Pisces 8° (February 26)

I didn’t sleep and that is not unusual when I am alone—my patterns get all screwed up. So there is definitely a chicken outside of the coop and it appears farmer fuckwad knows about it and just doesn’t care. Just a perfect metaphor for our situation actually. No news on the real estate front in any case. I will repeat lunch menu from yesterday, sans pain, and I am making a sort of kedgeree only with potato not rice. I was thinking of getting some things in from Orleans or Provincetown but actually there is plenty here in house to fill the voids.This will last a few days, actually. Maybe too many potatoes. Not getting a whole lot done today but did get to say this much anyway: Gemini is the cosmic switchboard operator of the zodiac, plugged in and connected every which way, possessing and passing along a wealth of information, without necessarily processing it. Indeed, the facts and figuring she retains often defies her own logic, being unaware of when and where she picked up this bit or bob of her accumulated knowledge. But those in her mercurial orbit are well aware that if they have a question, she generally has several answers to choose from. All things being, at least, bidirectional in the dual Twins’s world, she is the consummate connector as well—she of the valuable introductions—although it isn’t a role she always wants to play, and certainly not for just anybody. She is all too aware—or should be—that in acting as a facilitator, a conduit, for others’ successes, she might lose sign of your own. So, you do well, Gemini, to be discerning on this point, reserving your energy for those most deserving and in endeavors that provide mutual benefit or are a byproduct of putting yourself first. Gemini is a natural agent, even when she is the primary or sole client. She is simply designed to broker deals, particularly when the hot commodity is herself. Gemini learns early on, and frequently the hard way, to take a hands-on approach to her career and creative goals, never relinquishing complete control to representatives on her behalf. She is a great delegator, but she should never completely outsource her authority, a micro-dose of micro-management going a long way to protect her interests. 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1651-1655. 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 don’t mind a short graph of nonsequitors and I don’t want you to judge me for employing them. I had another mystical morning. Most mornings this week. Spoke with a client before the interview with Tanya. Ticking things off the list big time. I’ve been writing notes to myself everywhere, including on a giant blackboard; and in about a half hour from now I will start erasing hopefully. Tying off, as I said yesterday (or the day before). Also not jumping at the first possible thing, I’m more interested in holding out for the good stuff. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t quite finished here today, which is fine, i’m going to spend the next ten minutes doing this and then the next twenty on pre-work for my meeting with Brad Thursday morning. These sorts of last minute whatchamacallits give me the willies and the heebyjeebies and leave a large pit in my stomach. I suppose I might feel my way back to when I was friends with Bruce Piszel which was second or third grade maybe. We both had these big knight figures we played with, one had gold armour, one had silver. And I also had this sort of fold out metal castle thingy with turrets (there was a Fort Apache version of this weird toy) with plastic knight figures that were very civil looking and then their enemies which looked like Saxon vikings or some such. His older brother and sister Buddy and Pam would probably ten or so years his senior and they were concert pianists who played separately and duets and studied with the teacher we studied with but Bruce quit. They moved to Rutherford the year we moved to Wyckoff. I tried to keep up visiting but it didn’t last long. I think Bruce and his younger brother Michael got into karate. They were pretty active kids.

But I see us in our turtlenecks and striped bell bottoms and Keds sliding across the floor, playing, sometimes Operation which was my favorite and it was so cool that they had it. I suddenly see another playmate, a girl, heavy, and yet like Marcy from Dennis the Menace, with pigtails tied with that thick cottony twine that came in different colors and girls always wore then. I remember being in a driveway. I recall an entrance with a vestibule. There was something very European about the Piszels, as their name would suggest. Polish I think. Was Chopin Polish. I do believe that it was the first time in my life that I can think of as depressing. I don’t know why. All I remember is a wet winter that wouldn’t end. I’m going to have a day tomorrow but it’s actually okay, only because I will get up super early and do then what I didn’t quite get to today. But what else is new, really, I mean this is the way of the world. We are cancelling some unnecessary plans which I think is really wise. I definitely need to float through as much as I can and take the time to pack and clean and all that sort of thing. I believe it is enough to forgo one thing but not all things. I don’t think felt depressed again, actually, for awhile. I do remember the first year moving to Wyckoff I had a smell in my nose like old cracked colored paper and this lasted for months. Probably a sinus infection that went unattended. I suppose there was a bit of depression involved, staying indoors, playing superhero, tying ropes to the railings inside our house. Metal railings inside our house. Why were they not wood. Don’t answer that.

