Sagittarius 21° (December 13)

Ron hilliards neck is always red. I am in a position where I could still only salvage once on the line here but really Excel with it . There are so many hours in a day there are so many ways to get information down and to have it be clear and it doesn’t have to be remarkable on the 1st go that’s not the goal anyway the goal is just to prepare the soil right now I’m going to try and get outside and rake up the neglect that’s been left for us to handle also put away all the summer furniture and just really trust that everything is going to workout in a way that it’s not only comfortable but is that much more accelerated and enjoyable for us. There’s a snow coming this week and I need to get someone in place because I know that the neglect will continue and they’ll be no help around here I did put word out on social media about our situation and it really has met with some positive responses and even that has made me feel that much more secure and that there’s a support system out there and I’m definitely going to let myself be helped and guided not going to protect this person. Chris Carter talk to somebody about all this and I think it’s going to be part of the healing moving forward as just a be able to bounce my feelings off for someone else then not feel so alone in the process I know everyone’s going through a hard time right now but really I’m tired of being the friend that always does all the heavy lifting I don’t really find that my friends reach out and contact me it’s always me doing all the work and I think it’s just my choice in France is maybe not that great that’s a big I’m going to examine in 2021 because I do realize after all this isolation that I isolate anyway but by the same token I really want not to do that so I’m going to really work on that second semester. I have a lot I want to accomplish and there’s plenty of time in which to do it all especially if I’m just packing a little bit each night and lighting fires next three months and really enjoying doing that and no one’s going to stop me if somebody tries to take over this house putting me into another construction zone then they’ll be a price to pay for that I want full compensation for everything and we’ve put out there and I’m going to get it. 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1281-1285. 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.

Setting up for the Bill Mahergument. I’ve gotsd lotsa notes on this, all different places. This is where I think I will pick up working my magical way through the little pale blue book, one of my favorite things (favorite rhyming with right!) The blue book was giving me life. Today I must fight the fear that accompanies procrastination. Is it fear or guilt or despair or some major combo platter thereof. (I think one of my greatest psychological challenges has stemmed from a situation that occurred in 2014 which was devestating on a number of levels. People should never be labeled anything. But we all have pain; and I believe we feel it because it is something we must reckon with; and I suppose on that note that I am grateful for the pain.)

I was thinking again about the Bhagavad Gita. For now I’m going to make it all I need as a go to support during the next three and a half weeks. There is something cosmic going on today for sure—today being two days after Thanksgiving, actually, as I’m in the midst of filling in some blocks of text, mainly, for bulk. I do think bulk is important. Anyway was watching Globe Trekker with Bobby Chinn and there is something so weird and cool about him and yet something sad and tricky. A Gemini maybe. Hey I’ll look it up be right back: Nope he’s an Aries and a New Zealander. Sounds like he’s from Brooklyn. Interesting. Anyway, he was doing a show about Ireland yesterday and it was inspiriting and then now today I see this:

I cannot believe we might be going to Ireland. I do think it best we go to London roundtrip. Can we stop and see Jackie and Laurence en route to Wales? Why not? Though I now know they are only an hour from town. Oh well. I wrote Jackie back. She will have written me in a week or so’s time to express her dissatisfaction with me. And then I’ll do something stupid and awkward with messaging on Instagram. (Another) anyway, I go on to say: Ireland is doubltess my siritual home. It rivals Italy for that distinction only wins the contest.

Oh good lord another synchronicity. The next thing in the little blue book is “rearrange living room paintings;” I did that in part yesterday afternoon. Good lord what is going on. I also have a box of frames to go to to match some artwork we have. It’s all in an effort to get back into the aesthetic side of life which must change. The metaphorical age group. That is something to add to the script I think, in simpler terms. We can’t tell you everything is the conceit. Bob Sanborn equals Palm Springs; but I think we decided not to go there after all. If I go anywhere I would love for it to be Europe. I will need to put a Brian King into place to host the evening. Superpower and shadow side, that’s what the show is all about.

I was thinking of shaping a novel around the twenty four characters in sextrology. I think because I am assymetrical I draw assymetrically. Is that a thing? Past and distant past. 1968 and 1806 perhaps. I don’t know I think the original should just be 1805 maybe. The year our house was built the house can even be the model if we wanted it to be. The house should not be big and there should be a creek with watercress. Perhaps I can superimpose the whole thing upon it. The beach and the ponds and the town center and all things historical. I think that would be just wild. I think I’ll have to be something of an historian this year I guess. That and embark upon my publishing dynasty. I need to turn that entire energy around. Also I don’t have to feel bad about certain endings. I didn’t initiate. I do not pretend to seek power by means of elimination like some queens.

---

Owning the sex space is something I think we could really exploit. Surely this dovetails with scheduling a chat with Florian. That makes chat with Florian, Brad, Brian, Lawrence plus clients to fit in before the end of the year. It shouldn’t be that hard. But I do need to start getting these Memos into place. I’m hoping that by the 26th of the month, which is a Monday, I will have most of my ducks in a row; and that I will be free to work on the upcoming show, both creatively and promotionally, for half of any given day, while I tie up loose ends for the year. I often get to this point of near elation; but I also have the experience of it never lasting long. I think back to who I used to be. I might lie in bed and watch There’s No Business Like Showbusiness just because it was on. Without guilt. Whole days watching old movies, most likely, with ice cream. I can’t fathom that kind of whistling in the graveyard now at this point in my life. I honestly do feel like there isn’t a moment to lose or rather waste. And yet I miss the insouciance of my even slightly younger days. I don’t want to spend any time dilly dallying even here today.

I have to put some thoughts down on virtual paper regarding some grant text for Afterglow. Please allow me to double duty here today:

Afterglow is Provincetown’s Live Performance Arts Festival. No other non-profit arts organization is dedicated to preserving Provincetown’s heritage as an incubator of innovative theater and performance The 9th annual Afterglow takes stage September 9-15, 2019 at the Art House. Afterglow has earned star on the international festival map, bringing to Provincetown engaged audiences from the region, country, and abroad to see our award-winning artists who perform in other festival cities New York, Sydney, London, Berlin, San Francisco, Dublin, Edinburgh. Afterglow dialogues with directors of these festivals world-wide. And even our many sponsors, alone, who visit Provincetown each year for Afterglow, are visitors of means who contribute to our economy. Afterglow’s artists make headlines as social icons and activists; and range from the newly emerging to Grammy-, Tony-, Sundance-, Obie- and Academy- award- winners invirgorating the gentre live performance. Afterglow uniquely presents solo plays, neo cabaret, progressive sketch, performance art, multimedia, dance, electronica, poetic/rap, rock opera, musical comedy and other forms, fostering Provincetown’s reputation as thriving performing arts center not just a commercial/resort entertainment town. Afterglow cultivates local talent—performers, directors, designers, choreographers, composers, playwrights —in festival, and with ancillary productions. The festival launched a “playwright’s initiative” and produces work at major venues/theaters under the “Afterglow of Provincetown” aegis. Afterglow honor Provincetown’s birthright as the birth place of the modern American stage, receiving support and promotion from Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater in NYC, and the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge where Afterglow produces the successful Afterglow-at-Oberon series, now in its fourth season. Works originated at Afterglow have moved Off-Broadway, to London, Los Angeles, Paris and other major cities around the globe.           

-0——-

Started cleaning up and was all set to get a lot of tidying done. I realized I had to renew my license which I thought could happen all on line. Nope. Off I went for a forty-five minute drive to the RMV. Ah well: best laid plans, etc. Anyway, it was a forced slow down. And it being election day I knew I had to pace myself in any case. It was a good day election-wise in the end which was good. We just need to find a way to get rid of the orange menance without his killing us all. I swear, I think about that scene where Cerse (sp?) Lannister blows everybody up. Nathalie Dormer’s performance in that haunts me as it is. Just a few days before we head of to London and I really am suffused with inspiration. I am letting the spiritual energy of what I’m calling The Gift to inspire all I’m doing. I look so forward to the uptick in directionality that I feel will now accompany our pursuits. From my mouth to the gods’ ears. Though it does require effort I my part.

I do need to take a bit of a sharp turn if for no other reason than to send a message to myself that I am making marked change. Between now and the end of the year we need to focus on the Z money and being clever; and I have to get my publishing mojo into gear. I do think the next first step is to do rewrite of the proposal, to get it into good shape; and to leave it in someone’s capable hands. We have to get our social media moving in any case. So having widgets is always a good way. And we now have a green light on promoting the books, something I’ll do with increasing zeal as I get the show on its feet.

Oh well I have another block of text I need writing for an upcoming grant application; so once again I’m doing a bit of doulbe duty. You like these glimpses into my world, anyway, right?

Ours is a thoughtfully crafted marketing plan with savvy strategies for public relations and both social media and print promotion. In addition to listing shows and ticket links, the Afterglow Festival website features a concierge service promoting Provincetown’s restaurants and lounges, hotels and inns, shops and services, the arts and events. Our surgical PR-marketing efforts have secured highly visible TV, radio and print coverage. (PBS WGBH, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, others) Besides editorial, broadcast, we utilize promotional events, print posters and postcards, proliferate e-blasts, newsletters, web campaigns, and employ social and other new media. We also use vehicle advertising, and launch successful yearly direct-mail campaigns. We cross-promote with Dixon Place, LaMama and The Public Theater in NYC; and with The American Repertory Theater in Cambridge; and UnCabaret in L.A. Our frequent presence in NYC and Boston, donating time and energy in-kind to Afterglow, has been a large part of our receiving press coverage in those markets, in particular.

Our focus is always on revisitation and are proud of the fact that many regular festival goers return year on year. In fact there is a community of well-healed supporters who not only donate to the festival, but attend each year (on sponsor passes) and make “Afterglow week” in September their yearly pilgrimage to Provincetown. Eight-five percent of our full audience comes from off-Cape Cod. We print programs touting our sponsors, but fail to afford advertising. Our celebrated branding includes a classy, bold logo, identity and collateral and eye-catching posters. We hope advertising will be a new line of offense; with support from PR, shifting more to the national and international level. The impact of local coverage is arguable, while social media among local people and businesses is impactful. We launched a Playbill-Instagram initiative, via a photoblog led by our participating artists.

---

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

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

Sagittarius 20° (December 12)

Trying to make sense of it all but it isn’t as easy as all that. Get into that healing feeling. It’s time for that. I don’t really have that much to say today it’s been really hard getting started on all this larger project work with the distractions of stress and the kind of stress that really doesn’t need to be a part of my life it’s just added on by other small minded nobody’s. And I really do believe that you get back what you put out there and I actually feel bad for people like farmer ******** because he is really seriously messing with his own karma but that’s his problem not mine. I’d like to get more into the dictate function using that to move the spoon it really is quite easy just to sit back and talk and not have to do all this typing and get all balled up in the shoulders. I think that we made the right move dealing with this new council and also I think it was the right thing to do to send a note to the folks down in Orleans. It really was their responsibility to do their due diligence and they didn’t do it and that’s their problem it shouldn’t really be ours anyway I’m just going to keep moving on and try to feel good and relaxed and get some exercise my muscles moving. 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1276-1280. 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.

Wood being delivered today and I will also get industrial vacuum so to rid the basement of cobwebs. Sounds fun doesn’t it? Oh, I’ll also have to put the hoses away. That’s a project in itself. I will forget however to get the storm door put on. I do now have the lease for next year. We have been spending our evenings singing which I think is pretty wonderful. I really don’t know any other couples that go to the piano after mealtime and sing out, Louise (which is Stella’s “Salon Name”). I saw Gypsy again recently and it was really quite great. I love who animated Rosalind Russell is in any case. She is the perfect film star cuz she can deliver rapid-fire changes in emotion and temperament in a very quick span of time which is wonderful for film. In the end it might have made her seem canned to critics. But I couldn’t disagree more. She’s in my top ten favorite actresses because she knew how to work the clutch. This business is half method and half Lucille Ball. I say that with conviction. When I was studing at HB studios with Ed Morehouse, before I moved on to Uta (and then back to Ed ere long)….I was doing the proper thing; I was using my actions and objectives and letting things move in on me and opening to sense memory and all of that but I said to Ed is it also ok to add some, how do you say, performance to all this. And he said, and I paraphrase: Yes, you do all of that. But you also do Lucille Ball. And I knew what he meant. He meant that you had to animate yourself and the scene and all of it for the stage. That there had to be a soupcon of schmaltz, not that Lucy was ever schmaltz. The brilliance of Lucy was that she was an actress and approached even the most camp and crackpot situations as if they were really happening. She was underappreciated as an artist who could do that on the big screen in dramas or classy comedies. She should have had the chance to do kind of movies Rosalind Russell did or Katharine Hepburn did. I remember someone asked Katharine Hepburn about Lucille and she said Lucille is a clown. That I thought was rude. Yes Lucy had the clowning skills—her mentor was Buster Keaton who tought here a thing or two about or thing or two–but Lucy was as good an actress as Hepburn but just didn’t hit that way with audiences. Kate Hepburn we effing lousy until she got to ’39 or ’40. Lucy was always good because she was open and tried. Kate’s personality onscreen wasn’t much different the way it was off. Stage Door is a perfectly prophetic film. Lucy and Ginger Rodgers are cousins. I always liked that fact.

I am super into going back into my cahiers and starting to create a world of developing aesthetic. I am in no rush to do anything anymore. Thursday will be one seventy one. Saturday will be one sixty nine. Monday could be one sixty seven. I begin writing the show. In the meantime I stumbled upon this yesterday:

Since as long as I can remember we have always called synchronicity: sign posts. A string of which one wants to characterize the majority of ones circumstance if possible. Sign posts are instant communion with the infinite/eternity. They say you’re on the right track, keep going. We’re always try to help clients open up to them. The night before last Penny Arcade participated in an art show and addressed the audience, touching on the subject of synchronicity. And how ones life should be all about it. The way she deliverd it was hysterical. I can only paraphrase: something like: If you’re not experiencing synchronicity with some regularity by the time you’re fifty you’re pretty much fucked. I could feel Stella mentally raising the roof and silently offering amen, as I was. So yesterday I found a journal from 1992 and thereabouts. I hadn’t opened it since. I had decided in the morning I was “going to do nothing all day” which, I find, can be a recipe for a) doing more than usual; while b) letting things happen to you. So I sat and went through this journal for a few hours and of course there were phrases I still write in journals. You know those. When you’re like, holy merde, I was saying that to myself all the way back then?…The physical journal itself came to me in a magical way. It was an empty book, blank white paper, hard red cover; the only thing in it was a title of sorts cursively written on the overleaf, in pencil—to be revealed at a later date!—and the price of 50¢ in the same pencilled hand. I wrote in it during a difficult chapter in all our lives. So many of the loving lights in our lives were being snuffed out by AIDS. The pain was palpable. And its all over the journal. As is synchronicity which suffused my Sunday, yesterday. In real time the journal chronicled the years I worked with Tony Randall’s National Actors Theater. My first year I was an intern and something of a costume-changing live prop in the Feydeau farce, A Little Hotel on the Side, at the Belasco. The second year I understudied three parts, and went on for a run in one of them, in The Seagull, directed by Marshall Mason, at the Lyceum. Marshall was also directing Larry Kramer’s The Destiny of Me, downtown, starring John Cameron Mitchell. Marshall took us all to see it and that’s how I first met JCM. The journal is this double helix of absolute elation at being on Broadway as a young actor in New York and of utter sadness, fear, dread, horror and surpassing anger. Finding and reading this journal brought me right back. As did, of course, Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart last night on HBO. Then an actor I hadn’t seen since she too appeared in A Little Hotel on the Side: Daniele Ferland, who was already a great actress as a teen when I first met her, appeared in the cast. More Proustian waves. And, in a particularly poignant moment in The Normal Heart, the mention of Wellfleet from whence I watched. Then Mad Men was waiting on demand. Robert Morse. That same Seagull year at NAT we performed a benefit for the company and I got to share the stage with that genius. I watch Mad Men religiously. But last night, as it began, I thought I’ve loved Robert Morse since I was a baby. (I remember thinking it was aweird-glorious synchronity meeting him at the time—but, as it was, I had been working on a Tony Randall impersonation at Gotham City improv when I first met him, so I wouldn’t say I was getting the feeling I was conjuring people to me, but I wasn’t going to discount the possibility either). So last night watching Mad Men I thought, I’m going to take to social networking today singing Robert Morse’s praises. And then a prescient flash. I have an inkling: this is going to Robert Morse’s episode. And so it was. And in such I way—I won’t spoil it—that makes the hair on the back of my beyond still stand on end. Yesterday was potent and affirming and fun.

---

I couldn’t even tell you what happened today. All I know is that I’m getting a bit weird. It’s the repetitive writing work. I’m not in control of it somehow, but I know it will come out alright in the end. It sort of has to at this point. We’ve been social in the evenings which is always fun and there is so much to be thankful for and so much to look forward to. I think of my young friends who died. I always think of them this time of year because my first experience of this was when my close childhood friend died in 1988. For the first time ever I Googled him and discovered he was a year older than I thought. He must have been kept back a year in school? But he was so brilliant; but probably impossible to control. Or the online records are incorrect. Anyway he was the first to go. We were just rekindling our friendship and I could tell we were about to embark on a major new chapter but it was never to be. So many things never to be. I believe that I am at a crossroads today and I have a choice here whether to survive this turning point. It’s always hard to move forward because you then have to admit that you squandered so much of the past. I did that. We all have I suppose to some degree; but I do feel a lot of regret and pain over bridges burned; but if I live in that I will never make it into this next important phase of being.

I’m excited to move forward I actually need to move forward. I want to feel new feelings. I can’t keep dragging some past behind me. I need to make new magic and hopefully, in so doing, I will be able to repair. It’s already happening. I’m not going to be rushed. I’ll get to stuff when I get to it. The trip is already shaping up to be quite business-y; it’s a great boon that that is the case. And it looks like we’ll be able to see all our friends after all. It’s time to change the narrative in a major way. It reminds me:

There comes a day, after a sleepless night, when the anxieties of life morph into purpose. The impetus to express what that is inevitably fades in the attempt. There is the retreating regret that it has taken some fifty years for some semblance of revelation to occur. It is alchemical, the shift. And it must be total.

I’ve always suspected that life couldn’t be lived in half measures, though I see others do so, seemingly succesfully, all the time.

For me, on this day marking the first third of a year past my fiftieth birthday, I can be filled with recrimination for any so-called waste of time I caused or I can see it as an accumulation of fuel to further myself and “sin no more.” And just plan to live longer.

I glean in myself a dual purpose. A most original but heretofore largely ignored, save in spurts, dedication to the theatre; and one devoted to the continually unfolding discovery of my spiritual self. I enjoy the fact that stage and sacred space, theater and temple, performance and priesthood are historically and culturally linked, once one and the same.

Synchronicity is symptomatic support by the universe of ones realization and pursuit of their individual spark of purpose.

I needed reminding of the above. Everything is all of a piece. I need to limit the distractions now at this point. And to tie it all together

---

I have never really liked Halloween. I have a lot of trauma surrounding it I think. One year I wasn’t allowed to go because I had to go to a Giants game with my father. I hated going to the Giants games. They were so boring. They never through the ball. It was just constant grunting and drunk men peeing in giant troughs. It was just disturbing over all. When I would go I would end up being tortured somehow. Or it was some kind of reminder of how marginalized I was by other kids in those years before high-school popularity popped in. Lots of urban myths surrounding this day. And it always seemed a holiday for the low-brow. Roseanne likes Halloween. And the population of Provincetown loves it too. But nowadays the people that populate the place all seem to have expert costumers, hair and makeup artists. It’s just a stupid holiday overall. And one reason never ever to move to Salem, Massachusetts. I do want to make some strong decisions and some bold moves. I need to limit what we do overall and to focus, focus, focus. A blast from the past:

 The Aries Woman

She likes to be pursued and can be quite cool and aloof, deriving a special thrill from watching her suitors fight over her. In a love bond, the Aries girl tends to wear the pants and often prefers flings to more serious relationships.

The Aries Man

He needs to be the pursuer in the relationship and will fight for the woman he loves. But he’s also unapologetic in his brash approach, just as he is about his sudden disinterest in a woman. So it’s best to try to keep this man guessing.

The Taurus Woman

She needs to be prized and often prefers all things feminine, if not a bit frilly. This gal also typically has a checklist of required attributes in a partner and she’ll hold out for “the one” to come along. Patience is a Bull girl’s premier virtue.

The Taurus Man

He needs to be worshipped — in the worst way. As the zodiac’s “collector,” he likes to know there are many women carrying a torch for him at any given time, but he’ll appreciate a take-charge partner who outshines all others in her pursuit of him.

The Gemini Woman

A Gemini woman is really into messing with a guy’s head. She likes to be in control, and yet she’s also the most vulnerable of the signs.

The Gemini Man

This is a guy who wants to have fun. His role in all things relationship- and sex-oriented can be related to his Peter Pan complex — he doesn’t seem to want to grow up.

The Cancer Woman

Cancer woman — talk about sexy. Not only does she have a ton of sexual needs but, of all the signs, she is also the most sexually demonstrative.

The Cancer Man

The Cancer man is the greatest lover of women. He’s very attune to a woman’s needs and appreciates really in-charge females.

The Leo Woman

She loves passion, yet she doesn’t want to be overpowered. This woman tends to seek out men who are fiery, but who also love their moms.

The Leo Man

He typically seeks women with natural beauty and can have an old-fashioned view of what a woman’s role should be. Yet, he doesn’t want a pushover — you’ll need to be authoritative or he’ll lose interest.

The Virgo Woman

The Virgo woman is the Eliza Doolittle of the signs: She wants to “do little” when it comes to her relationships. She is also inclined to make herself over into what she believes her man wants.

The Virgo Man

This guy tends to try to change his mate — he has this perfection thing going. Often he ends up with women who find that sort of attention nurturing. There’s an altruistic aspect to his behavior … very Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady.

The Libra Woman

The Libra woman likes pretty mates — she’s very attracted to androgynous beauty. In terms of her relationship habits, she doesn’t want to be second banana: She needs to be in control.

The Libra Man

He is very into women who have both classical beauty and high self-esteem. This guy tends to go for women who keep themselves on pedestals.

The Scorpio Woman

She wants to kill off every bad quality a guy has; that way he can become his best possible self — which means she needs a partner who will let her make him over from the inside out.

The Scorpio Man

He isn’t overwhelmed by anything female. In relationships he is all or nothing, seeking body and soul possession. Scorpios are the sexiest sign, yet they don’t generally feel that way, especially the men.

The Sagittarius Woman

A Sagittarius woman wants to blind you with her radiance. And she typically looks for a man like Sex and the City‘s Mr. Big.

The Sagittarius Man

This guy is very “try-sexual” — he has few boundaries in the bedroom. He is also over-the-top in both his affections and in his demands. Typically, he goes for a glamazon type of woman.

The Capricorn Woman

This woman tends to like her men young. She also enjoys being worshiped, yet she’ll always keep a large part of herself hidden.

The Capricorn Man

This guy can be a tough one, as he isn’t always forthcoming. He is apt to have a wife at home and some sexy sugar on the side (and tends to like ’em young).

The Aquarius Woman

She is the most easygoing of the female signs — she can live in a man’s world, even when it’s littered with pizza boxes. But she always keeps a suitcase packed under the bed … and when she’s gone, she’s gone for good.

The Aquarius Man

This guy wants to play guru and be followed. He also wants to decide what his and his mate’s lifestyle will be like, meaning he has to be with a woman who is comfortable letting a guy make all the decisions for her.

The Pisces Woman

A Pisces woman wants it all: She craves the sexy beast, the artist and the guy who will bring home the bacon. And she often goes from one man to another.

The Pisces Man

He needs a confident woman who doesn’t seek any kind of validation. This guy is emotionally hands-off, believing that if you must discuss or analyze your feelings, they cease to be real.

---

S went to Boston this morning. I am going to try to finish what I started. I will have no distractions (unfortunately) and I will get through the last two signs but for these damned Pisces intros. What is it about that sign that confounds me. Anyway also addicted to new Sabrina on Netflix. I was a huge fan of Archies Comics as a kid. I loved all the gang. I think of them in terms of archetype now. Like I know Archie is a Leo and that Reggie is a Scorpio. I want to say Veronica might also be Scorpio but she could also be a Taurus. And Betty could be Taurus or Libra. I want to say Taurus because she’s the more natural one—the Maryann to Veronica’s Ginger—but she’s really kind of smart and almost a bit androgyne in her spirit so I’m going to say she’s a Libra. And I’m going to make the southern belle that is Veronica a Taurus, because she does have that feigned innocence thing going on.

It’s still a parable bc maybe theres a certain kind of wisdom that is beyond us.Go higher than Bill M. Logical, structured and valid system for self-realizationJung, Steiner, and other mystics an seers that Joseph Campbell bc it is a system that is complex and seemingly very carefully thought out an steeped in myth and therefore imbued with that powerPersonal development Developing our NPR PBS aspect of our brand Which has always been there With wit and humor is a huge part of the appeal

Radio and television is entertaining enlightenment

Cheeky and a bit sexy or provocative

Sextrology the evolution of the writing was a combination of us wanting to assert a philosophy of the signs by gender archetype and yet the publisher was looking for a sexy astrology book, we weren’t going to say no, so we managed to create this high low hybrid that really resonated with readers and was unique to the genre. We’re still unique to the genre. Additionally, we put this fashionable spin on it. Our publishers didn’t believe we would pull of what we did. Fast forward fifteen years and the world has caught up to the genre(s) we pioneered in our chic, progressive way. So yeah…I came upon a list…or rather a sort of collection of thoughts. It is probably nearly a year old.

Event planner list

Magazine editor list. March is the start of the astrological new year. Your Year in Love, Abundance, and Creativity. Paris consultation. Quiet short term let Paris then to Switzerland then to Venice and back then to Zurich and some place fab en route back to Paris. Fashion Week? Fly roundtrip Danish Air.

Well I’m sure it was about the product, or rather about the getting of the money for the product. I need to let people know in no uncertain terms that this is what we’re doing: raising money; and that there is a percentage/fee in it for anyone who brings in X-amount. I want to find the money myself I really truly do. It comes down to asking people with millions to burn—starting with those closest to me, but not those who pay for Afterglow that’s a different situation.

I want to go through and profile people on Facebook, one at a time, to profile who they are and what they do and to outline them. I know I will never do this.  Also through the birthday list to determine what signs they are for the coming year. Also need to make a list of things to discuss with Shira. All these things surface while I’m swimming. Also to revisit the budget and make some magic truly happen in the coming year.

I mentioned swimming which makes me think that I may have made these notes while staying at the Aldwych, which is not only my favorite place to swim but one of my proverbial happy places. As tacky as that hotel can be in a number of ways there is something about being able to go to that pool that is just brilliant. I am headin to London next week—but not staying there—but perhaps I can return to happyville anyway.

A little bit of dada: Slaughter of the innocents. Flow and Ease. Cartouche. Waht was that thing we talked about? Avatar 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Framing lessons? Want to make faux modern art with found paint and objects. What is hay house. Here I am.  I was born with a birthmark that ran/runs from my left breast down and around along my left arm. My family called it the cofee stain.

---

So begins my making some notes for our new show coming up in just five weeks. I’m a bit late getting started but what the hell that’s okay. It will actually be weeks before I have anything solid but the good news is I’m not reinventing the wheel and the song choices will come to light as they always do. Tornado warning in effect now! Academic Taja Peeps. Making molehills out of mountains. Any old crap (a w’s guide). Writing sic. might be in a sense, like writing series of pamplets. I was going to do diary of a n.w…but sic can be writing about writing, relating times in my life in terms of what I was doing with words. The Cosmic Blague and American Baroness are surely our “culural essayist” assays. Both are also deeply steeped in observational comedy. Show-wise, I think we can be sildly powetic, metaphysical, funny, musical, wise and magic.

Gemini: I like the notion of Mercury having the inside track. Expert at lots of business, acting wise, close at hand. Everything happening in quick succession. She’s doing so much. Like a Rosalind Russell.

Libra: He can be the most misunderstood, the most scrutinized or feels himself to be. Libra is great at the outside of ideas, shaping and branding existing entities especially. Not so great with internal process? Not sure about that one. The Candidate & The Class.

Scorpio Woman: Looking for the making of a man. She “catches” ideas like a spider in a web. Perhaps both men and women of the sign seek to catch you in a web.

Sag: Eye on the target but TK a great expanse. Wanderlust.

I was alone this weekend but it wasn’t very eventful. I did get in touch with Dave which was long overdue; and was entertaining watching some James Bond. I cannot crack the code on these two last signs but I will do so by the time S. comes home on Saturday. I am feeling fairly optimistic at this juncture. I have a number of wheels in motion but that is the point: they are in motion. I’m starting to get some design ideas already too which is pretty wonderful. In many ways S. and I are so much in synch. It is obvious to me that I have to be the rather mysterious man behind the curtain with this new enterprise. It’s not a place I want to be the “face”; of course when it comes to events I will be very much involved.

I binge watched all of House of Cards this season and, though it wasn’t the most magnificent thing I’ve seen on television I did think it was better than most and the acting really turned me on. Also just getting closer and, mostly, en route to getting it: seeing Robin Wright in action. There is no better designed mechanism than she walking in heels.

---

Contents of the little blue notebook: Start an “estracted sotries” file into which to flow show, s+c W.I.T. material. Put the sponsors on the webstie. Download contracts G. Potter, Fishback, Illustrious, Tamy Faye. Abel. A serious argument for astrology (I think we will do that tomorrow). Blue Paint, Mail Spot, Yoga shorts. John Kelly; votives.

That little splay of experience in words reminds me of times I’d go to JD’s to bathe. I’d bring all my stuff and sort of plop down in the kitchen and stand around the omphalos, that tree-section round table, cutting board he had. This time of year is tough, with Thanksgiving coming up. I never thought certain experiences would end and then they do and it just feels awful. But reading that wonderful thing today about grief, something I do assign to the sign of Scorpio in that: Grief is an honor of sorts. That when we grieve we give praise. Something along those lines. I’ll go back to the little blue notebook and see what I can find:

Leo man is god co-creator. Lipnik, Krone, Jungr, King, Self, Steele. I am reminded that I need to check in with everybody about their emotional whereabouts. I am determined to take stock of folks. Next Glow Molly Pope? Julien Fleischer? Blue Yarn Sweater underam fix hole white shirt. Confirm. People, whether unconsciously or consciously who seem…Leo woman plays cat and mouse. Superpowers. Dissolving drifting The Sinking siren. 77 Parrats. 78 Grease. Trace’s house (after freshman year) also beach haven with alnors? 76 Traces monica tampon…oh that was 79

Monday. List of outstanding materials. August info build website/exel program. Plop in photos. Make roster. Create tix infor for venue. Flow all to Jesse. Tuesday Book Train and Ferry and Hotel Confirm MFA. Eight weeks offensive.

You have to include everything. You can’t be so black or white. You are not good nor are you evil if you indulge in certain behaviors whether or not said behavior is good for you. It needn’t have resonance behind it’s own action—it needn’t be the sign of some spin down or other. You don’t have prents looking over your should and you’re inot in trouble. A thought that is comforting to know that friends might play that part in your life sometime. You have an off-switch and you know when to use it. Like now. YOu can ritualize instead of rationalize. Imagine that guild doesn’t play a part.

Read the Bhagavad Gita. I cannot believe I spelled that correctly just typing wildly. It’s almost weird that this is true. I have always thought to travel with it and to keep it as my spritual substance. I think I will do that!!

——

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

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

Sagittarius 19° (December 11)

It turns out the bank people are really quite evil. The “security” officer said to be in touch with him any time with further questions and yet he went two weeks without returning a single call or email. Only when I added other people to the email (today) did he get back to me. Poor form. I will have to request a meeting with the manager. I’m also very likely going to move my money to a different back—I can’t trust these people anymore because of that one employee. And the officers of the bank aren’t even contrite so I think it is time to move on. I took a glimpse to my left today and was reminded, by a pair of Marys, that I am not alone. Sometimes I forget. But I know for a fact, I truly do, that there is indeed power and guidance and compassion out there for those of us who endeavor to deserve it. I must keep doing the best I can do which is probably pretty damned good.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1271-1275. 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 woke up less spooked than I did yesterday. There was a tornado that crossed the Bourne Bridge apparently. Given our cheat fest I did not eat breakfast today. I need to let some calories go by. We had a marvelous conversation with a client whom I feel we really helped. Then we spoke to the financial guy on our new team to get some questions answered for our noon Skype with J+N. Well that went well. We seemed to be totally on the same page and the conversation went very quickly. There will always be trepidation when making any kind of professional arrangement with friends, the bonds of which you seek to preserve at any cost. That will always remain the priority for me with people I love, regardless of any business collaborations. It is amazing how nothing much really changes even with major news such as this. The truth is and always has been that money changes nothing really. I need to be so smart and so careful when it comes to this next phase of life. Still we did have another little cheat day and did toast to this new development, though cautiously not counting too too many chickens. We have a long way to go, and it will be years of working around the clock, to make this happen.

Pipe bombs. This is the day all these threatening packages were delivered. The DOW also plunged erasing all the gains it made so far this year. I’m not exactly sure what that means but it makes me happy on some level because the Embarrasment can’t brag about it any more. So okay. I put together the responses we needed to make to get the deal moving. I cooked a steak perfectly. I have call out to the doctor and I contacted Barneys about my Margiela fix that needs happening. N won’t be coming to London which is a bit of a bummer as I would really like to hang. I have a feeling we will be able to do some sort of last minute plan with P+M, probably, after all. That will be important. I am in one big long process of landing, softly. I need to stay very lean and very sane.

