Matthew Gallaway

Wednesday (Flowers and Sunlight)

This afternoon the clouds finally began to break up over midtown. (It was the rainiest March on record, in case you didn't hear the news.)
Something about the light made the rest of midtown look plastic and unreal, a model of a city instead of the real thing.
Back in Washington Heights, I stopped in at the park at the intersection of Saint Nicholas and Broadway, where I was entranced by the daffodils. (Or at least slightly entranced.)
Or at least entranced enough to take more than one picture.
It's not an easy life to bloom so close to the traffic and exhaust of Broadway, but daffodils never complain about anything; it's one of the reasons they're very popular.
In the garden, where I arrived a few minutes later, the hellebores are the star attraction (although the white ones are a little annoyed at having dirt all over their petals from so much rain).
I spent time pulling out a few of the million or so maple trees that have sprouted in the garden.
The dawn redwood and the firethorn are each ready to burst with new leaves.
Back at the apartment, the sun was setting.
Zephyr and I watched this forgotten sight (he with some apparent skepticism).
Sometimes things we love disappear for a few days and it's difficult to remember exactly what they looked like (and this realization pains us); when they reappear, however, you might feel thankful for the absence, because it's like seeing it again for the first time.

Scenes from Florida: Part Five (River of Grass)

Not long after my parents and I returned from the beach to their condominium, the sun began to set (as it always does). I went out to 'capture the moment' on a bridge crossing the small canal that separates my parents' development from the one next door.
The canal was almost completely taken over by the high grass, which I'm pretty sure is an invasive species; this in no way diminished its appeal as it swayed in the wind and turned gold in the fading sunlight. Besides, it's hard to be judgmental when we humans are clearly the most invasive species the world has ever known.
Looking down at the cracked cement, I was reminded of the tenacious beauty of nature, here in the form of a little yellow flower.
A red iris (I think!) was blooming along the riverbank.
Above me, a royal palm hovered with serene ambivalence over the proceedings.
Nearby was the first hole of a languishing golf course that is quickly reverting to its natural state. I wanted to document this process in greater detail -- as I did last year -- but unfortunately I didn't have the time. Looking back at the pictures from a year ago, I'm struck by the muted tones of the photos; I'm pretty sure that I would have 'Photoshopped the shit' out of these images were I doing it this year and wondered if this was a sign of boredom with the world, or alternatively, a growing comfort with color. (I suppose it could be both.)
I returned to the bridge and again admired the grass.
The sun was quickly sinking, but I didn't mind the blurred image.
About a 100 yards away, a crane also hovered over us, this where the highway was being widened to allow increasing amounts of traffic to pass through the area with greater ease.

Scenes from Florida: Part Four (Live Oaks in Old Vero Beach)

After my parents and I left the Sebastian River Inlet, we drove back down to Vero, where we sat on the beach for an hour or so.
When we left the beach not long after arriving -- it wasn't very warm (it's been a cold winter, even in southern Florida) -- we drove through the old section of Vero Beach, which has unpaved roads lined with live oak trees that are at least ten thousand years old.
Although I have mixed feelings about Florida as a state (or perhaps a state of mind), I felt that I could be very happy living in any number of the houses in this neighborhood (particularly if said house featured a screened-in chlorine-free pool).
Unfortunately, like the Estate Section of Riverdale (in the Bronx) -- the other neighborhood I regularly dream about moving to -- all of the houses in Vero seem to be comfortably nestled in the seven-figure price range, which is two (and probably three) figures more than I would be able to afford at this moment. As we drove through the streets, I aggressively prayed for a lotto victory, despite the fact that I never play. I remembered how as a child, one of my favorite streets -- called Austin -- in Pittsburgh also featured oaks (but of the northern, deciduous variety), and how I always called it the 'tree-tunnel street' and wanted to live there too. Whatever it takes, I vowed to myself, I will live in a tree tunnel before it's too late.
But then we reached a clearing at the end of the road, and my desires vanished with the magical, dappled light.

