Scorpio 9° (October 31)

Watching a cooking show set in San Sebastian. Today will be the final day of summer enjoyment, in effect. Evenings sitting outside may arise should we hit another spate of Indian summer, but for the most part, with the full Moon today on All Hallow’s Eve, and the turning back of the clocks, and two months of increasing darkness, we will make a necessarily fitting psychological shift. It all feels quite right now. I keep tweaking the letter to farmer fuckhead. I am feeling more not less confident about it. Looking forward to my daily Bikram practice restart on Tuesday. I think it will be the most therapeutic thing I can do for myself, mid mornings. And on days we have clients I simply don’t do it. The next two months should prove to be very powerful indeed, then after a few days break, only, the following two brings me to having something drafted at the end of February, which will be a great milestone. And then we get to May, which is all tweaking and would thus allow for some afternoon house hunting here and/or there. That is a worthwhile way to spend the long winter. I will deposit four months into farmer fuckhead account in December, which will bring us to May, at which point we will drop another four in, which brings us through September if we include the original last-month. At that point we will ask for a reckoning for the electricity and so forth, and I will have made my move with the injury situation. 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1071-1075. 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 last day of March 2018 and the last Blue Moon until 2020; and Easter tomorrow, quite a confluence, the Moon also opposing Mercury all T-squared by Mars and Saturn in Capricorn. Mars is exalted, and Saturn dignified, in the sign. So there is much amplification in the way of power. I think this weekend is posing a challenge: To get to know our real selves a little better and to trust our own sovereignty in situations. There is no reason to go far afield knowing it takes so long to come back. It is on that score I say to you: Know Thyself today.

This sort of speak, I feel, comes under the “weather within” idea I want to work on with S. in our weekly social media offerings. Something short and sweet and astrological—an interstitial—which we might nonetheless have a little comic fun with. Cosmic Comics® Productions. I would like to make a tiny LLC off the biz with that moniker. I think that might be wise. We talked a while back about being content creators, double entendre intended for sure. Contentment creators. That’s another way of putting it. Getting a number of memos out into the either. The montage portion of the programming. What is the film that makes fun with the montage section? Is it Team America? Something like that. God that was a great piece of funny, funny work. I love those guys. Thinking back to the turn of the millennium, just some eighteen years ago, I feel I’m living in a very changed world.

I spoke about The Weather Within (brought to you by As Above So Below, you’re cure for metaphysical irregularity). It can be fun and funny and require us to be up and at ’em; as we say. I must also check in with the Boston Globe and make sure they have all they need to run a piece this way. I will also put sponsor letters into emails this week and link to the press item as well. I need to go through the weekly minutes tomorrow morning in time for Monday meeting. And I will break down the dealio on social media plan. It’s all part of the program of underachieving borderin on laziness. I know that this is the way to approach the year ahead.

I was thinking about certain times I’ve been with people and how I’ve behaved. For instance, at our dearest friends I might show up for some two week period and I might have been smoking, which I would do, no apologies, outside never thinking a thing about it. Or I might have had a boatload of wine at dinner and send everyone off to bed only to then tidy and “finish drinking” making everything camera ready. I would never do these sorts of things now—if I did I would have to commit myself. And yet my attitude doesn’t get any better as I age, though my behavior might. Still I sense evolution.

Next year, we will be in Europe and UK often. We must base the consultancy in Paris; it is actually the most practical thing to do. So many of our clients are in Europe or Asia and since we see folks mainly by Skype in any case, and so many in-person yearly clients work in fashion and design, they can see us there. Also, most friends how are at the grandparent age—that happened quickly—and I’m ready to be a god/grand/parent for sure.

Monday must also be about settling accounts—we have a number of people and causes to give to in our tithing spirit. I mentioned tithing last week in terms of this young fellow whom I found needs our help. That’s part of the reckoning. Post the Libra Full Moon, I’m feeling pretty balanced overall. And having physically cleaned and organized my offices, je suis tres content.

