Sagittarius 2° (November 24)

I do think that the alchemy is changing already and, after a short spate of panic, I’m ready to devote every waking hour to the project at hand. It will be my industry, my creative outlet, my obsession, my vacation, my dedication, my magic formula, my protective fortress, my ambition, my transcendence, my spirituality, my deep dive, my magic spell, my indulgence, my porn, my psychologist, my hobby, my art, my religion, and my partner in crime. I don’t know what I dreamt exactly but I do know that Gary C. featured in it and it revolved around having to get to a movie theater in time. It also centered on Paris in some sense, some magical apartment in a building with a series of them, my mother perhaps also living in one of them. There were wood beams in the ceiling. It was very fifteenth century meets flimsy 1980s drafty. The thing I learned already today, having been awake for only an hour is that: If you just stay inside a project then the ideas are available to you. I don’t necessarily feel like getting a tree this year. I mean, I do, but I don’t want the hassle to be honest. I am going to spend an hour a day throwing things out. And a half hour shopping online because daddy needs some stuff. I am forgoing all other things. All other needs. All other everything. An hour equals a page whenever it occurs and there are thousands of hours still available to me. Come July, when all will be in boxes, we will slip away, and make it clear that we are under a vast protection of terrestrial and spiritual forces. We will inform the legal team that we are dehors. So for the next four hours this day I will read three chapitres and draft the front-of-book material. Okay now my love project beckons.

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1186-1190 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.

Day Six

Oh the dream I had—I had to wake myself up from at 5:15 this morning: I was yelling at Peter Belsky. I had two desks in his establishment which looked like a sort of chic lounge with modular red furniture. It was an entire store front with a downstairs where I also had a desk with more stuff. I almost have to jump to the end to describe the beginning. He knew I was there to talk. I kept waiting for him to finish with other people. In the meantime I made my way to the kitchen area where there were other people—it was sort of a party. (This all might flash me back to a dream I had about him many, many moons ago.) There were creepy, crappy people at the party, specific ones with whom I was doing mental and verbal sparring. All I wanted was a clean plate for lasagna while I waited for Peter to be done. Lynne had left me (she was driving a yellow taxi) outside and was to return in an hour. I had a real face to face confrontation with some hardbody guy who could have taken me a part but still I remained in his face ready to fight until we both backed off a little—I could feel that he was physically ready to do battle by way of his tensing the muscles of his core and inner thighs (I felt it as if it were my muscles that were doing so, which doesn’t make real, only dream sense). Peter wanted to get Nora Burn to be editor he had told my earlier and I went quietly ballistic saying she’s a no talent and I’ve been working there since 1987, the premise being I was meant to be editor in chief of this magazine that was always threatening to get off the ground. It was a dream of being undervalued, overlooked, being the one right there the whole time doing all the work and yet not the one desired for the reward of the big job whatever that means or meant. There was a woman, whom the hardbody was presumably protecting, who was real trouble and it was as if I was alerted to her being an anti-us by Laurie who, even in the dream, I believe, was no longer with us. Again I flash back to a dream dating to the early nineties perhaps, when we were losing Laurie, where this type of tightly packed and populated dream was set in claustrophobic quarters (the setting was the upstairs three bedrooms of the house I grew up in which must have doubled for the claustrophobic tenament interior of Laurie’s apartment on west 43rd of 44th to which I had a key back in the late eighties such that I could edit on the one computer DV8 owned. Anyway, I finished my lasagna….Lynne showed up in the dream in time to eat it with me/us…but this did not supercede the fact that I would still be waiting for Lynne to pick me up in a yellow taxi which was part of the original premise of the dream. Her arrival to the kitchen was through another (back) door in the space, while Peter at his desk, working with hipsters, was in the (store)front on the front side of the store, if that makes sense, where he sat at just one of the modular desks others were also sitting at, workers for him. Then I saw his desk was empty and learned that he was gone. And I went super ballistic. I went outside looking, I went all around. It was still to early for front of building Lynne to pick me up in her yellow taxi. I was fuming. Then I saw Peter coming down the road, after leaving me high and dry for over an hour, because now Lynne, too, was late, and he was driving a brown Deux Cheveux, contently oblivious as you please (stopping at a dumpster?) then we are at his desk. I’m aware of some of the women who sit around him at their desks because I think I already vented some about him in their presence; and then there was this hipster in front of me, perhaps the same hipster I walked in on as he was readying a shower for himself, half naked, when I looked for Peter in the bathroom before going outside and finally spotting him in his French car. I yelled at him for never following through on his promise! (That must be the psychological key to why this dream now.) That I had worked for DV8 since 1987…that I had worked on Seen (conflating him with Jonathan whatever his name was) winning the magazine a Graphis award…that I had been waiting around (apparently all these years) to finally function, paid, as editor in chief of what this next enterprise would be, my desk here (which I was clearing as I ranted) and especially the one downstairs filled with work already completed or semi completed. Now, awake, it might be seen as all the work I have ever done, designed for this sort of enterprise—all the work at The New York Social Calendar, all the lists of pitches for The Face and other publications, all that stuff I dragged (and still drag?) around all those/these years. And how he never paid me or anyone. I appealed to all the people in the room at their own desks, asking them, am I right that you’re all here working for free? And then I gave him the biggest dressing down in dream form I have ever delivered since reading my sister—when that happened it became talking/yelling in my sleep in that way where you’re talking through the veils between the sub- and conscious worlds. I referenced his family (wife and daughter) living in Wichita, Kansas and the expense of going back and forth, and the Deux Cheveux which he presumably had to ship from France, and on and on and on, citing his selfhisness and so forth. The Deux Cheveux could be Eric Delancy or Ryan Landry or neither. Anyway I railed on Peter and his expression was cryptic, a combination of really feeling the truth of what I was saying and not really caring and just waiting for it to end. Anyway…The lesson here is that I must be paid. And I must be valued.