 I made a reservation for seven Saturday at Kanoyama, so that’s done. I’m kind of psyched for sushi and it’s so easy. It’s right across the street from Pangea and I don’t think it will be overly hectic like places we don’t know that well. I think we try something new on our own when we are there for the Kennedy event. This Cosmic Blague is going to add up to something someday that much I can tell you. I’ll be curious to read myself back. I’m going to have to be somewhat speedy in the writing of the new book. Maybe the intros are entitled random thoughts about the Aries et al. Right I know: I write the horoscopes first and then do the intros and those will be the starter kits in any case, more like the back of page matter we created for Wallpaper•.
A thing you don’t know about me: Upon moving to NYC in the early late 80s I worked uptown by day at Avenue magazine and downtown by night editing DV8 Magazine which was the club kid bible and the motor by which their parties were thrown—DV8* made deals with club owners to throw parties the kids would attend and where we circulated DV8*, the first ever magazine desktop published on a Mac as far as I know. I don’t remember Walt Cassidy (his aka Wallpaper sounds familiar) but that doesn’t mean anything. A couple of years ago at the LA Art Book Fair I saw some photographer that was showing work we produced at DV8* which turned out to be that of my friend and then contributor. I do know that David LaChapelle‘s firstcover (correct me if I’m wrong) was DV8*. And the pages, which I will start to scan at some point onto this FB Page, were filled with so many folks who went on to do terrific things. The much alluded to TV appearance and New York magazine article that constituted, which was the most exposure we/the club kids experienced at that epoch, understood and made mention of DV8*’s influence. I’ll be interested to know if we appear in this book. I always thought it funny that Wallpaper* magazine had an asterisk in its title as well. Ultimately, under our non-pagan names, Stella and I became co-Executive Editors of Wallpaper* in London, in the early aughts, our last ever office job working for somebody else. Postscript: Michael Musto wrote to say his name was Walt Paper. I still don’t remember him.

Okay well here I am, on this date, writing a final paragraph before I move onto the last project of the day. I have to say it is a real joy to get here; we certainly did ring the bell this year I have to say and as we slide into the final six weeks of it, I am reminded to take things slower even as so many things are simultaneously heating up. The reality is that I will be writing for a good chunk of the next two years and that’s okay. When I get on the plane I’ll start next  year’s planet moves. That can be January while February and March I put those packets together—grabbing “musings” and “experience” plus notes about each of the Sextrology chapters—into document packages. That can be like four two days per sign, four times twenty four is forty-eight, so that’s pretty doable really as a backdrop project, deconstructing what we’re doing;

 Anyway, I spent the day writing and packing and fell asleep pretty exhausted rather early only to awken around three (big surprise) and I popped on the TV to see exactly what time it actually was and Smithereens was on TCM. Now I know this film was pivotal for S. back in the day but I think I only thought I knew it or had seen it; and if I had seen it, which is slightly familiar, I don’t remember any of it. I only watched a bit with the sound off before thankfully falling back to sleep. But what struck me was the following:

It was of it’s time. Now I know that sounds obvious but hear me out. It was made and set in 1982 and, though we associate the eighties with being the beginning of big shoulder pads and Wall Street and Alexis and Crystal, the fact is that, in 1982, New York (as the prime location not only of the film but of American consciousness at the time) was at its most burnt out. We think of the seventies as being burnt out but really it was just still burning. In 1982 New York was a shell of a former self and a raw scaffolding for what would be its new identity. In the film, the characters are living in a van in a parking lot surrounded by homeless people and burnt out buildings and everything, including advertisements for shows at Max’s Kansas City, was expressed in fresh grafitti. What was happening on screen might be a slightly exaggerated version of what was going on downtown but not too too much. Susan Seidelman was capturing the authenticity of the era in real time. People looked like the characters on screen. They smoked extinguished cigarette butts, they dove into diners where they would see a friend or acquaintance and quickly steal a bite of their burger, they wore converse hightops with miniskirts that cost pennies in thrift shops. As we did. It got me thinking: This was the last time a filmmaker caught on screen, in fictionalized form, a reality they were presently living—well, it was at least the last time a white person did. In the late eighties and nineties Spike Lee and John Singleton managed to show us slices of real life in real time, fictionalized though it was. Tell me what film you can think of since that time, though, when we are seeing the reality we are living staring back at us through film. Diane Arbus did it in photographs in the fifties and sixties; Joan Didion did it in the seventies (although she was writing essays from life, which doesn’t really count). Only a certain desolation and despair can be translated as such. Unless you labor under the delusion that your life in the West Village in the nineties was exactly like Friends or Sex and the City then I don’t think you have even a specious argument. Another thing: I hate Ryan Murphy. I’m sure I’d loath the person actually as much as I do his revisionist glamorization of horrific times. Paris is Burning was a documentary so it doesn’t count. But had there been a real scripted film at the time about people living life in New York City during that time, instead of a sanitized twenty-first century version thereof, that would have been more along the lines of what I was talking about.

