Matthew Gallaway

Die Sache Metropolis (Let's All Dance Like Kate Bush)

After the perfect temps in New Orleans, I didn't ever want to be cold again, but the weather had other plans. Even Clio found it difficult to find the motivation to go for her daily run. Other people didn't even bother going to the door. The flowers were confused by everything, as usual. Except for the snowdrops, who pushed through the snow and lit the ground like luminaria.  I planted these bulbs in early November and had forgotten about them, which is the best approach to bulbs. "Did we plant these?" asked Stephen. "I can't remember," I said mostly truthfully. "They look nice though." It was harder to forget about the orchids, given how perfectly orange they were and given that they require a more-intensive care regime than 1) bury them, and 2) forget step (1).
"It's going to be very warm soon," said Zephyr, who unlike the groundhog turned out to be right. Did you go outside this weekend? If so, and if you live in the northeast, then you know it was INSANE. Insanely nice, actually, if you could forget about global warming and the imminent destruction of the planet and so many other horrible things. The hellebores are in bloom. Elektra took her position to guard against evil things. "I feel like I've lost faith in so much over the course of my fifty years on this planet," she explained, "but I'm going to work hard to maintain a little piece of idealism and hope." The snowdrops concurred. I also concurred, I thought, as I arrived at the park on my Saturday run. At this time of the morning, it was empty (of people) and beautiful. And glistening. And insanely warm and pleasantly misty. As I passed the heather, I thought about my eleventh grade English teacher who believed that the ghosts of Heathcliff and Catherine wandered the moors. Inspired by the memory and the landscape, I stopped to reenact Kate Bush singing Wuthering Heights. The cotoneaster collected water and waited for the sun to rise. I resumed my run. Everyone else was still in bed. "There are so many people in the world, but thankfully none of them are here," one heather said to another heather. I explained to the heathers, who were discussing U.S. politics, that not all people were awful. For example, there's Kate Bush, whose dance they had just seen me attempt. And here's a young hot gay bear who tweeted a picture of himself reading the German translation of my novel, which like the snowdrops I had forgotten I even wrote, but has just been published in Germany this week by an imprint/publishing house that specializes in translations of gay English-language authors. I know, right? I couldn't believe that such an entity could exist when I first learned about it a little over a year ago, but here's the proof. Tell all your German friends to get ready, because we're all moving to Berlin and/or Vienna :)

The Miracle of St. Charles Avenue (Race Results)

It was difficult not to be completely charmed by the architecture of New Orleans, where I went to 1) attend some work-related meetings, and 2) run a half marathon (13.1 miles), which regular readers of this blog will know I've been training for over the past several months. I hadn't run a race in almost two decades and was determined to "recapture the glory" of my youth, when I had been moderately fast in a local or at best regional sense, the sort of kid who makes it to the state championship but gets crushed in the finals. If only I could live in a mansion on a boulevard lined with live elms, I thought, my troubles would be over. But in the next second I remembered that I don't want to live in a city that requires driving a car on a regular basis, which probably puts New Orleans (and every other city in the United States except for New York) out of "the running." (Lol?) One fact about NOLA I didn't see mentioned in the travel brochures: it has wonderful moss growing over the gnarled roots of the live elms. Saturday, the day before the race, my host took me on a tour of the French Quarter, where I admired the wrought-iron balconies. And the manhole covers. And more wrought-iron balconies. Maybe I could live here, I thought, as I checked the weather in New York City and saw that it was negative-ten-thousand degrees and raining ice. I tried to figure out which direction the Mississippi was flowing. "Just don't try to swim it," my host cautioned me. As usual, I was willing to remain in a state of confusion. We ate lunch at the equivalent of a "bodega," except that it served amazingly delicious po-boys. I tried to restrain myself, knowing that it would be difficult to make my projected time of 1:30 if I gained ten pounds the day before my race. On the other hand, it seemed like a shame to eat only half a sandwich instead of gorging myself on three or four. I promised myself that, after the race, I would indulge without regret. Many of the houses in New Orleans still need "some work" owing to hurricane damage and/or the constant maintenance required as a result of being so close to the Gulf of Mexico. As we toured around the city, my host warned me that the course I was running was surprisingly hilly, especially toward the end. I was surprised and concerned; I had already endured a major disappointment in my training when I learned that 0.0 on the treadmill was not flat but the equivalent of running downhill, which had injected quite a bit of doubt and paranoia into my time projections. That night, however, I looked at a graphic depiction of the course's altitude and learned that it went from four feet above sea level to at most eight feet, which for someone who lives and runs around the biggest hills in Manhattan is effectively flat. Something else about New Orleans: it has great street signage. The morning of the race, I rode my bike downtown. Actually, we drove, which admittedly was very convenient. The race started at 7:30 am and for the first eight miles went out St. Charles Avenue and back. During the first leg, I was a bit worried because I had the sense of going downhill, which led me to conserve my energy, knowing that I would pay with an incline later on. But when I turned around, I still felt like I was going downhill. "These streets were designed by M.C. Escher" my host would later explain. As far as I was concerned, it was a miracle! As I ran, I imagined the fried shrimp po-boy I would eat later that day. And the scads of crawfish, after I learned how to peel them. And the only moderately touristy art fair I would attend on Frenchman Street. And the gigantic cat mural I would see. (New Orleans is filled with strays.) And the gender-fluid hot dog with whom I would share a martini and a dance. With so much on my mind, I barely noticed the miles ticking by. Actually, I noticed them very closely, as one will do when you're running as fast as you can over the course of 13.1 miles. But I made it to the end in 1:26:00, or an average of 6:34 per mile, which beat my projected time and placed me at number 51 (out of ~9500 runners) and second in my 45-49 yo age group.




Damn. I was filled with relief and maybe even some pride :)