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Easter Sunday. And it was not a good night. I barely slept as is the typical case when alone. But when I first woke up in the middle of the night I had a glob of yuckos that I coughed up from my chest and discharged, flushed. Seriously, given that entrance into awakedness I assumed I had a really bad cold. My sinuses hurt anyway, but they basically always do; and I felt generally lousy, so I naturally assumed I was coming down with something. And most of the morning was spent in the head that I’m sick. And yet slowly as the day unfolded, I began to feel fine. Like all of it was allergies or something.

It is also April 1. Now, I had a friend with whom I shared April 1 fun. He lost his way and now we are no longer friends. But today is our sort of shared holiday, as it was for years, and I’m a bit wistful not for that relationship, per se, but for a close bond with another guy on whom I can play practical jokes and have a fairly unconditional bond. It seems that male friendships lose their emotionality over time and they wholesale dissolve on the main. I used to have so many close male best friends. At least a dozen. I miss that. Mostly Virgos, but that’s another story.People forget that, when you don’t procreate, that you’re not occupied as most are by family life. And they assume you are equally predisposed…indisposed…disposed? Anyway, when left alone, even for short periods, I feel that particular dearth.

All told I’ve gone a bit fetal today I suppose.

Krt who owned the Bell Caffe where I worked in the early nineties—today is his birthday. I love/d Krt….Funny I just came back to write this after several hours and I had a nice tete-a-tete with Krt. I’m sorry I’m not using accents properly, someone can edit me. I had left him a birthday message and he wrote me immediately. We will catch up when next I’m in London. I’m just realizing, given the earlier bit of this post, that maybe I got a reminder from the universe

I watched All The President’s Men last night and it’s fine. It ends weirdly.

Now everyone knows that I have an erotic attachment to Luke and Leia from Star Wars, thus Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, both Libras; and maybe you also know that we assign these characters as archetypes of the sign of Libra—they would be assigned regardless of the fact that Libra actors portrayed them; but typecasting by sign being what it is this comes as no suprise to we in the biz—which means just the two of us as our biz is something unique to us. I have a current allergy to parenthesis.

Mark Hamill seems troubled to me in a way that I take as a cautionary tale. I think he struggles with some kind of substance abuse, most likely alcohol addiction. I don’t know this to be true but: He looks and acts the way I imagine I would if I were to myself slip into some kind of downward alcoholic spiral. And to think about what he looked like younger; we’ve all changed I realize, but he was a slip of a pretty Apollonian boy; and now he’s bordering on playing Steve Bannon’s stunt double. I don’t mean to be glib or point fingers; I feel for him; but: Empathy is always at least half self-preservational. You may quote (and credit) me on that one.

I don’t know how good I friend I really am; and where I am lacking in that department I would attribute to the fact that I am not the best friend I could be to myself. The irony of the Libra man, associated with the seventh house of relationships, is that he will not have a very good one with himself. He is other-orientated, especially in one-on-one relationships, a series of which make up the Libran friendship landscape—he is not a group person. He will give the larger-half portion of everything to his mate, in both senses of that word, but will ignore himself, which means he has less of himself to ultimately share.

I see Mark Hamill on a talk show, say with Ellen. And I can tell he’s drunk or something. I call also feel his pain in trying to appear normal—I know first hand that can be work. When in the past I was consciously drinking too much or too early, I wouldn’t ever admit it. Now I would. But that’s because the light got in to all the broken places. It’s Leonard Cohen who said that’s where the light gets in—he’s a Virgo, and Virgo is all about the break, the crack, followed by that light of Libra. There’s also a fine Roches song called Broken Places.

I believe I shall stop here.

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o you’re like why is this post Aries 13° but the Sabian Symbol you attach at the end of th post is Aries 14°. Well that’s because my post is about the day as it unfolds from the degree point (here 13°) but that same time frame encompasses the 14° Sabian Symbol, as the degree point signals the completion of that symbol. I hope that made sense to you.

