Scorpio 4° (October 26)

Over the weekend S. picked out a new car and we are going to pick it up today, the first day of the absolute restart of the book work, with so much preparation now under my belt. I’ve forgotten about humor and I need to take stock of the chapters and work those mad libs harder. I am looking forward to optimism. I finally own a muscle car. It feels weird. An entire family of friends has Covid and some members, knowing they had it, got on a train and traveled through other countries. It really freaks me out how differently people handle the big things in life that come our way. I am super happy to know that we will just get away from our desks today. We “accidentally” drove up to 6A in Barnstable and drove home that way. We haven’t been on that road in so long. Quite beautiful. I really see myself in a small perfect place the door of which I can lock and travel to parts known and un. I realized today that I need to have more fun with what I’m doing. We need to be witty with all that we are doing. I am looking forward to our TV talk tomorrow. Happy Birthday Hillary.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1046-1050. I am reading through all of my Blagues, five per day, and posting some samples here. Now, in my sixth year of writing this Blague, by the time I get to my seventh, I will have journeyed through all the daily Blagues of my first five years. If that’s confusing I apologize. Year seven, I’ll only have to read through year six, once a day.

I can’t say I loved my father, and I was unable to trust my mother. I now know that I was right in the first place. I found out about six years ago, nearly ten years after his death, that it was quite obvious from birth that he didn’t like me. For the first eight years of my life I lived in a small apartment in Jersey City and shared a tiny room with my sister who is over five years older than myself. Twin beds tucked into corners with just a small space between them. Oh how I hate her too. She had a best friend, who was more a sister to me, who lived upstairs in the building and who moved away when I was six or seven. And yet, rekindling my relationship with her via social media six years ago, she revealed much to me. That my father didn’t like me. That he was extremely upset by my existence because I wasn’t a butch child; not the alpha-male that he considered himself to be. He was truly wrong about that too.

I was right in the second place too. My mother, whom I loved, was not to be trusted. And I knew this early in life. They say you don’t realize when trauma is happening, but that something triggers in later in life. For me later in life meant like ten years old. When shipped off to a rental summer house for the summer, my mother, sister and I; my father staying up north “to work,” I remember one night, my mother had a bunch of her friends over, all of whom lived in the same apartement building in Jersey City, from which we fled to a tony suburb two years before—she said “let’s show them what we do” and we proceeded to make-out to the verbal horror of her friends that shocked me into realization that, though I can’t remember a single incident as to the “what we do” prior to that, I have a shameful, sharp remembrance of performing it for her friends. A completed cycle of trauma before I turned eleven. I always wonder if this made me vulnerable to all that happened, starting at age eleven, which would only support my father’s presuppositions.

Am I, one eternally wonders, a self-fulfilled prophesy in the flesh? Sure why not. It’s so easy to be poetic about the things that happen to us and to reveal them, thusly, suggesting it makes one interesting, that we all have extraordinary stories. But really, though this and other traumas may have cycled through me before teenage, the tragedy of them continue in me all my life. In my self-indulgence, in my isolation, in my alienation of anyone who might be a friend, something I have never successfully been able to pick. I am a split person or a dual person or a person or all of the above.

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This has been a tough couple of days. Any kind of things involving people’s health is always a bit of a pickle, emotionally. Growing up the male Katharine Hepburn I always thought I’d face physical challenges with a yankee resolve; then again, I thought I would swim every day off a dock all year long. Neither of these things seem to have become my eventual reality; so I know I have a long way to go in this area, and in others. I know this. But then I return to the Kate Hepburn thing or anything stiff-upper-lippy. What is the alternative, I ask you. It has to be thus. We must be strident in the face of adversity. There is no other way. I hate medications, I will either endure the damage or make changes where changes might mean something. Otherwise I’m pretty fine, floating; and I will face whatever may come. Doing so is an expression of the dignity of being alive.

Our friend Taylor said that “Comparison is violence” and I not only agree; but I would suggest it is a self-inflicted sort. I may have written this very sentence a few Blagues back but, to be honest, writing so much in so short a spate of time, really is a blur. And yet I’m proud of the quantity, if not the quality. And I feel there might be some gems of wisdom to be found in the silt of the past six weeks playing so-called catch-up which I realize was more than that. Yes, I got derailed in October receiving news that, whether you label it “devestating” or not devestated me. I was feeling so happy and so optimistic about the representation we were being offered. “Let’s have some fun,” said the top agent who was “interested in representing” us back in May—and then the slow silent descent of six months ending with an abrupt…”Unfortunately…” Oh how I loathe that word. And I’m sad to have discovered how easily it was to derail me. In my defense, I swore off all agents, lawyers, managers as best I could, dating back at least six years; because I never again wanted to find myself in a position where someone could take me off my game with just that one word, ususally uttered after 5PM on a Friday.

So many cowards. And so many rich cowards to boot.

I don’t want to compare, as I say, because of the violence factor but, really, most of the people I know that are very wealthy (but for a few poignant exceptions with whom I have close bonds) are really just venal and vapid in equal measure. I surely do not want to be like them. Ever. I want to be one of the good eggs that gets his. And I have. And I’m not greedy. And it’s not that I want more for more sake. I actually want it for security and peace of mind. And so I must again take up my warrior spear and set upon making a difference, for myself, and for my loved one, in this world. I do just have the one—that wasn’t a typo, despite what the daily sign-off (below) of this Blague might suggest.

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With a heady Pisces man encounter and the watching of the Mr. Rogers special on PBS I am awash in masculine-fish understanding. Well, I should preface by saying that Pisces man is probably the most truly unknowable character in the human zodiacal Pantheon. Typing that triggered a dream. Something about not using upper case in something that called for it. Not a very impactful dream. We once had a contest amongst friends whereby we recounted our most boring dream ever. One friend had what seemed like an epic dream in which she was just vaccuming. She might have wond the contest or I did. My contribution: I once dreamed that I was asleep and not dreaming.

I love the fact that Mr. Rogers (whom I really didn’t watch much as a kid) had Margaret Hamilton the Wicked Witch on. I actually do remember that episode. I think she was also already Cora who sold coffee. I suppose she was so universally frightening to children that it warranted an episode on demystifying the witch thing. But he didn’t have to go and write a song about it called, or deliver the message that, “Witches are Never Real”, because, hello, here I am. And look I know that many of my downtown East Village friends and performers and defacto social crowd consider themselves witches and talk about it and say blessed be and all that…but they don’t have my abilities. Nor do they even know (or actually care to know) that I possess the actual thing of which they wrap themselves in a cartoon-cloak version.

It’s just one of the many reveals about me which have yet to happen. I am and have done more things than most who get praised, obsessively, by those who love to worship. I hope that made sense. Not all talent is gods-given. There are acutely cultivated people out there (many of whom just happen to be born under the sign of Taurus) who have worked so hard on their persona and on little bits of ability, blowing them out to extreme proportion, that it disguises the fact they might not really be very singers or writers or actors or comedians. And yet they succeed via their decades long cultivation and I think that is as important if not more important than natural talent. Those who have both the natural sort and the genius for self-cultivation really make true stars. But they aren’t necessarily also witches. It’s just a little fairy dust thrown on top, an affectation, like a love for Stevie Nicks. Don’t get me wrong—Stevie is fabulous—but we really shouldn’t label her a genius.

As often happens, as I’m writing this, a dream I had last night bubbles to the surface. I think I was in a van or a bus as would travel a band or performance troupe and the conversation swung to what a true genius Christine McVie is; (in the dream) how she was a unique composer who innovatively pieced together compositions. In reality her songs are very simple but surely among the most best-selling ones in Fleetwood Mac. They were catchy. And she’s a bigger Mac than her husband in the equation of the musical group. But she’s an Ethel, a Bea Benadaret, the beta female in the mix, by virtue of Stevie’s love of the limelight, surely, but also her recklessness. I remember friends seeing the band during the Tusk tour while I was still in high school and reporting back that Stevie just sat on the edge of the stage staring into space all during the show. It was when they were on the wane, for sure, seeming corny and tired compared to Squeeze and Elvis Costello and other pop entities coming onto the scene. But I do believe that Stevie just might be a witch. Grace Slick called her a white witch. I’m going to say gray, brown, tan beige or putty.

