Sagittarius 17° (December 9)

Turns out that Farmer Fuckface turned on someone else who was in another house on the hill. These people said it happened on New Years Day 2020. I’m not surprised and I am a bit bolstered by this news. We will take a little spin into Provincetown today and I will buy some scallops to make with leeks and potatoes for din din. We will get some window lights and other bits and bobs to finish the holiday decoration. I was hoping to get some writing done but it won’t be in the stars. We passed by this little place in Wellfleet but I don’t think it could ever work for us. We shall see what we shall see. The search goes on for a place to land, but it’s not today. I am moving the spoon along as best I can. We are good to go from the publisher which is really good news. I have to do the Yeoman’s work now, that is the most important part, otherwise I’m just prolonging the inevitable. It was strange to be in Provincetown. I feel like a ghost in my own experience. I saw the JVB and band have performed at Joe’s and will have a solstice show which is always bittersweet for me. I have to avoid social media during the next three months. I feel it is the only way that I can truly survive this leg of the journey. I am going to remain positive. I am going to see this through to the end. I am going to trust in the universe, especially the one inside myself. I am going to write the following.

Dear Afterglow Festival Friends and Family. 

Just a quasi-quick newsletter-y note to say Happy Holidays and to send you all the love and happiness imaginable as we glimpse some light at the end of the tunnel. Typically, this time of year, Stella and I are rehearsing our Winter Solstice show for Joe’s Pub, an annual pivot in time when we celebrate the return of light, an advent in the calendar which is that much more poignant this year. Happily, our dear friend, Afterglow advisor, and singular most sensational stage performer on this or any planet, whose weeks-long holiday shows at Joe’s are always a sold-out smash, Justin Vivian Bond has filmed a Solstice Eve show called “Good Morning, Midnight, It’s Christmas,” which will be streaming December 20th at 7pm EST, starring the stellar musical talents of Matt Ray, also an Afterglow advisor, Claudia Chopek and Nath Ann Carrera. Do Not Miss This. We are going to be snuggled up streaming the show by the fire with our light-up-nose Santa slippers on. Oh yes. For information on this Joe’s Pub Live! event go here: https://publictheater.org/productions/joes-pub/2020/j/justin-vivian-bond-good-morning-midnight-its-christmas—joes-pub-live/

None of us will forget this difficult year of closed theaters and performance venues. And though the live Afterglow Festival didn’t happen in 2020 in Provincetown, we were able to quickly pivot our non-profit to fundraise for performing artists, commissioning work we hope will be presented in the years to come. So, we want to take this opportunity to once again express our gratitude to all the returning sponsors of Afterglow who heeded our call to help keep so many performers afloat and creating new work. Thank you, thank you, from the bottom of our collective heart. And for those who haven’t but still wish to contribute to Afterglow, please know that we have no deadline on sponsorships and donations this year, and you can still make a difference in the creative lives of artists as we continue our mission to commission as many performers’ new works as possible for future presentation before our live Provincetown audiences! www.afterglowfestival.org/donations and www.afterglowfestival.org/sponsorships

That was the short and sweet! Please foster and feel as much holiday cheer as you can. Be safe, stay vigilant, and take care of yourself and one another. Looking forward to a happy, near future!

The following blocks of text are exceprts from my first year of  Blagues, nos. 1261-1265. 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 note from Neil Blair this morning inviting us to lunch as they are on the Cape! Alas, we are with family. And to think they are going to be in Wellfleet—it’s a bit weird. I had put together some suggestions for them for visiting Boston, where they’re looking at schools with their kid; but I had no idea they would be visiting the Cape. Neil’s aunts own an inn in, he always said Chatham, but it’s really Harwich, says Neil’s cousin, Chris, whom we met at Cipriani. I asked is it on Pleasant Bay and Chris said it’s called the Pleasant Bay Inn. So yeah. So odd when friends who live in foreign countries show up in your town when you’re not there. Not ha-ha funny but you know. Watching Tracy Ullman this morning she had a brilliant skit about being overly woke; which rang so true. One of the things was just watch Friends without being triggered by the homophobia and the heteronormality. It’s really funny that came up since we binge-watched old episodes last night upon our return.

Today was a big catch-up day though I did do some maintenance on the Brian front. Nancy Bauer, the dean of SMFA got back to me and I’m hoping there is a way we can make this all happen. My drothers would be to partner with them and have them be the hosting venue. In any case my mind is pretty well centered on this new Moveable Festival and all that it can be, based in Boston, with big donors at the ready. The work entailed in going for that is the same as needs to happen in any case. The trick is to keep everything very simple and just go from point to point in the process of what needs to happen. I may be wrong but I think Nancy gets that part from our previous conversations. She got the group mailer I put out and responded. I do understand that Bri had fanbase come to Oberon but….I’m going to disagree with him here.

