Matthew Gallaway

The Year in Review: 2018

Best day the Hudson was covered in ice and the city looked like a faraway dream: January 9, 2018.

Best political slogan from the 1970s.

The best upper Manhattan park in winter: Fort Tryon Park (Washington Heights).

Best ‘band photo’ of three cats: Elektra, