Capricorn 28° (January 18)

I have been awake all night and I have to be very careful of my health at this point. The fucked up thing is that I will not get to bed tonight either until at least two in the morning. So will be about thirty hours of sleeplessness which isn’t great. There is an upside to this week though already as I have my ducks more in a row than expected and now it is really just over three months where I need to be my most vigilant self. I imagine, in that time, we might have more news on the real estate end so I’m just going to totally go with that flow. And, so what: I have to write for fourteen hours a day for a few months? It will be totally worth it. I can still knock this out of the park if I am rested, and that remains the plan. I have a total inventory of all our belongings pretty much at this point so that takes off a good deal of stress in itself. Live is just a series of boxes. It used to be a series of beds. I am going to put all self-indulgences on hold for a while and put all that time I waste into ninety minutes of yoga as the world warms up in the coming months. I mean, winter is a third over and that is very good news to me. I am making a lovely marinated shrimp for dinner which we will sautée and serve, simply, with salad. Last Tango in Halifax added yet another season and suddenly I feel like I’m watching oldie television. It will be back to Lupin which I also love. Desperate for the return of Call My Agent. First an Inauguration on Wednesday and the return of the show on Thursday.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1461-1465. 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 had a dream last night that I was at a Roches concert and it was Maggie Roche’s birthday so we were all to gather backstage, afterward, to have a little party. The venue was a cross between the old Bottom Line and Joe’s Pub, back in the day, before they made renovations. I awoke at 5:20 and had opened my laptop by 5:40 and the first thing on my FB feed was a posting by Suzzy Roche talking about how she once wrote Mother Teresa to ask for permission to perform a Christmas show and send the proceeds to her and her charity. She didn’t hear back but performed the show anyway. Then months and months later a response from Mother Teresa arrived, delivered without a stamp!!! I could read snippets only of the letter on FB but it talked about the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing and it was very thankful and offered blessings and was signed by M.T.  Then, somehow, Suzzy lost the letter and has been looking for it down through the years—the letter was dated 1988—and had never found it and it haunted her seemingly. And then just the other day Suzzy entered her apartment and there on the floor of her living room was what looked like a folded piece of paper which she almost picked up and absent-mindedly threw away. But she looked at it and—yes, you guessed it—it was the very letter.

I immediately posted about my dream and then directly seeing her post. I mentioned in my comment to her that it was Maggie’s birthday in my dream and in that moment I “realized” (or at least this was my flash) that Maggie, who left us over a year ago, must have had a hand in the rematerialization of that cherished letter from Calcutta all those years ago. Though it’s not my cosmic experience primarily, I felt it perfectly fit one of the original criteria of this Cosmic Blague, which was, is, to relate experiences of inexplicable nature along with the Universe’s “jokes on you/us all.” This is no joke (a phrase I can’t not hear in my brain as spoken by Kate McKinnon in an Australian accent from the movie Rough Night). If you haven’t seen that film, by the way: You should.  Anyway there was a sense of faith being restored upon waking today. What I didn’t tell Suzzy (because she’d think I’m a weirdo) is that she and her sisters have factored into my dreams for decades. I have been a huge fan ever since I first heard the record in my college freshman-year dorm. And I saw them at least a dozen times over the years in various forms and am friendly with Terre whom I love and admire and respect deeply. I don’t know Suzzy personally. The sisters occupy different spheres. But Suzzy is a Libra like me. Terre is the opposite sign of Aries, which isn’t all that opposite to Libra at all. That was the most pleasurable bit of productinating I have ever done! Now to get back to the actual work at hand. Wish me luck people.

