The Week in Extremely Local News

03/01/2020

The Week in Extremely Local News

SUNDAY

In the effort to expand my horizons, I ran across the GWB into New Jersey. The bridge and snake pit of highways getting on and off is a chore, but the park that surrounds the Palisades is beautiful and big, with miles of car-free roads and trails.

Here's a trail heading north on the cliffs overlooking the Hudson. As usual, I was fixated on the moss.

MONDAY

On Monday I returned to more familiar -- and more beautiful, but much smaller -- territory in the form of Fort Tryon Park, where the heather was glowing in the late February sun.

TUESDAY

On Tuesday, the orchid was in bloom. It wasn't the day it bloomed, but it was one of the many days when I stopped to admire it. I can never get enough of this color, which is closer to tangerine in reality but photographs a deeper red.

WEDNESDAY

On Wednesday, the roses captured the weak afternoon light, which is reflected from the windows in the apartment building across the street. Sometimes we buy flowers and they don't last or don't open; these roses opened and lasted.

THURSDAY

The garden, including this flowering Hellebores foetidus -- which we're very proud of, owing to its notoriously fickle temperament -- is coming to life very early this year.

The winter aconites are also very early (and very cute).

FRIDAY

On Friday, Zephyr and I pondered many things. Zephyr was relieved to be removed from so much that was happening; I -- being closer to these things -- was less sure how I felt.

On Friday afternoon, on the way home from work, I picked up my guitar from the technician, who somewhat miraculously lives less than a mile away from me, in Harlem. (The miracle is that I was able to walk home.) My guitar, an old Martin from 1930, is comically small but has a lovely, warm tone. When I bought it -- in 1990 -- 1930 seemed like a very long time ago, but now, 1990 seems pretty far away, too. Whatever the case, I had forgotten how time stops while playing an instrument, even if your audience is a trio of reluctant cats.

SATURDAY

On Saturday, Clio and Zephyr said goodbye to February and looked forward to the March sun.

Posted at 02:27 PM in Expression, Science Projects | Permalink

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#gods

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

The Metropolis Case

'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.

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Expression//Reaction//ScienceProjects

03/01/2020