The oracular energy of today is all about overcoming obstacles. Perhaps as a result of that dreaded pot of gold of two days ago—you can’t take it with you—yesterday we faced the abyss of an open grave. But today at 6° Taurus we seem to be building a Cantilever Bridge Across A Deep Gorge, suggesting there is a way to find a lasting link while living. What is highlighted here is some kind of collective—we can’t build a bridge on our own. The link we are creating is that between people, via group cooperation, just as it is one designed to help us over a sense of emptiness or void, these dynamics being one and the same.

Looking at my schedule today, it is the day that I must begin contracting all the seventeen artists I have slated to perform this year’s Afterglow Festival in Provincetown. And I must also reach out to sponsors and donors to fund this yearly project. I’ve been trying to build other bridges with other venues, as well, to produce the great artists with whom I’ve the privilege to work, but it has been a total slog. Not returning emails. How do people get away with this? It’s part of a larger question which is: why do people who operate so shoddily in the world, with no regard to formality or the social fabric, succeed at all? We seem all to often to reward those who are self-serving, ineffective and second-rate; while individuals of quality and character have to spend their time bumping up against these, let us call them, void-ers. I’ve resolved, at various times in my career (which has entailed the wearing of many hats) to be more cutthroat and other c-words, but I only ever end up being compassionate, even for these void-ers, which partly pisses me off, but, for which, I am largely grateful. I’m not after that pot of gold after all. I’m interested in experience. But, man oh man, you would not believe the people who have reached out to contact us this year, friends at ad agencies that want to help us spread our word, even so-called good friends with production studios and branding companies wanting to help realize our vision. And then (what is it like to live in these people’s heads) they completely disappear. You called us, remember? This is not true connection. This isn’t building a cantilever bridge. This is the opposite. Honestly I think some people must wake and bake and think they’re having an epiphany about us and what we’re doing and gain the momentary bravado to phone and promise the moon. But again, it’s just fairy favors. That pot of gold.

The only way you build a bridge together, whether professionally or personally, is to start building it. Before we ever charged clients or even called what we did a consultancy we offered our services up for free. We don’t get paid to do the Afterglow Festival, we just do it to fill a void and prevent a further chasm in Provincetown’s birthright as the birthplace of the modern American stage. I do this by holding out my beggar’s bowl and asking those whom I believe have a stake in Provincetown’s stage heritage remaining intact to give what they can, whether it be ten dollars or ten thousand. I can ask for money because it goes solely toward building that cantilever bridge. It has nothing to do with me personally, but for the pleasure and satisfaction I derive from pulling this project off each year. As it’s become increasingly successful, mercenary minds want something from it. Those who gave to us now see us as a way for them to profit and it makes me queasy. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve taken the gloves off this week with the blog. I’m on a bit of a Norma Rae soap box; but I am a Libra after all, and any form of injustice makes me break out in a rash of righteous swords.

Today’s symbol really is about making one’s individual life better by recognizing a chasm that needs to be bridged and working with others toward doing just that. Certain things cannot be done on our own. And those of us who recognize where there is lack or have understood deprivation in any sense of the word (like that widow yesterday) are more equipped than others to make some positive changes, buidling bridges in this world. This gives the individual life substance and purpose. I’ve quoted her before but as Uta Hagen would say: Obstacles only make your objectives stronger. So if the hotel that usually gives our artists discount rooms during the Afterglow Festival suddenly wants to profit on us this might inspire me to reach out to a bunch of hotels and inns and ask them to house our artists individually, and gratis to boot. It’s way more work for me, but it’s good work. As I write this I realize that Greed is one of the biggest voids that exists in this world. Look at the polarization of the haves and have nots. The gulf between them has become vast because the greedy find a way to buy politicians and otherwise find loopholes around paying taxes while raising prices on everything their corporations manufacture, including food that makes people sick so that they have to spend their hard earned money on drugs created to cure illnesses these same corporations, in effect, created. I wish this was exaggeration but it isn’t.

It is indeed more difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle; which is why I’m most in awe of my richest friends who spend their money in truly philanthropic ways. There are those who have given to my non-profit since year one whom I know strive to give as much as they can. Wealth and fame do not make people happy, that is a fact. And there is something about the making of a lot of money that corrupts people and causes them to horde it. I think this can happen to most folks. So I find it so rare and refreshing when I encounter those of means who give so much without thought to it just being a good write off or buying some kind of recognition. One of our most faithful patrons insists on being anonymous and is truly caring. And there of course is Ms. Rowling who singlehandedly pays for the entire operation of her Lumos foundation, so that if I person makes a donation to it, that whole amount goes toward the cause, never toward expenses. People of means do have a great power to do good in this world and so few of them do, ironically. It’s so inspiring when they dedicate their life to building bridges over gaping voids they see in our human society. I know many rich people give money to causes, but so few care about them.

Okay hopping off my soapbox. What I am realizing from this oracle is that I can’t do something that can be metaphorically expressed as bridge-building alone. True progress is a collective endeavor and must include the ideas and skills of more than one person. A cantilever bridge is only fixed at one end. That is to say we don’t know where the other end might lead; we must be flexible in regard to where our efforts might “land.” This is why those hit and run contacts from people pretending (to themselves) that they want to “help” doesn’t work—because the fact is they are leading with their agenda, they know exactly where they want the so-called collaborative effort to land: in their own pocket books or with an individual feather in their cap. This is why they cannot follow through. Because they were never prepared to devote to the process of filling a void, that was a pretense for their own reward. So, if you’re one of those people who reach out to others under the guise of collectively wanting to make some corner of the world a better place, when really you are only fishing for projects via which you might profit, you should take this oracle to heart today. Because you not only don’t gain a foothold with that future aim, you lose any ground you’ve gained in the relationship you sought to parlay into your half-wake-and-baked vision.

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