So, again, we put together all the thoughts on investment. The next thing to do is get things set up and ready to receive. Bank accounts and so forth and deciding on what structure this business will take. That’s all that can happen on that right now. Switching gears this is what I am looking at over the next two weeks. Okay so obvs I need to get these books into edit mode. I need to add info to the VSB grant about bringing specific people (sponsors) to town. I need to see if Maria will speak with us; I need to fill out final report for last year and scan all that needs scanning and include all the print receipts and so forth. I need to begin writing the show tomorrow, just a tiny bit at a time. I need to start sending get tix/save date. I need to get Excel sheet of venues to Brian. I need to devise my plan for outreach for Glow to both the artists and new venues. I have to promote the Oberon shows. And also do a last minute outreach to people who can give. I have touched base with the Museum School and also with Tatiana von Furstenberg, and I’m hoping to hear back from them soon.

The argument for Boston/Cambridge HQ. Lifestyle would be the keyword of this option. There would be more room to spread out, both in terms of office/studio, but also as we are talking about a less harried and populated existence. Walk to the Acela when needing to go to NYC, which shouldn’t be that much initially. We would be able to cover expenses with a combination of AC and WA and the new GF, ultimately. Silly things like being able to return to healthful practices. We would be working on the New England consultancy. And the proximity to Providence, which may be a great pool of talent, whould be super easy.

---

Now there are ten pipe bombs. And my eye thing doesn’t show up in old notes so there is that now to deal with. Oh well, what you going to do. I couldn’t sleep last night as I am already, let’s not say obsessing, but I am being vigilant about getting all this new life into play. I have to pave a way to be focused purely, creatively on what the collection is going to consist of and look like. We will have a few off sights after the New Year and get this party started right. We get to look at Paris consultancy now during fashion week. There is an overall elan that goes with all of this. I will surely be looking at budgets and seeing how we can make this work, giving ourselves the basics we need to do this job, while keeping it lean and mean

The argument for New York would be the talent and business pool available to us. The consultancy would certainly do fantastically in that regard. We would probably have a better event business. We surely would be able to work more on the performance as well. It is just kind of ridiculous place. Uptown makes the most sense for living but one doesn’t get a lot for the moolah. But when it comes to shopping, eating and so forth it is really out of control. Even as I’m writing this my gut is telling me that we wouldn’t be happy. It might be that we find a studio there to act as a show room and a home base too for when we are in town. All of it is possible; and we will do whatever best serves the business. I am very much looking forward to this renaissance. The only way to combat the societal blues we feel, very much as a result of social media, is focus on self and ones own creativity.

Even those I know who espouse that ideal, the ones who go off about others posting selfies of them with famous people often then post pictures of themselves with famous people. Those who lament a vanishing downtown NYC or other vestiges of the past in other places to gentrification are those who would sell out as soon as they can. We live in a world of sour grapes it seems. I don’t see the need to continually flaunt the boons in my life. Nobody needs pictures of me at premiers or launches or award ceremonies. It’s all pretty lame stuff. And we do know that it is documented fact that it contributes to people’s depression, sometimes to a very drastic degree. Does it bug me when someone I know who thought I was somebody at some point and tried to friend me and get things from me suddenly disappears or doesn’t seem to want to know me the moment they get some whiff of fame or fortune. Sure. But then again not really.

People have lost their spirituality in a heap of celebrity ussies and posts about their awards or dead pets. I’m so tired of living in so bankrupt a culture. And my own participation in the social media scandal of today will be too participate only as an abstract. Remember autonomy? Remember integrity? Remember anything before NetFlix and the addiction of coming up with euphemism for the orange menance. I do. I think the Amish are onto something. This whole world of technology seems diabolical to me. It’s just a platform of the increasingly mentally ill. I do so enjoy writing in obscurity.

---

It’s Pesky’s birthday today. I think she is in Los Angeles. It is also Maggie Roche’s birthday. Why am I skeptical about Suzzy selling those CDs. The best album overall is the Maggie and Terre one, prior to Suzzy’s joining the band I think. I know that she supposedly gave the band style; and really they were always fun to watch; and I think she’s probably kind of a nice person, though she was terrifying to me when I jumped up on stage all those many years ago. And she clashes with Terre whom I do love; but I suppose there are indeed always three sides to a story; still I can’t imagine the cruelty. I loved Terre’s book Blabbermouth; in fact I’d like to re-read it. I have been thinking a lot about memoir myself recently—as I write this I forget that this Blague actually mainly consists of, now, nearly four years of daily memoir. It’s crazy.

But I think it might be time to work on some pieces of fiction; or fictionalized non-fiction. Ah the post-modern world. It’s filled with such fun. The one positive thing I can say for sure is that I feel that I have some kind of lifeline now. That there is a net. There is a sense of being able take something and make it into much more. It’s been nearly twelve years since the first iteration of the designs were blown up by that Dracula and his Renfrew. But we will have seen what has happened to them. I will take a look now through my spy portal. Ten thousand thieves. That’s really what we ought to call ’em. Anyway it is all information and all bile under the bridge. Too many wonderful and amazing people out there to waste time on the low and evil. I am writing my story. It begins now. We have had a wonderful time even during the worst. So many people I know can only attempt to be happy if high on the hog and even then not so much. So I appreciate where this journey is taking me and I’m ready for the next steps.

There comes a point in life where you have to say shut up and so what. Or vice versa. I have to put solid things in motion and dive deep into this beautiful new phase of life. Living life on deadlines is becoming a thing of the past. Thought is is rather addicting to have gone from school into a world of writing and the deadlines I dreaded writing papers in college in many ways have never become a thing of the past. Now it’s up to me and I feel really good about that. It’s like having money in the bank you needn’t spend. The convertability of it all is what can be the dreamiest bit. Meanwhile we have such an opportunity to set things up underneath the new business, because the old business in itself has a life that has yet to be fully lived in my estimation. After this Blague today we should really find there is a shift. It’s down/up to me. I’ve said that before. And there is nothing like the extention of assists that you’re determined not to take. It’s about having something not to fall back on, or fall into, but to simply know is there and build from.

---

Last night was kind of a blowout. We had an amazing dinner. I cooked. Friday fish. Just why not still do the Catholic thing even though no other aspect of it exists in our lives. And yet I remain drawn to the mystics of that religion, and to the Cathars, part of me wanting to renounce everything, always. I wonder what Sus is doing right now. I know she has a new boyfriend to whom she is very attached. I think he’s a clown or a mime or something, which means both she and Jaq married mimes. How weird is that. Well Enz. seems happy and he’s a pretty good barometer. I just think that those who change their personalities to make a bond tend not to include people they know in said equation, like we will out them. We shall see. This is all very much off the top of my head but no less interesting at least to me, my only reader, except for Erin Markey (yes Erin I mentioned you again in case you’re Googling yourself!)

I find it funny that nobody knows from whence we really come. When I say nobody I mean all the young(ish ) performers with whom I’ve worked over the years. That’s also the fun part. I love all the kids from six to sixty. And/but they are in for ashow for sure. All I have to say and all I have to give can not be compressed into one Blague. It can’t be compressed into four or four-and-twenty years of Blague. I seem to be the character on the outs. Like I don’t get it. I know the world is supposedly moving in certain directions but I’m so not going there. Why, why, why do people have to put of constant pics of themselves with celebrities they don’t even know? What does that do for them. We all know a great many famous people. It doesn’t mean we have to trade in them. I would say Sad but it’s already taken by someone I despise.

This next couple of weeks will be telling. We have tickets out (for a few days) to a sort of ancestral land. I mean, being Irish, I don’t know really where my family comes from. Although I do. My cousin Denise who shares my exact Irish lineage, says we are from Cork and North Connaught. It’s funny how my “very English friends” are mostly not English at all. And probably, in fact, I’m more connected by blood to that isle than they are. It doesn’t stop them from playing the part of course which is understandable. Everyone I know who lives in England, and has has some bare bones of means, have turned themselves into ancestral lords of the land. Who can blame them. I would do the same if I could. There is no American equivalent that makes any kind of sense.

I mean really. Our true friends are the same friends (and associates) dating back to 1983-1986. I have to say, for the most part (with very few and sincere exeptions (P+M, GvdK, CF, JVB, N+J), those including high school friends for whom, I admit, after reaquainting with them, I have limited investment…I mean what the ef was that? Crazy stuff went down this sumer that’s for sure.

---

Cauliflower pizza crust. Those were just some of the watchwords for today. I have been getting a goodly amount of work done, going at a fairly decent pace. The goal is to get to the point where I can just finishing piecing the books all together and then I can begin the promotion and also the work on the new show. I have not been taking as good care of myself as i should be doing these past few days. I hate the constant writing. I cannot wait to be done with it all and moving on to other projects. If this were the only thing I had to write each day I think I’d be far happier. Anyway, it’s Sunday and there’s no reason to get to upset about anything in particular. I sent JLB a note and she wrote back. I will have to respond as soon as I get a moment. I am putting on my list for Thursday, November 8, as something tells me I won’t have time between now and then. I am putting tape over my camera. EW seems to have blocked me on Facebook. The world is going to change. I have to make room for my start up disk.

We watched “I Love You, Alice B. Tolkas” last night and Peter Sellers and Tolkas are both Virgos. And I was struck at how Virgo a tale it was about the Everyman, a morality play about good and bad, if not evil, Virgo virtue and vice. The Zodiac’s Virgin holds a sheaf of grain which will be ingested, if not gestated, wheat separating from chaff, nutrient from detritus, digestion being ruled by this sixth sign whose astrological house governs diet, behaviors, habits and daily routines. Virtue is everyday. As is vice. Every wo/man is in service to decide which they’re serving, “I serve” being the Virgo motto. (The “Tolkas” film is serving brownies.) The sign is also associated with work. Working it and serving It. Peter Sellers, the proverbial put-upon Everyman character might very well find a middle way in the movie.

Get It.
Anatomy of your spiritual being
Zodiac images are post-its.
To Be Easy.
Starsky & Cox teach you how to Get It.
You’ve got to Let It. Dissolution Neptune.
First house is Get It.
Twelfth house is Let It.
The twelfth house, Pisces, opposite facing fish, the Alpha and the Omega.
The fish of Pisces are the totems of Aphrodite-Mari and her son Eros.
One and the same of course as Mary—Mari, Mari—and the Jesus Fish.
Mary’s della robbia blue gown is the sea fringed with foam, the picture of Aphrodite on her half shell.
Planet Neptune. Named for Roman god of the Se
Warrior First. Holding Vigil
Appreciation 3 prongedNo excuses. Can’t think a bad thougth.
You can’t afford it. Going broke. Can’t afford it.
.makes you feel bad. Have to recovery. Everyone is in recovery. This is the 12 step program.

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

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

Sagittarius 18° (December 10)

I awoke and wrote a note to the bank people. The loser president is trying overthrow the will of the people and otherwise destroy democracy. I cannot believe it is that same loser we all laughed at in New York in the eighties and nineties. How does something like this happen? I honestly think it is an argument for the existence of a multiverse, in some bad prism of which I seem to be stuck. Maybe there is another me who is enjoying a Hillary presidency or where I maybe am the president myself. I keep rejigging the old schedule and I am getting myself in and ready for a productive next three months, during which time I will rule the proverbial school. I feel like a broken record so I can only imagine how I sound. Oh, well, what to do. We are eating a ton of fish. Scallops last night, Shrimp the nights before that, on and on, backwards and forwards. Flounder, Salmon. I am writing this on the twelfth and every dinner since the third, and most lunches too, have consisted of fish. This is all I can think about writing today. Sad isn’t it. I need to get a move on with other things. That’s why I have put more words to read below.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1266-1270. 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’m in a very 1990s head today, like looking through a Josef Astor lens. I think of folks I knew—Heisel, the Rosenbergs, Dischinger, Tyrnauer—and would like to revist that whole era as a theme, not of nostalgia, but as a point of reference. I would like a lot of things. I would like a close friend who “gets me” to talk to; the kind of friend you had as a kid, but, as an adult is impossible to come by. It’s just one of the contributors to my loneliness and feelings of isolation. Anyway, that’s my problem. The riches, as they say, are in the niches. And in that I mean the spiritual sort. It becomes increasingly important to own all of it. And to just get on with what has come to be called my daily existence. Sometimes this Blague can be ha-ha funny and sometimes it can just point ot the funniness of life. Okay, who’s up for a timed writing of forty minutes? Let’s do it!

Phase four of 2018 is heavily focussed on clients. We are going to be taking appointments on the Cape late November to mid-December,then Boston and NYC, through Christmas. I have ten days, now to finish writing the twelve new Haute Astrology books for the year. And in this period of time I will be getting the writing underway for our December show, which is always fun. Unless it isn’t. LOL It all comes down to teamwork, which is in short supply these days. Not in a bad way—it’s just everybody is so busy making bank and posting pics of themselves with celebrities. It might sound trite or knee jerk but it just insn’t enjoyable. The only way to be these days is anonymous; which is a paradoxical take on preserving a social-media presence which will remain necessary for professional purposes. But I am ever so slowly working my way into a glorious state of renewed privacy.

I’m so especially—I won’t say sick or tired because I don’t feel sour-grape-ish in the least here—weirded out (is the term) by friends I’ve had, dating back to nobody being on MySpace, with whom I used to meet and hang and grab coffee or play games after Chinese food delivery, having given themselves some East Village version of a Kardashian makeover and now only ever seem to exist for the camera, cheeks pressed together with the most famous figure to be found in any given room. It seems sociopathic. I would never end a friendship over something like this but I honestly feel if I do nothing these types of friendships will slip away because I won’t be in any of their pictures. Friendships now seem to be based on ones most recent Album in Photos. It’s all fine. I don’t mind slipping away unnoticed.

I would love to rent-to-buy a small building with a storefront for work, full basement for storage and studio and upstairs apartment (duplex?). This has always been one of my dreams. I am so into me right now. And my blue-apron vision of myself. My two greatest requirements are a killer kitchen and a giant clawfoot bathtub. These are the things I most want in life. I see it so clearly now. Too much to ask? Shooting way too low? LOL I am not being honest with you. I don’t know that I ever have. You don’t need to know the truth after all. You don’t want it— be honest yourself.

---

Three weeks until we set off to London and then Montreal. You cannot believe what I have to pull off between now and then. It really is absurd. But, you know what, I’m not complaining. There is something powerful and quite spiritual in the air. I feel like being the person I always was, characterized in large part by being highly allergic to the sychophantic. Some of my most famous friends are also the worst sycophants. It’s like, dude/tte, just chill and be with yourself. Jeez. So much postering and social climbing. It’s incredibly boring. I like the word boring because I imagine the original term was closer to having something boring into your skull. That is a far better image of boredom that this kind of vague meaning we attach to it in modern times. There is so much to dig down into. And many lessons learned on the theme of not creating more obstacles for oneself.

We live in a society where not only wealth, but attention is in the hands of the very few. And those same people keep on being given money and opportunity and encouragement. Honestly I don’t need to see or hear from Lena Dunham ever again, except, maybe as a guest judge on Ru Paul’s Drag Race. She was good on that. And I’m sure she’s perfectly sweet; but can we stop calling artists those who pump out schlock? I don’t need to watch her make money off of inserting her own personal struggles into plotlines. I have problems of my own. And solutions to. I’m in take-no-prisonsers mode at present. I’m going to get where I’m going with or without any help from patrons or applause from the peanut gallery. It’s up to me and it’s down to me.

We have a client today which is unusual as we don’t typically do this on Saturdays but that’s okay. I actually need something of a palate cleanser; and I didn’t get much else done but that’s also not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes you need to sacrifice to your work and sometimes you need to sacrifice the doing of the work. I did the latter today and shall do the former tomorrow. I’m thinking of tomorrow as one of my playing for time days where I pretend my life absolutely depends on my finishing a certain project or else something terrible will happen, like I’ll be executed or something.

Bonnie tagged me in a photo she put on social media in which I’m four years old. My sister and she back to back with hullahoops around their waists, heads turned in to face the camera, and i’m standing withing the hoop extended out in front of my sibling, gazing off. I don’t have a single picture of myself from this age as my sister stole and or hoarded everything she could get her hands on, only, I strongly imagine, to lose them all or let them rot, water damaged or get seized in some kind of raid and then destroyed. Let’s just say I don’t think anything that might have been considered my own memorabilia would have fared better in her possession that I ever did in her company. But, oh, how the picture makes me love myself, a very strange effect to be sure. I connect so much with the little person in the photo and I feel in so very many ways exactly as I know he does…did. I wrote to Bonnie to say that, looking at a folding table, a sofabed, cabinets and lamps int he room I can still feel the exact texture of every single item as, in our small two bedroom apartment in 1967, every nook and cranny of it’s interior was my playground. That folding table, for instance was a ladder for getting into my imaginery Jupiter 2, the flying saucer on “Lost in Space” my favorite show. Many years later I interviewed Billy Mumy, who played Will Robinson, both being my first, heros, along with a dozen other child stars for Detour magazine. This year Billy beamed in on Facebook to wish me Happy Birthday and it absolutely imparted a thrill.