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Oh my goodness I was looking at my collective To-Do list and in a world where I thought I was ahead of the game of 2018 I suddenly feel ever so slightly behind the eight ball, though I am aware, that both perspectives are illusions. I am interested in getting more out of every day, naturally, as spring approached. I am often derailed with regret for the things I didn’t continue to pursue—guitar, tennis, et al. But self-recrimination is not only a trap in itself, it’s also kind of narcisisstic at its core. Look I don’t live in a hut and have to walk six miles every day for water to feed my family of nine. I have the luxury of my problems and wistful thinking. However, and you might relate to this, it is often difficult know if I’m being hard on myself or not hard enough. When I look around I feel nobody works harder than I do. Then again, others might feel I live the life of Riley. Neither or both may be true.

There is much heavy lifting to do this year and I really want to do it. I have learned my lesson about disappointment and it’s almost better to expect to feel it than to toppled by a position of high optimism. The trick is to be optimistic and not get taken off your game, despite the doings of others. I do think I’ll feel better, next week, when I can go through to-do lists and brand books and planning strategies and all that occurs in the course of a day in the life of a person that has a dozen would-be giant projects going at once. This sort of grand re-visioning is for the birds; and I truly never want to have to do it again. The spoon must be moved. And I must reserve this time for more purely creative pursuits.

Starting on the Ides of March, a happy-sad day on a number of accounts, I will be working my way through some creative ideas in what will be a week-long slamming together of a project. Yes, that’s right, I’m giving myself another goal to achieve. This time in the short-term. It might prove to be something of incredible importance, not just in its own creation, but in the manner it will be created. It’s an experiement in actualization which, if it works, I can share with clients and friends. It’s hard to put into words the theory of the method as of yet but, bear with me, it has something to do with creating objects and putting them down onto a desk in front of you. I know that sounds rather basic but it may require cut-outs and cartoons and the like with little snippets of words here and there to get the out of the abstract realm and into the real in a matter of one week.

Yet another reason to beware the Ides of March.

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I miss blue books, you know, those exam books we used to write into at university. It’s the same reason I miss stationers, especially the French kind. I think it would be so hot to have a stationers and collectibles as part of the retail model for the design stores. If such items were both a draw and an accent for customers. But, like so many ideas, somebody else would have to actually work there.

The so-called “downtown performance scene”, once literally associated with NYC and no more conceptual a reference, has changed more drastically, probably in its history, in the years I’ve been working in it, and for a number of reasons. Many of the popular artists who had been performing on the fringes have seen that fringe become mainstream. Meanwhile there is simply more appetite in other cities, now, besides NYC for this genre (which isn’t really any one genre at all); and many artists themselves comprise a social circle, if not a circuit, while living. in Austin, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland(s), Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans. I believe our work with Afterglow, preserving Provincetown as an incubator, working with artists from various American places, and some foreign ones as well, champion artists that have been on the fringe, has helped cultivate this cultural shift, along with other festivals, arts centers, theaters, museums and universities, many of which are in loose contact with each other. Then there are those, the younger ones, who were on the cusp of this cultural shift and immediately spring-boarded into zeitgeist via television and film and commercial “festivals” which really should be termed something else.

I remember, when I was learning to write semi-professionally I think my biggest challenge was to take each thought in turn, to separate them out, and let thoughts simply build through the blocks of letters, characters. I still see vestiges of my struggle with that when I write. I also write several paragraphs, often, at the same time. I’m sure that wasn’t something you knew, would have guessed, or even thought was a thing. But it is.

I don’t want to rush. Rushing is for losers. The tortoise not the hare is the proverbial winner. It’s all very Saturn-Cronos energy of endurance. Endora, as we’ve oftain said, is the pop culture Ops-Rhea. Cronos and his scythe. Old Father, and Mother, Time. Maurice and Endura, forever clad in tuxedo and gown, like the classic ruling couple of the Golden Age of the Titans; and too, they are Oberon and Titania.

Anyway you never saw them rushing. I’m ready to be a late bloomer. Title for a book: The Baby Bloomer Generation. Don’t steal that title—it’s now officially my IP.

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.