Matthew Gallaway

Birds of a Feather

When I was four or five years old, one of my favorite books was an Audubon Guide to North American Birds. It was a thick book, probably close to 1000 pages long with a mauve hardback cover, the corners of which would eventually be chewed by my pet gerbils, which escaped their cages with alarming regularity and scurried out into the night.
My mother still talks about how she would be woken up by the patter of little feet running across the floor, at which point she would rush out and wake me up, and bleary-eyed we would try to chase down these rodents on the lam. It was very difficult, because they were quick and nimble and even when cornered could slip through your fingers. They also had a knack for getting into the deepest closets, where you would hear them rustling around, and perhaps catch a glimpse of their shiny reflective eyes -- perhaps even taunting you -- before you would pull everything out in the almost always fruitless attempt to capture them. Another thing my mother talks about is how, almost immediately after I got the gerbils -- a pair -- one of them had a litter, they were pink and squirmy and hairless worms, several of which the mother gerbil promptly ate. I will always remember this introduction to the more brutal side of the natural world. 
At some point the gerbil population exploded and then diminished -- I gave some away, some died, some were never found and perhaps are still living in the backs of cabinets in a suburban house not far from Pittsburgh -- so that I was down to a final pair, which predictably one night escaped. These two, for reasons that will never be quite clear to me, both managed to jump into the fish bowl and drown, so that I woke up to find their floating carcasses, under which the fish swam with their usual ambivalent grace. It was not a happy day for my second-grade self.
The point of all this is that while I wouldn't have predicted thirty-five years ago that I would end up moving to the exact location on which James Audubon built his 19th-century estate, it makes a certain sense in retrospect, as does my continuing obsession with the birds of the neighborhood, who for reasons that are perhaps unknown to anyone but themselves spend hours circling madly overhead. Which is not to say this seemingly manic behavior is without beauty, such as on Sunday, when the sun reflected off their wings as the birds turned at a certain angle, and I felt breathless as I stood on the corner taking photographs, ignoring the stares and eye-rolls of the local men who spend their days clumped on the corner drinking and gambling.
We are the same, I wanted to say to them, except when we are not.

The George Washington Bridge Project: Beauty and Nausea

Here's the sunset tonight.
I'm going to keep things short because I'm suffering with some kind of stomach virus/flu. (I think.)
I left work early and barfed in a garbage can in the subway at 145th Street.
In between the waves of nausea, I tried to gather inspiration from the strength of the bridge and the beauty of the orchid.

Three Shots of New York City from a Plane (And a Theory about Cats)

Yesterday Stephen flew in from Detroit and took these amazing shots of the city from the plane.
Here's midtown. It's strange to think that when this picture was taken, I was actually in my office, right next to the Empire State Building. If you look hard enough, you can probably see me.
Here's a shot of the George Washington Bridge and the Triborough, both of which were designed by the same engineer, Othmar Ammann. The scale of the modern city is so immense that individual people have been rendered meaningless. 
The corollary of this theory is that cats are poised to take over the world. 

