Pisces 23° (March 13)

Up at four, got some water, took some gummies, put on GOT episode I’ve seen four thousand times and promptly fell asleep. Cleaned up had some yoghurt and berries and made some smoked salmon goat cheese microgreen sandwiches. We hopped in car and Louie drove which was good as my back is really out of whack. We got to the place after making a few wrong turns and the experience was actually pretty remarkable—such nice people and functionally so together. Also the place was empty and nobody cared about comorbidities. We were out of there in fifteen minutes, ate half a sandwich, then headed to Orleans to do some shopping. We are going to take the rest of the day off after doing some more house cleaning and unpacking all the goodies. I will make scallops and leeks for dinner. And we bought ice cream which we never eat. 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my Blagues, nos. 1726-1730. 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.

Paris, Day Four of Sixty: I feel edgy and dissatisfied. We are meeting Ellen today at two so I will set off for a long walk in the Les Halles direction stopping for a little something to tide me over—I went a bit too far, actually, and need to get myself back— and I’ll grab some rouleaux printemps on Rambuteau. We get some instructions from Ellen about the trash and so forth and she doesn’t know how to get the dishwasher to go either. That all goes fine. It was an edgy day and S. took herself to a sort of health food restaurant for lunch. My arm pain is acting up again. I cannot believe how lost in the moment I was. I end up checking out the Bains du Marais and having a tiny beer out on my own. I come back and we decide, though it is raining, that we will stroll all the way to the Café de la Nouvelle Mairie. I have clams and poireaux and saucisse. We have gateaux fromage blanc and mousse. On the agenda to write today is the following:

Something about any delusion of guys being in love with you. Or this can be added into the other bit. We can also talk about the shed and the lake and how Virgos tend to spend too much time in the former and not enough in the later. Because the sign of Virgo is all about habits and behavior people of the sign can be overly administrative in their lives, tinkering with themselves (as we mentioned regarding self help) or being to in service in their lives and works to the needs of others, playing the helper, the fixer, the assistant, the apprentice, defining themselves by how much they can organize and administer to the lives and careers of others (which more often than not leads to more Virgo resentment). Do less and be more.

We took a car home from the restaurant last evening. It looks like the Jimin work will come into play. I am now, a week later, filling in some gaps here. I’m not sure what to say but I know I need to get some things flowing. It is still the beginning of the year and I am going to accomplish some greatness, early on. I truly want to let go of all the pain and resentment. And the false friendships especially. I mentioned receiving a weird email from Stefan after years of not speaking. In the coming days I will write him back and say I think it was weird and solicitous. And I will find out in the process that he has become an astrologer and is working for a newspaper on the Cape. What is wrong with people? That is a rhetorical question. He cut and pasted into his email this old exchange between us from 2015 or some such where he references our working together. I really don’t want him in my forcefield. Then again I feel that way about a number of people these days. I am cleaning house on all levels and, I’m going to write myself through this and out the other side. I know what it is I want to do and I want to do it. First I want to focus on the pendants to the enth degree. The rest is just a matter of information. In some ways the excitement of the trip is causing me to fuck up a bit. On the other hand I learn as we encounter third parties that I am not the one who is really off. I thought the best way to articulate what went down with that freak would be to write to O.

Paris, Day Five of Sixty: Spent morning in working and then the handyman came to fix the television and the broken window which was newly so due to the strong winds which were beautiful and rainy. I managed to find a valve for the dishwasher so we can check that off the list.We had a lunch of chicken, beets and potato leftovers. I took out the trash and did some shopping at Monop and at the vegetable people then came back and set up the kitchen a bit more. Galoule. I have been awake since three o’clock and can’t do much of anything. We decide to walk up to the third and have some biologique wine at Barav, where we end up having beaucoup and eating a cheese and charcuterie plate and some raviolis and crudities ending in another chocolate mousse and fromage blanc. We drank a bunch of reds but there was this white we tried that I will go back for tomorrow. We met some nice people at the restaurant, Isabelle from Belleville. I think she put her number in my phone.  I do have a great deal to write today, unfortunately I won’t get to it. On the agenda to write today is the following

Paris, Day Six of Sixty: Book and Consultancy promotion day. Spent the morning writing and cooking. Had some incredible Greek yoghurt and strawberries and coffee. We will speak with A. and Guglia by Facetime or Skype today. Maybe we could reach out to press who will be attending shows and let them know that we are here and start talking about who the jewelry writers and editors are. I should ask Bryony and all other journailists in London too. That might be a great place to start. I’m pretty excited about the television thing but I’m so braced for disappointment so much of the tlime that it’s hard to gauge exactly what will happen. On the agenda to write today is the following

Paris, Day Seven of Sixty: I did a little shoppage at Monop’ and the Caviste and made a soup and otherwise put things to rights while S. had a hair appointment. When she came back we went back out and got some paper and other supplies at BHV; and then went to do a little more food shopping only to realize that stores won’t reopen until later in the day. So I just keep working on these ideas for the book which I will finish up on the train on Friday. We bought some lovely lamb and sides from the Greek shop and veggies and herbs and such. S. has drycleaning and cobbler to sort out. When I get back it seems the garlic didn’t make it into my bag, so I run back out, just as A. arrived. I come back and marinate the lamb while we talk and drink standing up in the kitchen. There is more wine than we need and we might drink a bit too much of it. We will stay up until one in the morning, and I will wake up on the sofa and drag myself into bed.

Paris, Day Eight of Sixty. I didn’t wake up in time to see A. off but I did manage to shout goodbye from the bedroom. Apparently they were up for at least an hour this morning rumbling around but I heard nothing. I’m loving earplugs. We had a little coffee and set off to the Alliance Francaise for placement tests. I thought it would be a quick affair but it took hours. I thought I was doing fantastically but actually I wasn’t being viewed as proficient at all. S. thought she was doing terribly and yet (of course) she was testing way better. She was even given a harder test than I took. I basically told the lady testers that if I didn’t get to be in the same class with her that I wasn’t going to take a class at all. So they let me go into the same class which is going to be difficult for me and probably too easy for S. My body feels strangely loose and strong and I’m trying, even on the walk across the river, to have a more athletic stance. There is a huge line to register, then, after we get through the sorting hat process. They might not be quick in France but they are thorough. Because we have given over to the length of time things take, and because I do have a soup waiting at home, we decide to take our lunch at the Café de la Nouvelle Mairee. I have oysters and steak tartare and S. has a radicchio salad and a quiche. We have a little pot of red. And then we walk back and touch down in the apartment for a bit before heading back out to visit the hotel Nancy wants us to check out and we grab some wine and some ziplocks and such and then sit at La Fronde, which, it turns out, has organic wine—I had only had beer there before—along with having a diverse and attractive wait staff. We nearly literally bumped into Diane Pernet, which is fantastic because she was first on my list of folks to contact.

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

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2021 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved. Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2021 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox.

Pisces 22° (March 12)

Another underachieving day. Oh well. Every little bit helps and there will be times when I write twenty pages at a time (yeah right). Maybe I do indeed lack the will for these sorts of things. Or maybe the idea itself is flawed. In any case I will do the minimum and have some fun. I ended up raking the yard when the resident evil wasn’t here. Speaking of evil that douchebag Manso can’t not be hateful. I pointed it out to many applause except for that Fedorko guy who is just always a big miss as well; and of course they are friends. Such old-school bitterness I can’t even. I will make a lovely flounder for dinner tonight. Hard act to follow after last night’s polenta and eggplant spectacle. But I’m going to put a little pecorino in with the bread crumbs. And serve it with broccoli and tiny whole roasted potatoes. Yum. And then, as if I wasn’t sore enough from yard work, we danced over five thousand steps. It was a good thing to do on a number of levels. Tomorrow we drive to Dartmouth for the first of two vaccine doeses.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my Blagues, nos. 1721-1725. 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 got off to a horrible start. We were awakened by the film crew just after four o’clock. It was insupportable. And of course this was the first day of holiday for the hotel manager with whom I’d already nurtured a relationship. Was a bummer. I called down to ask to speak to a manager and one wasn’t yet in. The crew had taken over. There was no reception, no morning breakfast room. Nobody answered the phone at room service. The desk said that breakfast was being set up somewhere on a different floor. I set out in search of answers and stumbled on two guys in suits one of whom said “morning sir, y’alright?” I said I’m looking for a manager and he pointed to the other guy who had pulled ahead and now spun on his heels. You’re the man I’m looking for said I. He said he hadn’t yet begun his day. That was lost on me. I started in on my noise complaint. He is about my height and, it might be a cultural thing—his name is Rachid and I’m assuming Algerian or some such—but he got right into my face. Not in a mean way, but he was definitely a close talker of the first kind and he wasn’t totally contrite, or so it seemed at the time. We went down to breakfast where they had set it up in this sort of ballroom sized hall, a buffet, but with pretty much all the same food one could order off the menu. We stockpiled some meats and cheese for A. who arrived about a half an hour later. We discussed packaging again for the most part as she wanted to prepare a brief for G. who will now be our new designer since the other folks have dragged their heels. Hard to believe that it is over nine months since we started a conversation with them; and it has been nearly four since I already said I think it might not be an auspicious arrangement. I have really felt held hostage by the situation, especially, as I was accused at the time of already having another person in place, which I didn’t, amid reassurances that everything could happen quickly. What I find especially irksome is that, though I care so (too) much about preserving our friendship, I feel the other bloke doesn’t give a flying fuck. Speaking of other blokes, what happened to Sebastian. Good question. Weird how people just flake off. Not to mention the recent exchange with Stefan the horrible. What a nutjob that jerk turned out to be. Next!

So I excused myself from breakfast a bit early as the subject turned to websites. I wanted to sneak in a swim, even a quick one, which I did. We then dressed and set off in a car to Soho for this meeting with the production company owned by C.M.. We got there a bit early so we strolled and popped into a magazine shop. Then we sent to the meeting, which was on Berwick Street, to which we were slightly early—they were just finishing up (eating). She herself was there which was astonishing, as were two associates, one being director of development. We were off and running. I won’t say much here about the content of the conversation because I probably really shouldn’t but there are a few takeaways we can discuss. First off, we were there because they are doing a show on theme of what we do for a living. C.M. is old school and a fan of Linda Goodman. It was her receptionist, who was out with a cold, apparently, who had a copy of Sextrology in her bag and told her bosses they should contact us. They would have looked us up and contacted our assistants, assuming we were in New York or L.A. or someplace domestic. Upon hearing from them, given who it is, we naturally assumed they were L.A. based. Turns out they are firmly, now, established in London. And, I’m sure murch to their surprise, we were also in London at the moment they wished to meet us. The next thing is the real kicker: The show idea they described is the exact show that we two had envisioned and talked about, some five years ago in Paris. But exactly the show. So the major takeaway is this: whatever happens at this point the fact is that the thoughtform of idea we put out there walking around Paris in 2025, excitedly describing the would-be show (that we could never make) to each other, managed to float through space and time and end up in the brain of one of the most successful and prolific producers of television there ever was. And we were brought in, seemingly on a whim, and while in the same city, all at the same time, an Uber away, to witness the next, and hopefully true, iteration of this very idea. So my lesson this week is in Faith. Faith that energy, like matter, can neither be created nor destroyed, and that our thought form of energy was indeed alive and it somehow made its way over the last five years through the ether. The meeting was an hour and we covered every bit of territory and we really liked each other and if nothing else I hope we made a friend.

We head out in a happy daze and work our way, en route to Liberty, to the Soho Hotel where we hope to have a drink and a snack, but they are not serving food, so we use the loo and leave. Because of our stay there a year ago November I remember how to work our way down Carnaby Street but we don’t get that far when S. spots Brindisa, where we stop for a few plates of tapas and a carafe of red wine. Really delicious. Then we head to Liberty and breeze through the jewelry section and see A.’s collection there of course. Post that, frustration ensues: We want to find the Atlantis bookshop on Museum Street but our Map apps are fucking with us and we end up in the landscape of hell which is Oxford Street and vow never again to do this. Jo raved about Atlantis so we had to go; but what we realize is that, whereas this type of shop might be unique in London, it is a pale comparison to any number of shops on this theme which we have encountered over the years in New York and Boston and Los Angeles. I had looked up the shop online and it typically yielded stories about how this shop has been in one family for generations, picturing mum and daughts. Well, when we got there, there they were mum and daughts and grand daughts. The shop gave me a weird vibe I have to say. These kinds of shops either feel good or weird, and this was a weird feel. I couldn’t wait to get out. We were close to Theobalds at that point and thus a very direct stroll up it to Rosebury Avenue and Exmouth Market, where I was just yesterday.

We stopped by our fave wine shop in the area for something to bring to Pascale and Matt’s. We then circled back to Exmouth and installed ourselves at Caravan for a tea and wine (guess who had which). And then it was time for dinner with the fam as Hen and Dot were there and there was a seventh space set at the table. Call Caroline for dinner, Pascale shouted at her children and we were like who is Caroline. Well, apparently Mary has a German friend from school in Eindhoven who has been living at Myddelton Square but we had no idea. She was very sweet. And Pascale made one of her signature delicious plant-based meals. S. and I had a little red, P. had a little white, M. is drinking non-alcoholic beer (m’ok); they asked if I had left a sports jacket in their bedroom cupboard. I was convinced I hadn’t, but yes it was mine—I totally forgot I brought this blazer with me, which I would have planned to wear at the end of a trip ending in major weight loss. I told Matt to try it on—he did—and it fit him perfectly. It is now his. It really felt like old times tonight and I just loved being able to have a family meal and be with people whom you know and who know you.

