Aquarius 18° (February 6)

I’m just going to post more astrological thoughts. Otherwise today is yet another wash, which I can’t really afford. Anyway, I have to be strong and bold and just keep forging forward.

The fairytale version of Mercury, Peter Pan, whom we’ve long associated with the sign, amasses his own tribe of lost boys who seek solace and guidance in equal measure. The sign of Gemini rules the hormonally raging age group of 14-21 a time when boys band together into schoolyard gangs, socially gathering together, into flocks of boon companions. And the Twins guy an embodied snapshot of those salad days all his life. He runs on the steam of such tribalism, if not mob mentality, like that other fellow in green tights, Robin Hood, operating in secret, employing the element of surprise, being rather thuggish, even, in the loftiest of enterprises. We might add that DC Comics’s original character Robin (Dick Grayson), Batman’s sidekick cum superhero in his own right is likewise attired and, as we’ll explore, is archetypally on brand. (And yes, nerds, we know that there is more than one Robin.) In keeping with this character, in our first book Sextrology we titled the Gemini man chapter The Goodfellow, a major nod, too, of course to Robin Goodfellow, aka Puck in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Not only is midsummer the culmination of the sign of Gemini, but Puck is the fairy incarnation of the mythic Mercury (Greek: Hermes), both being messengers to their king masters, Oberon and Zeus, respectively. Where we are going with this: Born under the premier air-sign in the zodiac, and the sole mutable one at that, Gemini people draw on the archetypes of the air spirits, sprites, fairies and, arguably, some angels and demons in equal measure. Not Shakespeare’s invention, Puck is a pagan spirit out of ancient northern European folklore, whose name may derive from the Old Irish and Old English puca, or the Old Norse and Old Icelandic puki—in either or both case, it is from whence we get the word pixie and, by extension, pixilated, which was first introduced by Mary Chase in her Pulitzer prize-winning 1945 stage play, and the 1950 film of the same name, Harvey, the title role being an invisible pooka, a benign but mischievous creature out of Celtic mythology who takes the form of a giant rabbit. To be pixilated, is to be dazed and confused, which is very much what it is in Mercury and Puck’s—and by extension Gemini man’s—power to do to others, not to be, well, confused with the similarly spelled digital pixelization (although that word presents a good visual to describe the deconstructive atmosphere the Gemini guy is wont to create). 

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1551-1555. 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.

Getting my brain around a timeline today. We will make salmon with salad and stewed tomatoes and avocado for dinner tonight with some wine from the Orleans shops. I spent the day mostly in bed feeling very weird and sweaty. The fou-fous are now in full force. This is proving to be the kind of week you wanted to be a period of immediate snap back; but instead it has been a one of somewhat dysfunctional aftermath. It happens. There is no real crime in it and I can only do as much as I can do. I did have some good time alone to myself and I did manage to get a few things done, but today is going to have to be a something of a rerun. So here is something I’ve written in the past:

I love Julia Child. Who doesn’t, I know, but she has always held a special fascination for me. When I was a waiter in 1986 at the Harvest in Harvard Square, she and her husband Paul would come in for lunch. You would here “Bonjour Roger” in that booming unmistakeable tenor as she greeted the tiny alcoholic nicotine sodden  maitre d’ whose name she properly prounced in French, ro-jay. Paul, a curled shrimp of a man who had already suffered his series of small strokes, followed hist towering wife into the dining room where she would always order the same thing: a burger, rare, no bun. She is a Leo and I’ve often remarked on the similarity between her choice of lunch and the bloody meat one would throw into a lion cage.

Before the book and movies about her during the last decades, I always thought she would make a great subject for a work of art. I won’t go any further into that thought lest I actually end up pursuing this instinct myself. At the very least I think she and her husband would make great costumes for Stella and me, come Halloween. But, obviously, there’s more to it. Here was a couple who worked together (even though you didn’t know he was behind the scenes), who had no kids and were rather late bloomers. They were also obsessed with France and had an affinity for Cambridge, Massachusetts and Maine. All of this I can relate to.

She described herself “as the cat looking at the king” when she was a student of Le Cordon Bleu—what can be more Leo an expression than that. And what person from any other sign could turn what was for her a personal passion into an entire movement, changing the way Americans cooked, forever. What other sign could see a chef superstar embodied in the form of a fifties something woman. I’m happy I had the few opportunities I did to wait on Mrs. Child whose name couldn’t be more fitting for someone who lived life with a childlike exuberance and who gave so much to the world.