Anyway we rose at six and left the house by nine to make a train from Dedham. These tablets are really chilling; although I did feel a certain wave of adrenalin attempt to make its way up through the miasma of my newly alchemically shifted self. Still it wasn’t nearly like what I have been coping with over the last couple of years with increasing intensity. We are headed to NYC and the Acela is much more relaxing than driving that is for shitting sure. It’s just after noon now and that means only a couple more hours to go. Part of me imagines I will take a nap when I get there, but, honestly by the time we check in and unpack I don’t see how that will be possible. Also I just realized that I forgot some things which (oy) I won’t mention. It’s not a big deal but it does sort of add to the dilemma if there were one. Which there needn’t be. So much of this stuff is made up in my mind in any case. I might do well to just lie down, set an alarm, and head out just in time for dinner and not have to stress any of this. I do have a habit of complicating things unnecessarily, that we know is very true. Meanwhile I’m sitting here on a train next to a boy who I think is a coder of some kind. He keeps writing impossible mathematcal looking equations. I can barely type in English. I have a giant to-do list, I may have mentioned, that I have to start plugging into my online calendar and/or daily planner. I’m sorry I don’t know how to code. Should I care that I can’t? Just got an invitation to a holiday dinner—it popped across my screen—but it isn’t something I’m going to be able to make. We have to figure out, as it is, how we are going to get from olde Cape Cod to Boston during Christmas week. I suppose we could stay in a hotel for two nights and then make our way to the family for dinner. That is a possibility. Might be very good for shopping; and still we would have time to do any last minute laundry and such at the inlaws. We will again post Scotland when back in London for, what? two days. And then Suffolk and then I suppose we can make our way to Paris and drop our bags at Susie’s or Dom and Nan’s and then head down to Geneva where H+C will surely pick us up and then onto Venice (with them?). This is all to be figured out.

There was a good article on Venice in Winter in Vogue from a few years ago. It looks super on the nose but when you’re visiting a place for the first time for a short time why not be on the nose about it all. I think it is just my luck that they’ve had one of the biggest floods in their history, a bit early this year, just as we decide to go there. What else is new? I just hope that after our visit, given my Pluto rising, it doesn’t completely sink into the sea. Anyway I’m trying not to panic. We are on the Acela still and we are stuck on the tracks as a bridge that is opened in front of us is not cooperating and isn’t closing. I am going to keep an open mind and think positive thoughts but why is there always something fucked up about American trains. They suck we know that. I have been on trains all through Europe for decades with nary a problem. As I write this they say that we will soon get underway. I’ll believe it when we are actually rolling.


Back to yesterday: Well the train to New York was fine but upon arrival I can once again say I fucking hate it here. I don’t even lament “my New York” and the rest of the lamenteers who still live here and make art about how it isn’t the same should fucking leave just as I have. Taxi ride from hell and then we get to our hotel where we are paying full price for a suite and we are told “heads up” there is a wedding party in the next suite and they may be loud later. I was like well heads up we will be complaining then if there is noise that wakes us up. Which inspired the desk guy (manager?) who I’ve met before and me no like to cop an attitude. I quickly pointed out we have had problems in the past because they are always so understaffed so that when there is noise problem they don’t even have an extra person to come upstairs to check on the noise let alone fix it. And get this he says: Yeah we still have an understaffing problem so….So? So okay you pay the seven hundred dollars it costs to be here then you fucking moron. I’m so pissed right now I could spit. Then on top of it I’m made to feel that this is my fault. You know what fuck everyone. I’m sick to death of this shit. I suppose it’s okay to tell someone that is just checking in that there going to have a lousy night of no sleep and there will be nobody at the desk to help them out. Just checked out Yelp and this place gets totally trashed. Okay I got that all out of my system—shwoooooo—and now I can go on with some happy thoughts and plans. I only need to be bitter long enought o get this out of my system. Not that the crappy hotel manager was ever contrite. He is a dick and that is the long and short of it.