Paris, Day One of Sixty: We wake finish packing I pay the bill I swim for an hour we check out and I get a bunch of expenses taken off our bill and a free car to the train station. We aren’t allowed in the first class lounge even though we have first class tickets. Oh well. The class of service is good but there are two mole people sitting next to us. I shoot them looks but they’re too dense to pick up the clues. They are sexless gamers who seem to work for Sainsbury’s or something. Anyway the ride was quick and I had a chicken dish and some mousse and a few minis of red wine. We get to Gare du Nord and people are soliciting us for taxis before we even queue up in the official line, which is strange. Well, turns out there is a manifestation and most of the taxis lining up are refusing to take the majority of people in line anywhere. We convince a driver to do so and it takes ninety minutes and many tens of euros to get to the rue des Archives. We took on little walk on Rambuteau and grabbed some coffee for the morning and some wine and cheese and water and a baguette that we could snack on as we unpack. The rue Rambuteau has everything. A cheese shop, a fish shop, a butcher, great veg places, the perfect place to buy coffee. And so many traiteurs—a Greek one, an Italian one. And this one bakery that sells just savory foods with a second one that just sells sweets. We do so fully and are exhausted so we stay local and find Le Mangerie which was recommended to me by la fille de Normandie who works at The Grocery on Kingsland Road. It was terrible. Weird little tapas type things. We can’t figure out how to turn certain lights on and the television isn’t in working order either. We will send a note about these things and get them fixed.

I feel like I have bitten off more than I can chew. Last night ended with dinner with A. at Emile which was just a pop-up it turns out and will open with more permanent digs in Belgravia in March. Anyway we were talking about our real names and how Corbett comes from Corbet, b and v being one an the same, thus Corvet or Corveau. Anyway, it all translates to the raven which is the family crest. On my side Leone is lion which would be our family crest. We joked about how, when you put us together, you might come up with Corleone. A. asked what our family crest would be and S. said the funniest thing ever: The Other Shoe Dropping. I’m still laughing to myself about this it was hysterical. Days later I’ll still spontaneously crack up on the street such that people will think I’m psycho. I am feeling unreal waves of happiness. Like crazy happiness. I thought I was happy in London but nowhere near how I feel now. I forget how much I love Paris and how bright it makes me feel. I must remember this feeling. I am here for two months and it already feels like it won’t be long enough. I am fatter than I want to be and there is this amazing men’s shop we happen across called Plusque Parfait. I am determined to get this weight off by the time Spring rolls around when I can buy myself some beautiful things from the shop. I have a lot on my plate but I feel up to the task. We are getting a second room in the hotel in Venice. I can’t believe I’m finally going to Venice. The train ride is ten hours. We go from the Gare de L’Est? S. needs to send me my ticket so I have it on my phone. I will definitely stop eating like a giant pig for a couple days before we go. The beauty is we don’t have to think about anything. The LLBs will be the tour guides arranging everything. Even the second hotel room so that someone can get some sleep. I will take the crappier of the two rooms.

By Thursday I need to have my text boxes drafted so that I can tweak and send them over the weekend. We have decided that on our return from Milan that S. and I would go over the particulars. I am super happy that we decided to stay away. It has already been an incredible boon; and I am determined to sail this ship toward ultimate success. It is about getting out ahead of the curve and staying there. That has always been the trick; and now, with this offsite plan, I feel that I can really accomplish all that needs accomplishing. The pendant program itself is an entire world of business needing to be accomplished. We will be getting initial things from Guilia this week which is great. It really is hard to articulate this feeling and this need to put things into motion. Ideas dissolve like the landscape of a lucid dream every time I sit down to hammer things out. I have two and a half hours left today to make magic and put things into motion and to start my own factory roll out for the new year. It is still only January. There is no panic as everything will move forward and give me a break, people take vacations. Even when I go away on holidays I always bring my work with me. I have got to stop feeling guilty and afraid. I do what I do and if I can’t live with the consequences than I shouldn’t do it. It really is that simple. It’s time to grow up and in the process be kinder to myself on all levels which means not putting my body and mind through unnecessary stresses while at the same time forgiving myself for any overindulgences I do fall into.

Paris, Day Two of Sixty: We woke and had coffee and went out in search of Bikram and the health food store, both of which we found after a cul de sac of time and space in which we looked for the yoga studio but we were on the wrong road. We did some shopping on Rambuteau, including a couple of sandwiches which we will eat before going back out for more groceries and flowers for the week. We also discover the Caviste, which we now remember, was among our favorite wine shops. We had the appointment with a favorite client who is in Paris; then we set off for the left bank. We do a little shopping at Papier Plus and then it is nearly time for the singing mass at St. Gervais. This morning I had a dream about saving my grandmother from a burning building. We sit in the church on small benches for half an hour while the nuns settle into their spots and never move a muscle. The priests finally arrive. There is such a difference between them, the women are still and meditative and serene, in their blue robes and white hooded cloaks, and the men, all in black, are slightly more boisterous and jolly and read like school boys on retreat ever so slightly. The congregation is shuffling in and the spots are all but taken up. The music begins and everyone begins to sing but only gets a few seconds in before a young man appears at the pulpit and takes the microphone protesting the Catholic Church. S. is having none of it, as is her personality—she’s freaked and needs to get the ef out. We go and I can’t help thinking the congregation believes that we are somehow complicit with the protester.

We head toward the river and S. tells me that she felt her grandmother move through her while she was sitting still on her stool at St. Gervais. Her grandmother changed her name to Genevieve and it turned out that the mass was all about St. Genevieve, the Patron Saint of Paris, whose feast day is January 3, and whose whole mission was about getting believers to believe. She led a prayer marathon which saved the city from siege by the Huns, she also worked out deals with the Germanic invaders. Her symbol is a candle, which we didn’t know as we strolled toward Boulevard St. Germaine to the Diptyque store to buy a candle. I told S. about my grandmother dream this morning from which I woke for the day. I went to see a psychic once who told me my grandmother had a message for me and it was to “go to church.” Just a few steps beyond the candle shop is our destination for dinner, Chez Rene. We were hesitant to go but so glad we did. We made a reservation for eight but arrived at seven, the only people yet in the place. By eight it was packed. S. had betteraves and mache salad and I had salade de chevre chaud and lambchops, with spinach and frites to share and a flan for dessert. We started with a gorgeous glass of champagne each then had some nice AOC vin, Bandol maybe, I don’t remember. We probably won’t go here again this trip so I’m glad we made the effort. As tradtionalese as it is, it is very good and simple and clean. My meal was just a bunch of lamb chops on a plate. So simple and lovely. I’m going to make some lamb in the kitchen here. I do intend on cooking a lot and making soups, especially, once the Bikram begins. I’m a bit nervous about going back and yet I super can’t wait.

We decided to stroll home and it was only about twenty minutes total, which is great. We passed a few little shops that are good to remember. Earlier we had scanned the neighborhood and noticed that Fer au Cheval is closed (they had a fire) and that there is an Eataly in the neighborhood (there it goes) and we picked a lousy (sale!) day to hit BHV but we needed some electronics. I bought a tiny Bluetooth speaker so we can listen to our own music and also I want to figure out continuous white noise. I do need to write to Neil to see if he is still planning a Paris visit. The sound of breaking glass is a particularly French sound. I also need to write to Laurie to ask about her friend’s resto. Tomorrow we will have lovely food from the Greeks. I might also think about making some lambchops just for fun. Oh and I have to research the Enfants Rouge market.

Paris, Day Three of Sixty: Back to Rambuteau to get a roasted chicken. We had a late breakfast of yoghurt, almonds and berries. I realized that I had lost my computer files which makes no actual sense. It put me into a bit of a tail spin. S. had a Facetime scheduled with the family so I decided to go for a beer in the neighborhood to write by hand. I came back and had chicken and decided I wanted to go back out which was actually fine. I actually went to a couple of places and got lost talking to people and writing in my notebook and failed to text home and it wasn’t pretty when I got home. I never know what to do in these cases. Sometimes if I text it starts a whole thing; and sometimes when I don’t it can be even worse. I will definitely limit my solo excursions for the rest of the trip so to keep the peace because we have too many important things to accomplish on this trip, really, and it needs to be productive and fruitful in the extreme. On the agenda to write today is the following:

Some N’ology text boxes one of which would be about self help something like Shut down the self help. We know you and you go from this book to the next, searching for external answers. So guess what you’re going to start your own self-help guide based on your experience.The Sixth Astrological House of Virgo is associated with our habits and behaviors, health and healing, how we “work”, that is to say how we operate and function, and the ways in which we best “serve” ourselves, and by extension, our environment and humanity as a whole. This goes a long way toward explaining why it is that, of all the signs, Virgo is the most interested, if not obsessed, with Self Help on many levels, and Virgo women especially. (By contrast, Virgo men tend to be downright hypochontriachal.) The sign’s symbol Virgin holding that sheaf of grain might well be considering its gluten content and what effect it will have on her. It is just one of the many ways in which Virgo overthinks, analyzes and navel gazes in the extreme. In typical Virgo fashion, you have read more than enough books, attended more than your fair share of workshops and seminars, visited a plethora of whole plethora of healing practitioners, psychics and sages, to last you a lifetime. So we are shutting you down—you must take at least three months off from any form of self help other than your regular exercise and maintaining a healthy, balanced diet. And with all that time and energy we are prescribing something actionable, and perhaps challengingly so: You are going to take all your self-help experience to date and create your own mini (or maxi) self-help treatise, weaving together all the myriad modes you have explored over the years, either through study or practice.

Gray is the color associated with the sign of Virgo, a nod to the sign’s mutable-earth assignation, which translates to clay, in keeping with the archetypes of the sign who include the potter god, Hephaestus and the idealized Pandora, with her own ceramic jar or box, whom he sculpted from the stuff. You do possess the potential to mold yourself into being the best you you can be. But another interpretation of Virgo’s trademark color gray speaks to your propensity to get stuck in neutral, lost in the gray area of inertia. I could talk about grey being neutral, a state in which Virgo finds herself all too often, stasis being less an issue of indecision than it is simple fear of making the wrong move. The first order of business will be to see if we can isolate some action items in the process. For fear of being hurt or disappointed. You tend to beat a dead horse, complain, You can be pathologically wronged by others. There needs to be an inventory of the litanies, the complaints, the grousing and the grudges. You have to let it all go. So, your homework is to go just twenty-four hours without a complaint or even the slightest negative comment, particularly about other people or situations you find yourself in.  There is also something about grudges.

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

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2021 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved. Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2021 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox.

Pisces 21° (March 11)

I will make some inroads today with a new chapter which is always a good feeling and yet I will underdeliver. It is baffling to think that in just about ten days that I will begin the seventh year of this Blague. I need to keep it simple and might just do a sort of Bluebook thing to get that party started. It could be nice, and link back to the original year for fun. I was feeling pretty upbeat about the real estate angle of things but I have freaked myself out a bit. Oh well: Onto other thoughts: The Moonchild is the most self-protective of men. He needs strong emotional defenses because he is highly sensitive, and so he chooses his company carefully, just as he secures professional positions for himself where he will largely be left to his own devices. As walled-in as he may be, he is, as a rule, exceedingly ambitious; he thus tends to oh, so subtly, target individuals he feels can speed his trip toward success, often becoming a darling to influential people who will take up his cause. He is very good at playing the proverbial game in his career, even when just starting out, especially charming those of an older generation to whom he shows such promise. Though typically cool as a cucumber himself, by astrological design, Cancer man elicits emotional responses from others. When young, he specifically works on the feelings of nostalgia that older men have for their own lives when they were his age, while women of all ages are simply charmed by his signature gentlemanly demeanor and behavior, which isn’t in the least disingenuous. Regardless of their gender or sexual orientation, Cancer men love women who typically make up the bulk of their friendships and associations. One feels safe in the Moonchild’s presence, and he prides himself on being polite, courteous, even, chivalrous. He is not one to act out or up, a master at quelling and disguising anger, upset or sorrow, though he’s quick to laughter, which he isn’t above feigning if he finds it might be endearing, just as he will hang on every word spoken by someone he wants in his corner. He wouldn’t consider himself calculating—he assumes everyone is as purposefully charming as himself. Anyway, pouring it on, as he does, comes naturally to this premier water sign, just one of the many ironies endemic to the Cancer male experience (he just has none about himself). His façade is one and the same as the protective Crab shell, any phoniness is thus a byproduct of shielding himself emotionally. Only those who know him well will recognize this and forgive him for it, for they understand how tender this guy can be. Besides, there is a certain comfort and joy in gaining close access to the Cancer man when knowing how measured, mannered and decorous he remains in his more formal bonds. He expects

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my Blagues, nos. 1716-1720. 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 dreamed last night, or rather this morning, that I was in the desert. In Wonder Valley specifically. There was some kind of weird conference and someone threw their rotted cancer hands that they kept in the freezer or something at me and I had to leave. I know that this will make no sense. They were dried and green and horrible. I can’t explain any further. Someone from the art world was interested in working with us. I was aware of the fact that might know Jack and I thought, well, that could be an area of confusion or represent a certain rift. What else is new. All I know is that I am looking for repair and for truth. And I will wait until I am back stateside to deal with those evil little wads in publishing—I am the embodiment of justice this year, wielding a terrible swift sword. Sorry not sorry. I feel quite frustrated today. And like everything is flung everywhere. If I stick to my owners manual it might work out fine. Possible titles: Unwritten Stories. Written Off (Funny Trials and Tribulations in the Publishing Word). Mightier Than The Sword is another one perhaps. Something like that. And why not? I have to put my anger and frustration some place and let it channel fully through me. Anyway there is much to do today. We have a big afternoon and evening planned and I’m super psyched to get out and move around today. There has been much work and just sitting in and writing, dreaming and scheming and my old carcass needs to move around a bit.

So we set off for A.’s studio which is only about a twenty minute stroll up Bethnal Green Road then hanging a left toward Old Bethnal Green Road LOL. The studio was cute and worky and we went over some colors and stones and other details. We are still tweaking to get it right. Then the three of us headed toward Bethnal Green, past the Town Hall where we will move on Sunday, and then we headed up the Old Ford Road (I think it’s called toward and through Victoria Park which was quite beautiful. It is a part of town to which we haven never been; and it was a long stroll through the park along the canal. We ended up at a bar/café/pub/restaurant called Crate where we had some chill drinks and talked more about the collection and packaging and so forth. It was good to get a bit of a jump on all that. As I’m writing this I think I am watching a Harry Stiles video (is that who everyone is always talking about) and he is in the group of people, mainly men, naked from the waist up, writhing about with them. There has been some talk recently within the community that he is gay baiting or whatever. Honestly I just think he’s pansexual like so much of the younger population. Anyway, we got some good ideas on paper and I’ll need a follow-up on that score this week.

