I was sort of wondering if there would be a symbol that might in some way characterize what I’ve been going through of late. At A Railroad Crossing, An Automobile Is Wrecked By A Train is the oracle for 5° Cancer. Of course, metaphorically speaking, this is about “the tragic results which are likely to occur when the individual’s will pits itself carelessly against the power of the collective will of society;” this this symbol is far more fitting to the texting girl that slammed into our car even though it was the last in a long line of stopped vehicles that one could see (if she were looking at the road). Her bratty will and entitlement and total lack of compassion for her fellow beings could have had seriously tragic results for us, however it will be she who will clash with the collective as it seeks to protect us by way of righteous laws put in place. Dane Rudhyar speaks of the via negativa, the negative way of the mystic who learns via trials and tribulations. I can only hope that in the aftermath of this accident that this young woman experiences some kind of revelation about the real and karmic effects of selfish actions. For my part, I feel a readjustment of the karmic kind. Something was broken and released. I wish I wasn’t jumping and flinching at every sound or movement I hear while driving or even just walking down the avenue. I’m pretty clear on what I want to prioritize in my life and I have no time nor inclination to suffer fool people or situations.

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A Cat Arguing With A Mouse is the Capricorn-ruled oracle for the day at 4° Cancer. Rudhyar says “We are still involved in the results of an act which brought about a radical reorientation of one’s life” and nothing could be closer to the truth. The cat and mouse are the opposite polarities in ourselves battling it out. In my case, trying to rationalize what had characterized the prior week, while having dealt with lawyers and doctors and insurance companies and a car dealership where we went to pick up the exact replica of the car that got totaled. We dropped our Hertz rental off at a location nearby, at an airport at the terminal. The next day, upon waking I will call that Hertz location to get a receipt to submit to my insurance company. A woman will answer and I will begin to explain: “We had been in an accident and rented a car from New Bedford and arranged to drop it off, there, at the Cape, which we did last evening at the Cape Air terminal”—I will then be interrupted by her pointedly and alarmingingly repeating in my ear: “We don’t have your car sir…..we don’t have your keys sir…” I will try to assure her I dropped it off and she will insist they don’t have my car. I shall ask if she is the supervisor; she isn’t. I will ask to speak to the supervisor and here her say (to him) this man wants to talk to the supervisor and the phone being thrown onto a desk. The supervisor will get on the phone and start yelling at me that he has customers and then he will hang up on me before I even speak. Then I will call back and he will pick up the phone and slam it back down again several times. I will call the nice young man at Hertz in New Bedford who rented me the ugly white Mazda mini people carrier and he will look up my rental number to confirm, yes, it was recorded you returned the car exactly when you said you did. He’ll have no explanation as to why this agent and her supervisor are so rude but he’ll apologize on their behalf and then give me the name of their area supervisor. I will call another Hertz nearby that will tell me that the evil Hertz branch, being at the Barnstable Municipal Airport is actually under an other supervisor’s jurisdiction, one located at T.F. Greene Airport in Rhode Island. I will call him and he will be appalled and he will offer me rental vouchers that I will refuse, saying that Hertz has lost me as a customer for all time. He will assure me he’ll get to the bottom of it and I believe him. He’ll call me back and say that he had a talking-to with the agent and her supervisor who didn’t even ask me my name or take my rental number but instead insisted they didn’t have the car I dropped off but they did. The weird thing, according to this bigger boss located in Rhode Island is that someone with my exact same name but a Nantucket address also dropped off a car to the same location I did within ten minutes of my doing so. John from Rhode Island had feared this was a mistake and I was charged twice so he checked and saw separate addresses and information for me and my name-alike. That means that if that crunt and her wuckfad supervisor had asked my name they would have realized that not only had I returned the car but two of me did so. Thank you multiverse. Thank you.

This oracle being about rationalization and self-justification cuts many ways. I felt perfectly justified in calling these horror shows’ superiors after being yelled at, shamed, yelled at again and hung up on repeatedly. I doubt very much though that they were able to justify the fact that they treated me so shabbily, insisting they didn’t have my car, when both of me dropped off our cars at precisely the moment I/we said I/we did. Even in the midst of boring, traumatizing aftermath, synchronicity is on my side.