---

The last day of Libra, fall a third down—I’m looking forward to the next two. The first two of winter not so much. I would really like to go to the desert or LA for January then Paris for February to mid-March. Really work on the consultancy. But between now and then there is so much fun stuff to do.

I need to go through in/out to flag non Afterglow things, just so we know what sort of time/energy and dollars went into the festival proper. Artist framer printmaker. Have a printmaking studio plus stationers. I could learn framing. I would love to learn framing. Get money from Cambridge Savings. Buy things for people for gifts then sell them in the shop. Two pools of 100 people for the show. The first pool is to gather 10 of 10 to the show, luring them with their gifties. The second pool are those people whom we plan on gifting the book anyway. So we send them the book and we also just let them know about our show. It’s all of a piece. I will sit and draw it, the energy thereof. I like making my own faux modern art pieces dans le style de. I could create a little company called that. I could do a lot of things. I am never at a lack for ideas.

The Assistant List Beyond Creating Wikipedia Page. You just have to be available to the work Write to Tatiana/ Starting Wednesday Blague must start to equal newsletter.

At night I will finish up the Excel program for NEFA and Tour Outreach. Re visit Zodiac with a Z and Zodiac Code. Happiness isn’t a goal, it’s a byproduct—Eleanor Roosevelt. There is gold in them thar hills that’s for shitting sure. I am going to be a miner sixty-niner. I’m hoping for a bit of fun weekend after next. Three weeks nearly still before heading off to London. I will be focusing on my weight for sure. David Vermeuel is a dick fucker. My long lost big brother who became religious as a result of rehab. How fucking cliche. Bet you anything he voted for the lump.

The lump is now going after transpeople. My father used to call me sister that which is just horrible and unthinkable. Living beyond the binary as I’ve done pretty much all my life, I don’t have the benefit, now, of being squirrel friends with my gay male cronies who have each others to kiki with and who can blame them for not prioritizing me; while my straight male friends only sort of stretch so far in understanding who I am, stopping at a kind of reluctant Joey-Chandler embrace, metaphorically speaking of course. People in the community are really going to speak up and act up. this is not going to fly with the fairy folk overall. Ah the fairy folk. The real ones. I used to see them in Goofland down by the creek. Stoned immaculate. I’ve been wanting to use that phrase. I think I’m done.

---

So I have a nevas on my eye. They don’t know if it is new or has been there. I have to circle back to my old doctor to see if he has some notes written anywhere on it. I’m not that concerned, however I do think it strange if it has never been mentioned in notes in the past. I seriously doubt that I developed in in the course of the last two years. It should be somewhere in notes, dating back to my first visit to the eye doctor. I do not feel like going back to that place…it was like an eye factory for old people and it really freaked me out. But the must unsettling this is that I woke up with an unstettled feeling. So it is that much more unsettling when you get unsettling news when you woke up feeling unsettled it’s like a circular feeling of dread. Sensing something was going to go amiss and it does. But of course it could all be a big nothing.

I am now very much in the process of bringing the books project home while I also get a handle on all the other work that needs happening in the next two weeks and a few days before we set off. We are only going to be in London for three nights which is fine; and chances are we will get to see P+M (I hope) on the Monday, but then again, perhaps not. I need to keep my eye (ha) very much on the prize now and really assert the agenda I need to assert. Tomorrow marks eight weeks out from the show and so that itself must be written before we get on the plane. I have a good outline for achieving that goal and I’ll start working that plan tomorrow evening. We have clients and product/financial meeting and I really will need to pace myself, energy wise.

We will have gone to vote this morning and then to take a drive to Orleans to run some errands and then to shop at Whole Foods. Post the appointment all I’ll want is pasta and so this will be the perfect cheat night. You need one of those once in a while I think. And I can’t think of a better time than to give myself the gift of flour and water. So many corners to turn this year. We are dancing on the head of a pin. The past needs sorting through in the form of every box stored in attics and basements, real and metaphorical. It is something that not only needs doing but what wants doing.

I need to sort out my feelings. And I need to plow through the work that is presently on my plate. This is the tricky part I have state filings to do. I have two more intros to write and then twenty four to edit. It will happen. It was funny that the doctor I saw today was called Murray. It’s a bit of a cosmic joke given the facet we have a Skype now scheduled with people of the same name, one even being a doctor. The turning of this point is painful. As is what can only be tendonitis in my arm. I think the most relaxing thing about this potential turn of events is the sense of relaxation it can provide. I think money is meant to make money. I know that is can happen. It’s funny that I don’t feel the way I thought I would feel. If anything I’m a bit preoccupied with preserving not using. But that is definitely not the way to approach this.

I will try to create a roll out for all that needs to happen and move onto more creative, higher thoughts. Things need to be put in a certain logical order and not become distracted or let things pile up. First on the list is posting this.

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

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

Sagittarius 17° (December 9)

Turns out that Farmer Fuckface turned on someone else who was in another house on the hill. These people said it happened on New Years Day 2020. I’m not surprised and I am a bit bolstered by this news. We will take a little spin into Provincetown today and I will buy some scallops to make with leeks and potatoes for din din. We will get some window lights and other bits and bobs to finish the holiday decoration. I was hoping to get some writing done but it won’t be in the stars. We passed by this little place in Wellfleet but I don’t think it could ever work for us. We shall see what we shall see. The search goes on for a place to land, but it’s not today. I am moving the spoon along as best I can. We are good to go from the publisher which is really good news. I have to do the Yeoman’s work now, that is the most important part, otherwise I’m just prolonging the inevitable. It was strange to be in Provincetown. I feel like a ghost in my own experience. I saw the JVB and band have performed at Joe’s and will have a solstice show which is always bittersweet for me. I have to avoid social media during the next three months. I feel it is the only way that I can truly survive this leg of the journey. I am going to remain positive. I am going to see this through to the end. I am going to trust in the universe, especially the one inside myself. I am going to write the following.

Dear Afterglow Festival Friends and Family. 

Just a quasi-quick newsletter-y note to say Happy Holidays and to send you all the love and happiness imaginable as we glimpse some light at the end of the tunnel. Typically, this time of year, Stella and I are rehearsing our Winter Solstice show for Joe’s Pub, an annual pivot in time when we celebrate the return of light, an advent in the calendar which is that much more poignant this year. Happily, our dear friend, Afterglow advisor, and singular most sensational stage performer on this or any planet, whose weeks-long holiday shows at Joe’s are always a sold-out smash, Justin Vivian Bond has filmed a Solstice Eve show called “Good Morning, Midnight, It’s Christmas,” which will be streaming December 20^th at 7pm EST, starring the stellar musical talents of Matt Ray, also an Afterglow advisor, Claudia Chopek and Nath Ann Carrera. Do Not Miss This. We are going to be snuggled up streaming the show by the fire with our light-up-nose Santa slippers on. Oh yes. For information on this Joe’s Pub Live! event go here: https://publictheater.org/productions/joes-pub/2020/j/justin-vivian-bond-good-morning-midnight-its-christmas—joes-pub-live/

None of us will forget this difficult year of closed theaters and performance venues. And though the live Afterglow Festival didn’t happen in 2020 in Provincetown, we were able to quickly pivot our non-profit to fundraise for performing artists, commissioning work we hope will be presented in the years to come. So, we want to take this opportunity to once again express our gratitude to all the returning sponsors of Afterglow who heeded our call to help keep so many performers afloat and creating new work. Thank you, thank you, from the bottom of our collective heart. And for those who haven’t but still wish to contribute to Afterglow, please know that we have no deadline on sponsorships and donations this year, and you can still make a difference in the creative lives of artists as we continue our mission to commission as many performers’ new works as possible for future presentation before our live Provincetown audiences! www.afterglowfestival.org/donations and www.afterglowfestival.org/sponsorships

That was the short and sweet! Please foster and feel as much holiday cheer as you can. Be safe, stay vigilant, and take care of yourself and one another. Looking forward to a happy, near future!

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1261-1265. I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

Had a note from Neil Blair this morning inviting us to lunch as they are on the Cape! Alas, we are with family. And to think they are going to be in Wellfleet—it’s a bit weird. I had put together some suggestions for them for visiting Boston, where they’re looking at schools with their kid; but I had no idea they would be visiting the Cape. Neil’s aunts own an inn in, he always said Chatham, but it’s really Harwich, says Neil’s cousin, Chris, whom we met at Cipriani. I asked is it on Pleasant Bay and Chris said it’s called the Pleasant Bay Inn. So yeah. So odd when friends who live in foreign countries show up in your town when you’re not there. Not ha-ha funny but you know. Watching Tracy Ullman this morning she had a brilliant skit about being overly woke; which rang so true. One of the things was just watch Friends without being triggered by the homophobia and the heteronormality. It’s really funny that came up since we binge-watched old episodes last night upon our return.

Today was a big catch-up day though I did do some maintenance on the Brian front. Nancy Bauer, the dean of SMFA got back to me and I’m hoping there is a way we can make this all happen. My drothers would be to partner with them and have them be the hosting venue. In any case my mind is pretty well centered on this new Moveable Festival and all that it can be, based in Boston, with big donors at the ready. The work entailed in going for that is the same as needs to happen in any case. The trick is to keep everything very simple and just go from point to point in the process of what needs to happen. I may be wrong but I think Nancy gets that part from our previous conversations. She got the group mailer I put out and responded. I do understand that Bri had fanbase come to Oberon but….I’m going to disagree with him here.

Even in the case of Boston I think it is about new outreach, specifically going super queer—and I’m thinking Fenway, “Machine” people, JP world and maybe going really deep in LGBTQ in terms of “community outreach” as well as the entire student LGBTQ population in Boston reaching out to all the schools organizations. Also as alternative to a venue in Provincetown where Glow can be lead presenter, we could do our lead presentation in Boston. The prob with Ptown is hard to rent place on season and off season nobody is around. And there are no kids or schools. The Oberon crowd being fanbase is fine. We would be looking for new audience for Bri in Boston i think.

To be able to keep (S)MFA in the picture and who knows maybe they will donate the space. I think we would approach this completely differently from the Oberon show. It’s like I told Nancy: There are two basic ways to go about this. Or three actually, depending on your own goals and needs

We could simply make a plan to present the show at SMFA for one night or a couple/few outside of the NEFA equation. Like we have in the past other places, and figure out the $ bit. In the case of Endicott and other schools that have budget for this we could come up with a flat fee and then SMFA could take all the ticket money. Or we could come up with a split of sorts with a guarantee.

The way the NEFA grant works we have a couple of options….

The way the grant works is that Afterglow (actually working under Glow aegis) will produce a tour and, as the lead presenter, also produce one of the runs of said tour. What we’ve learned with the touring grant is that we are unique in that most lead presenters have brick and mortar; so, in the case of Glow we would be present at some place we rent in say our home base of Provincetown; and then we have to secure two other “partner presenters” each of which apply directly (very little paper work) to NEFA to present the piece. It’s almost like a matching grant in that the artists get the NEFA money directly which is typically around or near the same amount that the venue would be investing in the artist/show—the finessing of which I’m now learning. And then venue keeps all the proceeds which further offset the investment.

The third way this can happen is that the Glow, as lead producer, could present at SMFA and in effect “rent” (either really or you could donate that rent back to us) and simply be our brick and mortar for what would be the lead presentation on the tour. This way you wouldn’t have to be a partner per se and have to deal with any of the NEFA bit yourself. You would simply be the space but we can certainly trumpet SMFA in the process of our own partnership.

So there are a number of ways to slice and dice!

---

We may be flying to London on Sunday 11th or Monday 12th in November to attend a premier on the 13th. That would be a month from now. Then we would fly back on the 15th in the morning and go straight to Taja show at Oberon and then the next day drive to Montreal. It sounds like a lot. But it’s not impossible. I would def stay in hotel in Cambridge then I think. We shall see if this is even doable. I think if all can be accomplished easily will be fine. Maybe we can fly overnight on the 11th and arrive the 12th and go to hotel and just flop, or perhaps having slept well on the plane, we’d have all day Monday and all day Tuesday to kick around before going to the event on Tuesday night. So long as it’s okay not to leave until the morning of the 15th such that we arrive back at Boston in the afternoon. We can either keep the hotel rezzie or go to Reading that evening.

All in all we will be exhausted and will have to sleep on those plane rides and get our sleep on then. I will also have to have the entire show written by then without fail which is also fine. Could be fun. We have options. I want to much to make hay, now, while the sun shines so that I can be relaxed and let my good unfold; and also have time to make this show not just great but something that can move around. We really don’t have to change very much if we are focusing on getting new audience. That should be the plan.

Well it’s another Monday and a good start. I’m going to try to be through part A of my day by noon. Then my afternoon can be solidly about moving the needle forward. I must get back into my groove—it is essential. “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is: infinite.” So said William Blake. And I’m one to believe him. If I hit my marks today my own perception will be allowed to shift, if just a little, as well, opening onto a more infinite vision of, even, my own self. With the start of November, I will have two solid weeks to work all but exclusively on the upcoming show, work on which begins tomorrow evening in any case. I can finally dig back into the more creative elements of my life story that I might want to outline. This is my fourth time around the wheel writing these Blagues, meaning I’ve written upwards of 1,670 entrees thus far in my experience. Some of them are more than a page, mostly every one is two pages, so I have like 3000 some odd pages to read through for inspiration. That’s not nothing.

It’s just about getting some kind of head start, really. I mean, it would be enough to have two places for a couple of years with an office to go to. That alone would change my perspective after all this time, decades now, working from home. Everything under one roof—a full day’s work plus all the domestic chores. I don’t need Ben Sasse telling me how to feel more connected. I just need an office in a city and a transporter room from once to project some magic. That is all really. I will of course stay in our witchy wonderland of New England, in America, my spiritual home. I have a lot to be thankful for here; plus I do some of my best healing here. That’s now what I’m aiming for more than anything else. (I was just going to Google something and forgot what it is—hate that—oh well I hope it comes back to me.) I have a day of timed writing and some friendly clients. I am so fortunate that in all I do I get to uplift people, and to guide them.

---

First, I have to remind myself that most people don’t work as hard as I do. That I wear many hats and I’m pretty successful at everything I undertake. The trick now is to concentrate, hone, focus and distill. The riches are in the niches as they say. And this will be a year of pulling many threads through. I don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to show writing, for starters. I have everything at my finger tips. The trick is to get people who haven’t come before to come out to support us. And really it doesn’t matter either way because we have never done anything we do for any kind of applause, real or metaphoric. What our focus shall continue to be: Is to spread our message of self-actualization. That’s the great thing about the Zodiac. People want to belong to this house of that in Hogwarts, right? Well the Zodiac is like a cosmic Hogwarts with twelve houses in which we each get all our own mansions. My interests are really metaphysics and I must find a way to continue my studies on the subject while having it inform all the work I do, from books to product to personal consulting to performing. It’s all the same message, interpreted various ways.

I wake up in our Cambridge flat and bike across the bridge to my morning Bikram class, on winter days, I take the bus, easy peasy. I get to the Atelier mid morning and have something restorative, mainly keto. I put on my real or metaphorical apron and my work day begins; and on any given day it will entail heavy focus on product design with the occassional session mixed in—our new large screen makes Skype sessions a breeze. We break for a late lunch and will spend the afternoon putting together our various projects and plans for books, products and events. We will do some scales and work on some bits, or it might just be a writing night. There may be some Glow Festival work to focus on. It’s all of a piece. I would carve out certain days for this and certain days for that and I would create the most beautiful jewel box of a space, with the requisite gadgetry in place. Our p.a. would manage all we needed managing making herself something of a major domo in time.

The wonderful thing about writing is you can write whatever you want. The terrible thing about writing is that you can write whatever you want. As there is a nagging feeling that, though there may be no right or wrong to putting the proverbial it down on real or metaphorical paper, there definitely is a good or bad dichotomy to contend with.

The beauty of writing this Blague during times of deadline is that it helps to keep my head straight. In just a week’s time I will be back to using this forum as a way to put my creative ideas into works. Next year I will write new snapshot one-pagers, portraits of the signs, which can very much come off of the work I do creatively, on the show, starting Monday. I must remember that I am in good shape and act accordingly. In the days leading up to Brian’s visit to the Idea Swap I will get him what he needs. Once I hand these book drafts over, I am full on into the show and doing my scales and promoting the show and, in the process, the books that will soon be uploaded. I will also get to take a nice trip to London which I find necessary; and I will be pretty much free to focus on purely creative things through to Christmas. After which time I would like to focus, solely, on clearing out the office and basement and already getting a jump on the next round of books which I would like to have completely written by March. I am going to keep things very much close to the bone this year and do a full accounting of monies going in their various directions. I will be performing my own show this year in festival and want to make sure to give that project plenty of attention in March and April as I again crank up the machinery for fundraising, all the while touting the local businesses.