Morning was crumpets—I didn’t have any. We travelled to Wrangell. We had a Turkish lunch of halibut (caught by K.) and beef kabobs, elbow macaroni and grilled aparagus with parsley, kale and sweet balsamic. We went into Wrangell. I bought a back pack and a tee-shirt. I am still in need of getting some work done!

Day Seven

Last night’s dinner was delicious Spring Rolls and Pho Noodles and Iced Coffee Cake. Ginger martinis, sake and white wine all in one go. And then it was the “Geese” night of Cards Against Humanity.

I did manage to finish the Norse Mythology book by Neil Gaiman, so that’s something. But otherwise I am really behind on just about everything. I don’t know what to do about it. Also I was feeling pretty rested and now I’m feeling rather shattered again which isn’t all that fun.

The morning was fantastic however. After a brekkie of banana bread: We went to see the Bears of Anan which is something I shan’t soon forget. It was a bit scary walking through the woods where we saw a bear climbing a tree; but the actual outlook where you could watch the bears catching and killing and eating salmon wasn’t at all frightening. There was even a bear hanging out under the wooden shack of a ranger station. But make no mistake—these animals are in no way acclimated to humans—they are definitely wild.

After watching them eat salmon we got to have Alaskan salmon ourselves. I left the skin on because it was perfectly done. And it was served with a salad of tun and canneloni and celery and squash roasted with basic and almonds. Gr-yum. Sak and Aine arrived in the late afternoon by seaplane and we had tea and flapjacks and then I tried to get a little something done before dinner which began with lovely cocktails—I had a dry martini—and oysters which were a bit cramy and delicious. Dinner was fantastic. Homemade parsely garanelli with a ragout of beef which was sweet, likely, with balsamic and almost bordered on bbq, with delious bread twists with olive and parmesan. After dinner there was an olfactory game planned with prizes of gorgeous colognes. Delicious Napa Valley wine and brandy into the late. Aine told us all about her new squeeze long afer others had gone to bed.

Flo and Jill have decided to leave early—Wednesday instead of Thursday, so I’m a bit bummed about that I must say. I really love them both and they will be so missed.

Day Eight

I have kept a rather low profile today, trying to get some work done and otherwise transcend the epic fatigue I feel. We are going up in a plane tomorrow to the Misty Fjords (a fantastic dragname) for J’s birthday and that should be a lot of fun.

I unfortunately realized that our graphic/web designer has as yet not gotten our site up and running; and he tends to disappear at crucial times, just as he did when we needed him last winter for a project. I feel I am too forgiving of shoddy work, but it’s selfish on my part, because I don’t want to have to go through the slog of finding someone new.

After breakfast yesterday I disappeared to tackle some of this work. I didn’t get very far unfortunately and the fundraising especially is uncharacteristically not forthcoming. I need to find a different tack. And it starts with a mental picture in my mind. So I’m going to try and re-write the headline. I don’t know why I got into a negative head. I am very sensitive to energy and I really try not to judge, lest I be….I get triggered easily working/interacting with people who remind me of my sister for sure. Next year I will avoid hiring certain figures. It was frustrating punching my way out of paper bags; I know I must have made some progress but it’s so hard to tell.

Breakfast featured waffles with black-cherry ricotta—I had none of it. Then lunch was Tandoori chicken, saffron rice, pureéd egglpant, burgies? (I don’t know Indian food the way the Brits do) and mango chutney, yoghurt sauce, naan, and pampadun. White wine. Then the kids and Aine went fishing. I went back to work. Went online and saw that my friend Ruben had done a FB Live from Ketchikan which is basically where we are! How cosmic is that? He is performing on the Norwegian Bliss.

More work. And my stomach was really hard and swollen and I knew this would put me into a bad mood unless I pre-picked out my clothes for dinner which was a Winter Wonderland theme, for summer in Alaska, which does make sense. I went haute lumberjack. Nibblies were amazing: a salmon jerky and chicken remoulade—like little chicken and mushroom stews inside fried balls. Martini. Then delicious white wine again.

We spoke about Lumos something to which I really want to find a way to contribute. I will bring it up again and maybe speak to Billy about it. Dinner was halibut with tomatoes four ways and baked Alaska for dessert. Movie night on the top deck: Passengers. I fell asleep about forty minutes in.