Even in the case of Boston I think it is about new outreach, specifically going super queer—and I’m thinking Fenway, “Machine” people, JP world and maybe going really deep in LGBTQ in terms of “community outreach” as well as the entire student LGBTQ population in Boston reaching out to all the schools organizations. Also as alternative to a venue in Provincetown where Glow can be lead presenter, we could do our lead presentation in Boston. The prob with Ptown is hard to rent place on season and off season nobody is around. And there are no kids or schools. The Oberon crowd being fanbase is fine. We would be looking for new audience for Bri in Boston i think.

To be able to keep (S)MFA in the picture and who knows maybe they will donate the space. I think we would approach this completely differently from the Oberon show. It’s like I told Nancy: There are two basic ways to go about this. Or three actually, depending on your own goals and needs

We could simply make a plan to present the show at SMFA for one night or a couple/few outside of the NEFA equation. Like we have in the past other places, and figure out the $ bit. In the case of Endicott and other schools that have budget for this we could come up with a flat fee and then SMFA could take all the ticket money. Or we could come up with a split of sorts with a guarantee.

The way the NEFA grant works we have a couple of options….

The way the grant works is that Afterglow (actually working under Glow aegis) will produce a tour and, as the lead presenter, also produce one of the runs of said tour. What we’ve learned with the touring grant is that we are unique in that most lead presenters have brick and mortar; so, in the case of Glow we would be present at some place we rent in say our home base of Provincetown; and then we have to secure two other “partner presenters” each of which apply directly (very little paper work) to NEFA to present the piece. It’s almost like a matching grant in that the artists get the NEFA money directly which is typically around or near the same amount that the venue would be investing in the artist/show—the finessing of which I’m now learning. And then venue keeps all the proceeds which further offset the investment.

The third way this can happen is that the Glow, as lead producer, could present at SMFA and in effect “rent” (either really or you could donate that rent back to us) and simply be our brick and mortar for what would be the lead presentation on the tour. This way you wouldn’t have to be a partner per se and have to deal with any of the NEFA bit yourself. You would simply be the space but we can certainly trumpet SMFA in the process of our own partnership.

So there are a number of ways to slice and dice!


We may be flying to London on Sunday 11th or Monday 12th in November to attend a premier on the 13th. That would be a month from now. Then we would fly back on the 15th in the morning and go straight to Taja show at Oberon and then the next day drive to Montreal. It sounds like a lot. But it’s not impossible. I would def stay in hotel in Cambridge then I think. We shall see if this is even doable. I think if all can be accomplished easily will be fine. Maybe we can fly overnight on the 11th and arrive the 12th and go to hotel and just flop, or perhaps having slept well on the plane, we’d have all day Monday and all day Tuesday to kick around before going to the event on Tuesday night. So long as it’s okay not to leave until the morning of the 15th such that we arrive back at Boston in the afternoon. We can either keep the hotel rezzie or go to Reading that evening.

All in all we will be exhausted and will have to sleep on those plane rides and get our sleep on then. I will also have to have the entire show written by then without fail which is also fine. Could be fun. We have options. I want to much to make hay, now, while the sun shines so that I can be relaxed and let my good unfold; and also have time to make this show not just great but something that can move around. We really don’t have to change very much if we are focusing on getting new audience. That should be the plan.

Well it’s another Monday and a good start. I’m going to try to be through part A of my day by noon. Then my afternoon can be solidly about moving the needle forward. I must get back into my groove—it is essential. “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is: infinite.” So said William Blake. And I’m one to believe him. If I hit my marks today my own perception will be allowed to shift, if just a little, as well, opening onto a more infinite vision of, even, my own self. With the start of November, I will have two solid weeks to work all but exclusively on the upcoming show, work on which begins tomorrow evening in any case. I can finally dig back into the more creative elements of my life story that I might want to outline. This is my fourth time around the wheel writing these Blagues, meaning I’ve written upwards of 1,670 entrees thus far in my experience. Some of them are more than a page, mostly every one is two pages, so I have like 3000 some odd pages to read through for inspiration. That’s not nothing.

