As we did most Sundays, Stephen and I walked to the Morris-Jumel Mansion. Thanks to a period of sustained maintenance, the grounds are crossing back into the realm of the pleasantly ruinous from a previous state of utter dilapidation.
Not far away, on 159th and Edgecombe, we discovered a new catering operation called "Company on Edgecombe" that offers a different "dinner box" each night for walk-in customers. For $15, you get a main dish and a choice of two sides, and the food tastes like it was made in your kitchen from farmers-market ingredients (and by a gourmet chef). They change the menu every day and post it on [a social-media site]. Also recommended for dessert are the carrot cakes, which have perfect cream-cheese frosting that's not too heavy or too sweet. Thus ends my career as a food critic.
Dinner boxes procured, we walked down Sylvan Terrace.
We ate in the garden, which we recently spruced up for the fall.
The firethorn (Pyracantha) berries have turned orange, which is my favorite color in nature.
The shadows grow longer as the sun passes in a lower arc. Pretty soon it will be dark all of the time.
"Summer can't be over yet." -- Dante and Zephyr
"Wake me up when winter's over." -- Zephyr
Elektra found the perfect spot to hide as she waited for flying snakes.
I walked to my old job for the last time.
Park Avenue was a "traffic nightmare" as a result of important political leaders giving speeches in the vicinity. I was happy to be literally above the fray.
Actually I had one more day at work, and the weather was perfect.
I would not miss working on a "cubicle farm," however.
At lunch, I walked south on Park Avenue to my gym. This walk is lovely, too, especially in the spring when the magnolias are in bloom. (I mean, it is Park Avenue.)
For almost a decade I've been running on a treadmill on the second floor above the drugstore, which looks out over a boring corner at Park Avenue and 34th Street.
Still, watching any street corner is more interesting than watching a television monitor or a basement wall, which is what you get in many gyms around the city.
I don't think I ever had to wait for a treadmill, either. Sometimes I wish that I could always run through a forest or a park, but it's not always feasible in the city. I also like listening to music, which is something I never do when I run outside. Lately I've been playing early records by The Cannanes, who make me wonder why I didn't move to Australia when I had the chance. (Actually, I never had the chance.) There's something magical (to me, anyway, and especially as I'm slogging away on the treadmill, which here begins to have metaphorical implications) about the way the band's ability to take scenes from daily life and transform them into songs that, over time, seem to age with me, reflecting both the muted exuberance and undercurrent of melancholy I have come to expect from the passage of time. "Delirious indecision," is a line that I think sums it up pretty neatly. (From "Drug-Induced Delirium" on the self-titled album, which is one of my favorites, although I like them all in different ways.)
I'm slower than I used to be, of course.
Locker rooms are another kind of cubicle farm I won't miss, although I'll probably be finding a new one soon.
I walked back to the office, enjoying the sight of Park Avenue crossing over Grand Central, which by the way is something I see all the time on television shows set in Manhattan.
It was mildly exciting at first, but after a while, the thrill wears off, and you are content to have a place to call home.
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09/27/2014
ORDER HERE
A RADICAL NEW MYTH ABOUT SEX, FAITH, AND THOSE OF US WHO WILL NEVER DIE
A young boy wanders into the woods of Harlem and witnesses the abduction of his sister by a glowing creature. Forty years later, now working as a New York City homicide detective, Gus is assigned to a case in which he unexpectedly succumbs to a vision that Helen is still alive. To find her, he embarks on an uorthodox investigation that leads to an ancient civilization of gods and the people determined to bring them back.
In this colossal new novel from the author of The Metropolis Case, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice collides with a new religion founded by three corporate office workers, creating something beautiful, illogical, and overwhelming. Part sex manifesto, part religious text, part Manhattan noir—with a dose of deadly serious, internet inspired satire—#gods is a sprawling inquest into the nature of faith and resistance in the modern world. With each turn of the page, #gods will leave you increasingly reborn.
Praise for #gods
“#gods is a mystery, an excavation of myths, an index of modern life, a gay coming-of-age story, an office satire, a lyrical fever dream, a conspiracy. One of the most ambitious novels in recent memory—and a wild, possibly transformative addition to the canon of gay literature—it contains multitudes, and seethes with brilliance.” —Mark Doten, author of The Infernal
“Matthew Gallaway’s #gods is a novel so brilliant, so funny, so full of strange and marvelous things, I couldn’t stop writing OMG WTF I <3 THIS SO MUCH in its margins. It’s rare to find a novel that so dazzlingly reinvigorates age-old meditations on faith and f&!*ing, art and eros. Luminous, enterprising, and sublimely cheeky, #gods tells the story, the myth, the dream of the human soul in all its glorious complexity.” —Suzanne Morrison, author of Yoga Bitch
“Matthew Gallaway’s storytelling manages to be both dreamy and serious; lean and luxurious. His words carry an incantatory power of mythic storytelling where beauty and savagery wrap around each other like bright threads in a gorgeous tapestry.” —Natasha Vargas-Cooper, author of Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America
“If the ancient gods were just like us, only more so, then the same could be said for this strange, wonderful book, in which the mundane sorrows and small triumphs of very ordinary lives glow ever so slightly around the edges, sometimes quite literally. At once an oddly romantic send-up of dead-end office culture and an offbeat supernatural procedural, #gods is terrifically weird, melancholy, sexy, and charming.” —Jacob Bacharach, author of The Bend of the World
'It’s to the credit of Matthew Gallaway’s enchanting, often funny first novel that it doesn’t require a corresponding degree of obsession from readers, but may leave them similarly transported: the book is so well written — there’s hardly a lazy sentence here — and filled with such memorable lead and supporting players that it quickly absorbs you into its worlds.'
-- The New York Times
Music: Death Culture at Sea and Saturnine
Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.
Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past
Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.
Video: The Chaos Detective
The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.