I didn’t forget to watch Jesus Christ Superstar live. I just didn’t want to. And anyway, too many commercials, as Stella would say. I’m sure I can see it On Demand; though I doubt I’ll be able to fast forward through the commercials, so I’ll probably never see it. Awoke at 5:30 and I knew immediately what kind of day it would be—and that I was mind-melding with Stella who also woke pre-dawn to drive back to the Cape. We would have our own Easter—I made pea soup with mint, roasted chicken with new potatoes in the drippings and ginger carrots. And, in a passive embracing of innocence, we watched the original Paddington and it was adorable, followed by stand-up acts on NetFlix. All in all we will file this under a mental-health day. And physical health too as, I’ve been feeling old “conditions” more accutely.

Even my closest friends don’t realize that I “suffer” day in and day out with a nagging physical problem. I put that word in quotation marks because, dealing it with so many decades now, it’s just part of my nature. My own private Chiron, you might say. I don’t want to get too into it but I’m going to say the first leg of the larger problem started in like 1990 I believe. I was at a friend’s place in Brooklyn just hanging out and jamming and I felt this kind of pop in/on the left side of my jaw, ear, throat, face, neck, mouth, tongue, sinus, windpipe, palate, eustacian tube, head, brain. To this day I don’t know where the “things” is located; but it has never been the same; and when i say that I mean that henceforth there has been a block or misalignment. I could go on on this subject and create an entire new blog based just on it.

Instead, I’ll just say that I have been constantly, both mentally and physically, negotiating this thing that happened; and I’ll say that it forced a certain ongoing meditation in me, if not an incessant prayer, which I believe helped “grow” my psychic sense(s) over the years. I remember soon after the incident…oh wait, I have to say first, that I told my mother about it—anything metaphyscial that I might encounter in life was best and easily shared with her because she always got it, nodding, eyes closed, telepathically saying I know, I got it, I understand, been there. This time he reaction was that much more glib. Oh, you popped a gland. I never thought to ask if this was a thing. Actually I just realized I never Googled it. (time lapse) Oh my god don’t Google that, what you get is people, vets, popping their dogs anal glands. Nothing on the subject as what my mother dismissed as a popped gland. Did she make that up?

Anyway, this ongoing nearly thirty-year-old affliction is my little cross to bear. And as I said: I believe helped “grow” my psychic sense(s). I remember soon after the incident I would go into a sort of shavasana, first, trying to “find” the place inside that was afflicted or damaged; and I would imagine this etherically thin golden thread “sewing” up the damages, like I was giving myself psychic stitches. As I did this, breathing deeply, the affliction would move or, rather, I would get a sense that it wasn’t any one place, per se, but along some kind of real pathway, nerve, lymph or circulatory, and/or along some invisible meridian. Anyway, the practice of this sort of meditation, which began pointedly, in time, just took over and became a part of my consciousness, whereby I am forever creatively visualizing the relief of this injury or blockage. I think it is part of my being now. I favor it doing exercise, careful to protect whatever it is. I fall asleep on some theme of this mediation. I never need to count sheep.

When I was young I had a Teddy that played Brahms. That was very relaxing. This two score and eight year mediation since affliction became my adult bedtime go to. If you look close me in my waking hours you might notice sudden movement or intakes of breath through my nose all designed to clear said block. I don’t do these things consciously, now, on the main.