Day Nine

Not only is it the last day of the month and exactly six weeks to festival time but it is Jo (and Harry’s lol) birthday. And we have been talking about Caddy Shack since we got on the boat and I just say today is also the 38th anniversary of its release. These things keep happening. As if Ruben starring in a musical on the Norwegian Bliss we keep passing int the night wasn’t enough.

We had prezzies for Jo over brekkie. And everyone is sort of doing their own thing now. I am still trying to get work done but it isn’t easy. Anyway I am not here to work so it’s fine. I need to get my brain around how it is I can bring in all the money I need in the last month. I will go down the list and make a huge plea to all the big sponsors. But for now I need to focus on having fun and just keeping up enough as not to get ridiculously behind.

Lunch was a birthday party with balloons and hats and noisemakers. Fun. We had cous cous with vegetable and steamed cod with herbs and chicken kabobs also with herbs and a salad of lettuce tomato cukes and onion; dessert was a cocoa sorbet; champagne and Whispering Angel.

Then the sea plane arrived and we tendered to it and wow it was way beyond what I expected, thankfully, because I might not have gone if I knew how we would be flying over mountains that we sometimes seemed to barely skirt. We went through Salmon Glacier to No Name Lake where we landed and hung around a bit, the pilot immediately putting out his fishing line. We had listened to John Williams music and Enya and so forth on the first bit of the flight. Then on the second bit it was all kind of rocking out music. I only found out later you could turn the music off in your headphones. I actually got the feeling that the pilot might have had more than coffee in his mug. I took a ton of video. After taking tea upon return, we prepared for the Norse God murder mystery night. Jo was Hel and seemed very much in character, characteristically, as was David, as Odin, who never dropped the ball. It was revealed last night, as I suspected, that he will go into the acting profession. I imagine what it would have been like for me to have parents of such enormous means actually supporting a child’s desire to become an actor. I have to take that primal pain and turn it all around.

I can’t get over how much I am reminded of my sister. The triggers are harshly real. And that is enough said about that. Other than I must not be dragged into any fight that someone else might be itching for. I must go even deeper into compassion. Dinner was something of a blur because of the game. For canapés we had salmon jerky again maybe? And some kind of creamy soup as a shooter? It was a ball of confusion with all the “gods” sussing each other out; and the crew making very graphic appearances. Cleo who organized the evening stressed the feminist aspect of the stewards as Valkyries which was fantastic—the male guests were prohibited from making eye contact with them while the female guests were required to do so. I was Loki (exactly who I hoped to be) and I was of course the murderer, which nobody guessed, stressing the point: don’t avoid the obvious. Afterword we played a bit of Cards Against Humanity but it fell flat because I think we’re all now too acquainted with the several, now, entire whole decks of cards.

Day Ten

Woke up early and really would have chosen to fall back; however, today was the first day there was mist and a mystical feeling in the air, which is how I imagined the weather would be for most of the trip. We are heading to Ketchikan today and I’m looking forward to being in a larger town for a few hours. And then Jill and Florian and Graeme and Matt will leave, after Alistair arrives. So the day will be characterized by a natural human shift which might shake some things out energetically speaking. I need to do some timed writings which I’ll do right now, having already had a breakfast of smoked salmon (which was caught by the kids and A. the other day) on rye bread.

I’m a bit coldy today, which I hope will pass. I might hit the hot tub which might help….time passes…and it did! We went into Ketchikan and S. and I decided to avoid the commercial bit, so we headed up a hill into area people seemed to live. The town seemed a bit poor on the one hand with giant cruiseships (and the blocks of tourist traps the cruise companies own) on the other. We came upon a bridge and a waterfall with a wooden walk way so we took it. As it turned out it wove back into town, all along this walkway on stilts, to a more charming, but still commercial bit. There were some nice jewelry shops and a great book store and a cannabis shop and a cabaret venue, if you could believe it. We didn’t have much time as we had a rendezvous time back at the tender; but we ended up waiting another forty-five minutes in any case because J. got rockignized. But I had bought some cheesy popcorn so we snacked on that until the fam arrived and headed back to the boat.

Lunch was a bit sad knowing Jill and Flo were leaving. Pizza and arugula/beet salad and roasted vegetables. I know the Brits aren’t always super effusive, I don’t know about the Welsh, but I love Jill. And Flo gave me another kiss, and he’s Swiss! And we also said goodbye to Matt and Graeme, wecloming Al aka Cap’n Bumpyon board earlier. We then hopped back into the tender and went back into Ketchikan and tooled around for an hour and hit the highlights—cannibis shop, cabaret, bookstore. Then tea with chocoloate chip pumpkin cookies. Oh boy. Canapés were sushi and dinner was black cod and rice and a bun with bean paste for dessert. Conversation was all about trans versus gay. The kids, I thought, had the most interesting perspectives. And then we watched The (first) Godfather. I went back to our cabin to pee and never made it out again, face-planting into bed where I spent a good part of the night, apparently, snoring.

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.