Scenes from Florida: Part Threes (Waves and Sting Rays)

After looking at the pelicans, my parents and I walked further out on the pier. I photographed the waves and thought about the cover of 'Nowhere,' the album by Ride that has long been one of my favorites from the shoe-gazing era.
I was distracted by a disturbance a little further out on the pier. A man's fishing rod was sharply curved over, straining with the weight of a sting ray hooked on the end of the line.
The ray had clearly exhausted itself and was lolling back and forth. (It was definitely not LOLing, however.) I felt sorry for it, and wondered what it would feel like to bite down on a piece of food, only to discover that you had been ensnared by a merciless hook and then tugged (as you fought for your life) into a strange environment where you couldn't even breathe. (This could be a metaphor for the modern workplace, obviously.) I remembered with some regret the many fish I had similarly tortured in my youth, and -- although I can't pretend to be a vegetarian -- felt that I no longer had the stomach for this kind of activity.
The ray was brought up to the pier with a net, where a group of men conferred about how best to handle it. Eventually one stepped on its tail while another used a pair of pliers to pull the hook out of the ray's mouth. He next motioned to cut off the ray's tail, but the other man stopped him, bemoaning the needless cruelty of such an act (he didn't use those exact words, however). Having freed the ray from the line, the less sadistic man kicked it a few times until it flopped over the edge of the pier and dropped fifteen or so feet to the water, where it quickly seemed to recover and swim away.
I remembered how when I was maybe four or five years old, I heard a story about a kid who had hooked a manta ray off a pier in Fort Lauderdale, and rather than let go of the rod, he had been pulled into the sea.
Presumably this kid is still being dragged along the bottom of the ocean somewhere, although I saw no trace as I looked north along the coastline.

Scenes from Florida: Part Two

After spending a few minutes on one side of the river, my parents and I drove over the bridge to the other side of Sebastian Inlet State Park.
This was apparently where you could buy bait and tackle, although I wasn't in the market for either. 
Instead I went to watch the pelicans, who were 'chilling' on the rocks next to the pier.
This one was very relaxed, even when I put the camera an inch from its eye. (Just kidding: I used the zoom.)
The brown pelican is known for having a very flexible neck. Sadly, it almost went extinct in the 1970s as a result of DDT, but has recovered somewhat in the intervening decades.
I felt a wave of hatred for my fellow humans when a group of them insisted on climbing over the barrier to get as close as possible to the pelicans.
I also saw what I believe was a little ibis.
And a beautiful white egret.
It turned out that the reason the pelicans liked to collect here was the availability of free meals from the fish-cleaning station, positioned just above them on the pier. It doesn't seem like an exaggeration to say that we humans ruin everything.
Fortunately, we're also very good at denial, so I just shifted the camera a few feet and pretended that I was watching the pelicans in their native habitat.
Someday, I thought after I said goodbye to the birds and walked back down the pier, the natural world will reclaim the civilized one, and it will be something to behold.

In the Weeds: Early Spring Edition (And Other News)

If you haven't seen my latest piece on The Awl, click through for some thoughts on early spring. In other news, the New York Times City Room also linked to the blog, which was exciting (for me, anyway!) because I think it was the first time I've appeared in the ole hometown paper. In still other news, this is the one-year anniversary of this blog, so thanks to all of you who have stopped by to read and comment! I can't say I have anything too different planned for the year ahead -- other than I hope to have more novel-related news in the works -- but you never know...I'll be sure to keep you posted. <3 MG