---

By November 2020, I would like to be opening a space, if not buying a building in P then in S or in C. I will be focusing on the “immoveable” idea and will have been taking meetings with manufacturers of planners and the like. I would love to find that company in France which makes the little black books. There will need to be a space in NYC that we can consider a showroom of sorts. It probably would have been smart to grab that place downtown when we had the chance; then again we would have had a psycho for a landlord. I know that I am deserving of good (but conditional) friendship, a large part of which is forgiveness. I have perhaps been too forgiving, to a fault; and perhaps on some subconscious level, because I suspected I might need some of the stuff in return. In any case we live and learn. There is this quote: To understand everything is to forgive everything.

Over the next two years I know what needs to happen, spiritually. For starters, I need to read. I know that mightn’t sound spiritual to you but, as a symptom, reading suggests I’m in a good place on that score. It’s like when I’m flossing regularly; that’s how I know I’m focussed on self care overall I do believe I need to go back to the beginning and read my way through some kind of chronological order. I would love to read for say, three hours a night. That would certainly be part of the path toward finding my peace again. And to get back to the minutes and the memos. To do less and be more. It’s been really kind of hard. Again I realize I can say whatever I want but still it ain’t easy. Back in the day, in my late 20s early 30s, living in the West Villlage, I barely had two pennis to scrape together and yet I remember being quite happy and certainly hopeful. I was never worried about moolah. I guess I supposed everything was ahead of me—that sometime would catch—either that or I was I never thought about it at all and just don’t remember. I’m a saver by nature I think. And I have been doing that in any case these last several years. Not a lot but something.

And. lord upon lord, do I ever need my autonomy. I am so completely frustrated with the way things are at this point. Not that it hasn’t been great up until now; but you know when you’ve been passed out of something but still find yourself in the old place. It is, in a word, maddening. I can taste what my life is about to become; and least that better me what’s rolling around in my mouth. I know I’m not the steadiest character, but I’m not the worst either. I’ll think of someone whose life I’m tempted to envy then I’ll see them in person and they’ll look like crap or be chain smoking or not able to make eye-contact or exhibiting some kind of weirdness. Believe me I know I’ve gone to the edge, and even recently so, and sometimes I’ve stepped over it. And I’ve often had to pay the consequence for that; but I’m willing to recognize that. What I don’t think is being understood is just how close to the edit we truly are at this juncture. And yet I’m willing to have that be part of the reality and to just be grateful that we are in the position we are in. I have to imagine the positive outcomes of all this. Darkest before the dawn and all that? Quick somebody say something super upbeat and positive.

---

I am feeling tested these past twenty-four hours, but you know what: that’s okay. I’m going to keep my side of the street clean; I’m not going to take my feelings out on myself; I’m going to dig deeper into faith and expand further into belief. I know what this ship I’m sailing, and I’m going to sail it. I am letting go of time. I am letting go of self-imposed deadlines. I am keeping my eye on hitting my marks but I’m also willing to be imperfect and color outside the lines. I’m tired of the way people use social media but, you know what?, that’s their prerogative. I guess it means someting of Tilda Swinton is in your picture. Man, I know some of the biggest celebs on the planet but their success doesn’t reflect on me, why should it. If anything I feel it is one’s responsbility NOT to flaunt said associations. It is so very unbecoming.

Well I have quite a challenging day of writing ahead of me today which is fine. I’m going to embrace it and work, timed-writing-wise, from like 1-7, as I’ve spent the morning doing all sorts of administrative work. But that in itself as been very rewarding. I don’t know why I’m so distracted and can’t focus. I guess it just happens but the timing isn’t great I will admit. I’m on the verge of feeling super claustrophobic (again) and like the balance is off in my world. I don’t know how much I have to do in any given day as this champion of other souls but right now I’m feeling the need to self-focus. But it isn’t a time that would very conducive to that instinct. I just have to do my best to keep putting words down and hope my brain joins the party.

Let’s see. Really. Why am I distracted? Typically it’s because I’m so overwhelmed, too much to do under the too many hats I wear. But that isn’t so much the case really now. I’m close to the edge but not dangerously so. And the edge of which I speak is overwork not something else for you people with overactive imaginations. Sometimes you have to walk through the jungle of your mind before you can reach the clearing in your soul. We should be less afraid of our despair sometimes, because it too can be part of the journey. The demons we meet in the darkness are dissolved once we reach for the Light. Or so said a friends post on social media. Thought it apropos that it popped up now. Anywig, I have schaudenfreude sometimes which really bums me out—I will hear of someone I deem to big for their britches falling into a ditch or something and it makes me giggle. I’m not proud of that. I think it’s awful. But sometimes you think and feel things in spite of your concious mind or conscience itself. Why that is I have no idea.

It’s not like I’m sitting around waiting for anything to happen. I just have a little bit of writer’s block is all. So I will talk about some ideas instead. Like, it will be the 15th anniversary of Sextrology this year and we want to spruce it up a bit. I brought this to the attention of our publishers but it fell on deaf ears. They don’t understand that the world has changed so much since the publishing of that book and that it is deemed to be too binary in its scope, now, after so much transactivism and so forth. So we will add material ourselves to the ebook, which we own, and, if they want to get on board and add anything to the print version they will have to ask us for it. We will send them a letter (certified or through some offical means) so to hit the point home. Then they will have to do a little begging. I think because of our subject matter we get relegated to the joke pile.

But I’m having none of it. A few months back I started down a path on the theme of “a serious argument for astrology” and that is the path I believe I need to take on full-stop. I need it to be in everything I do on the subject. There really is no time to waste. Which brings me back to the oy-oy-oy of not hitting my creative marks today. Still you never know, it’s only three o’clock in the afternoon and I could suddenly become suffused with so muc inspiration that I bang out the requisite five or six pages I planned on writing today. Let us see…

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

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

Sagittarius 16° (December 8)

The anniversary of John Lennon’s death. I am reconnecting with more childhood friends, which is pretty nice actually. I should have a lot to say but I don’t really I will make a lovely Caesar with Shrimp even though we had Shrimp Scampi yesterday. It really doesn’t matter. One kid from my past called Neil will ask to say hi to my mother. He can do it as easily as I can since she’s dead. He told me stories about Halloween parties which I do remember actually. It was the beginning of seventh grade and it was a 1950s theme because Happy Days was all the rage. Diane and Dede were there. Now they are both out, the former having taken her time. I’m not having the easiest time getting work done today but that too has to be okay. There are plenty of errands to run and other ways to procrastinate which I will do, knowing me. We did hear from publisher today so we shall write back tomorrow. It should be quite good news in the end and we will get our tree fully decorated and put some candles in the window. I have thank you otes to write. I no longer do Christmas cards. It was too painful. For years and years I would individually watercolor cards but they always went unappreciated. I know that shouldn’t dissuade m from doing some anyway but the desire got bred out of me. I have very much felt disposable, especially since around 2014. I have slowly been inching my way back to where I feel I can trust people again but I have to say it aint easy and so I have to cut myself some slack on that score and just do the best that I can do. I’m mostly interested now in getting myself into the best version of me that I can be and I truly do want to create a delicious book that people can devour so I have to get the jump on all of that. I think I’m in the pocket but I’m not quite sure. We will continue to put the word out there and try and find something we can really enjoy. In the meantime I have to trust that the universe is on my side. So I’m going to do that.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1256-1260. 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 am spending exactly nine minutes writing this today. I feel as if my time has been hijacked but I also must concede that that would be up to me to allow to happen. I have to do things in units of time today in order to stay on track. That much I know. Enough good is happening in my personal life that I must find my gratitutde within all of it. The idea of the tour planning (grant) and setting up a neo vaudeville circuit have do not in the end dovetail. It would be too easy to say that people wasted my time. But people wasted my time. My allowing them to do it any further would be my own damned fault.

Anyway, I am in a take-no-prisoners position. We have to now present this new piece in 2019. I will get all the information in that I need to make this reality happen. And I will make major bank on this. I just realized something: If we could be paid as part of the artistic team we could move forward with this botched project. I cannot believe I have had to spend so much time deconstructing grant projects that other people were meant to be managing. Either way, this leg of that journey is coming to a natural end. And my raging cough continues—I can’t sleep at night because all I do is wheeze when I lie down. I probably have pneumonia or something. Or well, I rather be killed by a Dickensian disease than by Mesothelioma or some modern-day malady.

They just put out a report that things are going to go to shit envronmentally in the next fifteen to twenty years give or take. That the ice capes will have severly melted causing the waters to rise signficantly. And It suddenly dawned on me why the Republican (Reptiles) might not care about climate change. They want a series of natural disasters they can blame. And then get the contracts for cleaning things up. Just like Cheney did rebuilding Iraq or Guiliani did post 911 (oh really, is it too soon?) That’s why Puerto Rico was allowed to happen the way it did. But seriously, think about it. Who risks suffering more than coastal elites. When will Replicand so anything about climate change. After I they let climate change happen just enough so that the waters rise and all the coastal elites are eliminated.

All I’m asking for is a little bit of a break–that’s all. It’s not like I even know how to squander anything. I would like a break because I feel that I would do right by it; and by doint right by it I would make myself proud; I would thereby make other people money as well. If I had loving family with a ton of extra cash, don’t you think I would love it if they would let me have some of it? Would I feel bad? No I’d want to make them proud along with myself. I do feel as if I wish as if I feel as I wish someone would invest in me. I wish someone with means would understand what a goldmine my brain can be; how deep a treasure my creativity is. I’m the smartest, most creative person I know really. I’m not the most prolific, nor am I the most naturally gifted. But I do spend far too much time in survival mode—not in a scary way—but it’s just that I never frontloaded making money in my experience. I always derived joy from doing and from experiences over things, let alone any kind of luxury. And, as that story goes, I feel I have at times experienced untold luxury, on many levels, that term applying (at least to me) to many other things besides material, aptly named stuff. It’s stuff. It gets in the way. I know more unhappy rich people than happy ones I can tell you that right now.

---

People forget, though they do not need reminding, that I am an actual wizard. I have clairvoyant powers of prediction and have been known to affect the weather, specifically bringing on storm clouds. I have also experienced what can only be described as shapeshifting—pin in a big story on that subject—yet my ability to astral project is wonky, mainly due, I think, to allergies, a certain nocturnal asthma, that prevents me from restful sleep. So I might just move to Salem and become a stand-up metaphysician. My comic heroes are the ascended masters and Joseph Campbell and St. Germain and other sages and time-traveling alchemists. Rasputin was a scream. Aleister Crowly? He killed. These are my brand of funny men.

There are 12 rays now apparently in the Ascended Masters theosophy. That kind of makes sense in terms of astrology. I should trace my roots through the theosophical society. I should have a large shock of white hair and fit into tiny grey flannel suits.

If would have an apartment in Boston, an apartment in Paris, a house on Outer Cape Cod and a house in Maine, the Maine house and Paris apartment could be rented. I would write a show that answers the question how did you meet and come to do what you do.

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

Quinn is….Stella is….maybe Emily and Alejandro could play us.

So we are closing in on that newsletter notes on which will be the fodder for this Blague for the next few days. I need to build the momentum and get my words and pictures together and start putting together packages for Corporations. Also putting together a single web page for the new glowfest.org. I do need to address, via Open Letter to Former Afterglow Artist Who Might be Too big for us, that there are ways they can help us. I also need to put together an Open Letter to Would-be Sponsors who never heard of us. And once this newsletter period is over. And I am writing the book intros and the holiday show, simultaneously, my Blagues will be excerpts from past good Blagues with new thoughts surrounding them in a Back and Forth series.

So I have these stones, themed paperweights under which I put bits of paper on this or that subject, mainly creative projects. I may have shown you pictures of them in the past.

I collect them from the beach where I haven’t been able to bring myself since the death of that young man from a shark bite, the second one this season, though only this one fatal. I know I need to get out and enjoy our beach but I’ve been really spooked to be honest. This time last year we were beachcombing for bits and bobs from which we made these amazing costumes which weren’t celebrated enough for my taste lol. Who knew dystopia could be so much fun; although it always brings my mood down to run into a certain person from NYC who ended up being there as part of the band’s entourage. Of all the curmudgeons in all the cities to run into. And Chris Klein was kind of a dickhead. Debby was her usual lovely self. She doesn’t remember crushing on me at Todd’s birthday, when I danced and danced with Parker P. But so what. Not everyone can get me. Famous people have it easy. People flock to them and they can pick and choose and sort of wade through. Mayber Parker and JCM should play Stella and me in the TV version of our life. Could be cool. Or JCM and Cynthia Nixon if she returns to the world of entertainment. I think she was saved from something by losing the primary to Cuomo to be honest.

---

Drove to Boston this morning and it was a little tense, traffic wise. But we got to Mount Auburn with time to spare and I parked the car at the hotel and just strolled around which was fun. There is something so chill about Cambridge and it seems to me a very good option as an American home base moving forward. I went by our old apartment building and there was a sign out front for a rental, with an agent name listed. I went into the old vestibule where the mailboxes are and saw that same name listed, so the realtor lives there. Not that I would want to live in that building again but it might be someone interesting to meet slash know. I think the next several months will be very chill and telling. My focus, as I’ve been saying, is on health and well-being. I have brought myself to the brink of exhaustion and need a break.

We had a lovely meal at Cafe Sushi, whose owner, Seizi Imura, is very charming. I sat down at the sushi bar in something of however because the hostess wasn’t. She was the opposite—quite rude actually. Still it is one of my favorite sushi restaurants on the planet; and I’m happy that it will be part of my world moving forward. I really need to land; and yet I have no desire to move back to NYC (please don’t make me); I don’t really mind being a type B personality, though you may differ in my opinion that I am one. Trust, I am. I’m not really all that ambitious. It’s just too hard. But for the people I know for whom lightening struck, anyone else I’ve known who has really had a lush life are those that really didn’t have to work (really) in the first place. They may be a little less broken than me, but not happier. Probably they are more regretful.

I am not regretful in the least. I’m something different. I’m repairing. I’m putting the brakes on. I’m recovering for real now. I believe in health and vitality. I can’t do what other people do. I must go deeper to get to a truly lithe way of living. I had this incredibly vivid dream last evening. I was in this multi story house which I later learned belonged to JD. There was fabric and throws and all sorts of things strewn kind of everywhere. It was like a design workshop but there were clippings of plants, too. As if there was a gardening section to the operation—wee sprigs of different plant life for either transplanting or pressing or as botany samples or all of the above. I got a wave of sadness as I always do regarding the demise of that friendship. But really how can one feel bad about a friendship with someone who was never a true friend—but, you see, when you’re a codependent like me, you can.

There was also a space where we were all kind of lying around on pillows and rugs, very Morrocan-y; and Michael Musto and some other Type A gays were there all sort of lounging around and it felt a little bit homoerotic but, as I may have mentioned before, I’ve only ever had a sex dream regarding women, never men, which I find shocking; and then, lo and behold, who should appear in the mix, but Christina Applegate, just in the nick of heterosexual time. She was sort of flopped in with all of us, all the male bodies, but nobody was messing around with here really—nobody was really messing around with anybody other then sort of carressing each other’s stomachs of all things; and she and I were just talking about art and film and entertainment.

---

So we came to town yesterday and had lunch, as I mentioned, at Cafe Sushi, then Stella had an appointment so I just regrouped in the room. I had hoped to sleep but that was a no-go. We went for an early bite at one of our other favorite places on the planet, Waypoint, and had what I always have, a shared veggie salad and the uni boccatini. Oh yes. Then we opened a bottle of good stuff, a delish Georgian red, and had Emma and Joe meet us in the Veritas lobby, which was lovely. A little pre-show something that isn’t the swill version. Then onto the main event which was Tori Scott at Oberon. I have never produced an artist that I’d officially not met in the flesh, but here we were. And wow was she ever fantastic. The best combination of voice and humor and pacing and craft and chops and poignant and honest and dirty and let’s go back to funny and vocally fantastic. And what a sweet human being to boot. The place was packed it was a great opening night of a new season of our series. For one night I didn’t have to think of all the work I’ve taken on and the stress associated with getting all the things done I need to get done. I really wanted to just forget my troubles and c’mon get happy for a hot second, which I believe I managed quite succcessfully to do.