It’s just about getting some kind of head start, really. I mean, it would be enough to have two places for a couple of years with an office to go to. That alone would change my perspective after all this time, decades now, working from home. Everything under one roof—a full day’s work plus all the domestic chores. I don’t need Ben Sasse telling me how to feel more connected. I just need an office in a city and a transporter room from once to project some magic. That is all really. I will of course stay in our witchy wonderland of New England, in America, my spiritual home. I have a lot to be thankful for here; plus I do some of my best healing here. That’s now what I’m aiming for more than anything else. (I was just going to Google something and forgot what it is—hate that—oh well I hope it comes back to me.) I have a day of timed writing and some friendly clients. I am so fortunate that in all I do I get to uplift people, and to guide them.

First, I have to remind myself that most people don’t work as hard as I do. That I wear many hats and I’m pretty successful at everything I undertake. The trick now is to concentrate, hone, focus and distill. The riches are in the niches as they say. And this will be a year of pulling many threads through. I don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to show writing, for starters. I have everything at my finger tips. The trick is to get people who haven’t come before to come out to support us. And really it doesn’t matter either way because we have never done anything we do for any kind of applause, real or metaphoric. What our focus shall continue to be: Is to spread our message of self-actualization. That’s the great thing about the Zodiac. People want to belong to this house of that in Hogwarts, right? Well the Zodiac is like a cosmic Hogwarts with twelve houses in which we each get all our own mansions. My interests are really metaphysics and I must find a way to continue my studies on the subject while having it inform all the work I do, from books to product to personal consulting to performing. It’s all the same message, interpreted various ways.

I wake up in our Cambridge flat and bike across the bridge to my morning Bikram class, on winter days, I take the bus, easy peasy. I get to the Atelier mid morning and have something restorative, mainly keto. I put on my real or metaphorical apron and my work day begins; and on any given day it will entail heavy focus on product design with the occassional session mixed in—our new large screen makes Skype sessions a breeze. We break for a late lunch and will spend the afternoon putting together our various projects and plans for books, products and events. We will do some scales and work on some bits, or it might just be a writing night. There may be some Glow Festival work to focus on. It’s all of a piece. I would carve out certain days for this and certain days for that and I would create the most beautiful jewel box of a space, with the requisite gadgetry in place. Our p.a. would manage all we needed managing making herself something of a major domo in time.

The wonderful thing about writing is you can write whatever you want. The terrible thing about writing is that you can write whatever you want. As there is a nagging feeling that, though there may be no right or wrong to putting the proverbial it down on real or metaphorical paper, there definitely is a good or bad dichotomy to contend with.

The beauty of writing this Blague during times of deadline is that it helps to keep my head straight. In just a week’s time I will be back to using this forum as a way to put my creative ideas into works. Next year I will write new snapshot one-pagers, portraits of the signs, which can very much come off of the work I do creatively, on the show, starting Monday. I must remember that I am in good shape and act accordingly. In the days leading up to Brian’s visit to the Idea Swap I will get him what he needs. Once I hand these book drafts over, I am full on into the show and doing my scales and promoting the show and, in the process, the books that will soon be uploaded. I will also get to take a nice trip to London which I find necessary; and I will be pretty much free to focus on purely creative things through to Christmas. After which time I would like to focus, solely, on clearing out the office and basement and already getting a jump on the next round of books which I would like to have completely written by March. I am going to keep things very much close to the bone this year and do a full accounting of monies going in their various directions. I will be performing my own show this year in festival and want to make sure to give that project plenty of attention in March and April as I again crank up the machinery for fundraising, all the while touting the local businesses.

By November 2020, I would like to be opening a space, if not buying a building in P then in S or in C. I will be focusing on the “immoveable” idea and will have been taking meetings with manufacturers of planners and the like. I would love to find that company in France which makes the little black books. There will need to be a space in NYC that we can consider a showroom of sorts. It probably would have been smart to grab that place downtown when we had the chance; then again we would have had a psycho for a landlord. I know that I am deserving of good (but conditional) friendship, a large part of which is forgiveness. I have perhaps been too forgiving, to a fault; and perhaps on some subconscious level, because I suspected I might need some of the stuff in return. In any case we live and learn. There is this quote: To understand everything is to forgive everything.

Over the next two years I know what needs to happen, spiritually. For starters, I need to read. I know that mightn’t sound spiritual to you but, as a symptom, reading suggests I’m in a good place on that score. It’s like when I’m flossing regularly; that’s how I know I’m focussed on self care overall I do believe I need to go back to the beginning and read my way through some kind of chronological order. I would love to read for say, three hours a night. That would certainly be part of the path toward finding my peace again. And to get back to the minutes and the memos. To do less and be more. It’s been really kind of hard. Again I realize I can say whatever I want but still it ain’t easy. Back in the day, in my late 20s early 30s, living in the West Villlage, I barely had two pennis to scrape together and yet I remember being quite happy and certainly hopeful. I was never worried about moolah. I guess I supposed everything was ahead of me—that sometime would catch—either that or I was I never thought about it at all and just don’t remember. I’m a saver by nature I think. And I have been doing that in any case these last several years. Not a lot but something.