Scenes from Florida: Part One

On Monday morning, after the rain stopped and the sky began to clear, my parents and I drove to a restaurant about ___ miles north of Vero Beach, not far from Melbourne. Getting out of the car, it was easy to imagine 'old Florida,' filled with little weather-beaten shacks with open shutters that served tequila and fresh fish sandwiches.
The cars in the parking lot -- mostly huge and muscular, an array of tanks -- left little doubt about exactly what year we were in. (The fish sandwich was excellent, however.)
After lunch, we drove south toward the Sebastian River Inlet and I photographed a seemingly infinite number of houses and condominiums that were either for sale or rent (most seemed to be uninhabited). The ocean, just to orient you, is directly to the left, so these houses are 'beachfront.'
We passed an empty condominium development, which the for-sale sign assured us was 'way under value.'
Approaching the bridge over the Sebastian River, my mother pointed out that it looked like a ski jump; I responded that it also resembled the cliff off of which the real-estate market had obviously fallen.
After paying an entrance fee to the Sebastian Inlet State Park (the only two-time national gold medal winner in the state-parks competition, according to the brochure we received), we walked through the dunes to the beach, pausing to admire several of the flowers that were in bloom. Sometimes it's easy to forget that warmer regions -- because they don't have snow -- also have seasons. A fleshy succulent seemed to be thriving in the sunshine.
Thankfully there was no lightning.
We walked out onto the pier, where fishers were busy casting, and I remembered a childhood fear about getting a lure caught in my eye.
I backed away and contemplated the volcanic rocks on which the pier had been constructed.
On the other side of the river -- where there was an even longer pier -- four pelicans soared by. (Does four make a 'flock'?)
Florida as a whole is generally not considered a politically progressive state, but they are serious about recycling used fishing line. (I wondered how much of this line came from Germans or French.)
I admired a bird -- a sandpiper? -- who moved back and forth with the waves.
One thing I've noticed about Florida is that no matter where you are -- the beach, a highway, a strip mall -- it's not uncommon to see birds gracefully flying by, which gives me hope that the state will eventually reach a point of equilibrium in its relationship with the natural world. 
The carcass of a pallet had washed up against the rocks.
And as so often happens, I could not suppress the feeling of falling off an eroding ledge.

The George Washington Bridge Project: All Souls (Javier Marias)

On Sunday I took off in a plane headed for Florida -- where I spent a few days visiting my parents -- and we flew directly over Washington Heights and the George Washington Bridge. Although I was looking forward to the trip and relieved that that plane had made it through the first of its two most serious hurdles (the second being the landing, obv), I felt somewhat pensive (although not in a bad way); I had just finished 'All Souls,' the 1989 novel by Spanish writer Javier Marias, which is short but dense and -- most of all -- heavy, i.e., imbued from start to finish with a sense of detached melancholy that makes even the simplest acts of life seem somehow tedious or painful. As I stared out the window at the city below, rendered in delicate miniature, I was struck by one of the -- if not the -- most important themes of the book, which is the idea that nothing is exactly as it appears. (The book takes place in Oxford -- as in the U.K. -- not Washington Heights, lol?) Under the regal ceremony and tradition of Oxford -- which Marias repeatedly describes as being a ‘city in syrup’  -- he depicts a range of (mostly men) who are either drunk, incompetent or psychotically narcissistic (all of whom are affiliated with the university); in more sympathetic cases, they are spies and non-heterosexuals (several of whom, it is worth nothing, are dying of AIDS, although the disease is never explicitly specified as such). As the narrator’s time passes in Oxford, he becomes increasingly enmeshed in the double lives of its inhabitants; he has a (non-homosexual) adulterous affair with a fellow professor, a woman who herself has painful secrets in her past; he becomes a member of a shadowy literary society devoted to a mysterious scholar who for unknown reasons (at least until the end) abandoned a brilliant young career and ended his life as beggar (of which there are many) on the streets of Oxford. Marias writes in an obsessively beautiful, poetic and introspective tone that (to me at least) resonates with European masters such as Proust, Musil, and Nadas, to name a few; his sentences tend to be complicated (thought not inappropriately so) and he deftly turns from dark humor to sex to more ruminative digressions and analysis. If I had one small reservation (I wouldn't even say 'complaint') about the book, it is how at the end Marias ties together several disparate threads in a way that struck me as a bit ‘Dark and Stormy Night’ (i.e., the satirical masterpiece by Snoopy: 'Could it be that she was the sister of the boy in Kansas who loved the girl with the tattered shawl who was the daughter of the maid who had escaped from the pirates?'). But this will in no way stop me from reading more of his work; the book is haunting for its exploration of the horrifying and murky secrets that so often exist beneath the most reserved and polite (and serene) appearances. The novel is an exploration (I thought as I pictured myself in the city below) of what really exists on the ground, and how life is rarely or never what it seems from afar.