After the show we went back to Waypoint for some clam pizza which was right up Emma’s alley, since she is from New Haven. But of course! Anyway it was so nice to be with kids (who easily, age wise, could be our own); and I really love them both. The evening was like a luxury vacation in twenty four hours in that we had received some encouraging news early in the day and truly began to feel and imagine how this might indeed be a sort of major turning point we had been hoping and hankering for. I’m so gun shy when it comes to getting my hopes up about anything really. Which is an awful thing to admit, as true as it might be. At the same time I must prepare for said good; which means making some strong decisions, and no quick ones. I’ve been there and I’ve done that and I’m very much interested in keeping things supremely real. The truth is I’d make a really fun insane person but unlikely a very safe one. So as eccentric as I may be—suddenly I’m the older guy at the bar in a tony Cambridge restuarant—interacting with the young waitstaff who regard we as some kind of somebody which is so adorable and such a slippery slope. I don’t want to be Ken Howard.

So I met with Brian in the lobby for a few hours and we went over a good deal of things. I think the equation could be a simpler one. Act as if. I need to get my brain around it all. For the lead-presenter event: We spend $7K (on the artists) then get back that same amount from the artist as a payout. Or if SMFA pays $3K and keeps box office then I’ve spent just 4 and you pay me full amount back so I’ve made $3K…in which case I mightn’t ask for all the money back. 7K/2K sounds more reaonable, as it adheres to that same ration of 9ths. We are also on track with getting some of the other grants moving; and that is why I transition this year to launching what will be my new company to create tours for artists throughout New England. To do that I need to raise money separately from Afterglow and approach a Boston-based set of people, and by that I mean corportations. This could surely have its own rental revenue source for an office in either Boston or Cambridge. I think as a Boston resident there is more available to me, but I can always have a small office somewhere on that score. So really this work isn’t a chore at all—it is something very important and motivating and I look forward to making this next dream come true.

---

Yesterday, post Brian meeting, I came up to the room and positioned myself in the doorway of the balcony as the sun was going down but still felt strong. For one I thought it would help my chesty cold; and, second, I was feeling as if I were on holiday for one last hour this so-called summer. But it was warm enough to just be in undies, and I had a little beverage and just chilled. Then I took myself for oysters and crispy white wine. And then returned to the room and just lay on the bed and luxuriated in miles of alone-time, or so it felt. I look forward to the next time I can have that experience but I don’t suspect it will be any time soon. And then I got hungry so I went back to my haunt for yet another clam pizza. To you this might sound like nothing. To me this is decadence of the first order; and for days I’ll be guilty about being that person. Ken Howard as I said yesterday. But that’s okay. I am an eccentric and I know I can go places; but I’m so genuinely grateful and, so, good: I like helping others succeed because it feels like the greatest success. And I am good (at it); it is good to be a part of other people’s good. They can be so appreciative and I feel like Boston is wide open to me.

Creatively I need to make sure the form isn’t frayed. We need to beef up our understanding of what this can be, and what it can’t. We could use some timely elements in the piece. Places where you can insert news of the day; it requires staying au courrant; we might want to bring in more of a musical director? Or have Rene play more piano. I feel you get stuck at the piano; and we might try opening some things up. Lines can and should not be delivered casually. As the actor you need actions. What do you want from us. And through what actions to you achieve your objective. That sort of actory thing can be fun and breathe fresh life into the project.

So Stella came back to Cambridge about 12:30 and we went for lunch. If there is any evidence that I am on some kind of spectrum it’s in my need for the right table in a restaurant. My mother used to move around like Lucy in her own episode. (See what I did there.) I got two soups and a plate of sushi back at Cafe Sushi. I looked up the name of the guy that Seizi was talking about and he and I are already friends on Facebook. Love that. I need to get some personal stationery. And send the kids some books. Then we had a little edgy moment leaving town. But not before we stopped at Central Bottle for charcuterie and cheese and other yummies. Sad the Paradise bar has closed. And where Toscanini’s is is going to be a boutique hotel (with Toscaninin’s back in it). The times they are a changing but then again so am I. And we seem to be merging back to Cambridge. I see myself with a nice apron on and I’m at least twently lbs. lighter than I am right now. I will have an office from which to so all I need to do. And I can get into some kind of routine, finally. And ride my bike—that is the best part. That part of the world is so terribly liveable and lovely. We’ll be able to host friends and travel and stay with friends. And just feel freer than we have the last few years, staying put, school and so forth, without our city dwelling. It’s easier in some ways but not really in the end. And I’m ready with this new auspice to tackle bigger fish.

---

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

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

Sagittarius 15° (December 7)

Well I did manage to get all I needed getting together together in time for the one o’clock chat with new lawyer fella. We have definitely upped our game with this one, and I feel reassuringly expensed. It has definitely but a bit of a fire under me as well. I think we were living in somewhat of a fool’s paradise with the last fella. Not all of this is supposed to make sense to you, whoever you are. You aren’t even there after all. Today is tough but not impossible. I just have to rid myself of that one awful layer of fearful depression that comes from this level of persecution and uncertainty. He seeks to intimidate by the use of local color. Fudge that. I am decidedly grasping at straws but that’s okay it is a long day. Despite the stresses I am keeping my absolute cool. There is no point in hell doing anyting to upset the applecart today and I really want to focus on my health foremost. Over the last couple of days I have learned that a childhood friend was raped by four other boys in our high school locker room and that teachers, principles etc. did nothing basically saying that’s what you get for acting like a faggot. I don’t know why but I am fuming. I managed to figure out who one of the perps was and I am beginning to guess at the others. Especes de merde. My friend R. is convinced that certain people aren’t capable of such things, but I have to believe the victim. At some point I will need to lay down my arms. So funny that not too longer ago people were dangling their venues making our non-profit beg, and now they are shut down. I don’t mean ha ha funny and I’m not saying this has all been designed as a karmic backlash to assholes. What I am saying though is: be kind because you never know what life will bring and you’ll never know how soon you will be knocked off that high horse you might think you’re on. There is no horse. I did pretty much come to a screaching halt today. 

Some thoughts to put on paper: Previously we had all but exclusively assigned the archetype of Hestia (Roman: Vesta), goddess of the hearth and home fires, along with Artemis, goddess of the hunt, to the fixed-fire sign of Leo. In truth this never sat completely well with us, metaphysically speaking. We did always nod to Hestia, if ever so slightly, in regard to Virgo woman, in that, in Rome, her worship involved the Vestal Virgins, sacred-harlots who had ritual sex with priests, fitting the profile of Mary Magdalene in her real religious role.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1251-1255. 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.

Last night was something of a shit show. I’d been feeling something brewing for the last several days—both personally and globally, as ever the twain now meet. I want to articulate some thoughts that could translate into a plea to people and corporations vis a vis the tour. I guess that dovetails with the Newsletter idea which I will put out there this week as well. I don’t know if it’s all the traveling but I don’t feel that well or rested—this cold I caught after New York has lingered now for over a week. I need to let it all go (tension) and lean into health now more than ever. Though as it nears 5 PM it’s so hard not to reach for some medium bodied solace. But I am attempting to reel it all in. I need to prepare for my good as they say.

It was a fairly decent day. One client who is very nice and very good always brightens my mood to be honest. We have some very tony characters in our roster and sometimes it does wear on me that the consultancy isn’t really scalable, which is why we are working our way into other means of making do-re-mi. I’m fairly happy getting things underway. I know that I have to work on the show coming up but it is so hard to get motivated when so many tasks and things are constantly hanging in the balance. I know we are working as hard as we can to plow through all the loose ends that are dangling everywhere. And we really do the best we can in the circumstances. I have pretty much everything where I need it to be. I just have to find the motivation to get more accomplished in the days given. Everything takes forever—or at least it feels that way sometimes.

David who moved to D.C. spent some time on the phone sith S about the biz plan which we are waiting on to take root. I’m really hoping for something of a score on this front. When last I stayed at the Eliot in August we were heading to Alaska and I had this joint I hadn’t smoked. So I hid it in my hotel room (we often stay in same room at hotel) and sure enough it was still there when I returned last week. This is something I can’t typically tell anyone, so I thought I’d tell all of you. It feels really hard to be funny right now doesn’t it. I want so much to feel jolly but western civilization is going to shite and this orange douchebag is leading the charge. He was such a joke for decades living in NYC; and now he’s president. And it’s almost been two years of this terrible depression and the GOP using it as a shield to get whatever they need done done. I really hope they all come to a painful end—isn’t that terrible to say. But really I do. Where is Valerie Solanas (is that her name?) when we most need her.

Anyway I decided to just see what kind of stuff and nonsense would come to my brain after a very busy day. I have spent the last few days catching up on all things to do with creating this new tour—now what needs happen, starting on Monday, is to truly start putting my words into place. I have to get all my finances and press clips up to date. I have to go over everything the lawyer sent me. But mainly I have to get right back into this book writing and somehow make it fun. And also dovetail it with work on the show. These are the most important things. We will let the publisher materialize. We will let the agent do likewise. We will let anyone who says they want to fund our business really do it. And I am going to parlay all of my sucesses into a great tour with great artists. And I’m going to get my self into shape and get that Tru show up on running. I also have to get back to the fellows on that Midnight at the Whatever show. To be honest I don’t think it stuck with me.

========

I’m having this weird visceral reaction to what’s happening and it is surprisingly not a bad sensation. Hear me out. I think because the gloves are off and they’ve played their hand: I feel unapologetically Democrat and American. These people aren’t true Americans—they are all in some way traitors, and we shall discover the specifics thereof very soon. Also, I know this is a bit woo-woo but if one were to trust in a higher power then this all might be one big Icarian set-up for the GOP. They pushed it, pressed their luck. Now anything can happen. And maybe, just maybe, karma will be the kind of bitch I can get with.

I have to start giving myself some positive feedback and I do need to read some books again. Look, if this is going to be a quiet, slow winter then so be it. I might as well give over to the relaxation and get my ass back to yoga class and all that good stuff. I have to stop obsessing over every single little thing or word. It is so not worth it. On Monday I will work till 10 on the Blagues and then I shall work until noon on book stuff. Then in the afternoon I will get finances up to speed. And Monday evening I can review what the lawyers had to say. I must take it easy Tuesday and Wednesday as well. It’s so funny because there was the festival in September, then trip to NYC then Boston and I’m still in this kind of hyperdrive when really all I need do right now is learn to relax. The state of the world, such as it is, is really terrible. But there is precious little I can do about it. I can only move forward.

I don’t know what is worse—people’s FB accounts being cloned or having to hear about it through the death of a thousand messages. I’m now convinced nobody is sending me anything—that that’s the hacky bit. Life is increasingly an unreality on so many levels, it might as well be one, too, on this most banal of them. Just quite FB! Meanwhile, let the rest of us happily have their identities stolen in peace!

We had a nice meeting just the two of us this morning and I feel like we really got onto the same page—for the first time al the numbers matched. I then spent several hours working on the tour project. The irony of this project is that I find myself working many hours on a grant that is designed for someone else; when I’ve made clear that I needed help from said individual for our own grants. There was supposed to be this person on hand to take care of the work but she quit right at the start. The Boston crowd is very precious as a whole I’ve learned. They are not necessarily hard-boiled like the New York stock; they’re easily triggered and have huge chips on their shoulders, I think, because they don’t live in NYC and they aren’t Amanda Palmer. Though many performers in Boston are Amanda Palmer clones. They are very attached to their identities and I’ve never met so many self-professed trans people who don’t live or function as trans, seemingly, in my life.

It’s that superior-inferiority thing though that is most irksome. And even people I work with at brick and mortar venues are constantly jockeying and trying to grab credit where it isn’t always due. I really can’t give a shit about it anymore. I’m on my own path and it doesn’t include worrying about this sort of thing. People will do what they do. I can only have compassion for them.

==========

I was really looking forward to going to this art gala thing last night but I feel depressed now the day after. I was a bit sideswiped by my host asking me about an incident that occured a year ago at the restaurant owned by another guest. And I felt hijacked and really put on the spot. Then the person to my left bumped me and spilled red wine all over my trousers; and then another one of the drunken people at my table picked at the string label of my Margiela jacket while I was midstream at the urinal. People were just so drunk and unruly and I felt unsafe during the evening. We managed to leave early and just did a French exit. Yesterday, too, Kavanaugh was confirmed so the day already felt lousy. And I cannot kick this stupid cold I still have. Added to which, it seems so many of our efforts have been falling on dead ears. I’m so tired of the ambushes, the lion’s dens, the garden paths I’m led up. The users and the overpromisers, all in all, the malignant narcissists (aka same old tune). Hell really does feel like others now and I am making a giant about-face right now and putting putting focus firmly on myself. I agreed to be the non-profit agent of a tour the work of which was meant to be all about putting that tour together and the writing of releases and promotional materials and all such things as goes along with that. What I didn’t sign up for are the countless hours that have to go into the fulfilling of the grant admin itself. I have to write letters to my state representatives even.

I am an artist not an administrator and I really need to start valuing that. There is an argument for writing when you feel like it. But I like the exercise of the daily thing, even if I go months without anything earth-shattering to seay. For me it’s about facility more than anything else. And luckily I am just about an hour away from getting some serious creative thoughts I need for my book writing and my creative life down onto paper. This also serves as a giant to-do list. And I pride myself on knocking things off my list as best I can. I did talk to David Drake about performing the Tru piece. Whatever comes of it will come of it. And, more than anything, I am so ready to get my witch on. It is so frustrating—and I know it’s a universal experience of being human—but I’m really bent on closing the gap between the life I’m currently living and where I think it should be. I don’t see any reason why I can’t just now put all the pieces together. So that’s what I’m going to do. The one thing I can say about myself is I like myself. I’m not perfect nor do I want to be. But I am kind and if I’m bound to hurt anyone, it’s typically myself. But I’m done with it I really am.

I am older and I’m nobody’s famous offspring. But I have done a great many things of which I am proud. Do I regret that they have in large part not been sustainable. Maybe. But I chalk that up to the fact that I don’t have heavy enough a dose of narcissism, I really do. I have put a lot of work into ideas that others can invest in. And as someone who has always invested in others it truly is time for me to get a little love back for all we put out there. It really only feels fair at this point. There is no guarantee I realize; but if those who’ve made promises, unsolicited, don’t materialize at this juncture, it saddens me to say that it will change some things for me, sadly. I have to put my head down and power through one way or the other. And perhaps I need to get my brain around living, once again, frugally on surprise. I’m always happiest doing for myself in any case.

In other news, I think I have a herniated disk in my neck. And this two week old cough is not helping any. I cough so hard I almost black out. That cannot be good.

=========

There is something very satisfying about getting caught up, after the fall out of summer and as the new series at Oberon kicks off this week, which I’m really looking forward to. We have Tori Scott on Thursday and I’ve replaced the errant Illustrious Blacks with Desiree Burch. Only a matter of time before I screw up and say Tori Burch. Which would be more excusable than saying Thory Burch. It will nearly be twelve years ago, this winter, that our original jewelry collection got the rug pulled out from under it by those terrible, terrible people. I find that they same characters, in life, who cling like crazy, spending nearly every waking hour with you; these are the same people that will turn on a dime or do a disappearing act. I’m very interested in working on songs, starting tomorrow which should be quite exciting. I like the singer of Screaming Females—I think she has a similar quality to his voice as Bryan Ferry.

One of the things I def need to do on Wednesday is focus on a beefed up list of venues. I can also play around with this on Thursday when I will have the whole day to myself. I look forward to feeling totally at one with my schedule and with my creativity. Making headway on finances first thing; and secondly reviewing the lawyers notes are what are most pressingly on the agenda. The house needs a deep clean the basement needs to be vacuumed yoga must start again and I am back on keto. Everything is fine there is truly nothing to worry about.

I want to tell Brian that spending many hours this week getting my brain around the reality and enormity of this project which necessarily includes adminstrative work associated with continually fulfilling the stipulations and requirements of the grant in addition to the booking and more creative bits. I think what I needed to do was just explore every nook and cranny of the requirements entailed and to begin making drafts and projections such that me might only have to tweak as we create an engine for moving this project along. These include final report narratives, agreement letters, thank you letters to legislature, a workable budget, a timeline and an extensive venue-outreach list. I had a bit of a mini meltdown when I realized how many hoops there will be to jump through, the largest of which is understanding what’s what (how we didn’t know that venues had to apply to NEFA themselves???? that was a big chunk of missing information!). But I’ve managed to spend the last three days focussed on bundling all these bits and bobs, making major inroads on them, and drafting any documentation that will need final version for submission/mailing etc.

I am also cultivating a giant Excel sheet of venues and will collect phone numbers and email addresses for each of the places located throughout the New England states. We will include way more many venues than we need and then go after spaces more surgically. I must plan trip through Vermont on the way up to Montreal and back through Maine on the return. I did read the script of Gravitational Fool and feel that we can add in some more jokes and really make the characters that much more different, one from another, the bits with the talkbacks at the end feel awkward. I feel like we should be coming to some crescendo, maybe we have to go into more an ecstatic mode? Liken the hanged man to a cocoon for our own metaphysical transformation?