A. wanted to take us out so we just had to head upstairs in the same building to Silo which was an English version of Portlandia which I fully enjoyed. The only ingredient that made me go hmm was a “spruce sauce” because I would sear on my life that this was made from discarded Christmas trees found on the street. And I don’t actually say this lightly because the entire philosophy of the place is hinged on non-waste. So, I think my theory is correct. It was a set menu projected onto the wall, so you just get what they give you, with some vegetarian options that I didn’t opt for. The first course was a radish cannelloni. When it arrived I thought it was a mise bouche, it was so tiny. Of all the things in nature it recalled a clitoris, and you know how hard those can sometimes be to find, so that should give you some idea of the portion size. The tables had silos in them that contained cutlery and a wine cooler, the cork lids of which you raised with a giant magnet. They had the best beef dish I’ve ever tasted—it was “aged” to the consistency of pudding, that’s how tender. And a pumpkin ice cream that was served two ways. It was wonderful and ridiculous in equal measure. And they had some very good organic wine which places really all must now have. There is no alternative in this new world. I’m now watching Jamie Oliver on the Uks food network. He is kind of handsome again. I missed his lisp. We went over to A.’s flat just after and met her daughter who shares a name with S. I really like her husband and we talked about film and drank some orange wine. A. fell asleep and I realized she bloody well works too hard. I hope that she can begin to do less and be more.

Probably two hours of sleep. I am getting to the point of exhaustion. We came back from A.’s house and I fell around one but was up by four. I’m just sitting here writing until eight when S. rises. I have quite the day planned and am a bit daunted, even though it is all about and at my leisure: On A.’s recommendation, I have booked a two-hour Ayurvedic massage. I don’t know what to expect but I know the place I’m going is a barge on the other side of the Thames at Tower Bridge. It’s quite cold today but I head out across Bethnal Green Road down past the Shoreditch overground through Spital fields and White Chapel across the bridge along the river. I think I know where the place is so I just sort of loll about; then I think maybe I’m not in the right spot after all, which I wasn’t. So I kept looking and couldn’t find address until I realized a large truck (lorry) was blocking the entrance to the whatever-it-is-you-call-the-metal-thing-you-walk-down-to-the-boats-on-the-river. Suj met me at the locked gate and led me down the slippery gang ways (they’re called gang ways?) to a warren of low barges. I am mainly walking on wooden planks, after a while, covered in chicken wire to make the going less slippery. (What he will tell me later on my way out is that I’m actually walking atop barges, and that the gardens’ plantings on either side of me are rooftop gardens in effect. There is even a large tree growing from the roof of a barge.) We get to his barge, a one-hundred-year-plus-old Dutch number, painted a dark teal. It takes some doing getting onto it. And then we enter this incredibly barebones kitchen behind which is the massage studio, consisting of a very old practice table covered with a towel, and a simple wooden stool, facing a mirror atop a sofa. There is a tele from which is coming plinky plunky music while images of some monk or Rinpoche glowers reassuringly. There is a smell of incense but none currently burning. I have to take a pee which requires a bit of acrobatics to “go below.” One must travel vertically, backwards, as if by ladder.

The massage begins with me naked but for my underwear, seated in the stool, as Suj says he will start with head massage. I have never felt anything in my life like this, my entire nervous system is a-tingle. Feeling as exhausted as I do I have that much more drastic a reaction, I think, than I might otherwise. This goes on for over ten minutes and I’m getting slightly uncomfortable. I’m almost aware of the nerve patterning from my head all the way down my legs, and my left one feels its age-old damage, or at least that’s what I’m imagining. Finally, it is time to move to the massage table where Suj instructs me to lie face down. I slip off my underwear for the rest of it. There are familiar elements to the massage, the symmetry of doing to the right what one does to the left; and of course kneading the muscles, but there is an extra element of covering the same territory, warming it up for starters, and then massage the same areas, over and over again, for extended periods of time. On the left side of my back all goes swimmingly, while it is usually my trouble side; but on the right something isn’t releasing, and with this form of massage, which is repetitive, the resistance is being met over and over again, which is only making me sieze up more and more, like when you try to get into a cross legged position and your hips sieze up, only it is my shoulder complex and I can’t seem to lie flat; so I riase myself off the table a bit on my right side and I’m making noises designed to tell Suj to back off but he doesn’t. I’m feeling a bit panicky, now, but it is subsiding slowly. He remarks on how tense my right side is; ad will tell me how much better my left is. He is all intuition while having perfect technique. He’s now doing those long stroke moves, standing at my head, down my back and ass which he keeps opening up on his way back to starting position. Of course the reflex is to clench and maintain integrity, in all senses of the word, but the repetition forces me to let go and now I’m worrying that my anus is actually going to prolapse. I’m exaggerating slash kidding but not really. He then changes places and starts to do my legs but on this score he will dig so far into my groin, in the process, increasing blood flow, shall we say, to the point of now all I can feel is the worry that he’s going to say turn over while I have an all but raging boner. Oh fuck. It isn’t very relaxing when you’re fretting about showing your full extended manhood. The panic is back now with a vengeance. There might also be a little leakage. Holy Hardon, Batman.

Ultimately he does have me flip over and I simply say: “okay, do erections happen?”, to which he responds, “don’t worry.” Ironically, this makes me worry more because it crosses my mind that his reassuring words carry a meaning along the lines of: I will take care of that. Uh, oh. But, no, thankfully, he had no intention of it going there. And my front now receives just as much attention as my back did; and when it comes to the legs bit, he’s digging back into where my lower body attaches to my top; at one point I think he just took my dick and moved it over as if it were an errant branch he encountered while weeding a garden. The real transcendence begins with the torso massage and ending with the face massage, which includes this move where he makes an opening motion from my third eye out, like opening curtains, over and over again. I have to say for a moment there I saw the face of some blue god, I kid you not. Two hours later and I was completely altered. I hadn’t noticed that the rocking of the barge which was minimal to begin with had completely halted. It was low tide and we were wedged in the mud at a slant. It was tricky enough getting up after this intense massage without having a dizzy spell and passing out, but the entire boat was at a major slant. My Batman reference now seems very apt as that show was so often filmed on a diagonal. I dress as best I can and am walked out back through the warren of boats getting more history of the place. I retrace my way back through Spitalfields where I purchase a reassuring pricey swimsuit, on sale. And S. is still at the flat. She soon sets off to see another friend (I should get one of those at some point) and I will have a pint at the George and the Dragon and do a bit of shopping at the Grocery before returning back to make a pasta sauce and pack up, both of which goes quite successfully.

Wake, clean, pack, leave for Bethnal Green. The owner of the building comes over and he and his wife are contrite about the noise that came from above, but nobody makes any move to compensate us. We do have their direct connection though so we could rebook it but we won’t. We take an Uber to Town Hall and set ourselves up in the lounge. I’m getting all our ideas onto virtual paper. There is a wait for the room for a couple of hours, then when we finally do get in, we see we are in the back of the building which would be fine except we are atop the dumpsters and I’m concerned. We are shown a room in the front which doesn’t have a bath and so we opt for another room in the back that does, but one which is further the way along from what might be dumpster noise. It won’t prove to be brilliant but that won’t be our fault. What we don’t know is that a film crew is moving into the hotel on Monday and they will begin load in at an ungodly hour. Meanwhile we are just happy to unpack—they gave us a giant rolling rack so that we can hang up most of our clothes that require it. We have a reservation for one of the two restaurants but I’m concerned as the wait staff so far have not proven to be all that swift. Never mind, it’s low stakes. And what it might lack in service it makes up for in proximity.

We head out and first walk along the Roman and Globe roads, the latter being kind of a woo-woo enclave of a Buddhist center and metaphysical bookstores, just around the corner from a vegetarian restaurant. With that under our belt we decide to go further afield, up to Broadway market. We pass a pizza pop up along the way which turns out to be a bit of foreshadowing. Upon discover of the Broadway market, we had no idea it was such an oasis and we actually end up requiring a snack and so stop at Franco Manca for a delicious pie to share along with some olives and wine as a late snack. Then uh oh, S. isn’t feeling great. As we make our way back to the hotel she is feeling more and more ill—her stomach is the culprit. So by the time of our reservation she is taking to ed and I head down on my lonesome. I have carafe(s) of wine to accompany my sirloin with cabbage, and a side green salad, followed by a yang (which I realize is a cheese) something I’d never heard of. There is a slightly Asian bent to the restaurant and the crackers that come with the yang almost feel like a sort of wonton. There is an Asian boy eating on his own in plaid pajamas and the slippers provided in his room. He is photographing his food; then again so am I. I will show S. when she is in a place where she can actually look at food. I take my last bit of cheese and wonton and quince jam, in sandwich form wrapped in a napkin, upstairs with a full glass of wine and I finish it while I cue up Netflix. The next thing I know I’ve fallen asleep and wake before one o’clock, having slept maybe three hours in total. So I watch the final episode and a half of the Star Trek series which was only two seasons long.

I think head to bed, it’s around three, and already people are making noise out back. I will awake the next morning to a cacophony of sound and will ask to be shown another room in the front. I go and check it out and it is really quiet though smaller. S. can’t move rooms in any case so it is a moot point. She is truly ill and we will have to cancel plans we had with Neil and Debs. Stella will write to say that I could still join them but they won’t want that as I rightly suspect. I will spend the entire day tomorrow in the room. It is a warm and sunny day. I will write to Matt and say something funny. I will watch the UK Food Network and watch Jennifer Saunders in a celebrity bake off with Joanna Lumley, Lulu and Dame Edna after the lisping of Jaime Oliver. S. will sleep until two in the afternoon. I will still be writing this a day late in preparation for coming back, after a swim in the pool (hopefully), because tomorrow’s post, as I promised myself, must be in regard to the “text box” copy that I am preparing for our agent before she takes the book out for a second round of pitches. We are definitely seeing a production company on Wednesday which is bizarre because they are based in London but didn’t know that we were here when they reached out to us about some work together on a project. WE have been down this road before and would be happy to do something like this for sure. We shall see what we shall see. I suspect I will eat dinner again alone downstairs tonight which is fine, but not fantastic.

I could talk about grey being neutral, a state in which Virgo finds herself all too often, stasis being less an issue of indecision than it is of making the wrong move. The first order of business will be to see if we can isolate some action items in the process. Shut down the self help. We know you and you go from this book to the next, searching for external answers. So guess what you’re going to start your own self-help guide based on your experience. This could be a good approach. This day Monday is all about transition. I stayed in as S. was super ill then went by the little spa and there were definitely guys checking in ahead of me for the final three hours of the evening. There was this one dancer boy. I said something like, hey have you been here before and he did this sort of skeptical half turn like you talking to me? And I was like yes. Have you been here before is it nice, fun, do you like it. And he was like uh huh. So shady. I realized it may perhaps be a bit gay up in this place at the end of men’s day, which it turned out to be. So said the nice lady who was helping people at the desk. She was good natured and gave me an eyeroll after dancer boy sashayed away. I got all the info. The staff seems to be all women. I don’t think that if there is gay stuff going on in there that it would be too overt. That was my read. They have a ton of treatments so I’ll go the next time we pass through this way. Another idea is: You are the appropriator of the Zodiac. So we want to turn this from a liability into an asset. Own the fact that you are open to influence and see it as a positive aspect of your superpower, but do be conscious of giving credit where credit is due, not just for others, but for yourself. You may be surprised by, and wake-up to, the fact that you rather unconsciously borrow from others all the time. You don’t even know you’re doing it.

I went to The Camel on the Globe Road and the boy at the bar near me lives on a barge in Hackney Wick. It’s fun to have conversations with strangers, ones you can’t strike up in places that’s for sure. And yet it is quiet in this world in the only way it can be in a giant city like this one with so many nooks and crannies. Unlike New York where the only place to go is up. Anyway I had a couple of beers and just hung out and chatted with folks for awhile which was a good break after being in the suite all day. I came back and S. is still feeling poorly so she is going to sit out dinner once again. I went down and spent a small fortune overindulging. I was chatting with other folks and ended up being down there many hours which did not go over well as you can imagine. We have booked our trains to Venice which is cool. Richard Godwin will write to say he knows a journalist who wants to interview us. She is from New Zealand and mentioned The Luminaries. This is sending us down a bit of a rabbit hole. We have never read the book which is characterized by one of us as being asleep at the wheel. There is something magical that happens when you go away. We have this television production company interested in our work and it makes me realize that this New Zealand interest might actually dovetail with the conversation this week with the Madelbach folks. I need to read the twelve-step idea for information on what might make for these text boxes I’m writing.

This week is going to fly by of that I am well aware. Dane Martha Keckler Erin. The City Wintery wrote to say they have a gig open, but they need to find someone who might be able to fill the room to capacity. I don’t really know who that could be. I could reach out to a few more folks to see but I did give a shout to Martha. I have a lot on my mind but I’m feeling rather stilted in terms of the writing. I need to be more lake than shed as we say in our family. I had some steak tartare and a green salad and I ordered the pasta but sent it back because it tasted like water. I got the fish instead. And then the cheese and little cookies. I am a bit overwhelmed with dread about what that bill will come to. I made a booking for the hotel and it comes to a hundred pounds more a night than what I’m paying now. I will need to find other digs I think unless they can make this place work out. I’m rambling but that’s the way that goes. I really wanted to have a little more fun this week but it wasn’t meant to be. It is a busy time and I have to make sure I look and feel my best for all these meetings. I really should have read The Luminaries.

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

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2021 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved. Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2021 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox.