So I went downstairs for a cocktail once S. headed to her hair appointment. And I ate a ton of olives. Then I headed over to meet her for dinner at Hearth which was incredibly overrated and overpriced. It really is too bad. I mean it’s one thing that in this new gilded age things that used to be easy breezy and rather on the cheap, like grabbing a bite in the East Village, has turned into twenty-six dollar orders of meat balls, but it’s quite another that there is even less effort put into it. Back in the day you would show up at some restaurant and even if it was cheap and cheerful the hostess, say, would have a look and a healthy, reassuringly cool attitude. She wouldn’t be wearing a fleece pullover unironically as if she were working some NYU cafeteria. I find myself not even wanting to tip anymore just becuase nothing matches the prices and the service places has gotten, worse and worse, lazier and lazier. One morning here at the Marlton I had to ask three different servers for a side of honey. And everyone just seems to take it for granted they are going to receive big gratuities on their crappy service. Sorry but no. Anyway still on evening one: We had a little bit of friction at dinner because what happened but a run in with he whom I’ve offered referred to as the devin incarnate because he hasn’t not been. In full disclosure I reached out to him last to wish him well and get any suck karma, good or bad, off my side of the street. His response was “thanks for the sentiment” adding S. on the email in an effort, what?, to rat me out for writing him? Whatever queen.

So soon after sitting down to dinner S. tells me that she was walking past his shop(s) and looked in the window and there he was doing his usual futzing thing. Their eyes locked and he beckoned her in and, well, honestly I didn’t really pay much attention to her telling me what exctly transired except for the fact that he hugged her (twice) and I think she said he asked about me or something to that effect. I mean if he’s not schizophrenic I can tell you that the situation absolutely is. And all I’m left wonering is: would he have acted that way toward me if I had similarly been passing and took a glance into his fussy little window. Eek gads. Even if he was being nice and actually loving in the situation he still creates this dynamic of division in a sense. Just one more way he proves that he’s a psycho. If he would have hugged me the same and been all lovey dovey then why doesn’t he just write me a note saying he wants things to be kosher between us (because he doesn’t); yet he knows that S. will report back to me how he treated her; so, in effect, he wants me to know that he feels one way toward her but another toward me. And thus he wished to cause even further pain. And why? Because he is an asshole that’s why. Anyway, honestly, if the situation was reverse I would have given him the giner and walked on. But S. being the nice person that she is allowed herself to be drawn in; and she doesn’t think people are as evil as they are so she doesn’t realize that she was part of his manipulation. Which pissed me off even more.

We went to see David Mills after dinner as he was performing at Pangea. The show was just good but it isn’t one I would necessarily put on because it is a bit too understated, probably, for the festival. I really am loking for a little bit of pizzazz, actually. I ended up knocking a candle over and the wax went flying and ended up staining some of the nicer clothing items we were wearing which reallly is quite a bummer to be honest. The walk home was a bit brisk but it was pretty okay. There is just something depressing about being here I can’t quite put my finger on. I meanit’s very glomy and very dirty but not in a lovely old-school kind of way. It’s more or less just a dump at this point and the streets are filled with banks and drugstores and things that used to be there, scaffolding surrounding every other building, no glowy or even vaguely sparkly feel that one used to encounter strolling from block to block. It just seems deptressed on an irrevocable level. Like something that won’t really come back. Looking out from our hotel suite at what are some of the most expensive buildings on Lower Fifth, it looks like the windows, some of them filled with books and some with air conditioners left, carelessly, in place all winter long, year on year, are all about to just fall out like rotted teeth. They look as unhappy as their inhabitants.

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

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