By Greg (VOSTROMO)

SCORPIO
Ruling planet: Pluto
Symbol: Scorpion (really, what are the odds?)
Birthstone: Topaz
Element: 2 pts brandy / 1 pt creme de menthe

Sylvia Plath finally writes me back — says she’s “too pure” for me — or anyone. Come again? On what planet does she live these days? Read “The Bell Jar”, she tells me — everything will become clear. Please. I know you, Sylvia. Or thought I did.

Carl Sagan says to me — this is over cocktails at Morton’s — he says: “if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” Oh sure, I say right back at him, that makes perfect sense — to anybody who’s had three gimlets. “Really,” he says, “somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” Perhaps, I say, that something incredible is you, picking up the check this time? “It’s far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion,” he says. Obviously so, I reply. Sure isn’t the way I’d have designed it.

Oksana Baiul is coaching my eight-year-old. “Russian split!” she calls out. People lined up around the rink to see Oksana turn to ponder what an eight-year-old can make of that. I‘m the one hiding my eyes. Over and over I’ve been sore tempted to throttle her — how do you expect a child to master something like that? Sometimes, I swear I’m this close to putting a counter-turn on her leg wrap, or swizzling her twizzle. Costs a fortune, though, so I grit my teeth and wait for the sound from the crowd that’ll tell me if we landed in one piece.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s moustache is talking to me. “Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.” Interesting observation, coming as it does from some horizontal hair on the man’s face. Oscar Wilde said that moustaches were “the evolutionary next level to enlightenment.” So maybe Stevenson’s ‘stache could talk after all. Could be the absinthe. Or both.

Pablo Picasso looks deeply into Marie-Therese’s eyes. “I do not seek,” he says, “I find.” On the bed is a blanket her mother made, rumpled at angles into more than three dimensions. She knows it wasn’t meant to be shared with a lover, not one as earthy and strong and confounding, but when she first stood naked before his brushes, much after she’d stood naked before the man, she felt an unexpected moment of innocence. Curling her arm through the wall she’d reached back to her childhood bed and pulled the blanket into his Paris atelier to wrap around her shoulders. “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone,” said Pablo, as he sketched out charcoal lines across the canvas. Rather than die she dropped the blanket a bit, baring one breast to the arts, tilted her face towards the sun, and let a novel in Spanish appear, unread, on her lap.

Ike Turner spins a record at WROX in Clarksdale. “On the airwaves for you right now is the great mister Louis Jordan,” he says as he releases the vibrating platter. Sure, he’s not supposed to make announcements, but Frisella always cuts him a little slack on Saturdays. Come September he might get his own slot, he needs to practice. Over in Tennessee, Anna Mae Bullock comes roaring into the world. Ruby had cracked her lip open when the dog ran into her and she tries not to smile at her new baby sister so it won’t start bleeding again. People always wonder.

Owen Wilson is pacing, running lines. Schwartzman claims he understands the “Darjeeling” script perfectly, but Owen’s not convinced. Clearly the opportunity to worship at the altar of Natalie Portman’s derriere is overriding Jason’s normally apt judgment. Or is Owen just missing the fundamental thing underlying this one, which he had no hand in writing? Realistically, nothing much actually happens to anyone, despite their several adventures with poison snakes, thieves, stolen romance… on the whole it’s a journey from here to here again. Previously his characters have learned, grown, changed, or at least dropped dead. It sort of works out, he thinks, because by the time I die, I’m usually tired of working on that particular movie, so I look forward to it.

This month’s forecast: buy Globex, stock symbol DOH

Tags: Book Suggestions

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 20th, 2011 at 7:03 am and is filed under Holidays and Special Dates, Musings, VostromoScope. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.