Last week, as a result of the blizzard fail, my office didn't receive its usual delivery of dairy products; still, perhaps you can imagine my exhilaration when, on Monday, I opened the refrigerator to discover these completely unbranded but very precisely labeled bottles. What brave soul had performed this remarkable feat? I almost wept as I imagined a future in which all products were similarly labeled, not with corporate logos and garishly trademarked colors, but with a simple font printed on a descriptive sticker. (I wasn't really on the verge of tears, but I was pretty happy to see these bottles, and it does make you think about how bombarded we are with branding -- which is really on the tip of the iceberg in terms of other forms of unconscious "messaging" -- and how there's really no relief in sight.) I poured some of the "half & half" into my coffee and returned to my desk.
Monday was the day of the ice storm that everybody in the city barely acknowledged, owing to the collective shame we felt about exaggerating the impact of the blizzard the week before. The ice storm was in fact much worse, not that anyone mentioned it.
It's hard to deny the beauty that results from coating everything in a thin sheath of ice, however.
The next day was equally beautiful, but in a brittle, blinding kind of way.
I was entranced by the silhouette of a crane at the top of the luxury condominium in Tribeca where I'll be moving as soon as I win the lottery.
Actually, I like to think that, in keeping with my belief that nobody should be able to afford a $75 million penthouse apartment, I would give away most of my lottery winnings to animal shelters and organizations that help impoverished people (as long as said organization is not vilifying gays, e.g., the Catholic Church among many others). There's a big problem in this country, embodied by this luxury condominium in Tribeca, which is that many people have way too much money; the solution is for them to relinquish some percentage of it to the government, which can redistribute this money to those in need. Thus ends my course in #Government101.
At home, Stephen had bought flowers, a harbinger of the spring. (Would it ever arrive?)
The rest of the week was marked by winter light, which is the best light.
As we often do, we settled in with the cats to watch some television after dinner. I thought about an interview I recently heard with the writer/drug-fiend/punk-freak William S. Burroughs, who in the course of talking about his love of cats (something shared by all great writers) discussed his continual astonishment at the way cats perform no service but give themselves entirely to the people who care for them. It really is amazing to behold the way a cat will, for example, climb on your chest and sit perfectly still as it stares into your eyes for an almost infinite length of time. (Or more likely, until you get up to make microwave popcorn.) The only analogous experience for humans, I think, is the way we watch a movie or a television show? But seriously, can you imagine staring at another person for this amount of time? It's really pretty miraculous when you think about it. Cats are so much less restless than people: in the Olympics, they would crush us in the "sitting still" event.
Anyway, we started watching The Walking Dead, the popular television show about what happens when the world is overrun by zombies. Stephen found the show too gory to be enjoyable, and as much as I wanted to agree with him, I couldn't stop watching; it dawned on me that while the characters don't have a lot of appeal to me and the dialogue is often eye-rollingly clunky, one of the reasons I like the show is that, as I watched other shows (e.g., Top Chef, Scandal, Nashville, pretty much anything), I could not stop thinking about how much more entertaining these shows would be if hordes of flesh-eating zombies were introduced into the plot lines. Instead of "please pack your knives and go home," zombies would storm the set and devour the losing chef; in fact, they would eat the judges and even the guest judges. Perhaps you can see the appeal.
The cold weather continued; to keep warm, I wore a scarf-and-hat combination that Stephen -- who is preparing to compete in the knitting event in the 2020 Winter Olympics -- made for me last year.
Eat your heart out LL Bean and Eddie Bauer! (And please take me off your promotional e-mail lists: you can't have a "sale of the year" every single week.)
The cats continued to sleep for sixteen hours a day; it's a lot of work to give yourself entirely to someone, even if they're feeding and sheltering you.
Elektra actually does provide a service, which is to chase off any mice that might be thinking about moving in.
But she also gives herself to us, but mostly when we're asleep, so that we see her in our dreams.
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02/07/2015
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.