Pisces 20° (March 10)

Only ten days until Spring. And thirty till Happy Anny. Which we will celebrate on a Friday, so still got a nice span of time for kickstarting. I must say I’m ready. Today, I turn to another sign. Oy. It is never easy but I think it can get easier. We shall see. I’m missing a certain seventies sensation, for some reason summed up in a “hi-hi” from Phyllis Lindstrom. I aim to isolate the superpowers of the sign in such a way as to make this book very active. I will outline some things to add to the end of Gemini woman; and I will reacquaint myself with the Cancer man experience so to get that motor running. I know I’m facing a bit of an abyss right now and I don’t think it has ever been so hard to pull myself back, but pull I must. Percival, Heracles, Osiris, etc. Blanchefleur reveals mystic meanings of chivalry. I don’t think I’m going crazy. I’m terribly sick of the monarchy. And I could use a tiny hit and just lie down for the rest of the day. I made egg drop soup for lunch, my best ever. My hair is clean and curly. I have genuine love and genuine sadness. I am making a grilled romaine Caesar with shrimp, which I need to marinate thanks for reminding me, you are welcome. It’s like giving birth every day to write a book but I asked for it and I got it. I did manage to touch base with orthopedic guy—something has definitely got to give on that score. It’s going to be what it’s going to be today and yet I am feeling optimistic.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my Blagues, nos. 1711-1715. 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.

S. came back from her night away. I couldn’t bring myself to eat a single bite and won’t have anything until we go to P + M for dinner where I will drink sparkling water and eat a single helping. We are surprised when Rose and James arrive because we were expect Dolce e Gabana to enter the sitting room instead. We are listening to jazz on the turntable and folks are drinking beer and wine. I feel shaky and not just metaphorically. Rose likes Boris Johnson and I am shocked. She was among the originals who came to LLB’s party where I worked in the Marais, in Paris, at Dizzy Place, not the Dizzy Place or Dizzy’s Place but Dizzy Place in 1986. The LLB’s are threatening to recreate that evening to some degree. If so I will go in drag. S. had a bag at P + M’s which she fetched and then forgot. I am also to blame for this which is actually reasonable. We are spending a lot of money. But I am trying not to focus too much on that right now. Everything is changing and I must learn to let it. I am a total asshole of this I am certain. I also know that not everything is my fault. That said I can do better. Way better. I’m looking forward to the change finally, which is weird given the fact I’m so bereft on this day. Something has broken but I think it was meant to do so. I need to focus on some action items. The apartment situation is really loud and I will address that in a letter. I’m sad and lonely but I must forge on. There are real friends now to be found and we will figure all that out. We have a meeting next week about product with the LLBs and I very much look forward to that, even though it is at an inconvenient time. Meetings must be taken. And now some more thoughts on things astrological;

As mentioned in a recent post the classic female “water bearer” was Hebe, cupbearer to the gods, who poured out their divine nectar. The daughter of Zeus and Hera, Hebe means youth; which is a word often synonymous with the future, as in the tuneful “I believe the children are our future.” The real future, along with science fiction, fall under the rulership of the Aquarian eleventh astrological house. Zeus, who went every which way, replaced Hebe—thanks Dad—with a beautiful boy he fell for called Ganymede. The eleventh house also rules homosexuality. Ganymede means gladness, joyor gaiety. In Arthurian legend, we find the figure of Galahad who achieves the quest for the holy grail. He is the son of Elaine who is the grail-bearer, the dispenser of joy and wisdom. In Tolkien’s work, the character of Galadriel is likewise the guardian of a water vessel from which is revealed all possibilities for the future, good news or bad. The goddesses of the dawn and rainbow, Eos and Iris, respectively, are both messenger deities who brought the good news and are both, too, depicted eternally holding pitchers.

The weird thing is when I pasted todays posting onto the online site the date 1986 popped up for no real reason. It is so terribly strange since that is the year when we met all the friends who are now impacting our life. Things I can write about: I can already be putting together text blocks per estate. I can already be articulating the pendant program and pinpointing the elements needed to do this or that. I have to figure out how and why to keep A. in the picture. The healing isn’t coming easy this time. This time the pain is real real real.

S is meeting Jo and Susanne tonight and I will eat the leftovers from heir soir, after I take a nice walk up to The Grocery to get some more of that incredible biodynamic wine. I stopped for a beer at the George and the Dragon which was peopled with nobody older than thirty-five, I kid you not. I felt extremely old and aware of the fact that younger people now almost look like a different species with their smooth skin and lustrous hair and beards. Was I ever that young and beautiful. I pretty much doubt it. I strolled home and put dinner together and tried to make something happen but I just ended up watching NetFlix. In the late afternoon I did meet up with Richard who wrote a piece on us a few years ago for British Vogue. It was really great to see him. I’m guessing he’s some fifteen years my junior. He has a six year old and one (it’s really to early to say) on the way (but he and now I said it anyway) and his whole life is still laid out before him. There must be some sense of that I can glean for myself but I haven’t really been able to “find” it, if you catch my drift. Apparently we are invited onto the boat in April. I have yet another bathing suit goal that I will likely not achieve. Oh well. Such is life. I keep have moments of clarity that dissolve into nothingness. I am again making a transition with this Blague, writing through certain things that need getting done. For starters, I am on quite a trip and I want to document the synchronicities thereof, ever a mission of this prospect and project.

S. reveals that during the day a wifi connection came up for someone Amy Murray. Now, Amy, our dearly departed friend, was both the bestie of Su and Jo. And this is the first time since 1986 that they have sat and talked about her and all that went down. Then, I’m told, Su mentions where Amy is buried and it turns out it’s the same place Jo got married. So really, of all the friends, only Amy got to attend that wedding after all. I need to look up Esoterika bookstore. There is no such place. It must be Watkins or Treadwells or Atlantis. I will find out. I did fight out. It is Atlantis. I also found out that Amy wasn’t buried there but that the funeral services were there. And of course I already sent the text. Good golly. I always seem (to be persuaded) to put my foot in it. Anyway, I have a feeling there may be some family conflict with April but I certainly hope not.

There is still a pall, no getting around it. And, on the continued theme of getting my head on straight, I think what I might do is make a grid. Yes, a grid. Starting with Sextrology and working down to the most underserved projects. I do think retribution could come in the form of publishing lots of little books. We could definitely use some influencer energy from folks, that much is certain. I want a little shop somewhere people can find me but I don’t know where that is. I suppose it could be some place in Boston although it often feels like such an energy suck. I want to figure this out. Would that it could be Ptown but that isn’t quite right anymore, really. I’m having an existential crisis when it comes to my location of choice, that much is certain. Would I like to live in Maine? I mean sure. And people would have to find us, which wouldn’t be a bad thing. Especially if we rented a flat, for our trouble, in Paris and spent time in London with whomever. We shall see. These are all good questions to ask, even though I have no solid answers. I am going to let it go for now and see what occurs.

I need to make up a list of subjects, prompts, questions on which to expound. The new business alone would have the following: Business model and operations, this would include who does what, budgets, production flow chart documenting who does what and when, sales and the trunk show concept for people, packaging and branding is its own thing, website and shipping is another whole area that needs to be explored, press and promotion, the pendant program itself is a whole world in and of its own. That list alone goes on and on. Congruently we need to figure out what the Wheel side of things entails, including what the consultancy is all about, what we are thinking in terms of books, and the self-publishing universe which I think could be major. Wheel is already established as an online publishing entity, so it makes perfect sense to build on that. The other Wheel projects include events, product (like those with Tim), and other content creation.

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

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2021 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved. Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2021 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox.

Pisces 19° (March 9)

I have spent way too much time on this particular chapter and I, though I got some pages down this morning, I need to work all afternoon bringing this maybe home. And then I’ll just have three days for the next chapter, knowing it is a marathon not a sprint. I’ve just finished up the middle section and now I need to transition into the third. A writer friend says that it requires talent (which s/he believes I have) and will with which, let’s face it, I tend to struggle. I just want today to be the best day it can be. Nothing in particular ever happens these days, there are no events. So I must rely pretty much solely on what is going on in my head or in my expression for introductory fodder for this Blague. I know I can make some magic here I just have to stay open to it. A lot can happen in the course of a day. And whatever doesn’t get written today will get written in the second pass when we package this into a first draft. Increasingly I will be waking earlier, my upstairs office being warmer and warmer as time goes by. Plenty of time in the evening to pack books and bags and so forth. I need to get my body moving a bit again. I will have five more chapters to write in the coming month. And then another twelve which will bring me to May when I will take a tiny break of just a day or two to go to Boston and Cambridge and get some things accomplished. 

Sometimes I think that I am behind and then I get signposts that say that I’m right on time. And so I am relaxing into the next final three hours of my day. Taking a little break to synthesize and reorganize my ideas. I will start with the notion of there being that star-crossed things, other countries, races, religions. Might even elope or marry in secret or in a private ceremony designed to say that don’t want to make too big a deal out of themselves while doing just the opposite, snubbing, making a great many Erises out of, others. She uses the metaphor of a rose, the flower associated with Gemini it blooms during the sign’s timeline on the calendare but also in meaning.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my Blagues, nos. 1706-1710. I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

It’s a bit of a tetchy morning and I will wait too long to eat, taking myself to Cecconi for some chicken paillard before we have a client session for ninety minutes to two hours. Then Alice will come over and we will look at some more designs and make our notes; she says she had a lousy day, I forget why exactly. Anyway, we decide to go to the Grocery for some wine and cheese which is not very much like us, especially as we have a dinner date with Susanne. Something about the dinner at Emile triggers me and I’m not sure why but I get very emotional without explanation. I’m still wondering what that was all about. I think I’m feeling sadness surrounding not having children as I have such real affection for her boy. I know it is something like that. Plus the passing of time and all the unfulfilled promises. And of course all the rejection I feel I’ve been experiencing beginning at the end of last year, which is carrying over through to now. It is a Full Moon. It is a Pluto conjunct Saturn thing. It is all of it. And I suppose the cosmos is working my nerves harder than even usual. I want to make some drastic changes in my life that much is for certain. But where to begin. We shall see.

The transition from Capricorn to Aquarius is, in simple terms, a shift from the old guard to the avant guard. Capricorn is steeped in culture, tradition and social mores that are worth preserving for all time; while Aquarius is about breaking out of outmoded structures, innovation, and the shock of the new. Though opposite energies in many ways, they work in tandem to keep the past and the future in synch. Capricorn is the cardinal-earth sign whose symbol is the mountain, and Aquarius is the fixed-air sign, that translates to the stars or heavens. In most mythologies, the throne of the gods sits atop some mountain, a terrestrial seat from whence divine powers of the universe are received. Capricorn urges us to the pinnacle of earthy beingness, as it is from the vantage point of our most elevated selves that we glimpse truest cosmic revelation, and receive the manna that Aquarius represents.

The time corresponding to Aquarius is that of deepest winter. Whereas Capricorn began at solstice and involved seasonal revelry then resolutions made, Aquarius is about what revelations have come to bear, as a result, and what sense of renewal we might feel, thus far, in driest January. The o.g. waterbearer to the Olympian gods was Hebe, goddess of youth, who poured out the nectar that kept the gods juicy and eternally juvenated. At this time, we aren’t now so concerned with who we’ve been, and any changes needing making; now we arethe change, and we already have a renewed sense of ourselves and what the future of this year might bring. As we see the days getting longer, we feel on the dawn of a new era. Like Hebe, the goddess of the dawn, Eos, and the goddess of the rainbow, Iris, are all “descending goddesses” who had a special love for mortals, to whom they would descend in hopes of raising them up. So, just as we might be high on our positively altered states, we should remember to bring the good news of our own personal revelations to others, so they might likewise feel as lovingly renewed as we do.

S. wants to meet for lunch to talk about what’s going on. It is a very good question but not one I’m apparently ready to answer. I am in a mood and it isn’t a good one. Things will fall apart but I will have no idea just how much. It’s just one of those things on the one hand and yet it really must mark a turning point. My plaid bag and blue scarf will be the casualties. I need to call Emile to see if the latter might be there. I know the former has been scattered to the four winds. Why this bothers me more than any other aspect of this day is behind me because it is basically a plastic bag and there are elements of my actual life in peril and yet I must endow the small things, I suppose, with the big because the big are just too big to cope with? Something like that.

The planetary ruler of Aquarius is Uranus, the original sky god of the Universe. Just as Sagittarius is ruled by king Jupiter, followed by Capricorn, which is ruled by his father Saturn, so too do we go back a generation, in turn, to his father Uranus, as we move forward into the sign of Aquarius. Uranus is the personification of the stars, the heavens, just as the fixed-air sign of Aquarius is represented by the star—the Star card in the Tarot depicts the Waterbearer. To the ancients, the stars were divine beings, in the form of constellations, and so it follows that the grand daddy of the gods comprised that vast starry Universe of all his progeny. The motto of Aquarius is “I Know,” and the Universe represents omniscience. It is from it that we receive glimpses in the form of revelation, when we are worthy or ready or both. The lofty stars paradoxically provided knowledge of earthly placement, in the here and now, especially for seafarers. In this way the stars were the bearers of souls over the water. When mythical Uranus was deposed, cast down by his son, Saturn, he fertilized the sea, from whence Venus, goddess of love emerged. We can remember that, even in times of deepest disappointment or dis-aster (meaning the dissipation of the stars) the result can be a resurgence love, especially the self sort, in our lives

The New Moon in Aquarius initiates a period of emotional freedom and detachment. We can and should let go of ties that bind too tightly, along with possessiveness and jealousy—a ritual releasing on that theme can be quite powerful (we suggest lighting a purple candle). Alternatively, the New Aquarian Moon cosmically assists us in making emotional commitments to ideologies and causes and to the large groups and organizations that champion them. It is a powerful moment to divest emotion to people in general, if not humanity as a whole, along with the animal and plant populations. One powerful Aquarian archetype is (the sister-wife of Uranus, the namesake of the sign’s planetary ruler): Gaia, who is the divine embodiment of the Earth itself. Environmental issues do indeed effect us all. On a lighter note, it’s a great time to network on a global scale and to send your ideas and projects out into the ether. Aquarius is symbolized by wavelengths—the sign is air, remember, not water—so it’s time to infiltrate the Zeitgeist.