In the Shadow of a Budding Grove of Eastern White Pines

Today, which was a perfect early March day -- warm (but not too warm) and sunny -- I went for a run and stopped to admire the grove of Eastern White Pines in Fort Tryon Park.
The oldest are the most impressive, as they bend and twist upward, and then create a canopy of glowing needles through which you can see the sky.
I wondered if any of these trees would be watching the Oscar ceremonies tonight, which apparently is still a big tradition in the United States. In my own case, I can't remember the last time I saw an Oscar-nominated movie that really said very much to me about my life (to quote Morrissey, obv); this is nothing against movies per se, of course, which I love as a rule and watch via Netflix very uncritically (as long as the director is Visconti or maybe Godard, j/k!) -- but so many modern movies tend to make me feel slightly (or more than slightly) hollow after viewing them, as though I'm not a real person, or at best a srsly fucked-up one (which may be true, but there are more and less interesting ways to explore this!).
I remembered how a few years ago, in a burst of anti-anti-social behavior, I accepted an invitation to attend an Oscar party with a group of people I didn't know, having been promised that the teevee would only be on in the background and that nobody was really going to pay attention, or at most watch 'ironically.' As it turned out, this was not at all the case, and the second the show started, it became clear that everyone present was going to weigh in on everything from the dresses to the boob-size to the schmaltzy song-and-dance routines to legitimate feelings of redemption or betrayal when movies they loved or hated did or did not win awards. What was strange to me is that the irony or sarcasm (if present) struck me as being almost as manufactured as the show itself, and allowed people to engage in the show (and in the underlying movies) while feeling superior to them but nevertheless still engaging, which of course is the bottom line; it sort of presents the question of whether or not you can say, eat a Big Mac ironically. Mostly this thought process, as it occurred to me at the time, made me feel like a major a-hole, not only because I hadn't seen any of the movies and didn't particularly want to, but also because I didn't like feeling superior to these people -- who without exception struck me as charming and intelligent and witty and urbane and most of all normal in ways that I am not -- which I knew even at the time was just a defensive mechanism to prevent me from wallowing too much in my own insecurities. In the end, I watched from the back row for a respectable amount of time as I miserably nursed a few beers and vowed to myself to never again fall into such a trap. When it comes to the Oscars, I realized, I am defective goods.
I was happy to see a baby pine. There was a period in the past when I wondered what they looked like, because to that point I had only noticed the magnificent adults.
Another one was still surrounded by the last of the snow.
Feeling more reassured about my day -- and the night ahead -- I said goodbye to the trees and ran home.

The Orange Orchid: A Fable in Five Parts

There was once a king who lived in a country situated so far up in the north that the ground was covered with snow eight months out of the year. Each spring, the snow would turn to streams of frigid water that rushed down the mountains, and this was the king's favorite time, because the sides of the ravines would bloom with close to a hundred thousand flowers -- and the king knew the exact number, for he had ordered a regiment from his army to count them, and they did -- the petals of which sparkled like tiny stars under the white sun.
The colors of these flowers crossed the entire spectrum, ranging from a red deeper than any blood (even that spilled on fresh snow) to a perfect violet that recalled the shadowed floor of a mossy forest on a moonless night during one of their brief summers. But of all the colors, the king liked the orange tone best, because he found that staring at it for just a few seconds soothed his vibrating, agitated heart in a way nothing else did, not the most delicious meal or winning ten games of chess against the smartest player in his kingdom, or even a night of passionate sex (and he had experienced quite a few of these during his twenty-eight years of life). 
The problem was that these orange flowers, while beyond pure in tone, were quite tiny -- no bigger than a thumbnail -- and lasted only a few weeks, after which the king would find himself distraught and angry as he considered waiting almost an entire year before he could again expect to calm his ragged nerves. One year, however, one of his explorers returned with exciting news: thousands of miles across the sea, there were jungles filled with immense flowers -- bigger than a person's head, or even an eagle's wing span -- which grew and blossomed continually throughout the year, so that the people who lived there were never deprived of this magical color. The king wanted to know why the explorer hadn't brought one of these specimens back and the explorer apologized, saying that she had tried, but that the plant had died en route, and all she could offer was a a faded petal, which was nevertheless longer than the king's arm and contained a last remnant of orange, which like a golden ring dropped into a deep well disappeared before his very eyes.
 
