Scorpio 13° (November 5)

J’ai beaucoup de chose a faire, et il y a toujours des excuses pour rien faire. C’est la vie. Demain il faut recommencer, sans question. Grace a dieu pour France Musique, it keeps me sane. I am only going to write a few sentences here today. I’m not really sure about D.. I think he isn’t as up front and honest as I require from a friendship. I don’t look down on people who get divorced of course; but there was something about his relationship with his spouse that rang wrong, that he was with her so he could have an out. There is a little gaslighting in that situation. I think some people feel that if they bond with someone who is unstable they always have an easy out. This will be the last night of this sort of thing. I am really ready to dig in and get the job done. I truly am. It aint going to be easy. But really it’s just a matter of writing a few things here like: Nobody possesses a greater appetite for life than Taurus man, the most sensual of the male signs in the zodiac. He XX is the very embodiment of sense and sensibility, inspiring and reacting to desired stimuli, in an ongoing effort to appeal to others’ wants, tastes and needs. Thus, he furthers his own aims, which he downplays and obscures, while providing what others mightn’t even realize they are lacking. He is a keen observer who will channel his skills and talents into filling what he perceives to be open niches of opportunity that promise to please others while offering him a stable platform for gaining attention, affection and momentum to keep his secretly ambitious wheels in motion. He is a master of seeming insouciance, having people believe that his achievements happen naturally, without effort. This not only disarms others but engenders even more support to help him along in his career or creative efforts, typically one and the same. Taurus would have you believe he is too pure a conduit of intellectual, aesthetic and artistic endowment to be self-promoting in the process of such expression. He might never outright invite patronage, but he is not above engineering others to take pity on him in the execution of his master plans. At his best, Taurus man will honestly dedicate himself to making the world a more beautiful, bountiful and blissful world in which to live, striving to provide an increasingly lush landscape of experience in which, the more the merrier, people might share, and admitting any personal benefit in so doing. The less evolved Taurus, however, is in it for his own gain, covetous of acclaim, material reward, and all forms of validation that serve as a poor substitute for self-esteem. All Taurus men struggle with the feeling they aren’t enough—it is the particular challenge of this sign’s path, paradoxically designed to breed out of such senses of self-deficiency. The true test of this is whether or not the Bull fellow can feel fulfilled despite any real or metaphoric mob of applauding fans. We are not telling you to change, Taurus. Your path is your own. But we want you to own your true nature and try not to disguise your intentions. For the truth is Taurus is the most evocative of creatures, a master of self-cultivation. Like a gardener he designs his persona to be appealing, especially to those whose attention he most wishes to capture.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1091-1095. 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 rather stress-free journey into New York City, and it was a lovely chilly day. Dipped down to TriBeCa so S. could pop into Ted Muehling to fix her earrings and buy J. a congratulatory gifty. Got to hotel and room was ready; and so we were able to have a little bite and take a wee walk for me to find something to wear. I found things to wear just not to dinner; so with a full suitcase I felt I still had nothing to put on. It’s a weight thing, which it always is, and I have to get over it and transcend this issue once and for all. Anyway, spring is here and with it comes my daily constitutionals; and it will be nice to get back to yoga in any case. For some reason this winter was harder on my body than others have been previously.

Dinner was at Marjorelle which was pretty effing delicious. I had the clams and the tagine of lamb. It was actually fairly reasonably priced for the three course menu; while I suspect the champagne that flowed counterbalanced that ideal.

All in all I fell back in love with New York this night. Seriously I haven’t wanted to spend much time with my ex city over the last ten years; but there is something about being in that uptown environment that seems at once like old New York, when I worked at magazines uptown, catering to denizens of certain zipcodes, and a modern new gilded age version in which we unfortunately now live. And the divide shall get more stunning still. But on this day I just wanted to enjoy rolling around a bit in some lap of luxury.

Though it is for sure on my mind that I need to pull professional threads through and start working some major magic. Ones personal life does, in many ways, effect ones professional one, and that can be a good thing. I am so fortunate that I will soon be back living along one of the most beautiful beaches in the world and I can let sand, sun and sea work its healing power. Oh, what a Lucky Man….