I’m guessing the smartest thing to do each day is to write the astrological stuff and to stay off social media. I can keep a Blague narrative page handy to act as more of a record than a safe space for musing these next few days. I have to go so deep and be all about it.

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

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

Sagittarius 14° (December 6)

So it’s Sunday. We decorated the tree last night, which was good fun. I’m going to spend the day putting the entire chronology together for the new counsel—fun. Obviously not something I want to have to do but it is necessary. My dream life is pretty wild. I do feel I’m getting to a good point in my process. I have connected with some childhood friends on the old book of face. We continue to go through and chuck things that we know we aren’t going to need. Some days I feel completely overwhelmed by it all, while other days I feel like, well, if we had to, we could likely pack up in a matter of two weeks. It will be an interesting time, and I want to do everything I can to avoid spending more money and having more stress, however the righteous path of standing up for oneself and one’s principles is the true north that needs following. Especially during dark times such as these, it is unfathomable to me how it is and why it is that someone would want to be so consciously meanspirited. It’s just wrong. And I pride myself on always being on the side of right. Some days that takes extra cups of coffee, sometimes not. Today I am going to dig down and put the project into works in time for our chat tomorrow. S. will speak to the Jazzagals. I do wish I had more of my own community, even a virtual one, but guys are crap. And in some way all the fellows I grew up with are all up their own a-holes, not in a terrible way, just that they are so preoccupied with their own problems (families) and marriages (divorces) and finding their various ways to anesthetize themselves (cannabis, religion, to name a couple. I wonder if they think I’m equally self-involved. I wish I were more self-involved and not always feeling the pain of being on my lonesome. But there you have it. I will knock off early because, frankly, all I can think about is cooking and drinking wine. And so I will make one of my go-to crowd (of two) pleasers, flounder, which it must be said nobody can quite make as well as I do. Eating a lot of fish is something I do on the regular, and though I don’t like to drink on a school night (lying through my teeth) I’m going to get some buckets of wine and have a grand ol’ eve.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1246-1250. 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.

Woke to Stella not feeling stellar. We were meant to go to Maine but we stayed put. I did work in bed setting up a Boston Globe article which worked out well, timing wise for the journalist. Speaking of journalism:

I was talking about being a journalist. I started at Passion magazine in Paris in 1986 than moved to New York in 1987 where I worked at an Avenue magazine offshoot called On The Avenue; at the same time I became managing editor then editor of DV8* which was a downtown music, fashion and art magazine that club kids like James St. James and Michael Alig would circulate for us at clubs like the Tunnel, Limelight, Palladium and The World. I then became managing editor of The New York Social Calendar which was a hip rag that was put in the new breed of luxury hotels like the Royalton and the Paramount where Where magazine wouldn’t fit. I freelanced for a number of magazines and newspapers including Paper, The New York Observer, Stop, In-Style, where I was a party reporter and Detour, where I wrote big celebrity features, The New York Times and the Boston Globe. I also was a field producer of a television show called Ooh La La made in Canada by the people who produced Fashion Television with Jeannie Becker. I did fashion pieces for youthy magazines like YM, Mademoiselle and Teen People. Soon, though, people got wind of Starsky + Cox and we/they began writing horoscope columns and features for seemingly every publication from Paris Vogue, Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle and Teen People, Star, Glamour and ultimately the Daily Beast (if you can believe we had a short-lived column there which ultimately became our own brand of Haute Astrology). Meanwhile under my real name and also under Stella’s real name I wrote for Neimann Marcus “The Book” which was pretty prestigious and allowed for more creativity than journalistic outlets, even though it was considered advertorial

=====

The word nemisis is literally from the goddess Nem-Isis, who was the shadow twin of Isis. An archeytpal Debby Downer if you will.

In my life, I believe, that I have had one nemisis, which is different from an enemy. A nemesis might be closer to a frenemy but one of the two people in the equation might be bordering on restraining order. My nemesis has actually tried to kill me, oh so subtly, but I don’t take it personally as he tries to kill everyone he “loves”, oh so subtly, because he has this weird worship/destroy attitude toward people he suspects are smarter, more fortunate or talented than s/he. This nemesis is no longer a nemesis in that I am in no way any longer emotionally involved with this character. Someone close to me probably warned me by saying something like: Anyone that wants to get that close to you so fast is probably not someone you want to know (or probably will know in the longr un because they are going to assert some narcissistic agenda). True dat. Funny thing about narcissists: They stage things like farewell tours and then they don’t go away.

========

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

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

Sagittarius 13° (December 5)

It’s funny but I came across a post about Bill(y) Mumy: It’s amazing. What I see as a teacher and student (not in that order) of acting is how  engages his core and diaphragm every time he “speaks” in other words connects, all so naturally, to that upper case Self inside. That is why, no matter what Bill has ever done as an actor, it is real to him. Acting is the opposite of acting in the sense of pretending, acting is acting, which is how humans express honestly, from their core, what they want, what their objectives are, and every word they speak is one and the same with their intention as the character. This is an innate understanding Bill possessed as a child. It cannot be taught to someone at a tender age. They either get it or they don’t. I can make comparisons to other child actors at the time Bill was working so prolifically. One of them is no a famous director. But there is no comparison between the true actor and the phoner inners. Acting is an art of the purest sort, because your source material is yourself. I never for a second did not believe Bill on screen. Even when, as a kid, he was hiding behind the same styroroam boulders that seemed to grace every planet on which the Robinsons landed. He shared this with Jonathan Harris: The ability to make even the most preposterous real. Jump cut to the Vegetable Planet. But I have to also say, while on the subject, that this praise is true for the entire cast of Lost In Space. Each and every actor on screen was a professional and they were equipped from the get-go (let us not forget that June Lockhard, too, was a child actor, and a very good one, gifted with the ability to be truthful, always, in the moment. She is especially wonderful in All This, And Heaven Too, with Bette and Boyer. I’m off on a tanget so I’ll reel it in. Bill Mumy’s acting ability had always been honest and stupendous. It is why we all still want to be his friend so many years later. He is an Aquarius, so it is right up his alley to have a gazillion friends, reserving his intimate connections for a very select few. Being that much older than me (and I’ve told him so) he was my hero for all my young life. When God Bless The Beast and the Children came along I was still in 2nd/3rd grade but I remember thinking—good for you, you’re not remaining the Tiger Beat kid. And then one day, as adults, I got to interview him and I promise you I was as gushing in that conversation as I am here now.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1241-1245 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.

The party last night turned out to be pretty fun. The cast of the FB movie were there for the most part. Catherine Waterston actually seemed nice. Monica Lewinsky was there which was interesting. Kate McKinnon sat right behind me. Whoopi Goldberg was pretty much my date and though I had no qualms interacting with her I don’t think she was overly interested so didn’t push. In fact, it was one of those dinners where everyone else is talking in pairs and trios and someone (me) has nobody to talk to. It rarely happens to me so I kind of rode it out and used it as a way to feel meditative in the circumstances. It wasn’t personal. Whoopi had a special salad from the rest of us but still didn’t eat it. She said she only really eats chips and french fries which was funny. I mentioned to two people we knew in common and she lit up a bit which was nice. Sheila Nevins came over and was introduced to me and I sort of gushed at her. To which shw reached out and carressed and held my face. I made a joke that I’m going to tell everyone that Sheila Nevins touched me uninvited—she’s a major mover in the #metoo movement—to which she replied: I’m going to tell everyone you touched me first. Ha! She is so elegant and funny too. JD appeared in the midst of it all and knelt at the head of our table to chat and then he came around to chat with Whoopi. He asked her a question that I overheard which reminded me of something someone would ask another high school student; I can’t really repeat it here. But, as they were hovering directly over me I sort of chimed in and made them laugh. JD leaned on my shoulders and squeezed them which was cute. Whoopi did a French exit. There was a sort of auction style pledge drive at different levels—being the budgeteer that I am, I pledged an amount that probably seemed paltry to others, while it was quite a lot for me. We were whisked away before dessert and had a last little something together just the three of us in the hotel lounge. I’m always sad when our time with our friend is over, though, in recent years, we have seen quite a lot of each other; in the past, the oughts decade, for instance, I never really knew, with such a parting, if we would indeed see each other for years to come; now I know there is always a next time that I needn’t wait too long for. I truly love this dear friend and I’m so grateful we get to spend time together and laugh; and laugh we do.

This morning we awoke early, big surprise, and decided to have breakfast down stairs in the whatchamacallit room and it was really fun. The food took forever to arrive which was perfect because we just wanted to sit there and chill and people watch and do practically nothing. Everything on the breakfast menu was ridiculously expensive, anyway, so I decided to order the most ridiculous thing: Eggs Isabella. Let’s just say that there were both truffles and caviar involved. I’m usually so careful when staying as someone’s guest but I just thought what the hell—it’s not something I’m going to ever make for myself. It was really fun just to hang out and soak up these last hours. We packed and went for a walk, zig-zagging the sidestreets between 63rd and 79th, between 5th and Madison and ended up at the Frederic Malle shop. Then we decided to have a spot of lunch at Bar Italia, sharing a couple plates, before getting in the car and heading back to the Cape. Was truly exhausted but the trip was so worth it. The celebrity bits don’t impress me a bit. What I love most is the true-friend time. True friends are truly hard to find.

=====

We arrived home late last evening. I have a scratchy throat today and I think I know what that means. I had the morning to myself to catch up on some writing and I could feel myself getting sicker and sicker. We had cauliflower crust pizza for lunch and a green salad with chicken breast for dinner. I had some thoughts post the party in NYC the other night.

Perfect that I am no beaming in from a futre time zone, when I still have a major cough, to report that all plans for the coming week were laid to waste. First of all relationships with people aren’t working and it’s global so it has to be me. And yet I swear to all things Christlike that I am being an agent of good—even not being as good to myself as I could be. But I’m going deeper into self care.

Had a nice show of support from some late breaking sponsors today. I really need to come up with a way to fundraise moving forward. I’ll put it on the list for October 4. I sent out a giant mailer to a bunch of venues regarding Brian’s show on Thursday. Had nice note back from Nancy Bauer on that score. I reached out to Desiree Burch to see if she would come stateside for the Feburary date the Illustrious people left vacant—thanks for that guys. And I finally have a date in the books to talk to Mass MoCA I should articulate that. Paid up the hotel and expenses looking tight but I will do my very best to remedy that in coming days. I see Lance Horne is doing something at ART. I will write him but he won’t write me back. I suggested Ikechuku Ufomadu also as a Feb replacement. Locked Tomoko in for our holiday show. Haven’t heard back from Danton will resend and hopefully he’ll join to. We are all on sale now at Joe’s Pub and happy to work some marketing magic. I did hear back from Sage Francis as well but I’m not sure he’s not flaking out again already. Audience is looking light for Gravitational Fool on Thursday but we will work some last minute magic.

I reached out to Cole too, but I think he’s just too big to answer emails. I pitched myself to play Tru in Jay Allen Pressey’s show but again no word back on that. I will suggest it to another venue. I’d like to get my hands on a copy of that play. Trying to confirm going to Portland but my spidey sense says that I’ll be too sick to do so. Still trying to get blood out of the stones that are the 141 guys—now that they have left the community they seem not to care that much about the work we’re doing. I do need to bring in more income. Next week I’ll circle back to Tatiana Von F. Emma sent some contracts I have to scan.

=====

Last evening I really didn’t sleep at all, my cold keeping my up for most the night. We had to move two of our clients, one to tomorrow and one to next week. We had an exact repeat of our food intake today as yesterday—cauliflower crust pizza for lunch and a lovely salad with chicken breast for dinner. I watched a pretty cool documentary about settlers on the Galapagos Islands in the early 20th century and otherwise lay low, trying to sweat this cold out, in bed for most of the day. In the evening we watched the Jane Fonda doc but didn’t finish watching. Will do so tomorrow. Going through some writing:

I love Julia Child. Who doesn’t, I know, but she has always held a special fascination for me. When I was a waiter in 1986 at the Harvest in Harvard Square, she and her husband Paul would come in for lunch. You would here “Bonjour Roger” in that booming unmistakeable tenor as she greeted the tiny alcoholic nicotine sodden maitre d’ whose name she properly prounced in French, ro-jay. Paul, a curled shrimp of a man who had already suffered his series of small strokes, followed hist towering wife into the dining room where she would always order the same thing: a burger, rare, no bun. She is a Leo and I’ve often remarked on the similarity between her choice of lunch and the bloody meat one would throw into a lion cage.

Before the book and movies about her during the last decades, I always thought she would make a great subject for a work of art. I won’t go any further into that thought lest I actually end up pursuing this instinct myself. At the very least I think she and her husband would make great costumes for Stella and me, come Halloween. But, obviously, there’s more to it. Here was a couple who worked together (even though you didn’t know he was behind the scenes), who had no kids and were rather late bloomers. They were also obsessed with France and had an affinity for Cambridge, Massachusetts and Maine. All of this I can relate to.

She described herself “as the cat looking at the king” when she was a student of Le Cordon Bleu—what can be more Leo an expression than that. And what person from any other sign could turn what was for her a personal passion into an entire movement, changing the way Americans cooked, forever. What other sign could see a chef superstar embodied in the form of a fifties something woman. I’m happy I had the few opportunities I did to wait on Mrs. Child whose name couldn’t be more fitting for someone who lived life with a childlike exuberance and who gave so much to the world.

======

I slept somewhat better. But still this cold is kicking my behind. I don’t feel much like writing today to be honest. So I will do another cut and paste:

As we often are, we were approached by an event planner to do readings for guest at a private party. But there was something mysterious about this whole affair as the planner didn’t seem to be someone who threw a lot of parties, and we came to learn she worked for just a few clients helping them with their private and corporate events which kept her busy. This event was to be at a private home in Rhode Island and we took it as an opportunity to see a new part of New England. Only was there did we realize the island was where much of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom was filmed. So we drove around to visit location spots, most notably, the “cove” of the place that serves as the film’s title.

The party itself only had about forty people in attendance but it was pretty elaborate and the grounds on which it was held, a private home on the water with multiple acres and buildings, was something the likes of which I’ve never seen; and I’ve spent a lot of time around rich people. We were set up in a sort of tower structure from which we could look down on the partygoers whom one couldn’t help imagine lived very privileged lives. One never knows exactly on which side of the political equation people might be in this position but, we were in short order led to assume that these people here assembled were on the right side of politics and history. How did we know this? Because they were all incredibly nice and unassuming people. In a world where the biblical adage that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven often rings so true, this party of people was to prove twrong that saying.

We had no idea the name of the hosts all the while we were at the party. Only by doing a bit of Google detective work the next day were our assumtions corrobarated. The host of the party was indeed a well-known, celebrated, very wealthy man of the Warren Buffet school of philanthropy where he was determined to give a great deal of his wealth away and to put it in service of others. We’ve always said that when it comes to private clients the best people in the world seem to find us and to be genuintely interested in raising their consciousness, making it a joy to help them in that aim. What we realize is that the same holds true for those who come to hire us for events. In either case we have never solicited interest but allow word of mouth and, I’d like to say, some good karma, make the referrals for us.

========

Drove to Lexington this morning for lunch and for a birthday ice cream with the birthday girl. We had a quick bite at the parents and then set off to Beverly to see the showcase of Gravitational Fool at Endicott. I need to articulate some thoughts regarding this show and what it needs but I guess i just need things to percolate in my brain a bit. I will otherwise re-muse myself:

Why do I do what it is I do in regard to the half of each year, I spend, putting together performing arts festivals and series. Well, the simple answer is that Ed Sullivan and I share more than a birthday. Like Ed, I was a journalist from the age of 22 to about 40. IN fact the main reason I thought to adopt the pseudonym of Quinn Cox was because I wanted to keep my journalistic world—editors and publishers and the subjects I wrote about—separate from what might or not be a success as an astrological duo which has affectionately come to be known as Starsky + Cox. But you see paradoxes began to spring up. Like my Libran brother Oscar Wilde said, and I paraphrase because I’m too lazy to look this shit up: Give a man a mask and he’ll reveal his truths to you. Okay I’m going to look it up and see how close I got. What he actually said was: “Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth.” Which is much simpler and better but I was close.

People do not know me and that’s been okay. I think I’m getting ready to reveal myself in teaspoonfuls. The fact is that back around 2005 I thought Stella and I needed to take to a stage, something we had only done together, rarely, in acting classes where, at HB Studios, we were labelled “the Lunts” which, I won’t lie, I loved. I had a sort of rock-bottom epiphany where I thought, hang on, our book Sextrology came out last year and it has been a success, so we should take to the stage and somehow combine comedy and astrology with some music thrown in. At a place called (under) Elmo in Chelsea, which one tried to convince oneself was a boutique version of Fez under Time Cafe which had recently closed down, we launched our first “Cosmic Cabaret” to a full house of wonderful people we knew personally and periferally. Lots of fashion people—Zaldy and Ruben and Isabel Toledo and John Bartlett—as opposed to performer folks. And, I have to say, after another decade or so “being” with performer folk, I much prefer the people in the fashion and design world, despite the fact I was so utterly convinced, in 2005, that I wanted to stop hanging around with fashion folks whom I did at the time find fatuous and enter the “real” world of performing artists who were down, dirty, honest and true.