Of all the cosmic things that can, would or do happen, yesterday likely proviced the most cosmic of occurances to date in the present writing of this Blague (there have been some freaky experiences from the past that I’ve recalled here as well). The day started out innocently enough. We had gone to L’Artusi for a late anniversary celebration on Thursday evening so we were slow to emerge yesterday but decided that we would stick together and tackle chores and hit marks together. First off, I must say, that the two topics I brought up en route here on the train the other day were: Nicky and Sean from Tea & Sympathy; and my lamenting about Pastis and wondering what happened to it. So last things first: Stella informs me that Pastis is actually reopening early May (hello, when is it now) on Gansevoort Street, literally around the corner as we are on Washington between Gansevoort and Horatio. So we walked by there en route to the bank yesterday morning and saw they are nearly (but not quite) open. Fine. We also spotted a place to grab some lunch salads later. We headed to the bank to send a wire transfer to the UK, then strolled onto Thirteenth Street to see if those criminals were there. They were. I peeked into the shop which wasn’t yet open. We decided as we headed down Greenwich Avenue to send them good wishes despite the pain they once caused us. As we strolled by Tea & Sympathy I casually peered in as best I could against the glare slowing but not stopping; still I could see a figure with wooly hair crouch down and point to outstrecthed arms and index fingers at us with a twisted expression that just screamed: Oy!

Out rushed Nicky whom we likely haven’t seen in a decade in the flesh. And it was as if not a moment had passed in all these years since we were a regular fixture on the block and in the shop. She quickly caught us up on the news of which I’ve had some inkling—about maybe having to close shop due to the greedy owner of the building, well, buildings, plural that make up that side of Greenwich Avenue from Twelfth to Thirteenth. It was a vivid lament as is warranted. We bemoaned the loss of the culture in which we lived in this neighborhood dating back to the late eighties and all through the nineties well into the aughts. And then the conversation swung the complete other way with Nicky rattling off jokes just as she always did back in the day. Then Sean appeared and Nicky exited and he told us all about their house up state and showed us pictures. We said we had to go. And he countered before you do have you heard…I said I think we have and listed the punchlines Nicky had just delivered. Oh, right, he said but I’ve got some more. The jokes were all incredibly funny. We then went our merry way down to our favorite wine shop on Washington south of Morton. In and out. Then back up Washington to the flat when all of a sudden the thing happened…..

We were going to be meeting our designer and so we were need to crack a conundrum in the creative process, an impasse to which we were coming time and again, hopefully before seeing her. The operative word was star, in that we were discussing how to employ the shape vis a vis our own logo which is also something of a star, or what we call the aster. Anyway I don’t want to give anything away. All you need to know is we were conversationally on the star…when…up the street as we were walking we saw what appeared to be a white balloon in the shape of a five-pointed star hovering in the air in the middle of the street, such that I thought it must be attached with a string to a car or a street sign; but it started to float up and fly around and we suddenly realized it wasn’t a balloon at all. As we approached in descended and pretty much landed out our feet. We stared at it, just a foot away, but still couldn’t make out what it was or of what it was made. I reached out to touch it and realized it was foam, bubbles, like that which would have escaped from a washing machine overloaded with detergent. And then it lifted into the air again and flew past us hovering high above the middle of the street before flying past third, fourth floor windows and disappearing over a roof top. It was nothing short of weirdly miraculous. Thankfully S. took a video of the whole thing.

Our designer, A.,who is over from London, arrived and we chit-chatted and started in on the work at hand. And we said to her we have this miraculous thing we have to show you. And she said, “oh, did you have a Christian Dior moment?” And for some reason we just let that comment sail by like a star made of soap suds. I don’t know why we didn’t question what she exactly meant by that. So we worked and talked and got to the impasse we two had gotten to, catching her up in thought to that point, so we could tackle it together and unknot the problem so to make it into an opporunity, when we said. Okay, so, this is where we were in our conversation today walking on Washington Street so we broke out the video that S. took. And A. immediately said what is that white star? It was so obviously a star that even from far away, looking into a tiny iPhone screen, it was a perfect five-pointer. She was as astonished as we were. And then she said well really that was a Christian Dior moment. And we were finally like wait, what does that mean.