Early Spring

As Stephen and I do every year, like nervous parents we begin to monitor the garden closely. Yesterday the buttercups (bulbs for which we planted last fall), which earlier in the week poked out of the ground, finally began to bloom.
The hellebores are also starting to flower.
We went to lunch at Liebman's in Riverdale (in the Bronx), after driving around the estate section, where we often fantasize about moving. 'It's so quiet here,' Stephen remarked more than once, referring to a resource -- silence -- that is often in short supply in Washington Heights.
Back in the garden, I noticed that the sap was running from the spruce tree where we had cut off some of the lower branches (we did this in late January, however, to keep the damage to a minimum).
The tree looks very healthy as a whole, with lots of new growth and buds up top, where it gets the most light.
The tree peonies are leafing out very vigorously at this point, and perhaps appear a bit monstrous.
But already we could see a few buds, which is exciting because the tree peonies have such beautiful flowers.
I'm flying down to Florida today to visit my parents, so won't be blogging here until Thursday or Friday. It's a vacation! See you soon...

The Flaneur/Edmund White

Recently I finished the newish Penguin translation of 'Sodom and Gomorrah,' the fourth volume of Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time,' and was dismayed to learn that -- because of draconian copyright laws in the United States -- the last three volumes will not be available until 2018 or thereabouts. Rather than dive back into the original translation of Proust, which I've already read, but still wanting to keep my thoughts on Parisian culture, I turned to 'The Flaneur,' Edmund White's compact book of essays (perfectly subtitled 'A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris) published 10 years ago.
White had the good fortune to live in Paris for close to to fifteen years, and the even better fortune to live on the Ile St. Louis, which is the more residential of the two small islands situated in the middle of the Seine. If Paris is by nature a magical, otherworldly city, the Ile St. Louis (photographed above and below on New Year's Day 2009, when Stephen and I were visiting) is the centerpiece of this landscape, and you get the sense that like a keystone, the city would crumble to pieces if it were ever removed. But the Ile itself is only the beginning of the journey: Paris is a perfect city for walking -- it is nowhere near the geographic size of say, London or New York -- and is filled with so many hidden streets and sweet vistas that, no matter how beautiful you find one spot, you are lulled into searching for something new and even better, or at least more novel, because it's certainly not part of human nature to be satisfied with something once we have become acclimated to it.
In The Flaneur, White captures this sense of strolling through Paris, except in his case he's offering us a historical/literary/sociological journey through the city; this is not (thankfully!) an academic exercise, but more a pleasant and stimulating trek through the intellectual history of the city as he has experienced it, with long and thoughtful (and thought-provoking) detours into any number of subjects ranging from Colette (the writer) to the changing demographics (both ethic and religious) of the city to cruising (an activity enjoyed by both non-heterosexuals and non-homosexuals in Paris, where -- as White astutely points out -- the sidewalk is a stage, as opposed to more of a backstage, as we are more inclined to think of it in New York) to the question of why -- given France's general tolerance for sexual behavior of any kind -- the country was so slow to react to the AIDS crisis as it developed in the eighties and nineties.
What was particularly interesting (to me, at least as a writer) was a story White relates about how during an interview by a French magazine, he was asked if he considered himself a 'gay writer,' a question White answered without pause in the affirmative. The interviewer said that White was the first and only writer to do so, given that it would be almost inconceivable for a French writer -- whether black or Jewish or non-heterosexual -- to ever want to place him or herself in such a 'ghetto'; but it is this 'French individualism,' -- a rejection of 'identity politics,' as White posits, that ironically made the country vulnerable to AIDS.
To read Edmund White (who is something of a living encyclopedia, and equally valuable, a non-heterosexual one) is (for me anyway) to not only take a trip through the streets of Paris (where I have also lived, albeit for regrettably shorter periods of time) but to take a trip through my bookshelves, to see how figures (and in many cases, heroes) like Proust and Baudelaire and even Benjamin were both shaped by Paris, and to understand how they in return have shaped those who have followed in their wake.