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After being rear-ended by some texting twentysomething on the 18th, and spending the morning in the ER in New Bedford, MA; we rented a car from Hertz; the agent even picked us up at the hospital which was amazing and we thought maybe we should return to Cape Cod and start off the next morning but instead we just kept on toward New York and arrived to say at the home of a dear friend. We had our show on Sunday, which is in benefit (as is all we do) for our Afterglow Festival; then on Monday we taped Catie Lazarus’ podcast Employee of the Month, before heading to see Brett Every’s show at the Amber Zone at Sid Gold’s Request Room where Stella performed a song as did Dane Terry, Nath Ann Carrera and Amber Martin herself. All the while, though, I realize we were moving from a state of shock to post-traumatic stress disorder. The Symbol for the day being A Man Bundled In Fur Leads A Shaggy Deer (okay) points to overcoming the “cold” during a trial of endurance. Honestly, I think Stella and I, who always pride ourselves on our resilience, tried to overcome too quickly. Frankly I don’t even remember performing a show on Sunday. Something’s different. I can’t quite put my finger on it. I am the man bundled in fur preparing for a new journey and I’m taking a fuzzy bambi with me to either shear and wear or eat or maybe ride. I’m accutely aware that I’m still being put through something and I can’t just snap out of it. I’m also quite certain that I can’t go back and do things they way I’ve done them. This oracle is ruled by Sagittarius in a twelve-fold sequence, so I’m going to go with concepts of growth, expansion, travel and new philosophies as the takeaway.

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Playing catch-up: A Man On A Magic Carpet Hovers Over A Large Area of Land is the image at 2° Cancer. We are seeking to expand conciousness by stabiling our point of view. This isn’t magical thinking but rather focusing on one means, not many, via which concsiouness can be raised. We are sticking to a belief system and seeing how high we might fly, insead of entertaining many belief systems. We are thinking higher thoughts. Dane Rudyhar speaks of transending two-dimensionality. I must admit this image isn’t really speaking to me. I recall there already being a magic carpet image. Or else I dreamed that. Focus for me is on repair and recovery from the accident we had last Thursday. I am trying not to let the people with whom I am now forced to deal—insurance agents and such—bother me. But I must say I resent having to spend time and energy into all these logistics. I also don’t understand how it’s possible for the person who caused this accident not to be cited by the police. I suppose lawyers will need to get involved. Trying to rise out of the two demensionality of this situation and transcend on a magic carpet of gratitude for being alive. But still I resent the fact that we have sustained injuries and I’m hoping for some support, not just from the cosmos, but from actual people sitting in cubicles answering my calls.

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On the summer Solstice the Sun rises and sets as far north as it will, and then it’s descent begins, the days becoming shorter. Again, remember the person who divined these symbols didn’t know which day she was choosing. So Cancer 1° On A ShipThe Sailers Lower An Old Flag and Raise A New One is pretty astonishing. We have gone as far as we can go in one direction and now we change tack, operating under a new banner. We are at the most Yang point in the year and now we begin a journey toward increased Yin. The individual will, the ship symbolizing ego consciousness, will now sail toward more collective unconscious. This is ruled by Libra in a twelve-fold sequence and Libra is the hingepin of the zodiac, the seventh sign, thus the turning point on the wheel of twelve signs, beginning the second half the journey around the wheel, just as we now turn to begin the second half, roughly, of the calendar year and certain the second half of “the Sun’s journey.”

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Last day of Gemini and tomorrow the Solstice when we will apparate at Joe’s Pub for a musical comedic performance about stars and shit. I’m not going to promote it any more. We have done so much press and work on this show and I just read Dane Rudhyar’s description of today’s oracle at 30° Gemini, A Parade Of Bathing Beauties Before Large Beach Crowds: “the show is over.” I thought that was funny and apt. I mean our show is tomorrow but really at this point the show is over. There is no more I can do except rehearse, especially since we’ve lost a couple days with this stupid car accident. And even there we’ve done all we can do. We were squeaky wheels with our insurance agents and now we have supervisors personally handling everything and calling us and treating us with kid gloves. Good. Because everything hurts. One thing about getting on stage though: you don’t feel your pain or your cold or your headache or anything that ails you; it waits for you back in the wings. Would that all life were a stage. I’m ready to chew the scenery I’ll tell you that. But let’s get into this Sabian Symbol a bit more.

