On my morning walk to the subway, I noticed that someone had planted a bank of red chrysanthemums on the west side of Saint Nicholas Avenue. When I was younger (~ two weeks ago), I would have been less than excited about the annual onslaught of mums: garish, disposable, factory produced flowers you picked up at Home Depot. Now, however, I wanted some.
I mean, I wish we had enough light for autumn roses, but I knew it was never going to happen. "Not every garden is a rose garden," Elektra reminded me when I started complaining to her.
Besides, there was a lot to admire at this time of the year: the azure sky, the magical light, the twisting branches of a (non-columnar) oak tree, also on Saint Nicholas.
In the garden, leaves were beginning to fall. We prayed for this winter to be less brutal than the previous two. Recently I met someone and explained that I had submitted a work-related proposal to some important people for review: "Say a prayer for me," I said, to which he responded, "I'm an atheist, so you won't be getting any prayers from me." I was reminded why I don't feel comfortable labeling myself an atheist, even though I probably share most and probably all of their non-beliefs.
Of all of our cats, Zephyr has the plushest coat, as he's the first to point out.
Dante was entranced by the light in the trees. "Just don't ask me to catch a mouse."
Clio, on the other hand, was praying for mice to appear -- as they often do as the temperatures drop -- and her prayers were answered. I found the evidence in our front hall closet, where Clio promptly positioned herself with feline intensity and focus.
Within a few hours, the score was in: Clio 2, Mice 0. Let this be a warning to any mice considering taking up residence in a four-cat household.
On Thursday night, I saw Tannhauser at the Met, which like (parts of) this blog post is also about the parameters of belief. I read in the program notes that Wagner had mixed feelings about the opera for his entire life, and you can really feel that ambivalence in the music, which veers from more traditional and constrained to the kind of sweeping, chromatic waves that characterize his later works. It was thrilling to behold, although after it was done, I was filled with renewed hatred for the popular music that played in the cab on the way home and -- even the next day -- the techno music that was piped into my gym's locker room. If I ever open a gym, I'm going to install a stereo that plays nothing, so that people can enjoy the reverberating melodies of the opera they heard the night before.
On Saturday, we drove north in search of mums. On the way, we stopped at an apple orchard, where we picked apples. Just kidding, we bought them already bagged because we were running out of time on our Zip Car and we wanted to eat donuts instead. You might say the donuts and hot cider were "heavenly," unless you were my atheist friend who would say, "I don't believe in heaven."
As the afternoon skies darkened, I hoped and feared that hordes of zombies would appear over the ridge. I recently skimmed through a very long "think piece" sort of bemoaning the popularity of The Walking Dead by a person who clearly didn't understand the appeal given the array of shallow characters and predictable plot lines. But really, what could be a better distillation of life? The only difference is that, in life, the zombies are less defined, but they/we are still everywhere. Everyone's a zombie, depending on your perspective. The other zombie show I've been enjoying, btw, is Les Revenants (the French version), which has an excellent Slint-derived soundtrack by Mogwai. My point being that I would pay pretty much anything to join a gym that played Slint and Mogwai instead of garbage techno.
We dropped off our Zip Car with one minute to spare and returned to the garden, where we were greeted by the Japanese anemones.
And toad lilies.
To reward Clio for catching two mice, we brought her out into the garden for the first time.
"I'll admit it, that kid has potential." -- Elektra
"I'll help her with her coat," said Zephyr.
We arranged our new pots of mums on the table, where they basked in the afternoon sun.
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10/18/2015
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.