical ways of living and how they are more true than true. I will make a contract and send it to the artists. I will start to go through my own Blague work. I want and need to hit all my marks. In Taurus we should take stock of our talents and assets.

I tweeted: We’re in Taurus, witches.Time to connect to your inner nymphs and flower gods; and to stop, drop and roll around in the proverbial roses like Ferdinand who is so fabulously light in his hooves. Love yourself—just not to the exclusion of others.

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.