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The morning was mine to bathe and collect. I decided to go more causual on the look because it was going to be a long day and I wanted to be comfortable. I was looking forward to meeting Jessica and her boyfriend Blaine. To be honest I never saw her on the Daily Show but I did see her HBO four-episode series special which I loved. Our dear John Early was on it and he has never been better. I was hoping, still, at this time, that he might return to Afterglow, but in the time since, he’s had to decline because his TBS show films during that time. It’s going to be a lot of fresh talent this year at festival.

We had a second day (and would have a third) of smoked fish platter for lunch—I’m off smoked fish now, although I think it’s smoked salmon for lunch today. Irony.

Well I should start by saying that S’s celebrity citings included Daniel Day Lewis and his wife (we always see Daniel Day Lewis and he and I share a barber who says we have the exact same hair pattern—maybe we are related on the Irish side who knows); also Blythe Danner and John Leguizamo. And then this morning she shared the hotel elevator with Bradley Cooper. Another irony: He is occupying our suite which we wanted to move into before the marathon HP play today. Alas, we will not be able to move until we return around 1AM; so post smoked fish, we got dressed and took a cab up to 43 Street. It was a civilized mob scene already, forty minutes before show time. We saw some of the familiar faces that HP events bring around and some unfamiliar ones as well including Brooke Shields, Emma Thompson, Liev Schreiber and Anna Wintour.

We were also seated directly behind a certain billionaire whose home we visited less than a year ago to work our Starsky + Cox magic at his estate in Jamestown, Rhode Island. He seems like a decent man; though he was angling to meet the author which wasn’t unobvious; he has very aggressive facework which makes me feel sad for him.

The play was even better on Broadway than in the West End, mainly because we were seeing the original cast now. And it was fascinating to note how they refitted an entire theater inside the old Lyric. The audience ooh’d and ahh’d as one would expect and the play is paced very well despite its length. I had a champagne pre-curtain and one at intermission; and that certainly smoothed any lingering ruffles from last evening. And then dinner at the Lamb’s which was a dream. Like our own private experience of the first scene of All About Eve and its Sarah Simmons club—portraits of whom I assuemd to be Duse and Bernhart abounding.

Life can be so strange. Then again, compared to what?

Back for the second act and standing ovations and bows by the creators and off to a suite at the Lambs for a little respite pre-after-party. Was feeling high and reviews were coming in, all good. Then off to the party where I did a beeline for the danceflor and left my sweater, jacket and scarf on a nearby table. I danced for about an hour with guests and members of the cast, using my talent in this area to create some circle-around scenarios, then looked for my attire as it was time to go. Never found my scarf which is just as well as it was given to me by someone whom I no longer cherish. But the real bummer was that my ticket packet “fell” out of my pocket which was sad. I suspect someone swiped it to be honest. Even in that rarified environment an extra momento of this sort might appeal to people’s lower instincts.

My dancing self is now pretty famous in certain circles. For me it’s always a good way to sweat out a bit of the evening (in this case marathon all-day) fun before retiring such that I will wake up with no lingering remnants of the evening before. Which was the case, and luckily, as we had two new clients starting in the morning.

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A quick breakfast nibble and then two clients in our suite at the Marlton. Then that damned smoked fish platter again.

Then a walk in the old neighborhood. I said it the other day but I’ll say it again: I have sort of fallen back in love with my ex city. I just don’t know if it will ever work out for us to be together again. First of all, it would be a costly venture; second there is that sense of never being able to go back again. Still, in Springtime, with those bloody blossoms, the West Village is hard to resist. We had a glass of wine at Buvette and went wine shopping as well. Wine was the theme. It was lovely weather and a lovely walk and we dropped our things back at the hotel, splashed our faces, and went to see if we could snag a couple of seats at L’Artusi.

When you walk into L’Artusi the first thing you see straight ahead of you is a corner of the bar that then stretches back further. But our little slice of synchronicity today was walking in and seeing (and hearing) Brooke Shields talk about the play yesterday to her friend and the sommelier. I couldn’t resist. “So you liked it?” I asked. A ten minute conversation ensued. She totes got the pacing. She said she just bought the same earrings S was wearing—the ones S had fixed the day we arrived. “We’re twins, ” she said. And we pointed out an age-old irony that S’s sister N has all her life been compared to Brooke.