I just realized that I forgot what we watched before Paddington and stand-up comedy: Rosemary’s Baby. How’s that for an Easter movie? I might make an argument for it year on year. So what do you do on Easter? Oh we have a tradition of watching Rosemary’s Baby. Happy Easter. Anyway, as happens with these mental health days, in so many ways designed to crank up the old synchronic machinery, many of the themes in Rosemary’s Baby were repeated in the other innocent entertainments we watched afterward. Hail Adrian. The film itself is shot through with so many inexplicable, coded, mystical things I find. Roman Castevet is the name of the main warlock (though Maurice Evans is in it as his would be foil—Evans being most famous for portraying the warlock father of Samanta on “Bewitched” at the time. Roman Polanski and John Cassavetes direct and star. But Roman Castevet is an anagram for Steven Marcato. The film was released in June of 1968 and in August of 1969 Sharon Tate was murdered in the most diabolical manner. John Lennon of course was shot outside the Dakota, which in the film was called the Bramford, which Evans says was the site of witches, cannibalism and murder in the early days of the century.

I might admit I believe that the film “unlocked” something; and I think the author, Ira Levin must have, on some level, tapped into Aleister Crowley’s story in the writing of that book. He actually is on the record as saying that the wave that he started with this book and then the film, which were followed by a slew of literature in the genre, most notably the novels of Stephen King, and films like The Exorcist and The Omen, created such a sense of Satan in the world that it likely fueled the Christian fundemental movement, by relief.

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We all have sadness and have experiened lost, but some people are better at grieving than others. I am not one of those people. Dating back, I always felt kind of ripped away. We moved to the suburbs from Jersey City in 1972; and then I was happy to ripped away. Though we weren’t your typical suburban family, I assimilated best of all—my father and sibling had the hardest time—my mother, the Pisces, dissolving in anywhere. But we were ripped away each summer to the Jersey Shore. I didn’t complain about this, but having summer friends and year-round friends made it difficult to bond really full with people and get any sort of consistency or momentum going. And as I was graduating high school my parents sold the house in Wyckoff, so I never returned there during college (except for once, in the first weeks of school, when I and a band of friends from B.U. stayed there and went to see Simon & Garfunkel in Central Park, on a whim, driving overnight and landing, near Wyckoff’s border, where the car literally broke—it’s frame cracked—anyway that’s a story in itself.

Instead I returned “home” to our summer house which was now our year-round house, trying to keep Wyckoff friendships alive but to no real avail. So I committed to a social life I could come home to on the Jersey Shore. I worked at the Parker House in Sea Girt and tried to cobble together a cool social circle. It worked but briefly; and not too many years later that house was pulled out from under me. And I suppose I repeated this trauma in my adulthood, moving from places I loved just like I gave away designer furniture I loved—George Nelson and Eames and other great pieces at least to great charities like Housing Works.

But I think I’m ready for a new era of ownership and stability as I get to this juncture in life. By the same token I could run away and join the circus (which is code for move to Los Angeles to become a character actor). The thing is, curse of the Libra, I am always intrigued by new possibilities and am never so sure as others seem to be about places of habitation and career directions. I can do what I do from anywhere, pretty much; which is a wonderful thing. And the word retire was never in my vocabulary, even dating back to when I was younger: I always knew I’d do something for a living that allowed me ultimate decision power. Ironic isn’t it that someone with difficultly making decisions has at least decided that he wouldn’t outsource decision making power. Maybe it’s enough to embrace this power, and forget about how I wield it. I wield it. That might be more than enough.

The moon transits Jupiter in Scorpio today so emotions can be intense for sure; but as they trine Neptune in Pisces the intensity should be allowed to dissipate just as readily. Today is a pivot, this much I feel. And though there is a ton on my plate I must flow with all of it. Producing a show this week at the Americn Repertory in Cambridge, continuing to write new introductions for next year’s Haute Astrology books, sign-off on a final draft of a business plan (and get my brain around what comes next on that score); I do need to start work on the new books themselves; I must finishing casting next year’s series ad A.R.T. and also this year’s Afterglow, not to mention beginning the outreach to fund it. There is more; but these are the major balls in the air.

