We decided to visit the community garden on 162nd Street between Amsterdam and Edgecombe Avenue. As usual it was overflowing with a verdant patchwork of flowers, trees, and fruits/vegetables.
A few years ago, we donated an apple tree, which otherwise would have faced the same fate as so many trees in our light-challenged garden: death. Here, however, it was thriving. We also donated a cherry that was also doing well.
To see this garden made me wish that the city would allocate more land for community gardens. For example, there's a big abandoned lot around the corner at Saint Nicholas and Amsterdam. When we moved uptown, it was a [chain drug store] but my understanding is that the land, which is built over the subway, could not sustain any building and so the [chain drug store] moved across the street into its [hideous] new location. The point being, it would be a perfect site for a community garden. I've written my council member many times over the years to inquire about this possibility, but have received no response. Fifteen years ago I was told by the council member's representative that the site was, in fact, slated for park/garden development, but nothing has happened, as you can't see from the picture I haven't posted. (Imagine a big, weed-filled lot.)
"Community gardens are amazing, and we should have more of them." -- Last words of a dying flower
"Fine, but we must be vigilant, because I've heard that community gardens are havens for flying snakes." -- Elektra
Meanwhile, everyone was exhausted from living with a teenager.
"She has so000ooo0o0o much energy," said Zephyr, as Dante stopped to literally smell the flowers.
Here's Clio when everyone else is getting ready to go to sleep. "What's on teevee?"
The good news is that she's (mostly) getting along better with everyone else, except for when she screams down the stairs at 100 mph and Dante -- who has to take them one at a time -- gets frightened. Cats: basically just like people!
"I have no idea what happened to the ham and sausage that was left on the counter." -- Clio
Clio's not allowed outside yet, so we like to give Dante a reprieve.
The sun pours in: we're obviously very lucky to have a garden.
But we still hope that everyone who wants a little bit of outdoor space in a nearby community garden can get some.
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08/29/2015
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.