Almost every afternoon around three o'clock, I found myself heading to the coffee machine in the office, where I prepared myself a cup of decaffeinated [insert brand name here] as a little "pick me up" before I soldiered through the rest of the work day.
I worried about many things as the coffee machine did its work, pushing a "flow count" through the coffee "pod" that I had placed in the holder: 1) would the door of the machine pop open, sending (decaffeinated) coffee flying everywhere, as it had done a few times in the past? 2) had I reached an age where decaffeinated coffee in the afternoon seemed like a luxurious treat? 3) why were some people in the office incapable of cleaning out the drain in the sink, even though there was a sign placed on the wall behind the sink explicitly asking them to do just that? As so often happens these days, particularly while reading about the cruel slaughter of endangered (or really any) animals, I felt like humanity was a very damaged proposition, and yet I could not deny being a member of this group. It was a fundamental dilemma of existence, obviously; how to reconcile a very logical hatred of the countless horrible things that people do to each other and to the planet with a desire (or need) to survive in these times with a sense of self-respect?
Maybe decaffeinated coffee was the best compromise I could hope for, I thought, as I removed the mercifully finished (i.e., unexploded) cup from the machine and went to the window to look at the Empire State Building in the western sun.
Meanwhile, the Hudson River continued to flow toward the Atlantic Ocean; I wondered if it ever wanted a coffee break, and if so, whether it would prefer caffeinated. "Oh, nice to see you, Hudson River -- can I get you a cup of Sanka?" A plane flew north, following the path of the Hudson; I had taken this route in the past and the views were admittedly amazing. I imagined the people on board feeling a mix of anxiety, desire, and trepidation as they envisioned landing at LaGuardia (side note: how is it that the spell check for this program has "Luanda" but not "LaGuardia"?!?) and, soon after, negotiating the frenzied commute back to wherever they lived in the city.
"I would like a cup of decaffeinated coffee, please." -- Elektra
The weather was mild and clear this week, even though the newscasters were obsessed with the impending storm. 2015 is apparently the year that people will talk on the air about hoarding groceries because of a forecast of 2-3 inches of snow.
It was impossible to deny the beauty of the morning light on my block, however, and the soothing quality of the long shadows. (Notwithstanding the potential of these same shadows to be frightening in the moonlight!)
The snow arrived and I shoveled, which is required of property owners in the city. Obviously, as can be expected with all laws (and particularly those involving the cleaning of sink drains and the poaching of rhinoceros and elephants) not everyone complies. There have been times in my life when I haven't shoveled, but I have always been a compulsive drain cleaner, which did not make sharing an apartment in Brooklyn with appromixately 15 other people (as I did in my twenties) very easy, at least from a drain-cleaning perspective. (Financially, it was pretty great, as I only paid $200 for my room, keeping in mind it was more like a hallway, because people had to pass through it in order to get to the basement, where they lived.) I once yelled at one of my roommates for his failure to clean out the drain after he did the dishes; it didn't do anything of course. We are no longer friends, either, not even on FB, which sometimes strikes me as unfortunate; it's possible to be very good friends with people until you live with them, and learn about their drain-cleaning habits. There's a possibility, I realized, that he's writing a blog post at this exact moment describing a former roommate who sublimated his non-heterosexual desire by being obsessed with clean drains, as if a few scraps of food in the sink ever hurt anyone. He's probably writing this post from a hunting preserve in Africa, however, where he is relaxing after taking down an elephant, a lion, and a giraffe.
Speaking of sublimating hon-heterosexual desire, I have strong opinions about fire escapes on the front of buildings; generally I think they are an architectural travesty and should be outlawed (the risk of death by fire notwithstanding), but today, as I had to admit, they looked pretty good with some snow on the steps.
In the garden, the branches of the Norway spruce were waiting for me to shake off the snow, which I soon did, with the help of a broom.
It was a small gesture, no doubt -- a decaffeinated activity -- but the tree felt better, and so did I.
« The Small Activities Project (Mondays Off) | Main | The Compare and Contrast Project (Snow and Flowers) »
01/24/2015
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.