The other elephant in the room is, well me. I was going to write the diet I must now began in increasing earnest and intensity, but I could resist. It’s spring and i need to drop at least ten lbs., which, to be honest, I end up doing pretty much anyway starting this time or year through summer, even without trying. My reasons for a little crash aspect in the diet is strictly practical and also financial. I need to fit comfortably into clothes I already own for upcoming events this month and next in NYC. And so I’ll be frontloading diet and exercise above all other things these next few weeks, and then just let it become part of the new order. I have been making my very spicy drinks and broths and getting early to bed and early to rise plus not drinking any wine at all. I know longer plan these sorts of clear-outs really. As I say, they are an annual unspoken event of sorts.

Lunch today will be a glorious leftover black bean soup. When you wake up at 5:30 as we do, you tend to be ravenous by 11:30. Then again I always ate lunch early. I remember back in the day, specifically, when I worked for the Book-of-the-Month Club in the early 1990s, I would hop the number two train from, practically, underneath my building on 12th Street and zip up to 50th Street to the Time Life Building, in under ten minutes. If I packed a lunch I would inevitably eat it at my desk by 10:30 or 11AM and have to go out and get a second one around 1 or 2 PM. I know that they referred to this in The Lord of the Rings but I thought it was something made up by Tolkien.

Does it ever freak you out that you will die without reading all the books you want to? Now these are the thoughts that could keep my up at night. Ha. Who am I kidding? Nothing keeps me up at night.

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I feel blatantly negative and unhappy and angry and upset and I want to be able vent the fuck out today. I am sick to death of just about everything and nothing is going to change that right now. Every gods damned thing I say or do seems to result in boring, bad nothingness. This is the way I feel. I wish everyone would just fuck the fuck off. The world is just filled with liars and users and assholes. That’s a fact. On this day I want to empty my bank account fill a bag and just fucking move to the desert, which, by the way, is becoming unaffordable. I just don’t feel I can live in this sick-o-phantic world anymore. cue Google search Quebec. I don’t know where I have to go, or what I have to do, to find kind people who aren’t fucking hypocrites and to experience some kind of genuine, well, experience, I truly do not. This world is one big diseased narcissistic ball of fuck hurtling through the space; and I really don’t see any healing in sight. And I don’t know why I bother trying to make any bit of it any better for anybody. It (largely) goes unappreciated.

I feel maybe I have it wrong. That if you can’t beat ’em join ’em is the only way to navigate this world. Nobody espouses true kindness, compassion or humanity. Nobody. Everybody is out for their own gain, plain and simple. And those of us who aren’t are just fucking patsys. Remember this is just the way I feel today. I’m hoping that indulging it might get me to the other side. There has always been a battle between good and evil raging out there and in here. But now I think the playing field has become terribly uneven. Greed has never ceased to be the problem, it only gets worser and worser. Our parents’ generation was a blip, and anomaly; and we are seeing the result of that, particularly as Americans where we are not only not given health care and education by rights, but they purposefully don’t want people healthy or educated because then they won’t vote for disgusting monsters like the melting circus peanut.

And honestly I feel like a waste of space myself, which is probably where all this is coming from. It seems I can’t do enough to fight the good fight—that which is raging inside me. So many of us in the country are so busy trying to survive, and help on the small levels that we can, that we have so little steam to take it to the streets where it belongs. It seems futile, resistance, it truly does. Why can’t the people we put into power be championing the bigger issues and causes. They will have privatized everything by the time I finish this post. Speaking of posts—the post office will be next. I don’t know where to go to finish out this life in happiness. Again this is me just talking today.

Pence tie-breaking against Planned Parenthood is sort of the last straw, and what broke the camel’s back on what was already a fairly lousy morning. I felt fine. But the world got up on the wrong side of the Sun. This might be working. I may coming out of it as I express what needs expressing. Still I’ve more to spew. So: Keep moving around your objets d’art/Photographing skinny young boys/Millions selling the Emp’s New Clothes/Hose down your vintage Pontiac/Keep vigil over the fridge/Find what you need in aisle five/Don’t forget your pills.

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.