As we often are, we were approached by an event planner to do readings for guest at a private party. But there was something mysterious about this whole affair as the planner didn’t seem to be someone who threw a lot of parties, and we came to learn she worked for just a few clients helping them with their private and corporate events which kept her busy. This event was to be at a private home in Rhode Island and we took it as an opportunity to see a new part of New England. Only was there did we realize the island was where much of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom was filmed. So we drove around to visit location spots, most notably, the “cove” of the place that serves as the film’s title.

The party itself only had about forty people in attendance but it was pretty elaborate and the grounds on which it was held, a private home on the water with multiple acres and buildings, was something the likes of which I’ve never seen; and I’ve spent a lot of time around rich people. We were set up in a sort of tower structure from which we could look down on the partygoers whom one couldn’t help imagine lived very privileged lives. One never knows exactly on which side of the political equation people might be in this position but, we were in short order led to assume that these people here assembled were on the right side of politics and history. How did we know this? Because they were all incredibly nice and unassuming people. In a world where the biblical adage that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven often rings so true, this party of people was to prove twrong that saying.

We had no idea the name of the hosts all the while we were at the party. Only by doing a bit of Google detective work the next day were our assumtions corrobarated. The host of the party was indeed a well-known, celebrated, very wealthy man of the Warren Buffet school of philanthropy where he was determined to give a great deal of his wealth away and to put it in service of others. We’ve always said that when it comes to private clients the best people in the world seem to find us and to be genuintely interested in raising their consciousness, making it a joy to help them in that aim. What we realize is that the same holds true for those who come to hire us for events. In either case we have never solicited interest but allow word of mouth and, I’d like to say, some good karma, make the referrals for us.

Emerging from the fog. I have what we call round these parts the “fou-fous”; (I caught some kind of something that my body is trying to rid itself of by way of sweating). A surplus of things is occuring to me. I need to run down the list of existing sponsors and send them the party invite. I also need to go for the jugs with getting “the persuadeables” (sorry) to donate. Scallops and leeks for dinner tonight. I need to fill in with more rerun material:

Why do I do what it is I do in regard to the half of each year, I spend, putting together performing arts festivals and series. Well, the simple answer is that Ed Sullivan and I share more than a birthday. Like Ed, I was a journalist from the age of 22 to about 40. IN fact the main reason I thought to adopt the pseudonym of Quinn Cox was because I wanted to keep my journalistic world—editors and publishers and the subjects I wrote about—separate from what might or not be a success as an astrological duo which has affectionately come to be known as Starsky + Cox. But you see paradoxes began to spring up. Like my Libran brother Oscar Wilde said, and I paraphrase because I’m too lazy to look this shit up: Give a man a mask and he’ll reveal his truths to you. Okay I’m going to look it up and see how close I got. What he actually said was: “Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth.” Which is much simpler and better but I was close.

People do not know me and that’s been okay. I think I’m getting ready to reveal myself in teaspoonfuls. The fact is that back around 2005 I thought Stella and I needed to take to a stage, something we had only done together, rarely, in acting classes where, at HB Studios, we were labelled “the Lunts” which, I won’t lie, I loved. I had a sort of rock-bottom epiphany where I thought, hang on, our book Sextrology came out last year and it has been a success, so we should take to the stage and somehow combine comedy and astrology with some music thrown in. At a place called (under) Elmo in Chelsea, which one tried to convince oneself was a boutique version of Fez under Time Cafe which had recently closed down, we launched our first “Cosmic Cabaret” to a full house of wonderful people we knew personally and periferally. Lots of fashion people—Zaldy and Ruben and Isabel Toledo and John Bartlett—as opposed to performer folks. And, I have to say, after another decade or so “being” with performer folk, I much prefer the people in the fashion and design world, despite the fact I was so utterly convinced, in 2005, that I wanted to stop hanging around with fashion folks whom I did at the time find fatuous and enter the “real” world of performing artists who were down, dirty, honest and true.

