Matthew Gallaway

Mid December (Winter is Coming)

Every December, most of the leaves are finally off the trees, which means that it's time to sweep them up. This process used to be more work-intensive, with an embarrassingly loud leaf blower and (equally loud) leaf shredder, but last year I decided to just 'let it be' and I only swept the path. The garden seemed to be no worse off for it, so I decided to repeat the strategy this year. (It's sort of like how I gave up shampoo twenty years ago and never looked back.) One difference this year is that the city has instituted composting, which means that the leaves (and other debris), when placed into a large, clear bag, will be collected and composted. It's just a small thing, but I did feel better knowing that the leaves weren't headed to a landfill. It's nice to think about participating in a natural cycle. I was tempted to put myself in a bag for pick-up and composting.  

Several years ago, someone from one of then neighboring apartment buildings started 'paint-balling' our garden and those of several of our neighbors. I want this person to be caught and forced to clean up trash in a park or something, but I also understand the impulse. I often fantasize about incinerating the cars that have colonized the sidewalks on my block. (But I don't.) Everyone should have a garden, or at least have the option. Skeptics will say, 'but where would you put these small gardens?' and I would say, 'where we now allocate public space for the storage of privately owned vehicles.' To have rows of community gardens lining the streets instead of 'parking' is my urban-planning dream. But as much as I know that Donald Trump loves community gardens, I'm not optimistic that my proposal is going anywhere soon. 

I love the (almost/sort of/maybe not) tessellated rows of yellow leaves on the climbing hydrangea. 

It was also time to put the candles away. 

And when it was all done, everyone was finally ready for the cold. 

Early December

In theory, my favorite thing is to get up early and go for a run, but in reality I've been waiting until the late afternoon, when the light is similarly beautiful. 

According to the internet, Ronald Reagan's 1984 political ad 'Morning in America' is considered by many to be the 'most successful presidential ad campaign in history.' 

But 'Sunset in America' feels like a better metaphor for what's happening around the world right now. (It also would have been a better metaphor in 1984.)  

Sometimes I wonder if I exaggerate my fears. After all, this perfect path has existed for as long as I've lived in Washington Heights. What more evidence do I need?  

But I also understand how much work it takes to maintain the park, and how -- in any garden, no matter how healthy -- there are always warning signs. What will this park look like in two or twenty or forty years? 

Have I been too fixated on the warning signs? 

I sometimes feel like my past is littered with wreckage: failed ventures, broken relationships, financial precarity, uncounted hours wasted on the subway. It's like that Weyes Blood line from their latest album: 'We tend to live long, that's why so many things go wrong.' But I can also look at my life now and say that not all of the things have gone wrong. So what's the answer? 

Something tells me that we're about to find out. 

Late November

With the news still unbearable, I tried to focus on some good things that were happening. 

At least the park was still beautiful. 

After spending many months nursing injuries, I was thankful to be finding my stride. Soon, I thought, maybe I can rejoin my gay running group. 

Every year I'm startled by these berries, but I've always deleted the photos, which are never good, and forgotten about the plant. This year's photo is no exception, but I'm posting it anyway, with the hope that I'll remember the name of the plant: Callicarpo dichotoma 'Early Amethyst' commonly known as 'beautyberry.' Beautyberry seems like such an easy name to learn and remember: how did I not know it before now? 

I've always loved the late-blooming roses. 

Soon it will be winter. 

The ferns have gathered. 

Everything is turning pink and red. 

We Prayed for Rain, and the Rain Came (November)

As the drought continued, the landscape seemed oddly bleached, except for a few minutes before sunset, when the slanted light made everything magical and dreamlike. 

The world was dissolving into a comical farce, but I tried to feel hopeful looking at the November blooms. 

Staring at the plants was hypnotic. I thought about those annoying articles in the New York Times that challenged readers to ponder a single painting for ten minutes. 

A part of me wanted to cancel my subscription to the NYT. The odd combination of centrist panic/euphoria and business-as-usual coverage ("Is 2025 the year to reconsider the pleasures of the Dalmatian Coast?") in the wake of Trump's victory was hard to stomach. But I was too addicted to the puzzles. 

When it rained on Thursday, I went into the garden with Clio and felt grateful. 

DeathCulture@Sea (Free Ride on Me)

For your Sunday morning listening pleasure, a new rock song from 'musical collective' DeathCulture@Sea. 

Link.

The full DCAS playlist can be found here.

Sunset in the Park (November)

I took advantage of the warm, dry weather by running through the park. 

The sun was setting earlier and earlier. 

It hadn't rained in weeks, and brittle leaves were scattered everywhere. 

The light was beautiful in the smoky haze. 

The elms reached for the sun. 

Everything was already changing, faster than we could have imagined. 

The Golden Hour

Yesterday (Friday), I was meeting with someone at work who kept referring to what 'a terrible week' it had been, and for a few seconds, I asked myself what was so terrible about it. And then I remembered.  