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

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2021 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved. Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2021 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox.

Pisces 18° (March 8)

I am quote unquote caught up but I just have this feeling that today is going to be challenging. It’s just my gut. It is the new day one. But I will try my best and I will move the needle faster and be that much more attentive to writing final-ish copy. I really have to. I want to feel healthy and relaxed and I want the ills of this carcass to heal. I want to feel happy and I want to shake this feeling of paranoia (but the commentary makes me feel as if I’m being spied upon which I do not like). Anyway, all is coming clear. No more C.F. in my life, no more of the Canadians, they can now be fully forgotten. I am focusing solely on career and real estate. These are my only interests moving forward. I am getting a slow start to the morning but that is to be expected. I will start my work day officially at 9:30 and work for a totally of six hours only today. As I say focus is on healing and I’ve decided I will wait two months until I get some blood work done and just do a little spin into Boston for the day, maybe get some takeaway somewhere, or just head to Nancoise for the night, why not. We could even go for Sunday dinner, that might be nice. Everyone should have their shots by then I imagine. I have this sinking feeling that we will be hearing from the lawyer today. I suppose that is the dread and sense that this day will be challenging. Honestly I just don’t want the distraction. It is a privilege I must say to be able to muse the way I am, day after day, so I really need to get my brain around that, which isn’t so hard to do really. I’ve decided to fall in love with myself again and not see anybody else for the time being. Ha! I know that made no sense. I have to find some tricks today to get myself “in.”

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my Blagues, nos. 1701-1705. I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

I had the strangest dreams last night. It involved JD and his house and chickens and foxes. The chickens thing is maybe obvious because the LLB’s have chickens and we were talking about how they “put themselves away” at night unlike geese and ducks. In the dream there were several white chickens that I suppose I owned. There was some sort of issue, too, with the law and drugs being (planted) on me. And then there were three distinct foxes, two of which were snow white, and one of which was black. All of them were cute and incredibly fluffy. One feature of the dream was that I had somehow left chickens inside JD’s house, where I had also somehow managed to get the foxes locked in. So when he came to visit his house, and we interacted even though there was a real disease about doing so—reflecting reality—I wasn’t quite in a position to go into the house and free the chickens which I imagined were roosting in the basement—I wanted to open a bulkhead unnoticed and let them out. While I had no idea where the foxes were. The black one was, specifically, mine, while the white ones were a bit more wild cards. As I write this I realize they might have been ghost foxes because, when nobody but me was looking they ran past me and out the front door squeezing easily into a crack that ran down the center of it. As if they were ghosts. Which they weren’t not I suppose. But really who the hell knows. We had breakfast—they no longer do cooked version here which is too bad because it used to be wonderful—and got packed and ready to head to the train station. The train itself was a much better version of the one on which we traveled to Scotland. So that was a small merci. I got some work done but not a lot, but at least it didn’t feel endless.

We got back to Myddelton Square, dropped our bags and headed for dinner at Brother Marcus post train. I order a gin and tonic which I don’t normally drink, but my time with the LLB’s still lingers. The waiter is Italian. I speak to him in it. I must be drunker of this one g+t then I thought. The food is very snack and delicious. I want to live in London. I’m pretty tired of my life on the other side of the pond. I will need to move my series to another location. I’m going to talk to City Winery and see what I might effect. I will write to Mike there. I will end up writing him for sure. I need to get Ellie off the list.

I need to reassess also the whole Scapes conversation and decide on whether to jewelry or not to jewelry. I fear that having not done a Christmas show last year that we won’t ever do one but I am going to see where that energy goes in the coming months. The summer should really tell us what’s what. As book plans have changed I need to refocus energy and rework my schedule. Soon I will be able to focus this Blague back on its original ways and means. The house cleaning soon begins. I’m glad we will miss the winter in New England as it is just too much to bear. I am going to make this a most fruitful year on every level. I know I don’t need to worry. Because, as we often say: If you’re worrying you’re not working (and by that we mean functioning). I need to be something of a beacon now and make this time about health and healing.

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

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2021 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved. Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2021 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox.

Pisces 17° (March 7)

Awoke at 3:33 like in the days of yore. And yet I don’t feel too too tired. Rather I feel that I am making some progress at least and I know if I hit my marks today and get about five pages in the can, then tomorrow will be bringing it all home and that can feel pretty awesome and still on schedule which is the most important thing really. It isn’t all the much to ask. Trying to understand where my head is. Today is my first of ninety days detoxing,which will bring me to June I can only imagine that the following six weeks will be about a bit of fun and sun. I want to feel as well as I can before heading to Italy. There is a certain amout of pleasure in writing this book that hasn’t happened with the previous ones. That is to say I can be pretty relaxed about saying whatever I want and I don’t have to focus on sex which is a real relief. I’m interestedin the roll-outs. I want to make good on and with what I’m doing. So far we have a nice rapport going and, even with the change in pub date (so much better) there was no agita in that process. 

Okay going to do a bit more drafting….

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my Blagues, nos. 1696-1700. 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.

Up at five o’clock and in an Uber by six to get to Euston station to catch the train to Edinburgh. That was fine although one had the sense that the “first class” service wasn’t exactly up to its usual speed; still, each time I travel anywhere in Europe or in the U.K. I am reminded of just how disfunctional American life, and its so-called private and social services, truly is. Euston Station compared with the horrific Penn Station; Heathrow vs. JFK. Please. Did a bunch of writing and scheming and such and by the time we got to Edinburgh we were ready to get off the train. Only to have to get on another one in just over an hour’s time. It was rainy outside so just as well that we stayed inside Waverly; but the train from there up to Pitlochry was seriously unfun. I see where Jo might have got her idea for the mean trolley lady. We were starving and tried to get to the café car, or rather S. did; only the trolley lady was already heading our way and wouldn’t let her of any othe passengers get by, which made no sense because there were plenty of spaces/opportunities to let a person pass. S. and the other passengers gave up thinking that they would get to the café car once trolley crunt had passed. But troll-y, who wasn’t Scottish but some kind of eastern European with snail blood was determined to block anybody. Finally, finally, when the journey was nearly over she went passed and S. got to the café car, but by then it had run out of food. This was a bad sitcom episode. We bought some crisps and other sundries and grumbled it down. We got off at Pitlochry where the taxi awaited us and drove us about twenty minutes to Aberfeldy. The reception was one and same with the restaurant bar; we checked in and asked if the LLBs had yet to arrive. They just had. We got to our room and I saw a text beckoning us to come to them for a drink. We wore our coats thinking we would stop by and then go for the walk we planned to take. Well that didn’t happen. They poured me a gin tonic and I went down to get S. a wine. Our room seemed fine but the LLB’s had something more of a suite, so we inquired about moving but the hotel was fully committed. We drank and then decided not to wait for our seven forty five reservation, but to instead go down and have an early bird special which our advancing age now affords us.

The food was surprisingly good. Laurence orded an Argentinian Malbec much to my consternation. Not so fast. I explored oher options on he menu and decided to concede which turned out to be a wise thing because we ended up drinking several bottles of the stuff and (spoiler alert) walk up feeling fine the next day. I had a beef madras and S. had the bang bang chicken. We had some kind of starter which excapes me now writing this days on. After dinner the shenanigans really began. We sent back to the LLB suite and spent another four hours talking, laughing, recalling and bringing up showtunes to which we could sing along in turn. I had no idea that the LLB’s were wont to go there, so it was so fun and expressive and such a laugh. I went down for another bottle. We have video of singing numbers Evita, Ricky Horror, Cabaret, Hair and there were surely more that we didn’t catch on “film.” I am struck by how easy it is to be with these two. They have always been exactly this, which means to say that, at twenty, they were comparatively grand delusional (because we didn’t know what they knew: that they were going to fulfill the destiny of being household names, for starters). I truly love them. And I suppose it might be considered ironic, in the end, that they are in fact the most authentic, genuine people I know. They have a grandson now who is three and whom they love so much. They live on a sort of family compound out in the country and it sounds so wonderful. As the non-breeders in the troop, there are times when tales of family dynamics and so forth really do impart a kind of sadness—not too, too often thus far in life, still more and more as time goes on. But any pangs of jealousy aside (because it’s not really that, never that) it just sounds so grand and scruffy all at that same time to be living with two daughters and their partners and a grandchild (with more to come) and cats and dogs and chickens and whatever other kind of livestock they might have floating around them. And in the end, I think Laurence has emerged as the most menschlike of us all, despite his fame and flights of fancy. I do truly love these people I must say. Even more so now I know that we can fall into home karaoke at the drop of a jazz hand.

With still some other Blague entries left undone, I have four to do to catch up on so to coincide with the present day. This will be a difficult challenge but I have decided to be up to it and get right up to speed. There is much to do in the new year; even more so there is much to be. I will find out that a friend who always comes to see our show at Joe’s was disappointed that we didn’t perform this year so she bought tickets to Sandra Bernhard instead only to report back that the show was boring and didn’t hold a candle to ours in terms of entertainment. In the past I might find a comment like that to be rather hard to believe but I am now of the mind to accept comments like this as truisms. I think the apologies I have made for myself are indeed now a thing of he past. I must turn the corner on so much of it. I will reach out to that guy Peter M. in coming days because he and I do have some overlap, being that he also produces artists. But things like this often prove to be disappointing. There is always that little bit of ego that crops in. Well not always but most often. After spending days with lovely friends the last thing I need is attitude from competitive strangers and the grandstanding that characterizes the underconfident. Boring. I am remembering the good and loving and supportive energy that I am blessed to enjoy in this life and I am not letting the rest of it get me down, so help me. So back to the story at hand on this day…

Okay so last night was fine-ish. But around five a.m. I was awakened from a dead sleep thinking S. was up and about doing this and that. Turned out the people in the next room, with whom we shared a paper wall, decided to unleash a bull that richocheted around there room. It was awful and after last night it was the last thing I needed. It happened again around seven then again around nine, not that we fell back from five because we did not. S. was having none of it and beelined downstairs to demand a different room only to return deflated because they didn’t have one. Being the New Year, people had rooms booked for months if not from a year ago. We said we would meet for a late breakfast that goes until ten so we headed down at nine forty five and Jax had said that Larry was still snoring so I expected her. Instead he came down looking highly reluctant and made shaking motions to signal his nerves were a bit shot from last night’s fun. I had the meatiest, greasiest breakfast I could order. Jax didn’t surface–something about her hair. L. brought her up a giant eggs Benedicte. Despite S. being shot down I managed to convince the staff to let us change rooms. So I spent the morning bathing and packing. I think S. had some appointment. We then met up again with the LLBs for lunch—we put our name down at three lemons—and went for a walk. People stopped to ask me to take pictures of LLB of course. There was some shoe shopping. And we all had to get bits and bobs and the pharmacy; and LLB needed more gin for his room. At lunch we ran into friends we would have expected to meet. And we talked about going to Venice together as the LLBs are regulars on that scene and we have never been.

I really didn’t intend to drink at lunch but all bets seem to be off and I followed Larry and had a stout. And then another. The girls shared a bottle of wine. We then went to our rooms to dress for the evening. I thought I said this but we met up with the mythological other couple attending the party (obviously they were in costumes) and all shared a car. The party itself was really fun. Stomp and Queen (with Adam Lambert) performed. I stayed pretty sober most of the evening but toward the end, when it was time to do some dancing, I let loose a bit. I always seem to encounter Neil B and his wife toward the end of these parties and I mentioned I was leaving my whole kit at the party which I did. Earlier on D. N. hung around with us and I honestly couldn’t understand anything he was saying. He seemed totally together but was obviously really quite drunk. No physical change in his behavior but his words were just so random. The whole theme worked well (being inside an H.G. Wells novel, really); and to be honest I don’t remember much of the ride home although I do remember giving my critique of the whole concept of repackaging Queen. Like you wouldn’t recast John Lennon and George Harrison and call it The Beatles featuring, oh I dunno, Chris Martin and Thom Yorke.

Well I felt better this morning than I truly had a right to. The LLBs met us for breakfast and I had the same greasy meat. We were meant to be back at Jo’s for brunch anytime after 11:30 or something. When we got there we were really the last to arrive. The guy that plays the detective character was there (I realized it was him later). And all the boat people were there. And Willy who was at the party last night of course and with whom I really had a lovely time (reverse foreshadowing) despite the fact the last time I saw her she sort of came for me which was unfortunate. She’s sort of done it before and I really do need to ignore it. Was lovely to see the kids of course and John and David and the whole lot. I had a bagel and some smoked salmon and then we went for a lovely long walk in the wet and green. I had a lovely chat with Aine whom I really hadn’t gotten to connect with much yet on the trip. The LLBs didn’t join on the walk as they threatened they wouldn’t due to footwear issues or just the fact they didn’t want to. Willy was overheard saying that she hates walking outside or something. So more foreshadowing. Scotland really is the most magical place on the planet I must say. We got back to the house and I texted LLBs to “come back,” and learned that Larry had invited the peeps from the hotel, Karen and Kenny to dinner with us (he is a political journalist like the other boat guys), and also J. and F. which was really great as we hadn’t really seen them much. J. was definitely one of the more in cups of the partygoers last night but she seemend perfectly fine today. I really love them and enjoy their company immensely. We were asked if we wanted hot toddies which, you know what, I never knew what went into one. Pretty much everybody had them. I couldn’t believe the Edinburgh crowd drove home last night after the party and then back again today for the brunch. The plan was to then seem them tomorrow when we ourselves get to town. I told Laurence that we had to invite Aine which of course we did, so now we were going to be nine peeps instead of eight which would be fine; but much to my delight and surprise J said she’d like to join with N of course and also Willy and her new fellow. How to explain to the hotel that we would now be thirteen for dinner.