The king, over protests of his court, his many lovers and even his subjects -- who all adored him because he had, despite taxing them quite heavily, invested the government's money in public transportation, libraries, opera houses and universal health care -- declared that he would have to travel to this fabled jungle and see the grand flowers himself, or else risk dying an unhappy man. And so it was arranged: a ship was procured and after many months at sea -- during which the crew encountered icebergs, hurricanes and attacks from giant squid -- they finally arrived at their destination. The king fell ill during a trip through the jungle, but insisted they carry him forward; he promised them he would survive, no matter how high his fever went or how delirious he became (and there were many nights when he screamed at his servants in languages that none of them could understand).
Finally, however, after eight days, they arrived at a clearing just as the sun rose over the treeline to illuminate an entire grove of the orange flowers, as brilliant as the explorer had promised. The king, in an increasingly rare moment of lucidity, wept because he knew that he had reached the end of his life, but he took the hands of two men standing next to him and pulled them down to their knees. 'It is the color of music,' he whispered, and as they raised him in the air and turned him slowly in a circle, so that his eyes were filled with nothing except that which he had longed for, he succumbed to the infinite night.

Thursday: Views from the Past

This morning was dull and gray, but not very cold, which I think is typical for early March.
I was relieved to see that the garbage on my block had been picked up, because last night when I arrived home from work it was still there.
At lunch I went to a business meeting on the 37th floor of a building on Sixth Avenue, which coincidentally enough is the exact same floor where I used to work. Ten years ago to this very day I had spent my time high up above midtown; the only difference was that my office faced east and the person I was meeting with occupied a southwestern corner.
I regretted that I never took any photographs from my old office -- which offered beautiful views of the Chrysler Building -- and tried to make up for it by surreptitiously snapping a few when the guy I was meeting with went to retrieve some documents from the printer. I remembered how when I worked here, the sun used to stream in from the west, and during the winter you could see the ice floes on the Hudson, which would reflect a brilliant shade of orange.
Times Square seems much less chaotic from forty floors above.
Down on the street, I took a few more pix of my old stomping grounds in midtown. Frankly this was never my favorite neighborhood -- it's very business-oriented and is PACKED with tourists much of the year -- but I did feel a certain inevitable nostalgia as I pictured myself ten years earlier, and thought about what I had and had not accomplished during the intervening period.
There were other changes to the building; most obviously was the enhanced security, which entailed a three-step check-in process to access the elevator banks, whereas when I started working there -- this pre-9/11, obv -- there had been nothing; anyone could go up to our office at the time. Although I understand the need for such security, I think it's not without a certain emotional cost in terms of a kind of heaviness that clings to the city and its inhabitants; it's one more thing to weigh us down.
On the other hand, outdoor ping-pong is a relatively new innovation -- this was in Bryant Park, which I passed through on the walk back to my office after lunch -- and one that perhaps compensates for the oppressive security. I think it's fair to say that the world would be a better place with more ping-pong table available to the general public. 
Predictably a pigeon was perched on this statue's head. (I'm not even sure who it's supposed to be, although I can confirm that -- like most statues in New York (and unlike those in Europe) -- it's not very gay nor particularly hot.)
If I were a pigeon, I think Bryant Park would be a pretty good place to live. These two seemed very unconcerned by the surrounding people, and content just to chill.
Back at my office, the afternoon passed and the sun set behind the Empire State Building. Needless to say, this view has been documented much better than many others in my past.