Apparently Christian Dior was deciding whether or not to start his own eponymous company and he was walking along the sidewalk when suddenly out of nowhere a brass or bronze star landed at his feet on the sidewalk, le trottoir. He took it as a sign that yes he should start his own eponymous collection and thus did. I will stop there.

Okay so picking up from where we left off yesterday, today being Sunday. On Friday night, after A. left, S. and I went over to Chelsea Market and picked up some Miznom to bring back and eat. We were overstimulated by the strange phenomena of the day and we stayed up talking till midnight. I had asked S. who, if any entity was behind the star incident, who would it have been (having an answer myself ready). She said Laurie and that was exactly what I was thinking. Our friend Laurie died of cancer a month after her thirtieth birthday. It is to her that Sextrologyis dedicated. Through her we met Rob Weisbach who originally bought the book (although his imprint at Morrow was dissolved when Harper Collins bought Morrow and he left before our book was published). Laurie died a decade before, but we stayed close with Rob.

Laurie wrote an unfinished novel which is hinged (see the Dior story from yesterday) on a character who finds a penny on the street and the story unfolds from there—in her manuscript she taped an actual Penny. We have the unfinished manuscript in our possession as her boyfriend, Peter, who took care of her till the end, gave it to us. In the novel there is a couple, inspired by us, who buy a farm. In 1998 we bought a property on Cape Cod that was called Mimosa Farm. IN the first week there we went to the local bookshop and Laurie’s best friend from her creative writing masters program at Binghamton, who we only met once at Laurie’s funeral, had moved to the same town and opened a book shop. That was cosmic kismet enough, no? It really doesn’t end there. It continues. A few years ago S. did a solo show at Joe’s Pub and while backstage waiting to go on she silently, secretly dedicated the show to Laurie. Peter, whom we hadn’t seen in over a decade, was on his way to the train for East Hampton; and suddenly stopped in his tracks. He had seen on Facebook or somewhere that S. was doing a show, and he was overwhelmed by the sudden need to ditch his Hamptons plan and to beeline down to Joe’s Pub. Imagine S.’s reaction when she saw he was in the audience, after dedicating the show to Laurie. So Friday night we spoke all about this the two of us and went over the entire timeline of Laurie’s illness and, S. thinks and I agree, processed the whole thing for the first time in twenty five years. Because it was twenty five years ago.

Yesterday we woke up had breakfast and we were meant to meet Alice at 1030 at Ted Muhling but we checked and the shop didn’t open till later. So we decided we would meet at 1130 instead at de Vera on Howard Street. Fine. We were early and kipped into Rick Owen (A. was also apparently early and was browsing around Open Ceremony). We went into de Vera and had a momentary misunderstanding and snit so I decided to go back outside. The shop is amazing but it has some heavy energy and I think it was messing with me. So I just gave us both a little space. I actually walked around the full city block and came back to the side of the shop–through the window I could see A. and S. were looking at jewels. I sat on one of those water valve things under my umbrella as it was spitting. I was probably sitting there for a minute before I heard “Oh my god.” And, will wonders never cease this weekend, it was Peter! with his daughter Praise (who is twelve and we’ve never met her since we’ve only seen Peter that one time at Joe’s Pub in, like, at least twenty years) and with him was another Rob, not Weisbach but Birnbach whom we hadn’t seen since Laurie’s funeral. Can you imagine the shock. I told Peter through hugs and kisses and welling eyes that we had spent the entire night speaking about him to which he was like: Naaah. I said you’ll see. We went into de Vera (which means “of the truth”) and S. started nearly shouting no, no, no, no, as she rushed toward Peter and hugged him, then Praise then Rob. It was too much. We filled A. in and she was blown away. Turns out Peter knows de Vera—they had had dinner together. So it wasn’t as if he was just walking by. He was headed to de Vera at the exact same time, practically as we planned to arrive. Can You. Dig. It?

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.