Anyway it was fun and jovial and life affirming as these synchronisitics signposts can be. We had a lovely meal at the bar which, however, is set too high for the stools they give you, and it wasn’t just shorty old me who seemed to think so. Then this handsome boy in a striped mariner shirt sat down next to me. He ordered a “no alcoholic cocktail” in an accent that was difficult to map; and he prayed over his food when it arrived. He then commented on the amount of potatoes that came on my plate with the steak I ordered. When we left he stopped us to say he had one more morning before heading back home in the AM and what should he do. We said go to the Whitney downtown. It turned out he was Norwegian Italian and was here for a “book festival”. I did a bit of research and he turned out to be a playwright visiting for PEN’s World Voices event in which I knew a bunch of people participating including Penny Arcade and Eileen Myles.

I friended him on Facebook but haven’t heard back.

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To say I have an overactive mind would be an understatement. I always loved the band Blind Faith, and especially “Can’t Find My Way Home”. There is a simple version of the song on piano by Joey Curtin. It’s actually a song I can play. And I love “Surrender” by Cheap Trick. I am constantly chasing thoughts and feelings, not one to be centered at all. Maybe that’s a thing about Libra where they are balanced but not centered. Gemini is the negotiation of opposites, one against another—they are the most polarized as people and sometimes bi- so. Libra is a blend, and so not always an easy one. It’s in some ways easier to compartmentalize, which is why Gemini can only deal with “the immediate” what’s right in front of them. Libra instead spans—inner life, outward experience and, one might argue, time; but then we have to define spanning time. I think it means something like acting in experience with a mind, if not a feel (for we are talking about Libra now) for for “the longbody” of life, as opposed to the immediate, Gemini being ruled by Mercury the god of both close-relationship, ubiquity, being quicksilver everywhere at once, and also the emphasis of the the present and the now, being perhaps slightly different things.

The present is something which can be mesured and expressed in outward circumstance whilst the now can only be innerly, maybe mystically intuited.

Anyway I woke up this day and had breakfast with Steve from the company that is doing our launch . We both had poached eggs and quinoa and S. had granola and yoghurt and ordered a basket of pastries. It was most enlightening and then we left the Marlton and headed to the Eliot in Boston which, since we always get the same suite, is like coming home; and it’s quite a good sense of it. I’m loving staying in hotels when I have to; so much less hassle right now than having some apartment, even short-let; because then I feel compelled to food shop and cook and nobody wants to do that.

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Dinner at Uni last night really was delicious. There is nothing like just going downstairs in your hotel to eat. And Uni is so good and I suppose needs to be quite pricey. I wish the Eliot had coffee in the morning. They don’t. It’s there most dire drawback. They could just install someone on an espresso machine inside the restaurant in the morning. I’m going to talk to them!

So after walking to Great Barrington on Newbury for coffee, we came back to see two favorite longerm clients; then we beat it and had sushi at Whole Foods in Hingham after spending $400 shopping…for two people. We got cheeses and Lambrusco and chilled the ef out. It was glorious as we gear up to May, so much possibility and positivity to look forward to. And May is a sexy time, too, no, lest we forget. Not that my own loins are so springy never mind surging. Did you ever hold a baby and feel your loins surge as a young, well, man I’m assuming, unless the ladies can do it to?

What’s a matter with me. Why am I so weird. I don’t know. I’m like a bonne vivant viper. Seriously I am so mean, and I don’t mean to be. I take things really personally. I learning not to but oh em gee which means something else when you type it: oh, em….gee!

This might be a funny thing to explore: Why it is that I am at once the nicest and cruelest person in the world. I got that Libra Medea Medusa thing going on, in male form, which is fitting of the Apollo archetype; for the god of light and truth and reason and music and poetry and all beautiful abstract aspects associated with his sign, (ruled by Venus on the astral (air) plane, ruled by the Scales the sole inanimate in the Zodiac), Apollo is also most cruel, his arrows causing searing pain, and his mythic punishments being pretty nasty (this is a hopefule statement I want to fully fact-check).

And again Libra is a blend and it can be a lot for people. I own that. I have never claimed to be an easy character to deal with, truly not. Anyway, I am terribly flawed and given to fits of fury and flights of phantasmagoria. The trick has always been to try and tame this driving force. I know I put people off. Many people probably. I may be known to be prickly but I’m just as sweet and juicy a peach. And I make the bestest friend I truly do.

But I can be a stone cold bitch. One doesn’t think of Apollo as being warm and fuzzy. That’s more a Dionysus thing. I love the gods, all, and always have. I have always known they are immortal and I don’t believe the have the provenance to die.

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.