By just after noon-thirty tomorrow the show of Spring will have come to a close and we’re holding a pageant of sorts to view if not judge the full pageantry of what beauties the season has produced. And we are gathered on a beach where I plan to spend my summer. That is not a sentence of privilege by the way. I know people assume I have some kind of trust fund or something because I spent all my life summering at the sea; but trust me, no trust fund. It’s just that living in the present in a way I enjoy has always been prioritized and not relegated to later. So here I am, savoring the moment. This Blague does much to keep me present in each day as I explore the energy of each passing one through meditation on these symbols. I work with clients by day helping them to self-actualize and I could be on a stage every night raising spirits through our unique form of Entertaining Enlightenment™. So what do I have on parade myself this day at the close of the Spring season. A lot. I might not be ready for the swimsuit challenge by Provincetown standards but I will put on a speedo with pride, showing off my hairy rolls and man boobs without hesitation, just as I’m ready to make a thousand perfect mistakes in tomorrow night’s show. We are ready to parade before you alll our wares—some vocal creations, some cosmic interpretations, some individual chart reads, some metaphysical musings, some personal stories, some voyages into the multiverse and hopefully spoonfeed those attended some wisdom in a spoonful of sugary wit. Justin Vivian Bond used to say “dare to suck” and honeys those are words to live by. Life is indeed a banquet or a parade or a pageant or whatever suggests full expression, so don’t be a sucker. Unfold fully like the fairy flower that you are. And maybe we’ll see you tomorrow night. I’m not putting any links here. You have Google. And our Haute Astrology horoscopes are also posted. See you tomorrow on the Solstice. I have to get a haircut and some Spanx.

Okay so today’s image at Gemini 29° is The First Mockingbird Of Spring. This oracle refers to the ability of talented persons to take collective material and transform it through a genuine, if not biological, need, and with an instinctual love. Yesterday was about being released from the past, emotionally released, while today is about welling up and expressing emotion to the collective. It is ruled by Leo in a twelve-fold sequence. Whereas Cancer is about the flow of emotion, Leo is about honing that power into a passion. The mockingbird copies the sounds of other birds and then strings them all together into something unique. This is, in effect, what all artists do. Especially cabaret artists like ourselves who interpret songs and sew them, as we do, into snappy patter(ns) about metaphysics and the movement of the stars. We perform our show STARRING tomorrow at Joe’s Pub and I’m taking names.

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Forgive my not posting this yesterday. We were rear-ended on the highway. We were standing still in traffic, the last car to have stopped in our lane. And a young woman plowed into us. She had her iphone on her lap when i went to her car. There is no explanation for careening into stopped cars on a highway other than not looking at the road and presumably looking at your phone. The oracle associated with the day at 28° Gemini is: Through Bankruptcy, Society Gives To An Overburdened Individual The Opportunity to Begin Again. This is meant to signal a release from unbearable pressures, freeing one for new tasks. I’m going to relate this metaphorically to what happened to us yesterday, our car being totaled while we basically walked away with some contusions and sore bodies: I choose to look at yesterday as a second chance, a new lease on life, and of course, a new lease on a car.

I was planning to go see an art opening that included some people I like but curated by someone who used to be a friend but has, over the past couple of years, been a source of ill treatment. The first thing I thought after the accident was fuck that. I’m not going anywhere near people who don’t treat me like gold. I recalled being “past life regressed” when I was in my twenties whereby I remembered a life spent very well, where I was this individual who had many comforts, friends and respect, but also experienced a great deal of loss, through it all retaining utmost dignity. I quit my job waiting tables the next day, in real time, as a result of feeling what it felt like to have more a sense of self worth than I did up until then. After yesterday’s smash-up I feel similarly. I will only put myself in situations and in company where I am celebrated at the level I deserve to be. Otherwise I am bankrupt, in a sense, and spiritually so. Bad things happen. But we need never be victims. And if a bad thing happening can eradicate us of any existing victimhood then thank the stars for small blessings.

The sign of Cancer rules this oracle in a twelve-fold sequence and it is about release. Everyone knows Cancer is all about emotions. It is the cardinal-water sign, the flood, the purge to wipe all our cars away. Financially, declaring bankruptcy is how one is purged of debts. I can only hope, that if yesterday’s incident was karmic in any way, that I’m purged of any cosmic debts owed. Because I’d like to have that be the worst thing to happen to me for quite some time. Touch wood.

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Today we seek a new form of consciousness. The image for Gemini 27° is A Gypsy Emerging From The Forest Wherein Her Tribe Is Encamped. She wants out. As we all often do. Not of any place necessarily, but rather out of our own mind space. Yesterday we got essentialized, nature providing a door way to what lies beneath (it all); still it was a subjective experience, it happened to us. Today we are objectively seeking a new life. We want a new experience, even, of the same circumstance. Taurus ruled yesterday’s image; and I’ve always associated Taurus with a certain tribal quality, living close to nature, while Gemini, duality, brings us to the crossroads, the agora, the market place in real time (ruled by Mercury named for the god of the crossroads and merchants); we are emerging from a sort of tribal bliss and ignorance into one of interaction with the world.