Performing artists, who had been down, dirty, honesty and true for the whole time I dipped in and out of their circles, for the past 20 years since I made my way to NYC, but when, in 2006, I began to seek their company, they were on their last gasp of genuine experience. Now, first, let me say, there is no downtown. And I say this as both a journalist and a downtown denizen who more dabbles in performance. I have said this for a decade now: Round about 2007, “downtown artists” began emulating some hybrid breed of Upper East Side Socialite and opera, indie-movie and/or rock star. Quite a leap, I know; but one felt, downtown, that one should speak in a mid-Atlantic accent previously reserved for Rosiland Russell and garb oneself from head to toe in outfits that were spontaneously ready to pass, if pressured, at a Met or Whitney Event.

Suddenly the creme de la creme of the downtown scene used words like creme de la creme. Though they might still live in apartments where the bath tub was recently or still, in the kitchen, they thought they should no longer have to pay for meals or makeup or plastic surgery because they were iconic, and they were. Some still are although that particular brand of enchantment is wearing off and, dare I say, thin.

And I started to miss my friends that worked at magazines that no longer existed. I started to miss the art directors and fellow writers, like myself, who live such solitary lives that it takes a proper poking or, at the very least, a more gregarious partner to stap you into interaction. But what I missed most about living life as a more anonymous character was the ability to move on a dime, to travel, undetected, without needing to be any one place on any certain date….

Awoke from a dream about the Olsen Twins. They were landing a helicopter onto a plane that we were traveling in. They looked old and terrible and one of them (Mary Kate I think) was binging on licorice. Today will not be a good day. Yesterday was too frought for that. More car trouble. More professional impasses. More fundraising pleas falling on deaf ears. There is no time for joy it seems. And my other dream was me looking for a car I parked somewhere and wondering if it got towed. That happened once in real life back in the very early nineties when I went to visit Dean Niarkis at his apartment somewhere in the twenties. I had parked my car and slept over and in the morning I went looking for it and couldn’t find it—I suppose I didn’t remember where I had put it. I was so desperate looking for probably a full hour and then, not giving up, I finally found it. Anyway even though the title of today’s posting is slightly rosier sounding it is a total lie. Things are super shitty right now and no matter what I attempt in hopes of reversing the fact it just leads to more problems and psychological warfare. Anyway I’m still have fever dreams and I’m still trying to feel physically better. I have thirty days now until festival eve and I am determined not only to enjoy the last vestiges of summer, which really lasts a good long time after the fact. And I have to look at these darker hours this week as a way of touching a certain kind of rock bottom from which we can rise.

Happily things did turn around and we did some emotional housework and then went for a second sushi of the week (don’t judge). The weather was changing, the oppressive heat being sent out to sea, as winds and clouds from the east swept over us, plunging the temperature to a tolerable level. We shared a bottle of rosé bought from the shops in overcrowded Wellfleet and then still had a little Chinon to take to bed with us. I am urging someone to watch Years And Years somewhat against her will. Yes, the subject matter is really scary; however the product is such top quality and the acting/ensemble superb. Belfast is on my mind today—I do love Maine so very much. But I have to stop my real-estate porn addiction because it doesn’t keep me in the now which is where I want and need to be. This should be an interesting month as I allow the intermittent fasting thing to take hold while I make the beach an everyday thing and go off any and all sauce for the duration. With so much holiday fun this summer already under my belt I don’t really expect this to be much of a challenge. And anyway I have to be all foward movement. It’s a psychological thing. I almost want to be awake as much as possible. Why is that? I’m predicting I will live until eight-four. Is that weird to say? I just have a vibe.

I have to clear out my brain and get my psychic self buzzing. That’s what these daily summits will be all about. We have to create our own excitement. And part of that is also clearing away the cobwebs of past negativity and dysfunction and, yes, destruction. I for one have never been perfect (I know that might come as a shock) and I have behaved badly in my life but it has never really, at the core, been anything but beating myself up, whether I’ve done it privately or in public. I want to fall back in love with writing again. This is one of my goals for the coming year. I’m prolific I know but I have to be a bit more purposeful. I need to find an almost physiological focus, a literal unscrambling of my brains. There is something about me always that feels as if I’ve been shaken by a giant babysitter. I sent a note to JCM asking if he would give a little shout here and there for the Afterglow Festival and he wrote back in gleeful affirmation. I’m so grateful for this kindness. I really am counting my blessings and friends as one.

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.