We arrived back at the Townhouse and went straight to break the news in hopes of hearing it would be no problem. It wasn’t not a problem. It took a lot of cajoling and convincing. Finally it came down to furniture and we said we’d bring tables and chairs from our rooms. We got a reluctant yes. The LLBs had already been set up in the bar while we were out for our long country constitutional. Larry had some Guinness and champagne going—a black velvet it is apparently called. I could retch just thinking about it; but of course Jax didn’t have anything because apparently in Scotland they throw the book at you for even the slightest bit of alcohol in your system, which must come from being a very alcoholic culture to begin (and end) with. Anywig, we never even made it upstairs but instead sat in the lounge, the couples, on sofas, facing one another, whilst Karen (half of the other couple, with Kenny) sat in an armchair diagonally facing us. For nearly four hours she sat and listened to us like she was binge-watching a series. The four of us recounted our stories, sort of at, one another, filling in the gaps on stories, reminding each other of things that never made it to longterm memory. Finally Karen said we should all write a book together, which is something I can imagine easily happening. It is difficult for me to sustain a thought right now as I am writing this from about two weeks out, trying to play catch up once again. There is a pattern here: when I encounter any kind of mini trauma or setback my work tends to go out the window. I am sitting here right now in a flat we’ve rented in London and the upstairs neighbors are so loud it’s hard to concentrate. We had a lousy couple of days at the end of last week, leading into the weekend, and it has been hard to recover. I am going to spend as much of this day just sitting here writing and doing little else so that I can pick up what pieces are still available to me. So many have been lost. It is the way it goes I suppose. I am trying not to hang on but instead to move forward. I still have my health which sometimes I think is a miracle. Anyway back to what I was saying. So this went, as I said, for about four hours, and we went up to change and refreshen as best as we could. When we arrived back down Kenny had emerged and we sat down to a new bottle of wine they were now serving (Karen had the benefit of ours the whole time). Not long after J and N and guests arrived and we all settled down to a lovely dinner. The food is wonderful in this place. I was seated across from Willy who at one point said “Hillary Clinton really fucked up.” Knowing she is something of a Bernie Bros. and that she has baited me in the past over stuff (not to mention that she is a good friend to a good friend of mine) I said politely that, well, actually she won the popular vote against all odds—corruption, voter booth tampering, rolls purging, hacking, and the larger insidiousness of foreign, Russian interference. But, truly, it is misogyny that was the main weapon used against her. This was argued for awhile. Then I said that women in all cultures are really the most maligned and disenfranchised of people and made the mistake of saying (because I thought we would beyond the question of my being able to say this or not) that “woman is the n-word of the world,” a valid prospect to be discussed. Forgettaboutit. W said that we can’t talk about the oppression of women without discussing the notion of race; I said I disagreed: that we can certainly talk about the oppression of women in its own right as it is to varying degrees a problem in all cultures, including our own. It was a rabbit hole and we were both terriers digging into it, for too long, neither one of us conceding. Until finally I moved to the other end of the table where the topic was no lighter: the notion of transgenderism in the face of newest wave feminism and the shadowside of terfism. The night did not end on the cheeriest of notes I must say. And I was told in coming days that I told the same story of our (friends) meeting in the course of twenty minutes without knowing it. The multiple nights (and days) of partying had indeed caught up to me.

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

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2021 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved. Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2021 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox.

Pisces 16° (March 6)

I am reading about the goddess Eris in preparation for this day. It is indeed putting me in the mood to understand the complexity of the Gemini. Being all over the place. Misinterpreted nature. All the signs have their paradoxes, especially the mutable (every third) sign of the zodiac, but the Twins are by their very nature the most dual, and rather magically so. Yes get into the magic. Get into the fairies. Gypsies. Unexpectedly I awoke feeling really numb in places so not sure what that’s all about but I’m taking it very seriously. I will end up taking a giant nap and working very little but I’m not feeling stressed at the thought of that. I decided (for some reason)…well let me put it this way I saw in my mind’s eye a platter with tofu and avocado which doesn’t sound that great and even S. thought it sounded yucky. Then I did a search and it’s a thing, with raw tofu, like a salad. I decided to bake the tofu and alternate slices of that with avocado all in a line with toasted ginger and scallion and a dressing I made of miso, roasted garlic, rice vinegar, toasted sesame oil and honey. It was pretty damned good, served with some stir fry veggies. I am steering clear of anything bad for me today in anticipation of tomrrow’s beginning of a major detox. And some writing thoughts:

Whether or not it is a result of Gemini’s archetypal assignation and its suffusion of her metaphysical makeup, even the most enlightened individual born under this sign cannot resist her puckish if not prankish nature, something she oft expresses unconsciously. For example, even if positioned to lead a life of leisure, delegating every chore to a staff of domestics, she may still go through the motions of one who is put upon, and in the extreme. Never mind that Gemini doesn’t believe in not letting others see her sweat, often telegraphing how slammed or in the weeds she is, purposefully making mountains out of minutia; even when there are no deals to make, merch to move, or other such ships to launch, she will occupy her time with elective chores that she will undertake with the same amount of import and frustrated sighs designed to instill in others “the fact” that she works harder than you do. The finer point here is that she is manipulating others’ thoughts, making them perceive a reality of her own divining. It might seem that she is running a special-ops raid remotely from her computer, meanwhile, she may just be online ordering stuff she doesn’t need, and will ultimately return, amid those same loaded sighs. It’s actually a great ploy, preventing others from asking too much from, and overloading, her, inspiring loving eyerolls from those who have her number. Truth be told, from within her signature small orbit, Gemini daily makes magic, forever tinkering with, tweaking, adding little touches, making upgrades to her immediate surroundings, physical and atmospheric, the environment and general ambience of a lifestyle. This is how Gemini identifies herself, to self and others, it is through the presentation of a scene, a field of experience. That’s where the metaphor of the Mercury’s marketplace comes in…but, wait let’s back up: The first sign of Aries is objective (masculine) out-put energy, the second of Taurus is subjective (feminine) in-put energy, and Gemini comes along and combines them both, that crossroads, a place, a setting, a happening.  Birds show off their nest building skills and often it’s decoration, they are also the original buskers, putting on a little dance and music festivals, with elaborate vocals, fancy footwork and impressive displays of fanned plumage. It’s their song of self, singing the body electric, how they signal to others who they are and secure a mate. They are looking to strike a deal, form a partnership, putting themselves at the proverbial crossroads, up for sale, to the highest bidder. Gemini woman feathers her nest, hatches her plans, puts together her events, launches her projects and otherwise makes it all happen as a means of self-expression. She literally puts it out there and when we say it we mean her it-factor, her best expression of self.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1691-1695. 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 can’t say I feel all that terrific today. And I’m kind of over the sloppiness of the situation. Apparently the FIL fell yesterday. He came over with MIL and he wasn’t very friendly. First off, he was told last time we were here that this would now be a dry house. He had asked his granddaughter for beer, she’s ten. There is an embargo on, and we have been instructed not to offer wine or even display it. Well it didn’t make for a very jolly evening. Seems no matter what one is going to be taken hostage by the man in the mood. Apparently he BIL if there was any beer and was told no; so he went and grabbed one he brought from his pocket. Imagine asking when you already have a stash of sorts. Then he asked the granddaughter to ask S. if there was any wine. That was also a no and has raised a lot of ire, which it would from the BIL. Anyway, on the bright side, the kid is gorgeous and had a lovely morning opening her prezzies. And there was Irish soda bread from SIL’s best friend whom I love (and who visited yesterday with her kiddies). And we had some fun doing Mad Libs and I made a soup before the harrumphing no helpers retruned and made noise and otherwise lumped around. Aren’t I nice. All I know is that in less than ninety minutes I am heading to the hair-port and can only hope that the loungers will be open. They’d have to be, I imagine. I don’t want to sit there for hours not taking advantage of what might be on offer. I will try not to snore tonight on the plane. I was fortunate enough to have avoided that fate last evening. I’m so glad we are flying upper class on Virgin because it takes all the pain out of the process. In a world where everything has become second rate it is some compensation. Now that we live in a gilded age part of this trip will be about trying to make the new world order work for me and mine. Wherever democracy is safest is probably where I’ll end up going. Once the oldies in my life finishing kicking the bucket it will be easier to escape Merry Christmas.

When you have no family and friends are hard to find, you can become quite cynical on a holiday such as these. And you think and say things like what the fuck is this mass hallucination that sees us still celebrating some guy’s birthday when, if he even actually existed, wouldn’t have been his birthday but an existing pagan holidays with toys and trees and nothing to do with a supposed Messiah. And this year, especially, gathering with family who aren’t family, while the authoritarian forces are slowly taking over? Yeah okay: Gather with your friends of misfits and pretend everything’s alright. That’s fine. No, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that we don’t really live in a democracy anymore. But don’t worry, you have really cute cats and your new creative project is just stunning. I am going to get some major perspective during the coming months. It’s going to be slightly difficult to go without my usual crutches, but I know that in the end this is exactly what is needed. It will all come right in the end. I will write for five more minutes and then I will start moving my baggage downstairs. I made that soup, as I said. I’m having a bit of wine in the room. We will get a ride from Dobie and drop his mother off first, much to her seeming disappointment. Check in took forever as there were no workers at their posts. We ended up talking to this couple—he’s English, she’s American—they live on the South Shore. He seems like the English equivalent of a townie douchebag and that will turn out to be very much correct.

We arrived at the lounge and the lovely lady checking us in was dressed something like a yankee chic Mrs. Claus. What will happen during the first part of this trip is a rupture and all the underlying stresses will surface along with all the suppressed annoyances and resentments. Meanwhile we don’t know that so it feels fine. I took a picture of the lady and had a vegetarian Tiki Masala. Those people said they couldn’t use the lounge because they were in economy plus but suddenly they were there. They said they talked their way into it because they are semi regulars (or he is). Things were going sort of fine. He is a Scorpio and she is a Virgo, so we should have known something wasn’t going to be right. And indeed it was clear he was a thumb-headed blowhard and she the personification of acquiescence. She shook a lot. She mentioned she had had a child before they met and that the child had cerebral palsy. Fast forward to how the evening ended when I showed them a picture of Nancy Pelosi I had on my phone and the douche ws obviously an impersonation of the orange menace doing an impersonation of the journalist who had a like disability. To be clear, he was doing an evil impersonation of Nancy to suggest she was somehow neurologically disabled as if he was swallowing whatever kind of speak was coming from the fake right news. That was that. I told them they had to get the fuck out of my face. They did. Soon we were called for our flight. It was late and we were exhausted. I had them make up my bed in the herringbone class of Virgin and I ordered food but I was asleep before it arrived.

I was awakened by talking and was aware there was turbulence. A flight attendant had sat down to talk someone through it. It was a sibilant monologue. Apparently I shot her a look. Sorry but not really. I had an almond croissant. Soon we landed and I realized I had already lost my first item of the trip, a much needed pair of reading glasses. I will have to replace those. These things seem small but they do make for a sad and empty feeling, something I am struggling with anyway this time of year, having no family and friends who are hard to find. At the baggage claim the Virgo talked to us and I was having none of it. As I’m writing this I feel like I’m having some kind of allergic reaction. It feels to be all in my head, quite literally. I mean to say I’m feeling a physical sensation inside my  head somewhere near where my throat meets my ears. Anyway. I’m sure it will pass (like the morning dew). Our driver will be late and unapologetic. I realize he’s just kind of not very bright. I sound like such an asshole and I’m not not. Especially today. The drive was fine but slow. London looked good to me on this quiet morning. We arrived at Myddelton Square but driver only took cash so S. had to set off to find some and returned to inform me that our cards weren’t working at multiple banks. Typical. I arranged the bags and drank some sparkling and we set off in search of lunch because it was not time for it. The only things open in Exmouth Market were the Greek deli place and a delicious Italian restaurant where we (I) got into a state. I’m not good at directly communicating my feelings at this point and am being weird and exaggerative, two euphemisms for something worse. I just want to shed some skin and don’t know how to do it. The point is I’m terribly disappointed in what transpired with agent and all that and I simply cannot process it. It is eating me from the inside out. I will reach out to make a plan to speak on the sixth. I really can’t say more about the date at hand other than I came back to sleep and returned to the restaurant at around ten o’clock and overate and overspent and am just plain over myself.

I had this weird dream that I was acting in a play with Lucille Ball. She lived in my (parents’) house in Belmar, New Jersey. And I had to visit her first to pick her up or something. It was sort of like she was coming out of retirement. It was an uneasy dream. I had to drive along the turnpike or parkway to our house in Wyckoff as well. I have a strange numbness. I’m sure from carrying all our bags and so forth. I need a bit of recuperation. I don’t know where I left the bag of food. All I know is I didn’t have it when I returned. And really the last thing I needed was a hit off a joint from strangers. I was having a sort of out of body experience I think. I do not want to repeat this. I forgot to take the necessary required. Tomorrow will be quite a dip as a result of all this. I will have that very scary kind of feeling I won’t know how to shake it. I am definitely not in tiptop form now. I did hope that I would sail into this new reality feeling a lot better than I do. Anyway I have to transcend the cause of all this which is still this crappy book situation. What a lousy bunch of people work in that industry. Honestly, it has never been fun to work in any aspect of publishing. I do have a sort of funny idea of what kind of book I could write but it would be a rather ironic publication. Waking Nightmares Working in Publishing. I do think it could be rather fun to put out there. The stories would run chronologically. The first one would be about Paris 1985 working at Passion (and would include meeting all the friends we now have; Dizzy Place, and the do you sell Passion question, fashion shows, Princess Caroline, Clic, the mini tell, Ilene Rosensweig, Andree Carroon, Stephen Daly (was that his name?) Robert, Maia, Mimi, Stacy Madadam. I applied for an internship I guess. I do believe I remember writing a letter saying why I wanted to be an intern, having no money and having to leave, going to Tilburg in any case; there being a staff party and going to Le Palace, taking Jackie and Lawrence, going dancing at the club privé, David Clark was also an intern, writing about the biologique market. Hanging out at La Palette.

