Geneva: Easy Reader Article

Passion, jealousy in Hermosa Beach
by Austin Siegemund-BrokaPublished April 3, 2008

Scott Michael Gallagher sits in front of Jamba Juice, his red Border Collie at his feet, while 9-year-old son Dylan sucks a Chocolate Moo’d in a nearby chair.

The sun shines through a thin blanket of clouds as mothers survey their shopping lists on their way onto Vons. It’s a typical scene for beach cities locals, but fans of Gallagher’s writing will know it from somewhere else: his novel Geneva, a semi-autobiographical account of life, love, and loss set mainly in Hermosa.Gallagher, 43, has lived in Hermosa for over 20 years. In that time he’s pursued his writing avidly, raised a kid, and touched the community on many levels.

Geneva, his second book and first novel, plays greatly off his community life.“Men and women all read it, and say ‘Wow, that sounds like something that happened to me.’ So yeah, it’s fiction, but semi-autobiographical at points,” said Gallagher.Geneva is a down-to-earth work about a simple beach-loving Hermosa local whose random brush with a beautiful young woman leads to romance, marriage, and a child.

As the story progresses, bitterness and resentment begin to grow between the couple, threatening the life they’ve built together.Gallagher’s approach to storytelling is direct. His first-person descriptions of growing love and hate are well-crafted, not overly-stylized, and capture an authentic “beach bum” tone. The novel explores the beauty and the foibles of life and love.

It’s possible to misjudge Geneva by its somewhat sexy cover, which does little to convey the range of themes that are explored within.“It looks like a romance novel, and it has nothing to do with that,” he said. “It’s about life, passion, love, jealousy, feelings – you know, it’s a human story.”Gallagher describes the work as “literary fiction,” citing as influences not William Shakespeare and Danielle Steel, but Ernest Hemmingway and Franz Kafka.‘Love to write’Gallagher’s start in writing was modest, beginning with a few pieces on the Internet and some published poetry. But with a little perseverance and some careful thought, Gallagher hopes he is developing his product into a maturing entity. “I [started] with poetry at about 23, like most people do, and then I realized I wanted to expand,” Gallagher said with a chuckle. “I love to write, and when I don’t write, it just feels like there’s something missing there.”

Geneva came in 2007 after four years of work. Gallagher said he based the book on actual events that occurred in Hermosa about 1996, which gives the book both its detailed story and its close ties to the community.“It took four, four-and-a-half years to write because there were a lot of chapters I had to get rid of and a lot of editing. The basic story was there, and I just had to know what to put in, and that takes time,” said Gallagher.

Gallagher himself was introduced to the beach cities in 1983. He followed the footsteps of his father, who did business in Manhattan Beach and finally settled in Hermosa. Gallagher owned two video stores – Hermosa Video on Hermosa Avenue and Manhattan Video in Manhattan Beach – perhaps ironic for a budding writer of books.“My dad worked out here in Manhattan Beach; I was born in Philadelphia but I came here in ’83 and stayed ever since,” Gallagher said. And he put down roots.“I was commissioner of basketball about three years ago, and I’ve coached baseball, basketball and soccer every year but this year,” said Gallagher. “But besides the video store and doing stuff with the kids, I know a lot of people just from living here so long.”

With the publication of Geneva, Gallagher is looking forward to a May reissue by the Amazon imprint Book Surge of his 365-day meditation book Search Your Self, under a new title, Words of Wisdom. The book, originally published in 2000, includes contemplation-provoking quotes from sources as varied as Gandhi, Rousseau, Bertrand Russell, Blake, Maslow, Jung and the Bible.His next writing project is kept under his hat.“I am going to write another novel,” said Gallagher. “I have two ideas, but I’m not sure yet, so like Hemmingway said, it’s bad luck to talk about it.”Geneva by Scott Michael Gallagher, 404 pages, paperback, $24.95. Available at Amazon.com and bookstores. ER

Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Seven Rome May 14, 1904

My dear Mr. Kappus,

. . . . It is true that many young people who love falsely, i.e., simply surrendering themselves and giving up their solitude (the average person will of course always go on doing that - ), feel oppressed by their failure and want to make the situation they have landed in livable and fruitful in their own, personal way -. For their nature tells them that the questions of love, even more than everything else that is important, cannot be resolved publicly and according to this or that agreement; that they are questions, intimate questions from one human being to another, which in any case require a new, special, wholly personal answer -. But how can they, who have already flung themselves together and can no longer tell whose outlines are whose, who thus no longer possess anything of their won, how can they find a way out of themselves, out of the depths of their already buried solitude?

