As I did every year, I met an old friend from college and we walked through Central Park, where we admired the banks of forsythias lining the trails and complained about our lives.
It was the day of the minimum-wage protest: it seemed pretty unlikely that anyone participating in the protest lived in the neighborhood, or at least anyone who's working for minimum wage.
We were both feeling a little dismayed by our respective employers' recent rollouts of what are effectively catastrophic health care plans: high deductible followed by a co-insurance split, etc., which is 'how things are going' in many businesses (both profit and non-profit) across the United States. I could relate to the op-ed in The Times this week that talked about how 'the middle class' was feeling 'burned by Obamacare,' given that, in comparison to 'five or ten years ago,' I'm definitely 'paying a lot more for less.' On the other hand, I did not -- as the blog post suggested I would -- feel any less interested in 'redistributive measures' that would shift money from the very top and 'spread it the fuck out.' The failure of Obama to stop or reverse this 'pendulum of inequity' is clearly the biggest mark against his administration (as it has been for every administration since LBJ) and remains the most pressing concern for the Democratic party and the country as a whole: the only question being why more people don't see it -- especially in 'poor-ass' red states -- and make it happen. It's also the reason why it's difficult to muster much enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton, despite the fact that -- relatively speaking to her Republican counterparts -- she's a 'progressive visionary' and will certainly 'receive my vote' (assuming she 'wins the nomination').
Still, it was hard to feel too concerned in a see of blue flowers. Was our country really a mess? Or were we just getting old?
Well, whoever is in charge of planting flowers in Central Park is doing a great job.
Rivers of daffodils.
We left the park and were mesmerized by the orange tulips in a tree pit.
I took the train uptown and walked up Saint Nicholas in Harlem, where I admired the light on the townhouses.
Someone else ;) is doing a great job of planting flowers in our backyard.
Hyacinths.
Hellebore and FLW statue in a similar pose.
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04/18/2015
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.