I suppose the next chapter would be Avenue magazine and the move to New York. This would include the Mikail Barysh story, also DV8 and that whole world. It would include acting and Uta and maybe New York Social Calendar which actually happened before the book of the month club and comedy class and all that jazz; perhaps it would bridge into the next wave of working at all the magazines like Detour and InStyle and YM and Paper. I think Paper might have happened before National Actors and all that but probably not. I will need to work out something of a timeline. And then all the fashion show era and pitching to the Face and all that perhaps and working for City TV and the Darren Star bit. All of that would probably go together nicely together. Something about losing all my notebooks at Florent. The rest will have to be sorted out as we go. We know it involves the crap our publishers pulled. People are basically really awful in that industry. We will see what happens next.

Today will be a fun day because it is Louie day. We will go for a long walk and the plan was to hit the Portrait Gallery then The Wollesely, but we were so starving by the time we started walking we decided to eat first and at J. Sheeky instead. A rocket salad and fish pie for me with a bottle of Chablis. That works. The drinking is going to have to stop. I will learn in two days time that there is something called dry January. That’s for me this year me thinks. Seems counterintuitive being away and all that but the fact is I’m here to work. But for today we will enjoy ourselves. The Portrait Gallery was fine. Not everything was to my liking but mostly I would say. And I could tell neither of us was really in the mood for a lot of museum action. We decided to stroll back and stopped at Lambs Conduit to make a little detour only to stumble upon Noble Rot, which we will likely circle back and visit. There was a tiny side road where people kept potted plants right on the street. London is a wonderful place even in its grimness. I am feeling fairly low by this point and upon our arrival back at Sadler’s Wells we went to suss out the butcher’s schedule—he won’t reopen for days. We went to the French wine shop and found something really good and were directed to Camden Passage to check to see if the cheese shop was open. It was. Coq Epicerie.

It is one of those December days in London, mild, the street lights reflecting off the wet cobble stones. If ever I could live here I would live right here. I am looking forward to Shoreditch too but mostly this is where I would stay. We are ridiculously blessed that we have friends whoare so generous with us. So with our cheese in tow we headed back to Myddelton Square and had a lovely time playing records and snacking in the sitting room. John Coltraine, Millie Jackson. We talked through some of the stickiness we encountered, mostly generated by me I really don’t want to be the cause of that sort of thing. But I too often am. We talked through the entire entropy of the publishing process. I realize on this day more than any other just how incredibly sad I am. I wanted so much to make this move. And now we will have to confront the situation head on, for real. I am no longer in the bravado phase. I am really truly upset and we will have to address it. I am actually hurt by the initial suggestion by M. in the process. I know these things will happen in waves, coming and going, the feelings of disappointment and rejection. One of my pet peeves is people who type really loud on their laptops, or as I like to call it slaptops.

I am really needing to let go of all this and more. The friendships; the feeling that I’ve made so many connections for so many people and they seem not to care enough to keep me in the picture. I’ve been a happy connector for people and I just don’t see why it is that I am so damn dispensible. But I have to not fight it. I must accept and move on. I am truly ready to do that now and I want most to triumph over what used to threaten to bring me down; there are so many more good things to look forward to and I cannot continue to try to get blood from stones. I will put my mind to the positive things and what that actually requires is severing all the emotional ties of the past. I have had the fantasy of disappearing into the ether. We shall see what people are made of. Espeically those who might just want to make money from us and nothing more. That will be eye opening to say the least.

I think what added to my sense of depression and loss was my sense of depression and loss. Losing things has been a theme, whether it applies to my ready-readers or opportunities passing me by to friendships that need falling away by the force of their own weight. I will spend New Year’s Eve writing out my affirmations and getting a fix on my finances and finding a way to further my aims and speed the plow. We are obviously being funneled in one direction and it all comes down to that. I will do a little math and I will make all the cash myself. Not only that I will make sure that people are properly dealt with and, not only that, but I will make it my goal to get my rights back. Examples will be made and the justice will be swift. We shall see that it is wielded because we are not afraid. People are not going to be able to get away with what they determine to get away with. And at the same time I will let the past be the past and move forward that much more singlemindedly. What is working is going to work really well. And we have time and inclination and energy and fortune on our side. I will make a success of all of this and I will live somewhere where it will all make sense and all be empowered.

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

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2021 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved. Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2021 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox.

Pisces 15° (March 5)

I’m going to call what we got yesterday some very good news. I am transitioning today but speeding the plow nonetheless. I slept through the night for the first time in over a week. The mandate no matter what now is six pages per day, beginning as early as possible, living on farmer’s hours once again. They have finished reading the covid relief bill. I hate Republicans. I suppose I feel a bit more protected now and looking down a cleared path and I’ve started to articulate our part in what will be mediation. And I feel happy and optimistic about this book which has felt like pulling teeth but truly isn’t actually. The hard work that I have done, all the stressing about it, even, is why I am here now; and that is actually really fine. I know I am approaching a time of increasing facility with zero fucks to give. Plus I really wish to be in the best shape of my life. Going to start counting my friends one by one. I don’t need a big house is also part of the good news. I know I won’t be buying low per se but that too is a-ok. It’s going to warmer and lighter longer. Everything I’ve done, preparing for lawyers and inevitable moves, is going to add up to ease now. I did all the heavy lifting and now I can leave it behind. Soon it will smell like Spring. Night time can be about packing and moving. If we find a place nearby I can do all the little stuff myself and keep our car. I am going to do a spell (with a special kit we have) to bring this house to me. For some reason I see a small shack in Truro this time, which could be really nice. Easy to get to stores and even more valuable in the end. I really do want to stay put.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1686-1690. 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.

Where to begin. I feel like starting it all up to be honest. I want to start me up. I’m going to follow through shooting the moon. I’m sick of cancel culture and I will continue the story I started yesterday. And I will gently urge…that’s where I ended writing on this day now four days ago. This is what always happens—I get derailed. So it is now the 22^nd. Last night was meant to be our solstice show at Joe’s Pub, but I barely even remembered it was solstice let alone did I commemorate it. When people treat me badly I pile on and treat myself like crap. This is what always happens. I further blow up my existence and then I have to spend time picking up the pieces. It isn’t enough that I have a full plate and that I’m leaving the country for months and am enduring the usual stresses that entails. No I have got to make it worse. And there are always the usual and unusual delays. Like this week was a horror of getting my new phone and computer sorted. I am now typing on a new mac and the keyboard is so loud. I hate loud keyboards. If you know me you know it is just one of my pet peaves. I have so many of those. More than most people. I feel broke on so many levels. I suppose I shall get back to the story at hand although I must say I have lost much interest on that score. Anyway I need to recall what was happening on this actual day. I think this would be Wednesday. I know that over the last couple of days I did send out a number of books.

In the wake of the publishing of Sextrology, Elaine Markson quietly and unofficially retired and we were often on the front lines with the various departments at Harper. There were a numbe of foreign deals made, not without some foibles on that score, but nothing we remember. We just know to explore this since Liz Sullavan intimated in our meeting at the Marlton that something was amiss with the rights department.I don’t know if I can do this actually.I think I won’t. What I will do is cut and paste somethings.

I sent this to Meg: When Sextrology came out Stephen H was the publisher at HarperCollins under which our imprint, Harper Resource,fell—he was Megan N’s boss and was replaced by Joe Tessitore who I think recently passed away.Fast forward to 2013, Steve writes to say he is setting up his own agency and would like for us to be his clients. He says he thinks we should do a “Birthday Book” concept. We say that we have a project in mind, we call BBOD, which remains on our to-do list of books to write (as we’ve mentioned to you). He says he wants to set up a meeting at Abrams just a meet and greet, not a pitch scenario. We say fine. We go to Abrams, we like each other, then Steve pitches his idea for a book, not our idea. (He also showed up an hour late, wearing shorts, and, afterward, was a bit too “celebratory” at lunch for our liking).  The Abrams folks we met were Holly D. and her colleague at the time David somebody. (Note from her to Steve post-meeting is below). We decide not to sign Steve on as our agent—we were not interested in writing his idea of a book—and so we completely drop out of publishing at this point to focus on our private consultancy and self-started projects. We don’t know what exactly Steve would have said to Holly. All this to say: Do you know if Holly is still at Abrams? Is she someone we could add to next pitch list of folks?

Then this: Cool. We have our thinking caps on.

Honestly, though we always rise above and make the lemonade; We have been quite upset by the Harper thing. I’ve spent the last couple of days doing some narrative therapy which has helped a lot. Still, what keeps coming up is how much crap we put up with and forgave HC (some hair-raising things that would strike you as painfully comical if not completely unbelievable) like the pretend book tour Kate Stark fabricated before leaving Harper just as our book was coming out (I kid you not) with fake flights booked and appearances at Book Soup and Booksmith in SF. HC ended up writing us a check to design our own book store which ultimately included those two places.

And this is just one of the trauma episodes coming up. Yet, we forgave them all their trespasses and still now don’t know what it is they still have in their bonnet about us. Because Harper didn’t buy Sexxtrology to begin with, and we ended up on their doorstep, they were one big Miss Minchin to us the entire time. None of the people we know of (who were  there at the time) are even still there. Despite the crap we went through we remain friendly with folks we first worked with; and have tried to forge trusting and collaborative relationships to those who’ve inherited us, pinballing from one imprint to another over the years. At some point I think we will need to know exactly what bee they have in their bonnet; we feel whatever is being said by whomever is messing with our livelihood and that is truly upsetting. But for now we are doing our best transcendence act

And this I sent to Mary Ellen C.:  I hope this finds you well! You’re probably like What The…?

I am working on funny stories about our experience in the publishing world and I am trying to piece together a timeline in so doing

When Sextrology was about to be published I think both Megan N. and Kate S. left HC and you came aboard, is that right?

I think also that Joe T., whom I hear is no longer with us?, replaced Steve H. at the same time? Steve actually wanted to agent us a few years back and I recall that he was a bit bitter about all that. Anyway, I’m off the point…..

This is my recollection and I wonder if you have the same one: There was this whole west coast book tour set up for Starsky + Cox (by Kate before she left) including TV appearances and radio and airline tickets and book store events at Book Soup and Booksmith in SF. We received an entire itinerary I remember and we tried to follow up about the plane tix and such only to discover that the entire tour had been fabricated. No tickets purchased. No TV appearances. And the bookstore owners had no idea what we were talking about when we called about our in-store events. Do I have all this right?

I do remember you and Joe decided to write Stella and me a check so that we could re-create the tour ourself and then some. We used the money very sparingly I know and did appear on KTLA in Los Angeles and at Book Soup (where friends of Tori Amos came and gave her a copy of our book which inspired her to write “Goodbye Pisces,” crediting us in her own book about song writing called Piece by Piece!!) and also at Booksmith in San Francisco where the Chronicle did a wonderful piece on us that really got the press rolling.

In my mind the check you gave us was for $3K. Anyway the funny bit about SF was that we stayed at this cheaper hotel owned by the Triton hotel and they piped music into our room. We had done the Booksmith event and they made Starsky + Cox “trading cards” as they do for authors. I said (never being a baseball fan) that the only cards I ever collected were Partridge Family cards. The morning after as we packed to head for the airport they piped “I Think I Love You” into our room. I got to the airport and used the mensroom and in there was Brian Forster who played the part of Chris Partridge on the show. I said “I used to collect your cards when I was a kids, so here you go, take one of ours!” Isn’t that so weird and synchronistic. Then again stuff like that happens to us all the time.

Anyway, I hope this jogs your memory and anything you can add to this story would be much appreciated. Everything happens for a reason and on some level I suppose I’m grateful to Kate Stark for faking our book tour before quitting Harper!

Yesterday I went to Yarmouth to the dermatologist and made the mistake of passing through some old haunts. Thre is a new online newspaper called the Independent to which people are contributing. I will only do so if there was money in it. It didn’t help my mood to take this trip today. I have a bunch of errands to do as well and that’s fine. I fell off my yoga wheel and will try to get back on during the course of the next couple of days. I’m giving myself ninethy minutes to write the next three days of posts because, if you’ve been paying attention, we are late to the party. Okay so here I go, kicking into a sort of hyper mode, which is the only way to go. I drove past the West Dennis beach I drove up Old County Road. And then made the mistake of going up Gorham, ours is the only house on the street that exists solely in memory. I want to get and stay ahead of all the curves. I want the pain I feel to fuel something. I am frightened of this trip ad of myself. I am tired of the withholding way that so-called friends (who never really were) are wont to treat me. I am going to get into this feeling today and I am going to accelerate it into a burning feeling of fiercity. I’m tired of the self-promoters and all their bullshit. I need time off to fucking get my brain around everything that is now happening and I don’t see why I shouldn’t. I am going to try and book some low-key characters. I have to shed five pounds in the next ten days. That is something that must occur. It should be easier. If I can just stop chowing like a pig and drinking like a fish. That messed up Shari E. who stood us up all those years ago—figures, as she’s a friend of that soulless Jack P.—well turns out that she is a major Qanon Trumpster. Big surprise there. We took down all her art and will likely burn it. I’ve lost so many things I’ve loved it’s not hard for me to lose shit I don’t care about Merry Fucking Christmas. Oh, man: I have no holiday spirit to speak of. Negative holiday spirit. I’m so mad at the world this week. But it’s no use pretening I’m note. I have to go through this as part of my process. Not meant to be speaking to the usual middle wo/men until after the holidays. Once I get the full skinny I’m going to go for the jugular. I know the universe can do the work for me. That will be my m.o.. There is not only no reason for revenge; it actually does the opposite of the desired effect.

And so I try and try to turn the corner on this particular issue that is burning at my core. I spent so much of the year writing a book and trying to get it published. The first round people didn’t bite as expected. Would that we didn’t’ go from “I’ve got so many editors chomping at the bit” to waah, waah. So that will be the first thing to figure out: How can that be. That will be the first thing we tackle. The second thing will tackle is this bad wrap bulsshit by HarperCollins. I will pick up the thread and write about the fact that we wrote for the worst person ever Joe Dolce (well actually his boss Bonnie Fuller was the worst person ever). I hope they are Googling themselves and see this. There have never been more unspiritual, soulless people than these two. At least I’m lucky enough to say that. So wow, yes, this is a purge. I am getting out all my vitriol. Underneath it is me, HI!, Quinn the Kind. I promise I haven’t gone to the dark side. I just need to release this shadow. I need to get to my truth. I will happily write a tell all. There is so much to say and do and so and say and say say say. Sherherazade. I don’t mind the free association. We had a mini vocal band back in the day called The Free Associates. It was a fun offshoot of the other more elaborate jam bands I was in. With my so-called best man. Ha! That’s a joike. I have always attracted the same one zodiacal sign as my best friend for as long as I can remember. And they always betrayed me. Always turned on me. They were always insular and selfish. I think I bring out the worst in this particular sign. Have I said enough already. I’d like to think I have. I have so much more to get to and I don’t know that I ever will.

