Recently, many readers have written asking me for updates about flowers and cats, which I have neglected owing to my ongoing obsession with the #gods project. Here I will bring everyone up to speed, beginning with this flowering cherry tree (from a few weeks ago, TBH) at the Morris-Jumel Mansion, where George Washington once strolled around thinking about the purpose of his life as lower Manhattan smoldered after being invaded by the British.
It's hard to believe that George Washington never heard an electric guitar, watched television, or worked in an "open office." How did he even manage?
He never even saw a photograph of the long shadows in the afternoon light.
"Yet somehow he ended up on the $1 bill." -- Dante
"Can I tell you I don't even know who George Washington is?" -- Zephyr
"He's a bridge." -- Dante
"I am so annoyed right now by all things that possess a beating heart." -- Elektra
Meanwhile, armed with my $9.99 macro lens, I went on an expedition to the front steps to photograph some moss. Like everything involving this new macro lens, it wasn't incredible, but it passed the time in a moderately interesting way.
The buds of the pin oak were glowing like #gods.
I learned something interesting about the macro lens, which is that it's very useful for taking 'selfies."
Having survived the polar vortex of early April, the garden was now switched on.
The red camellias continued to dazzle.
While the pink ones floated around like big tufts of cotton candy, if cotton candy floated. In my first New York city apartment, I had a roommate who loved cotton candy so much that she would bring home bags of it to have around for snacking. Like I would get home from work and she would be sitting on the couch just ripping off big swaths of cotton candy as she flipped through a magazine and made fun of all of the ridiculous looking fashion models. We were both very 'Gen X' about advertising and brands, and sometimes I can recall that judgmental cynicism pretty easily. Like tonight I was watching an interview with a filmmaker who was going on and on in about the most self-righteous (but admittedly accurate) manner about the dangers of global warming and how countries and the corporations who ruled them needed to change asap or life was pretty much over, and all I could think about was how he was wearing a Yankees hat, which made me wonder how serious he was about his calls for a 'revolution.' Didn''t he realize that the Yankees, like all professional sports teams, represent just another corporate brand that's ruining the world? I could really relate to Elektra in that moment. I wished I had some cotton candy to snack on. One thing I learned from my old roommate is that if you eat enough cotton candy, you can start to hallucinate a little.
Anyway, one of our Japanese maples is doing exceptionally well this spring. The other one -- not pictured -- is struggling a bit owing to an aphid infestation that we treated with some oil spray that was obviously not the best thing for the new leaves, the edges of which are now blackened. I think it's going to be okay, but I feel bad that I messed it up. Like I can't even take care of a tree and I'm angry about a guy who is literally saving the world because he's wearing a baseball hat.
Rather than worry about my inconsistent judgments, I focused on taking multiple shots of the same scene, creating the illusion of consistency.
Look at the cute little purple flowers of the mazus reptans. This plant is originally from the Himalayas, as I know from my trips to . . . Wikipedia.
Our sycamore/maple is also doing quite nicely this year.
I'm going to miss the camellias when they're gone.
I wonder if not having photographs to "preserve the moment" made the moments more or less intense for people like George Washington. I suppose I could write a letter to Ichabod Crane, who is on what became a really terrible television show called Sleepy Hollow. Ichabod Crane and the police officer Abbie Mills were really fun to watch, but the monsters they fought became soooooo boring after a while.
All over the city, it's now tulip season, btw.
It's also Clio season ;)
And flying snake season :(
The garden is growing fast.
The leaves are opening as we watch.
Time passes slowly and quickly, as it always does.
Soon the world will be underwater, and it won't look any different than it already does.
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04/22/2016
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.