And. lord upon lord, do I ever need my autonomy. I am so completely frustrated with the way things are at this point. Not that it hasn’t been great up until now; but you know when you’ve been passed out of something but still find yourself in the old place. It is, in a word, maddening. I can taste what my life is about to become; and least that better me what’s rolling around in my mouth. I know I’m not the steadiest character, but I’m not the worst either. I’ll think of someone whose life I’m tempted to envy then I’ll see them in person and they’ll look like crap or be chain smoking or not able to make eye-contact or exhibiting some kind of weirdness. Believe me I know I’ve gone to the edge, and even recently so, and sometimes I’ve stepped over it. And I’ve often had to pay the consequence for that; but I’m willing to recognize that. What I don’t think is being understood is just how close to the edit we truly are at this juncture. And yet I’m willing to have that be part of the reality and to just be grateful that we are in the position we are in. I have to imagine the positive outcomes of all this. Darkest before the dawn and all that? Quick somebody say something super upbeat and positive.

I am feeling tested these past twenty-four hours, but you know what: that’s okay. I’m going to keep my side of the street clean; I’m not going to take my feelings out on myself; I’m going to dig deeper into faith and expand further into belief. I know what this ship I’m sailing, and I’m going to sail it. I am letting go of time. I am letting go of self-imposed deadlines. I am keeping my eye on hitting my marks but I’m also willing to be imperfect and color outside the lines. I’m tired of the way people use social media but, you know what?, that’s their prerogative. I guess it means someting of Tilda Swinton is in your picture. Man, I know some of the biggest celebs on the planet but their success doesn’t reflect on me, why should it. If anything I feel it is one’s responsbility NOT to flaunt said associations. It is so very unbecoming.

Well I have quite a challenging day of writing ahead of me today which is fine. I’m going to embrace it and work, timed-writing-wise, from like 1-7, as I’ve spent the morning doing all sorts of administrative work. But that in itself as been very rewarding. I don’t know why I’m so distracted and can’t focus. I guess it just happens but the timing isn’t great I will admit. I’m on the verge of feeling super claustrophobic (again) and like the balance is off in my world. I don’t know how much I have to do in any given day as this champion of other souls but right now I’m feeling the need to self-focus. But it isn’t a time that would very conducive to that instinct. I just have to do my best to keep putting words down and hope my brain joins the party.

Let’s see. Really. Why am I distracted? Typically it’s because I’m so overwhelmed, too much to do under the too many hats I wear. But that isn’t so much the case really now. I’m close to the edge but not dangerously so. And the edge of which I speak is overwork not something else for you people with overactive imaginations. Sometimes you have to walk through the jungle of your mind before you can reach the clearing in your soul. We should be less afraid of our despair sometimes, because it too can be part of the journey. The demons we meet in the darkness are dissolved once we reach for the Light. Or so said a friends post on social media. Thought it apropos that it popped up now. Anywig, I have schaudenfreude sometimes which really bums me out—I will hear of someone I deem to big for their britches falling into a ditch or something and it makes me giggle. I’m not proud of that. I think it’s awful. But sometimes you think and feel things in spite of your concious mind or conscience itself. Why that is I have no idea.

It’s not like I’m sitting around waiting for anything to happen. I just have a little bit of writer’s block is all. So I will talk about some ideas instead. Like, it will be the 15th anniversary of Sextrology this year and we want to spruce it up a bit. I brought this to the attention of our publishers but it fell on deaf ears. They don’t understand that the world has changed so much since the publishing of that book and that it is deemed to be too binary in its scope, now, after so much transactivism and so forth. So we will add material ourselves to the ebook, which we own, and, if they want to get on board and add anything to the print version they will have to ask us for it. We will send them a letter (certified or through some offical means) so to hit the point home. Then they will have to do a little begging. I think because of our subject matter we get relegated to the joke pile.

But I’m having none of it. A few months back I started down a path on the theme of “a serious argument for astrology” and that is the path I believe I need to take on full-stop. I need it to be in everything I do on the subject. There really is no time to waste. Which brings me back to the oy-oy-oy of not hitting my creative marks today. Still you never know, it’s only three o’clock in the afternoon and I could suddenly become suffused with so muc inspiration that I bang out the requisite five or six pages I planned on writing today. Let us see…

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.