You say you want a resolution? Well, you know, that is a very Capricorn thing to do. We are posting a lot about this sort of thing on social media. Sometimes the post hit FB but mainly you need to follow StarskyandCox on Instagram for the full effect. We are trying to be better at social media. Apparently having followers (which so many people just buy anyway) is more important than having actual readers of ones work, and by that I mean books. Just when you thought traditional publishing couldn’t be even more twisted, venal and celebrity worshiping. But let’s not talk about that. Let’s talk about cancel culture instead. It is so much more fun. This past year I had an artist cancel a show very last minute leaving my non-profit holding the financial bag. Do you think this artist cared? No they didn’t. But it doesn’t stop there. The artist then turns around and bad mouths the very non-profit that spent a ton of money to support them and with witch the broke a contract without batting an eye, let alone exhibiting a conscience. It’s more than galling. Another performer last year cancelled out on a series we put on which meaned having to refund tickets like crazy. Again no remorse. Anyway this is going nowhere.

A Resolution is a very Capricorn Thing. Shalt-nots being Saturned-ruled restrictions.Don’t bet me started on Moses—ten commandments, tenth sign of the Zodiac—whom God told to build a tabernacle out of Goat Hair. I’m off subject…My Resolution this year is to be an Agent of Accountability in the Age of Cancel Culture. If you bad-mouth, ef-over, gaslight, virtue signal (not to mention break a promise, let alone a contract with me) or otherwise sow any seeds of false narrative (bear false witness) against me, my work or organizations, or anybody I even remotely like, I’m going to call your shit out. I don’t care if you’re a community high priestess or the maharincess of liberal politcical correctness. One of my myriad Libran selves is a bad ass born on the streets of Jersey City; and starting in 2020 I’m bringing guido back, pulling no punches and taking no prisoners when it comes to the very basics of living life by the Golden Rule. I have no more blind eyes or cheeks to turn and there may even be some retroaction on that score. So if you think you maybe got something by or over some proverbial mister niceguy, don’t let 2019 hit you on the ass on the way out.

I’m almost done with this spewing I promise you. I have just a little further to go with all of this and then I hope it will be out of my body. It is more sickening for me than it is for you can promise you that. I’m so not putting up with any crap this coming year. I am so not letting others get away with murder. I am so not letting the ghostlighting and the cancel culture take me down. It is all a mass hallucination on so many levels in any case and I am determined to keep this situation as real as I possibly can. I promise that when I get into the post that corresponds with two days hence I will begin to say positive things. I’m also aware of the fact that I started thoughts that I haven’t finished; but that too is part of the process here. This new laptop has the loudest keyboard I said that but I can’t believe how loud this shit gets. Anyway I want this Blague to be like a big pre-colonoscopy treatment where I get all the shit out of my system. I have had to deal with so much negative crap over the last couple of days and I have not risen above it. I haven’t lashed out but worse: I took it all in. That was my bad for real. And I haven’t fulfilled a number of promises I made to myself.  Anyway, I have once again written enough. Tomorrow’s post may be that much more vehement. But you can handle it, whoever you are.

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

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2021 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved. Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2021 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox.

Pisces 14° (March 4)

Make It Snappy. I need to go back and employ shorter sentences. Thinking more about my meditation and I’m super way into it. It is steeped in the belief that the body can heal itself and that, like so many other things, astrology can be a practical source for meditation and wellness. That’s where I’m going with this. I really feel that I can create a workshop along these lines. I need to catch some lightning in a bottle now and that is exactly what I am to do. The moment I decided to do a nice long clear out what do you think happens? Two cases of wine show up at the same exact moment Tim drives up with a dozen mugs. It will be fun to write some snappy copy for that and put on something groovy for filming. I don’t look my absolute best but I am jonesing a bit to have some fun and make some funny videos. We had a meeting on the ancillary book matter and I think it’s a good idea to get some things moving in the publisher’s direct. Then we can be left alone for a good long time. I keep getting flashes of Ireland which is strange because it so isn’t on my radar.

I tried watching Stanley Tucci host his new Italy show on CNN and, sorry, but he seems so entitled, vain and vapid with nothing but movie star connections—zero charisma nor point of view. You wouldn’t necessarily know it from the title “Searching For Italy” but it is a food show; and yet despite repeating over and over that he’s a “foodie” that worn expression doesn’t even seem true. All he does is stut around in tiny jackets, cropped pants with no socks, taste food and say “oh my God.” Seriously, if there was a drinking game where you had to take a shot every time he said “oh my God,” you would die of alcohol poisoning. His few attempts at Anthony Bourdain philsophy are nonsensical misses, and he actually takes swipes at his guests. (You know how people who aren’t funny try to be funny and just end up being sarcastic and insulting?) There was one take away, however: If you close your eyes, you would swear his whiny affected posh delivery was being voiced by Jack Benny. Hey CNN here’s a suggestion: Replace Tucci with Susan Lucci in Gucci. Even with her years of face work, she can register infinitely more varied and vivid expression than the Mr. Magoo in Thom Browne silhouettes you currently have prancing le strade d’Italia. (Sorry I didn’t get much sleep last night.)

So once again awoke at three and stayed awake only to find that S. was also up reading. We surfaced a couple hours later and managed to score some vaccination appointments so that feels great but somehow odd. Which is how I feel in any case, but I’m getting acclimated to this new era. Got my budgets squared away and have gone through some more notes and then I’m just going to write for a couple of hours today and get to bed on the early. I have pre-preparted a lovely chowder and we had lefties from last couple of meals—last night I marinated salmon in miso and molasses and serves with crispy scallion and ginger, spicy green beans and some potato chips left over from my flounder fish &, plus quinoa tabbouleh I made the other day. All yumster. I’m going to be regaling you in the next few days with more astrology so stayed tuned for that!

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1681-1685. 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.

Ah, Solstice. With the start of Capricorn, the days start getting longer, and, as we slowly celebrate the return of light, we make our new year’s resolutions. Capricorn advocates for keeping it real and doing what we can do in the present to have lasting effects. It is the sign of endurance, posterity and a certain slice of eternity. Capricorn is ruled by Saturn, “Old Father Time”, named for the Titan god of the mythic Golden Age, the “grandfather” of the gods who, with his wife, Rhea (her name means “ease”), are endlessly retiring. The sign and it’s timely resolutions are about retiring certain aspects of self which no longer serve as we mature and grow. On that magical old TV show “Bewitched” Samantha’s parents personify Saturn and Rhea. Even her mother’s name, Endora, portrays the enduring nature of this cosmic archetype. And just as you wouldn’t mess with her, or her errant hubby, you should think twice before crossing a mighty Capricorn witch or warlock.

In ancient times, this week was celebrated as Saturnalia, festival of the god Saturn whose namesake planet rules this sign of Capricorn. Coincidence? We think not. The Saturs (English Satyrs) were goat gods and insatiable in their appetites; and Saturnalia was all about indulgence, feasting, intoxication and orgies. Some unlucky candidate was force fed then sacrificed in a ghastly scapegoat ritual, the ancients believing they were destroying the forces of darkness in killing off some innocent person. Thus the bonfires, the Yule log, and decorating with candles and with wreaths and boughs of holly, garlands and, of course, trees—bringing the outside inside was a topsy turvy way to recognize the the life force in the deadest, darkest time of year. Masters would wait on servants during festival, an aristocratic tradition in Britain and elsewhere that exists to this day. Reversal was seen as a necessary element to enact in celebration at this time of year. So you might ask yourself what needs switching up. And how, at this darkest time of year, you can spark new signs of liveliness in yourself that can manifest with the new year. And what can you rid yourself of and mindfully sacrifice without making any ritual killings that is.

Ring-ring-a-ling. We’d like to propose a toast: Here’s to the lads and ladies who do unto others as they would have…well you get the idea. The Golden Rule is the simplest to live by, but it isn’t the easiest. Look to yourself this holiday season, check your intentions, and take responsibility for your actions and try to keep your side of the sidewalk shoveled. This most magical time of the year allows you to work some real sorcery all your own. Capricorn restraint (and whatever resolution you have planned) doesn’t mean denying yourself anything; it’s about freeing yourself from the unseen forces (a/k/a our conditioning) that make us do and think and say things that aren’t true expressions of who we are. This only makes us feel in conflict and divided. When in doubt, evoke that Rule, and ritualize the Yuletide as a time of certain atonement, that is to say at-one-ment.

Good Tidings! The annular solar eclipse happened overnight, and it is all about fresh starts and putting new plans in motion for the future. And here we are setting off on a new journey of our own. Good Tithings! It is Boxing Day and we have just landed in London where this holiday means something. It’s origin is hinged on putting together “Christmas boxes” for servants and vendors and other such workers on whom more posh folks habitually rely. So it is about expressing appreciation and giving back, things we can do today whereever we might be. Every year, S+C do a ritual tithe, where we provide our private-consultancy services to a few folks for free. To be honest it feels like the most selfish thing to do, because it inspires such a sense of warmth and well-being. So here we are: Taking appointments for the next month in London before settling into Paris, our European HQ, to see even more clients, so many of whom work in fashion and design.

Stella Starsky was born on this date, same birthday as Marlene Dietrich—no big stretch there. Capricorn women, more than any others, deserve the status designation: Iconic. Towering figures, even when tiny (Stella is quite tall), they embody the attributes of their Capricorn-ruled tenth house, that of respect, honor, authority, veneration and influence. Stella has a way of lifting up others, of empowering them, and expecting them to ascend to their best selves. As a Capricorn she embodies the power of Faith, in herself, those she loves, and in humanity as a whole. Like another famous Capricorn woman, when others go low, she goes higher and higher. Drawing on the archetype of the “ascending goddess”, the gorgeous Sea Goat is designed for the slow and steady climb toward self-realization. So Happy Birthday Stella Starsky! Other Capricorn beauties born this day: Lily Cole and Timothée Chalamet.

As mentioned in a previous post, in antiquity this time of year was celebrated with the festival of Saturnalia. The planet ruler of Capricorn was named for Saturn (Greek: Cronus) the deposed chief god of the Golden Age (a paradise of time/space when there were no rules, no lies or crime, no disease and mortals, who lived for hundreds of years, mingled with the gods who then inhabited the earth). Capricorn men draw on the archetype of Saturn, being throwbacks to a more glittering time, encyclopedic in their knowledge of the past, often at a very young age, seeming worldly wise beyond their years. They also have a retiring, laid-back approach to life, being old-souls with a faded-glory aesthetic (not to mention some decadent proclivities); they can rock a cardigan, ascot, pair of loafers, vintage watch and signet pinky ring better than any ol’ boy on the planet. They are rather Saturnine (somber if not melancholic) and Saturnian (sardonic, slow to change, if not effete); and, as the old goat of the Zodiac, may be prone to certain satyriasis, named for the randy mythological satyrs who were forever chasing young nymphs. Hello J.D. Salinger, ef you R. Kelly—even Elvis had a child bride. Whatever savage beastliness lurks beneath the surface of the Capricorn man, to all appearances he is an elegant, soave and debonair fellow, as evidenced by the likes of Cary Grant, Denzel Washington, Jude Law, Morris Chestnut, David Bowie, Orlando Bloom, James Earl Jones, Kit Harrington, John Legend, Zayn Malik, Bradley Cooper and Eddie Redmayne.

The classic Capricorn archetype is Rhea, the sister-wife of Cronus, (Roman: Saturn), namesake of the planet ruler of the sign. Rhea is an anagram of her “daughter” Hera, (Roman: Juno), who with her brother-husband, Zeus, (Greek: Jupiter), inherits the kingdom of heaven (Olympus) and the chiefdom of the gods. Fearing a prophecy he’d be overthrown, Cronus gobbled up five of his six kids, but when Rhea delivered her youngest, Zeus, she hid him away and swaddled up some stone for Saturn to swallow. In the form of a She-Goat (Amaltheia) Rhea nursed her child who grew up to fulfill the prophecy, with his newly regurgitated siblings by his side. And just as Capricorn man and women differently manifest the energy of their sign, if not being diametrically opposed, Cronus-Saturn is struck down, deposed and dissident, while Rhea rises up. Capricorn is the cardinal-earth sign, which translates to a mountain, and Rhea is an “ascending goddess” who takes to her mountain fortress (Mount Ida), her crown being turretted in shape to reflect the elevated spiritual stronghold she occupies. She is the mountain mother, the Matterhorn, the Grand (read: Great) Mother of the gods; but no shrinking violet is she. Sometimes called Cybele, from whom we get the term cymbals, (Roman: Ops, meaning plenty—optimism, optimal, opportunity, options), Rhea may have retired, but she created her own swinging retreat with rhythmic and rather loud revelry. When her grandson, the orgiastic Bacchus-Dionysus, youngest of the gods, comes on the scene, she bequeaths her entire estate to him, including her leapard-drawn chariot, and her entire retinue of party-goers (in leopard print), mainly women, who literally slay men, in ritual killings. There was always human and other sacrifices going on during this time of year. Rhea’s passing the torch to Dionysus is a mythic allegory of renunciation. Called Rhea-Cronus, it is where we get the word crone. Making peace with life’s ephemeral nature ironically allows Capricorn women to glimpse eternity and foster an enduring legacy.

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

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go! Copyright 2021 Wheel Atelier Inc. All Rights Reserved. Get your HAUTE ASTROLOGY 2021 Weekly Horoscope ebooks by Starsky + Cox.