Wednesday

As the snow melts, there are some surprising things that float to the surface, such as this bike Stephen and I saw on Sunday.
Unfortunately, in my experience, everything you've heard about Washington Heights being a 'cesspool' is pretty much true in terms of litter on the streets; this is exacerbated by the snow, even when it lasts just a few days. I think one of the reasons people in the neighborhood -- who are generally not in the highest income brackets -- are so inclined to litter is because it's a way to claim a piece of Manhattan; to deface or destroy something, i.e., to throw trash at it, is essentially to own it on a certain level. (This applies to noise as well, which is why loud stereos are such a plague.) Society requires a certain consideration to function, and if you believe you're on the short end of the stick -- whether this belief is accurate or not -- there's little point in being polite and respecting the rules; thus, throwing your shit all over the place becomes (even if this is rarely acknowledged as such) a political act, a way to protest the unfairness of society and our place in it. I think this is why the litter of Washington Heights seems to resonate with an anger and chaos -- perhaps even anarchy -- that's not present in more typically unkempt neighborhoods, where people are just lazy or ambivalent; there's nothing lazy about the trash on the streets of Washington Heights: it basically screams 'fuck you' to anyone who passes by and takes the time to consider it. Yesterday morning when the sun was out, I decided to focus for a few seconds on the mountain range of snow, and how it reflected the amber light.
Here it was still possible to see the beauty of the snow, the way it had transformed the city into something completely different for a few days.
This morning, however, there was very little snow left, so that the streets were dominated by the fuck-you garbage.
In a way, the neighborhood -- when it is teeming with trash like this -- is redolent of a disaster area, which in a way is closer to the truth, when you consider the combination of poverty and despair and governmental disdain that have marked Washington Heights for the better part of a century. 
But I'm far less critical than I used to be about the garbage, and can even observe it with a certain admiration to the extent that it symbolizes my own discontent with society.
And while I'm less inclined to violent gestures than I might have been at a different point in my life, I can appreciate the desire to rip things up -- in this case the subway advertisements -- and throw them against the wall, as if to finally make a stand, however futile, against the onslaught of conformity, the relentless pressure -- and often, necessity -- to lead a life that doesn't feel like your own.   

Sunday in Washington Heights

After a busy Caturday, we woke up and were all still tired this morning.
Elektra stared into space.
Stephen's new orchid looked beautiful in the morning light, though.
This is a cattleya 'trick or treat' orchid, a tropical variety that's obviously quite happy with a western exposure in Washington Heights.
After Stephen finished his weekly watering of the orchids, we ate breakfast at the diner and then went for a walk down 158th Street, where we admired The Grinnell, which is perhaps the grandest apartment palace in upper Manhattan.
Predictably, we walked around it with a mix of envy and exhilaration as we considered the triangular form of the building against the late winter sky.
This is the western facade of the building, which is somewhat reminiscent of the Flatiron Building downtown.
I often tell people that the pre-war architecture of Washington Heights, when combined with the curving streets and hills, makes it the most 'European' of any neighborhood in the city. This is a view looking north on the Upper Riverside Drive from 158th Street. (158th Street, btw, which extends down to the Hudson, was originally an Indian path, so has an even longer history than that of the surrounding buildings.)
The Grinnell is not the only architecturally significant building in the vicinity, as this one -- right across the street -- demonstrates. Someday I'd like to take a tour of the upper floor, which faces south and west, and thus offers views of the river and the downtown skyline.
On the other corner is a smaller brick house from the same era (circa 1900-10) that offers a different kind of charm; the front portion is for sale if you're in the market for something!
We walked through the melting snow, dreaming of distant times but not unhappy to be here in our own.

The George Washington Bridge Project

This morning the bridge was shrouded in mist.
At moments, it seemed to completely disappear.
As I contemplated this for the two minutes and fifteen seconds I had at my leisure before rushing out the door en route to a busy day at work, I was reminded of how no matter how beautiful and grand something appears, and no matter how hard we strive to obtain it -- and even when it is in fact right in front of us -- such a thing can seem as distant and unobtainable as immortality or hitting the lottery or world peace.
And how it's sometimes necessary to have such a thing obscured to understand not only how close it really is, but what we would miss if it actually disappeared.
This post was written by Elektra.

The George Washington Bloom Project

Today was pretty much a lousy day on all fronts, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to post some shots I took of the orchids last week in the setting sun.
I haven't figured out how to keep the bridge and the flowers in focus, but I'm not sure I really want to.
(This is a metaphor for one of life's hard realities; namely, that you often have to choose one thing at the expense of another.)
Thankfully, both choices offer different possibilities of beauty, assuming we can let go of any regret that comes from knowing we can no longer have what once seemed so easy to attain.