They act out of mutual helplessness, and then if, with the best of intentions, they try to escape the conventions that is approaching them (marriage, for example), they fall into the clutches of some less obvious but just as deadly conventional solution. For then everything around them is - convention. Wherever people act out of a prematurely fused, muddy communion, every action is conventional: every relation that such confusion leads to has its own convention, however unusual (i.e., in the ordinary sense immoral) it may be; even separating would be a conventional step, an impersonal, accidental decision without strength and without fruit . . .

A Reply to a Friend

I enjoyed reading you thoughts. I can say this with certainty–at least you’re trying. All the same, I would tell you that after some study on this matter, moments of bliss come when least expected and when uninvited. Those that have lived in a nearly continual state of "harmony," I can count on one hand.

What’s more, I’ve known none of these luminaries personally, yet everyone has heard of them. This doesn’t mean one should give up the quest. On the contrary, all there is is the quest. Anyway, it’s heartening to read and talk with someone who writes and talks from the gut, as it were. This was something I tried to do in Geneva, so I know the difficulties.

One thing I would suggest–and this comes from a writer with much self-doubt--never apologize for offering your deepest thoughts. If people don’t understand or appreciate your efforts, to hell with them, they obviously aren’t you audience. Your job is to create. And it may just be that being artists is what we will have to resign ourselves. Buddha’s don’t come around so often.

To my mind, if not an artist in life like the aforementioned, than an artist on canvas, paper or piano, etc. may be the next best thing. It sure beats selling insurance! Are artists miserable as a group? Maybe so . . . but I do know that when I’m writing, time is of no account and that just may be all the bliss I’m afforded in this life.

A Muse of Writing

An Angel in your Midst




Anesthetize yourself no longer, for the light,
The radiance is in her eyes and it’s shining on you.

Put down that bottle, let go the crutch,
And look less darkly on the possibility of angels.

An angel has fallen for you, turned in her wings,
And requires only your inattention to take flight
Again, so pay attention.
This is your chance to wake-up and on
Your own two feet take part in creation.

When her eyes take you in, when you
Feel their warm glow on your forehead,
This is the time to let go your fears, your reservations,
And join in the feeling, in the discovery
That life will not let you stop living.

Copright 1998 Scott Michael Gallagher

Novel Pathways

Pathways




Understand, I'll slip quietly away from the noisy crowd

when I see the pale stars rising, blooming, over the oaks.


I'll pursue solitary pathways through the pale twilit meadows,

with only this one dream:

You come too.



--Rainer Maria Rilke

Pascal's Passion

Discourse on the Passion of Love

In love we dare not hazard, because we fear to lose every thing; it is necessary, however, to advance, but who can say how far? We tremble constantly until we have found this point. Prudence does nothing towards maintaining it when it is found.
67
There is nothing so embarrassing as to be a lover, and to see something in our favor without daring to believe it; we are alike opposed by hope and fear. But finally the latter becomes victorious over the other.
68
When we love ardently, it is always a novelty to see the person beloved. After a moment’s absence, he finds a void in his heart. What happiness is it to find her again! he feels at once a cessation of anxiety.
69
It is necessary, however, that this love should be already far advanced; for when it is budding, and has made no progress, we feel indeed a cessation of anxiety, but others supervene.
70
Although troubles thus succeed each other, one is not hindered from desiring the presence of his mistress by the hope of suffering less; yet, when he sees her, he fancies that he suffers more than before. Past troubles no longer move him, the present touch him, and it is of those that touch him that he judges.
71
Is not a lover in this state worthy of compassion?

--Blaise Pascal

More Fair and Temperate . . .

Geneva, a novel pg. 135

“More Shakespeare?”

“Yep.”

“Anything else before we go eat?” she asked sportingly, with just a hint of impatience.

“That’s about it…Wait, one more: ‘Thou art more fair and temperate than a summer’s day.’”

“Now that’s more like it,” she said, grabbing my arm.

From behind me as we made our way to Main Street along the footpath through the park, I heard the voice of the soon-to-be-troubled Othello saying to treacherous Iago:
‘Tis not to make me jealous
To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company,
Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well;
Where virtue is, these are more virtuous.
Not from mine own weak merits will I draw
The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt,
For she had eyes, and chose me.'

How true, I thought, my arm around Geneva’s waist now. A perfect
sermon for a perfect day. And to think I was jealous over that silly incident at
Club Med. “For she had eyes, and chose me.” Damn right she did. And last
night proved it once and for all…