Performing artists, who had been down, dirty, honesty and true for the whole time I dipped in and out of their circles, for the past 20 years since I made my way to NYC, but when, in 2006, I began to seek their company, they were on their last gasp of genuine experience. Now, first, let me say, there is no downtown. And I say this as both a journalist and a downtown denizen who more dabbles in performance. I have said this for a decade now: Round about 2007, “downtown artists” began emulating some hybrid breed of Upper East Side Socialite and opera, indie-movie and/or rock star. Quite a leap, I know; but one felt, downtown, that one should speak in a mid-Atlantic accent previously reserved for Rosiland Russell and garb oneself from head to toe in outfits that were spontaneously ready to pass, if pressured, at a Met or Whitney Event.

Suddenly the creme de la creme of the downtown scene used words like creme de la creme. Though they might still live in apartments where the bath tub was recently or still, in the kitchen, they thought they should no longer have to pay for meals or makeup or plastic surgery because they were iconic, and they were. Some still are although that particular brand of enchantment is wearing off and, dare I say, thin.

And I started to miss my friends that worked at magazines that no longer existed. I started to miss the art directors and fellow writers, like myself, who live such solitary lives that it takes a proper poking or, at the very least, a more gregarious partner to stap you into interaction. But what I missed most about living life as a more anonymous character was the ability to move on a dime, to travel, undetected, without needing to be any one place on any certain date….

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

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

Sagittarius 12° (December 4)

Just when I thought things might have been looking up another bomb, which I did not see coming, gets dropped. I truly don’t understand this life. The challenge feels way too big for me and I don’t know why, during a pandemic, that people can be so cruel. But I try to imagine that I am being guided in the right direction, despite the stress and searing pain I’m feeling. I look for signs and there may be some but not really sure they are what I’m after anymore. The stress is really just too, too great and I know myself and I need to secure a back up. There is no point in giving over to this place at this point now. The day really was going so well, but you just have to flow with the go in life, is what it comes down to, and so I will let myself be slightly derailed and then I will do a giant redirect. There is nothing else can be done about things. There is a special circle in Hell for people who intentionally cause others pain and suffering, particularly during this Covid-19 pandemic. (And it is so cliché to be a douche at the end of the day on a Friday.) 2020 has brought out the best and the worst in people, but like traitors, real perpetrators of any kind are now easy to spot among those in whom this dark time has brought out the bright lights of kindness and compassion. Go out of your way to be loving, as you have no clue what loss and difficulty others might be enduring. Don’t add to people’s pain. I know I’m preaching to the choir, here, because if you’re reading this we are friends, so at the very worst, you’re a benign narcissist (as I’ve pretty much weeded out the maligant ones from my social media sphere over the last twelve months)! Forgive even the most rabid fucktards for the sake of your own peace and well-being. Feel for those who tresspass against you because that karma you done heard about is real. Happy weekend everybody and stay out of every kind of harm’s way! 00

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1236-1240 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.

Still really unsettled by the shark incident and I know I won’t get back to our beach before returning from NYC where we go in a couple of days. I was looking back on some writing from the past couple of years. And I wish to just repeat it here.

My mother used to tell me how she had to fight and, I think, ultimately, drink to silence her “impressions”, empathetic Pisces that she was. Sometimes I would catch her unawares sitting in a kitchen chair staring unblinkingly, only her gaze seemed to direct inward not out. I didn’t experience what she experienced as a child.

I do remember moving objects when I was very small, something I never repeated, though I’ve tried. And surely I did enter the fairy world, for lack of a better term, through duvet covers and sometimes even the odd pillow case. But there was nothing in my youth or teens of the psychic about my experience except so far as my mother was concerned. I would get a flash that she was about to phone me and I would suprise and entertain friends and roommates by saying the phone is about to ring and it would be my mother which it was. I chalked that up to her not me.

In Rome in 1984 Stella and I met an old man who spoke in tongues whom we “understood” on a transmissionary level; in our Hoboken apartment in 1988 we saw plasmic scenes of partygoers from the 1920s superimposed upon the visual landscape of our interior. We had a ghost cat that visitors would also see and almost trip over. But it wasn’t until the early 1990s, living in New York’s West Village, where we did for a good long time, that my so-called gift emerge.

In clubs and in bars with a good buzz on was how it began. Inevitably the struck-up conversations with acquaintances or veritable strangers, I would start getting messages. People wouldn’t think I was crazy because I was eerily accurate in my verbalizations; in the moment I didn’t judge, while, next day, I chalked it up to quasi drunken stupidity. Now I know that drinks would relax the veil between me and it. I wasn’t a professional astrologer then, never mindsome form of metaphysician. These little episodes were foreshadowing. But, slowly, over time, I did begin to trust these impressions which  were being received increasingly in sober moments. I simply thought: cool, I have inherited something of my Celtic mother’s gift which might amount to a tiny party trick perhaps. No further expectation.

Year’s later as we began doing astrological readings for people, the sharp focus of doing so seemed to have the same effect as the fuzzying out that drinking enabled. Impressions were coming to me through the very opposite end of my mental spectrum—that of a concentrated openness to the symbolic patterning on a individual’s astrological chart. We were (and are) continually trained to read people’s charts, the result of which is already forever astonishing—the accuracy of a technical astrological reading will always remain inexplicable as to the why it works. But, more and more, there was something extra available to me. Training my mind technically, consciously, intellectually via the complexities and intricasies of one’s chart at hand seemed also to open a window somewhere in the back (or, to be accurate upper-left side) of said consciousness where these flashes, impressions, or rather, imperatives were asking to be articulated.

I pick a Tarot card every morning. Doing so is never the same twice. Our minds are never exactly in the same state when we do some ritual behavior—they state always varies at least by tiny degrees. This morning I was shuffling absent-mindingly to the point that I forgot what I was doing, lost in some early morning daydream, the to-dos of the day yet to creep their way in. Suddenly I “heard” a pick me from one of the cards I remembered I was fondling. I did. It was the Magician. And its appearance immediately inspired the theme of today’s installment. In a way my so-called psychic ability, as transient as it can be, is the Universe’s ultimate Blage on me.

=====

Possible venues throughout New England Portland: State Theater; Aura, Longfellows, Space Gallery.

I stumbled on a few things I wrote of late

How to speak on the subject of nothingness: The day was devoid of meaning, there was nothing to discuss, the televised news headlines were the same as last night’s, it was toast as usual, today, with almond butter and honey, not miso-tahini sauce. Alas, it was a no-nonsense day, with varied purposes being personfied in beings moving too and fro, like birds, in the morning.

There was beauty; there always is. But today had a special spark suggesting something significant might happen. Use of simile, unawares. And somewhere via something else a corner of the mind awakes from long sleep not hindered by worry and longing. There was poetry, too. Somehow, inside ones head, verse was heard, sounded like voiced by Laurence Olivier, the first name to be introduced here. And now, I have nothing to fear.

I asked the door to move if there were spirit here and it didn’t. So I know that it is just me. And before I exercise license I must feel, and that is near impossible. Take sip, swallow. Make of yourself vehicle and vessel. It’s uncomfortable but it gets the lead out. Golden years, gold, whop whop whop.

I sent L.R. another email to try and get paid for the time and energy I put into booking her a gig. I don’t know why I won’t learn my lesson with certain people who seem to feel justified in using others for their own selfish ends. Lesson learned. Never again. I alighted on Rob Roth’s show and wrote him a note but he wasn’t interested apparently. I’m still pulling teeth from people who pledged to become sponsors of the festival. I don’t understand how ridiculous this process has become. The December show is coming together band-wise. And I’m already immediately into grant writing for next year. Crazy.

=====

There was something else I stumbled upon recently, things I wrote but failed to remember:

Living in seaside towns you see your fare share of inns and B&Bs and so forth. And there is something about the signage that can tell you something right off the bat, I find, about the personalities of the owners. If full and they hang a little NO to the left of VACANCY I take it as a polite, time-saving gesture for all involved. It’s polite enough without being cute. I hate cute. The only exception perhaps is when a shop says OPEN and then scrambles the words to read NOPE when they’re not. I can sort of deal with that. But when an inn or B&B is full and they hang the world NO to the right of the VACANCY sign, I feel we’re in for a bit of a problem. I mean there won’t be a problem because obviously I’m not entering to inquire about a room—I wouldn’t anyway; but I might subliminally steer visiting friends or strangers, even, away from some a place. Somehow that particular combination of the two words is the equivalent of the kind of 1980s joke, like, “I’m so interested in this—NOT.” It’s something Roseanne used to say as the character Roseanne on Roseanne. It’s a little dangle-y, as if there is a silent question mark after the work VACANCY? and then boom: NO, loser. It’s just a bit passive aggressive.

And then there is the more cloying passive aggresive version of the no vacancy sign which is SORRY. Really? Sorry? Are you. Why. Who asked you to be. Who says I’m disappointed? How did we jump to disappointment. It’s assuming a lot: To think you have the power to disappoint me. It’s so condescending. It might be worse than VACANCY NO now that I think about it. Like it’s so fucking great to stay at your crappy B&B. SORRY. That’s like breaking up with someone because you know they are just about to break up with you. Like I have to be shut out from staying at your crappy place and also be noble enough to let you down easy that I didn’t want to fucking stay there in the first place. God. It’s such a victimy projection. Like don’t fucking worry about it. I’m fine. I don’t need your fucking pity that I can’t stay in your lousy room with the squeaky double bed and eat your mini muffins with bad coffee in the morning. Trust me we are good.

Whatever happened to FULL. I love FULL. It’s so simple and direct. It’s the opposite of VACANCY, that would be EMPTY which wouldn’t be accurate because a place isn’t empty then full it’s filling up and then full. FILLING UP would be a cute way of saying VACANCY but, yeah, we don’t like cute so never mind. And so what—damn the parallel structure—FULL works just fine. It’s succinct and yet it feels a little friendly. It’s not assuming anything about me or asking me to feel away. It’s not like the other codependent nightmare signs. It’s just like FULL. That’s it. We’re cool. No need to discuss. I have boundaries. I wish you well. I’m not going to waste your time. Just keep looking and I wish you well. God Speed.

While on the subject of signs: I have this idea to market a two sided Provincetown Paddle whereupon, on one side it says COME HERE and on the other GO AWAY. Because after living and working in this town for quite some time what I’ve noticed is that it’s a petrie dish for polarization. And ultimately people fall into two categories—those you want or actually need to see for one reason or another on any given day OR those you are definitely trying to avoid seeing or being seen by. So I thought I would market an auction paddle. I could call it the “Provincetown People Polarization Paddle”™ I think it would sell like hotcakes.

=========

Yesterday we drove from the Cape to Boston. I haven’t had panicky feelings in a long time but as I was telling S. I have been experiencing a sort of dread lately. It might very well be about money, but I think it’s more than that. I think it’s about the creative limbs that we keep going out upon and not knowing when to sort of reel those suckers in.

Some more remembrances:

As a small child in Jersey City we used to have soot showers. That’s right. There was a nearby factory or something and sometimes soot would fall from the sky like black snow flakes, wafting down. It was very odd and frankly something I hadn’t thought about probably since the last time I witnessed one—sometimes sitting down to write a Blague without any exact idea about what that Blague might be can trigger memories of this sort. These soot showers used to happen, I recall, most, in Spring, which seemed longer when I was a kid, in no small part due to the manmade changes in our weather patterns.

There was something magical that happened to kids in Spring, which I can’t quite explain. In the city, there would come that day where bubbles and water balloons and kites and kids trying to ride bikes for the first time without training wheels, bats-and-balls, those paddles with the ball attached with a rubber band, and hopscotch, water pistols, and hulahoops, and those small pink balls one used, in cities, to play handball against a brick wall, and the two dangerous early-seventies toys called Clackers—two balls on a string you would try to make hit above and below your quick-flicking grip, only to hit yourself in the head or face—and that other gadget, a loop with a string and ball attached, where you strapped the loop around one ankle and you would try to jump over the ball as you swung it in a circular motion with said ankle, only to trip yourself and fall face first onto the pavement—all would all start to surface. Girls played elaborate patty cake and jumped rope and everyone played Red Rover and May I.

Later in the more bucolic suburbs, in addition to paper airplaines, boys would fold up paper footballs and shoot the between a buddy’s goal post—index fingers connected at the tips with both thumbs up, while girls made what I was told later in life by someone were called Cooty Cathers, little magical folded and numbered creases of paper with numbers that you manipulated with your fingers and to which you posed questions about love, for the most part. I didn’t describe this at all well. Under flaps of paper were “answers” to the questions girls would ask. Suburban girls played less patty cake it seemed and gymanstical feats seemed to replace jumping rope, but that might be Nadia Comenici’s fault. And of course little league and new gloves and mitts and such played a major part in the childhood estate of Spring. And for some reason candy seemed to be more a Spring occupation than it was in other seasons. I think that had something to do with marketing and the knowledge that kids could sneak away to candy stores more readily in the clement weather.

========

Yesterday we drove from Boston to New York City. It was ridiculously fast and easy all the traffic going the other way. We checked in and immediately went in search of lunch. Match was just a couple blocks away so we got seated and when we plopped down realized that Richard Barone was seated next to us with Paul Williams. Actually I spotted Paul first and thought in an instant that the only person I know who knows him is Richard et voila it was Richard. We said hi and did our own thing. S. had soup and I had a tuna tartare and then some single espressi and upon splitting had a nice chat with Richard and Paul who I think is 78 years old and really nice. He gave us his card. He is preseident of ASCAP. And he not only wrote We’ve Only Just Begun and most songs you (well, at least I) grew up on….he wrote the freaking The Rainbow Connection. For that he should be sainted.

We quickly spruced up and prepared to meet the publisher of Harper One books who was coming to see us for a chat. These types of meetings always give me something of a panic attack to be honest because I have such trauma around publishers, editors, agents, managers and lawyers in regard to book world. She was super cool but super on a schedule as is not expected. Still you never know where these things go. She mentioned doing a book for people we know that own a shop in Salem. Anyway we got a text that JW was going to be joining us that evening for dinner which was to make a happy foursome. We met around 7 and it was just the three of us for awhile which was great cuz we got to catch up on personal stuff and then JW joined and that was a differnet kind of fun. As usual we closed the joint and it wasn’t the best night of sleep.

We had a wee breakfast in the room and then set off for Barneys where I had two clothing options in mind that I needed to round out one or the other of the outfits I brought. I ended up scrapping everything and spending way too much money on a Margiela jacket and cotton cashmere t-shirt. Anyway I never buy clothes and it was a good investment so really no harm done. Then we decided to have lunch in the building at Fred’s. Suddenly Michael Cohen was there (apparently—I did not know this—he lunches there pretty much every day), which I thought was strange cuz Donnie Deutsch had been saying on Morning Joe so much, recently, that Michel is laying low and he hadn’t really seen him. S. had the chopped salad which is her custom and I had the club salad with blue cheese. We had a nice crisp glass of Sancerre each and headed out. Who should we see exiting the restuarant, in that weird area with art sculptures made for six year-olds but, yep, you guessed it: Donnie Deutsch. Before I could open my mouth, Stella said: You know Michael Cohen’s in there. He said yeah I know. I said: So I guess he’s not laying as low as you said. He turned scarlet and said yeah but he’s still not talking though. Meanwhile Cohen spent the entire hour we were there getting up to hug or shake hands with every manager and waiter at Fred’s. My take is that he is trying to act the hero, now, since pleading guilty. As if he is going to save us from the orange menace. I’m not really buying it. He is a crook just like the rest of them. Donnie Deutsch works out way too much and his kids who were playing around the sculptures are really, really young. I’m guessing this is family number two for him, but what do I know.

My Margiela was being altered meanwhile and I was to hit Barneys back at 430 to pick up the jacket. Well I texted the sales guy, Anthony, at 430 and he said twenty minutes. I was already strolling over and I had to be downstairs in the hotel at 6 to meet the car. I sat at Barneys till about 5:15 becoming increasingly irate and adamant and when I finally go the hand of I bolted back to the room where I still had to shave and shower and do all such sundries. I forgot to spritz myself with cologne and raced back to the room at the stroke of six, and the phone in the room was already ringing. They are really precise with timing I guess. We got to the party in plenty of time and was meant to be greeted by our friend who now works for the charity, Kris. We didn’t see her and so just checked in ourselves. I was holding my phone and glasses because I thought I didn’t have any pockets in my new jacket. This was disproven by our friend Debra who was the first of the guests to greet us.

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

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