At it’s core, this is about leaving behind a more earth-bound existence and seeking, as Dane Rudhyar puts it “the realm of mind and complex, tense interpersonal relationships.” So Gemini. We are moving from the instinctual to the conscious, the wild to the tame. This morning I was perusing a website dedicated to the Dinka of Southern Sudan and thought all the women looked like models and, sure enough, some have become them. It made my stomach sink a bit to think they lost their tribal connections and yet they looked quite happy living in the so-called civilized world. Any one of us who grew up in the wilds of suburbia know what the cities of the world offered us as they beckoned. I moved to Paris which remains my spiritual home and then to New York, where I lived for twenty years, feeling mostly alienated I will admit, though I lived there during one of its better phases. And it was indeed the agora where I was able to sell my wares, and still do.

Just Chills You
Ever So Slightly

I’ve been city shopping for sometime, now. There are pros and cons to living in any one of them. I suppose I do think in terms of how a city will make me feel, but also how it might make me think, what untapped realms of my mind might be opened. I suppose we are, all of us gypsies, and the people I know who do best in cities, particularly in New York, have recreated a sort of tribal existence therein which seems as wroughtly knit and insular as any gypsy camp or Dinka community. The comfortability of being part of the tribe, especially if one has the role of chief or witch doctor, is very difficult to transcend. In the modern urban examples I can cite, they always seem self-serving in their provision of validation and worship inside the bubble.

Belonging is a Venus-powered Taurean need. Wheeling and dealing “on the streets” making a way for oneself is a Mercury-fueled Geminian experience. They both appeal and they both limit. In the former energy field, individualist thinking isn’t so much a requirement as is knowing how to appeal and gain favor—to please, a Venus infinitive if there ever was one. In the Gemini model, a certain scrappiness is required, being clever and living by ones wits, perhaps even selling the skills that were absorbed while living within the tribal or family culture of origin; in a sense taking to market the essentials of self that one has glimpsed if not fully cultivated. When we strike out on our own in the proverbial big city we put ourselves in the care of that trickster god Mercury who lords over all manner of street people like us, including displaced gypsies, tramps and thieves.

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Frost-Covered Trees Against Winter Skies is today’s symbol. Given the weather here in North East, it’s barely a stretch, despite it being June. Apparently this oracle is about “the revelation of archetypal form and essential rhythm of existence”. Strangely enough, that is the very theme of our live show we’re now preparing for the Solstice on Sunday—only, you know, funnier. As if archetypes weren’t already hysterical. We have moved beyond the pruning of yesterday and what did we find? Essential energy. That which can not be created nor destroyed. We can personify archetypes as gods or saints or fairytale characters or those in literature, while we find ourselves taking on said roles in our lives all the time. That is what is immutable. What lies beneath, whether from a scientific perspective or a metaphysical one, physics or philosophy, I’m inclined to called isness. That’s right, my righteous brothers and sisters: At the essential level of existence, that which transcends time and space, everything that is always was and shall ever be—it may or may not be expanding—but it is not subject to the cycles of creation and destruction which are largely an illusion when viewed from this essential, eternal, energetic, truly existential perspective. No alarms and no surprises. Just Om.

Starsky + Cox
Entertaining Enlightenment™

The cycles of nature, seeming creation and destruction, only ironically help us to get beyond this cyclical roll of the cosmic wheel, yin and yang, from solstice to solstice, pole to pole. For even they are like Salome’s rainbow colored seven veils being dropped to reveal the true non-material reality. Dane Rudyar says: “It is not that we experience the Buddhist’s void (sunya), but rather that we reach the essence of our individual being, the form of pure selfhood which is the structuring power underneath all external features – all that belong to the “leaf” realm. The “leaf realm”? That’s a new one on me. Allow me to Google—brb: Okay I’m back and that yielded nothing; so I’m going to take a leap and assume dear Dane is referring, simply, to the natural world. Which works for me in light of today’s oracle being ruled by pastoral Taurus in a twelve-fold sequence. Taken together I think what is being said here today is that: Communing with Nature, the natural state with its natural laws, is the best way for we humans to get near the essence of existence, eliminating all “externals”; however, what we ultimately learn is that Nature is simply a doorway, a bridge, from the external to the essential world. Enter the intersecting plotlines of humans and nature spirits in Shakespeare’s (a Taurus) A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a favorite piece of literature that Stella and I are going to have more than a little fun with this coming Sunday on the Solstice. Get your tickets to see us: STARRING at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater, Sunday, Solstice at Seven PM.

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