How could I have forgotten? It wasn't so terrible, I realized, because it wasn't unexpected. Of course he won. He won in February of 2020 when the Democratic Party leadership orchestrated the defeat of Bernie Sanders in advance of the South Carolina primary. And he won in [insert date and any of the many, many examples when Democrats failed to stop him from running again]. And he and his allies will keep winning until the Democrats deliver the same kinds of radical change that Trump is promising, but in the opposite direction, which is to say toward redistributing wealth/constraining corporate power and caring for sick people (and animals) and curbing climate change, basically all the things we're failing to do as a country (and as a species). 

Trump wants to ruin the world, and that's exciting for desperate people (and confusing for those who are comfortable with the world as it is). I dread the next four (or more) years under Trump. I'm already exhausted by him and he hasn't even started, but I'm also tired of Democrats like Biden and Harris and (especially) Eric Adams and Kathy Hochul. I've read many articles discussing the terrible policies we can expect Trump to enact, and often (not always, but enough) I find myself thinking, 'well, the Democrats have already done that.' We were living in a corrupt plutocracy before Trump was elected (again), and we will still be living in a corrupt plutocracy when he takes office. 

The only certainty is that the natural world has had enough of us. Will Trump and his rich friends Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos be able to prevent the hurricanes and the fires and the flooding?  

It's comforting to know that somewhere, something very powerful is working to rebalance the world, and no amount of corporate lobbying will be able to stop it. 

Season of the Long Shadows

It was true that there were still some beautiful things left to see in the new world. 

You could look close and crop out the disease and decay. 

But eventually you had to pull back and acknowledge the truth. 

Everything was desiccated.  

It had been the driest month in the history of months. 

It felt like we were stuck and yet at the same time somehow spinning uncontrollably toward something bad. 

A friend texted me an article about a celebrity from our high school who was now appearing in the right-wing media. We speculated about how many people we knew who were drifting rightward or perhaps had always been there.

Stephen and I argued about whether the youth deserved to be so ambivalent. I blamed the Democrats for not giving them anything to hope for; he said that they still needed to be more pragmatic about the alternative. 

We agreed that, barring a welcome surprise, we were about to find out what that alternative looks like. 

I thought about a conversation I had recently with a gay niece about what's in store. We agreed that we (by virtue of being US citizens who are white and cisgender) are not at the top of the Republican hit list, but we felt certain that we are on the list. But we also agreed that there's something liberating about being hated for who you are. It means you can stop pretending. 

As I circled the track, I thought about people I once knew and loved, and how wrong I was. 

'Come kill me,' I whispered to the disappearing sun. 'It's what you've always wanted.' 

DeathCulture@Sea (Let's Get Lucky for a While)

I wrote this song thinking about things I'd rather not think about while trying not to think about other things I'd rather not think about. It's been that kind of year -- let's rock! 

 

Going Down the Road Feeling Bad

I tried not to think about the election and the eerily consistent weather, which both made it feel as though time had stopped.   

I knew it hadn't stopped. The days were ticking by; I saw the numbers change on the calendar app on my iPhone. People were still dying, including Gary Indiana -- the gay critic and novelist -- and Phil Lesh, the bass player for the Grateful Dead. Ferociously smart, acerbic, and uncompromising, Gary Indiana is the kind of gay writer who I suspect most (like 99.98 percent of) non-homosexuals have never heard of but who deserves to be in some kind of hall of fame, just for documenting what life was like for gays during the second half of the twentieth century. 

Phil Lesh, on the other hand, is someone 99.98 percent of homosexuals have never heard of, but is someone who is already in a hall of fame for his work with the Grateful Dead. I feel conflicted about the Grateful Dead, in much the way I feel conflicted about the mainstream Boomer generation from which they arose and will always represent. They have songs that I've always liked and which periodically will get stuck in my head: 'Box of Rain,' 'Ripple,' 'Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad' (which I played with a cover band in college), but the Grateful Dead will always feel very aesthetically 'straight' to me, similar to The Beatles (so straight) but in contrast to say, The Kinks (not so straight, and better because of it).   

One of the things nice things about growing up in the 1980s is that so many of the biggest rock bands from that era (R.E.M., the Smiths, the Cure, etc.) were not straight, which was a big departure from the boomers, and one that I personally welcomed. As the youngest of five children (and the only Gen Xer), I was indoctrinated into a lot of 1960s-1970s music that was excruciatingly straight. Now that I'm older and less straight, I have no desire to ever hear this music again. For example, I think about the ten thousand times I was subjected to 'Brown-Eyed Girl' at family singalongs, and I feel bereft.

The world of popular music to which I was introduced as a child reinforced my sense that there was one way to be in the world. Which was difficult in some respects but also paved the way for the giddy exhilaration I felt while looking at the back cover of 'Chronic Town' and feeling certain that this band and its music was somehow part of the same world I wanted to belong to. 

It's how I still judge art and music, which is more emotional and intuitive than technical or 'critical.' 

Does this song say anything about the world I want to live in? 

If so, let's give it another listen.