Matthew Gallaway

Notes on Layering (Manifest Destiny)

1. Paranoid about getting sick, I wore three layers on my run this week when the temperature broke the all-time record for February. I couldn't believe it was seventy degrees, even though it was the only thing anyone was talking about besides the Olympics and the ongoing political/social nightmare engineered by the Republican regime. 2. I wasn't too concerned about being overdressed. Recently, I read an article describing the benefits of over-layering on slow runs, namely that it prepares you for racing in the heat.    3. And the heat is coming, as you can see from what's happening in the park. 4. I enjoyed the Olympics this year. I already wrote about how they brought gay realness to millions, and I also thought they were the least nationalistic. So many athletes grow up in one country, train in a different one, and represent a third; in this world, the flag is just a fashion statement. 5. It was also a relief not to have the United States winning everything, as often happens in the summer Olympics. Not winning means we can redefine 'success' and 'failure' in ways that are more meaningful to greater numbers of people.  6. It's fun to see the extremes of athletic success, but more diversity of representation means that we who are watching can feel good about our implicit, relative mediocrity (the antidote to poisonous manifest destiny).  7. Only a few people get to win gold medals, but everyone can appreciate a flowering heather; this week, as citizens of the world, we were able to witness both. 



 
 

Notes on Gay Realness at the 2018 Winter Olympics (Queer Eye)

1. One nice thing about February is that it's a low-expectation month. So yes, it's cold and dreary, but when the sun breaks through for a few minutes (not pictured), it seems like a nice surprise, something to feel good about. It's not like March and (especially) April, when spring mercilessly teases you; when you're tired of harbingers and want the real thing. In February, you can enjoy what you get. If it's nothing, no big deal; you weren't expecting anything anyway. 2. It's also an Olympics month this year, as I'm sure you've noticed.3. I didn't have many expectations for the Olympics this year, but I've been enjoying a few things. For me, highlights have included the insane/burnout snowboarders, the downhill skiers, and -- maybe best of all -- the very gay figure skating competition (especially the men, but only because they just finished; I'm sure I'll enjoy the women, too). I don't follow figure skating outside of the Olympics, but as someone who's been watching regularly for probably ____ decades, it's great to see a sport that, after years of denial, seems to have arrived at a perfect intersection of athletic ability, artistry, and gay realness.  4. I feel like skating went through a phase when they were trying to pretend that it was only about athletic ability, but this year, something's different. The sport, like certain politicians over the years has 'evolved.' All of the men who won medals (gay or not), in addition to their quad jumps, move with a fluidity that's best described as 'gay' (by which I mean you can't imagine the style existing but for the tradition out of which it arose). It's beautiful and inspiring to watch. This gayness has been embraced by the commentators, also: it's so much more fun -- and enlightening, because he knows what he's talking about -- to listen to Johnny Weir than the monotone, humorless robots the networks use for so many of the other sports. The lesson is clear: the more gay the Olympics become, the better they'll be to watch and, let's assume, participate in. Being seriously gay and seriously athletic are not at all exclusive conditions. This slightly gay Olympics is only just the beginning, but it makes me look forward to the increasingly gay Olympics of the future. 5. On a similar note, between Olympic events, I've also been watching the rebooted "Queer Eye" on Netflix. This show, in which five 'very gay' guys each week visit someone (usually a straight guy, but not always) to give this person a makeover, is a good reminder why reality television has done wayyyyyyyyyyy more for gay representation over the past two decades than any Hollywood movie or television show. There's no sense of wanting to 'tone it down' for anyone, which feels refreshing and important if you've been getting by on the pitiful scraps of gay life we're regularly given by Hollywood (as if they're doing us some kind of big favor by acknowledging our existence). Watch the show and you'll see what I mean: the entire Hollywood-industrial complex needs to spend a week with the "Fab Five" and learn to stop offering up the same sad tropes that have no basis in reality.  6. Like the Olympics, Hollywood needs a big injection of gay realness, whether it comes from the Fab Five or somewhere else. 7. And then whatever parts of the world that are still in denial can be next. My expectations remain low, but at this point, anything real feels like a gift.  



 

Notes on Winter Trees and Flowers

1. This week, the snow melted, leaving behind some beautiful colors.   2. In some ways, winter is the most inspiring season in the park. 3. The occasional glimmer aside, the tones are muted. Everyone seems to be either dead or hibernating. But to spend a few minutes here is to realize that the landscape is not dead at all. It is gathering energy. 4. The branches may appear frozen, but they are moving, just at a slower pace than we can detect with the naked eye.  5. If you could film these trees for a decade and speed up the camera, they would look like a coral reef. The tips of these branches, if you look closely, are always twitching. They are the restless children of the park. 6. Not everything is so subtle.  7. A few weeks ago, the heather was barely visible. This week -- in the middle of winter -- it's blooming in every color I wanted to see. 




 

Notes on Everything I Want To Remember

1. Tired of complaining all the time about everything, I decided I needed a break. Not a permanent one, but at least for a few days. As I ran through the snow (something I had been complaining about), it occurred to me that the most miraculous things in the world, the things we want to remember, are rarely covered in the news. Like this statue on the banks of the Hudson, sitting in the high tide with snow on its shoulders, contemplating the rest of Manhattan to the south.  2. The problem with the news, I realized (with the understanding that I'm far from the first to do so) is not so much that it ignores these moments of peace/tranquility/beauty, but that it crowds them out. Like who has time to contemplate the slow, majestic curve of Riverside Drive when you're worried about whether they're going to 'release the memo.' 3. Or be mesmerized by the patterns formed by the ice on top of the wall.  4. I often complain a lot about Twitter and Facebook, but since I'm not complaining this week, I thought about the woman who tweeted about finding a tired bee in the park, where she had gone to memorize a poem. She brought the bee home and fed it sugar and water, and kept it for the night under a strainer before releasing it the next morning. What could be more important?5. Or someone else who said they spent an hour going back and forth between 'you aren't' and 'you're not' before moving on to the next word in the poem they were writing. These moments meant far more to me than anything about 'the memo' or whatever else was being engineered by the right wing to punish those who least deserve it. 6. On my Facebook, I was happy to see that one of my old friends from high school was getting ready for Mardi Gras, where he's marching -- as he does every year -- with a group who assemble reclining chairs, the ones you would expect to see in the den of a 1970s house, on wheels. It's pointless and ridiculous but hilarious and fun. 7. I never get tired of seeing people post pictures of animals they love. It makes me think of a movie I saw not too long ago called Kedi, about the stray cats of Istanbul and the saints who take care of them. One of these caretakers, an old fisherman, said something to the effect of how, if you can't love an animal, you can't love a person, either, which I have found to be true in my experience. (I highly recommend this movie if you love animals or are interested in seeing a movie about Muslims who are not depicted as maniacal terrorists.) 8. There's a part of me that feels guilty about carving out this space for bees and stray cats and other small miracles, which I know is a luxury that many people don't have these days.  9. But a bigger part, after so many years of protesting and marching and being consumed by anger for the plutocracy and those who (consciously and unconsciously) support it, is exhausted. Do I want to be ninety years old and shaking my fist at the latest abomination of the right wing?  (Not that I would ever criticize anyone of any age for protesting in whatever way they see fit.)10. For me, at least this week, the answer is no: I would rather be sitting quietly in the snow, maybe shivering as I listen to the lapping water, quietly hoping for the change that may or may not ever come.