In the garden, we spent a lot of time watching the azalea wither and fade.
Though it was dispiriting to see another spring come to an end, it was easier, we all agreed, than watching U.S. democracy wither and fade.
Or maybe our current difficulties are no more than a broken brick in the path, easily repaired.
In either case, the campanula cheered us up, its flowers threading between the new growth on the evergreens.
The flowers were everywhere, just waiting to take off, not realizing that in a few weeks they would also fade away.
"Flowers are so stupid." -- Elektra
Clio, being something of a young flower herself, ran up and down the path.
The variegated ivy smugly inhabited the shadowy corners, where the flowers would not go.
Like many young people, Clio strayed from the path and ended up balancing precariously among the ferns and cold-hardy camellia.
"My name is Zephyr and I will be your next president."
It might have seemed unlikely a year ago, but now more people were praying than laughing.
The campanula were too young to be fearful or nostalgic, however.
Clio found her way back to the path, where her relief was tinged with a kind of disheartening melancholy as she considered the limits of life. She didn't want to return to the wilds of the ferns, but she felt like the path constrained her.
Like millions of others, she reluctantly created an account on LinkedIn. The internet, once so full of promise, had never seemed more lifeless or dispiriting.
The colors remained beautiful if you could squint a little.
Half the world was lit and half was unlit, just like always. It was really just a question of where you were standing.
Dante thought about his youth, which he had spent in this same yard being chased by angry strays who had been twice his size. Somehow he had lasted and they had not. The biggest and scariest of the lot -- a gigantic orange cat -- had died, his corpse found by the same neighbor who used to give Dante food when he was starving half to death. That was all in the past, he thought, relaxing on the path.
As usual, life remained unfair and miraculous.
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06/04/2016
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.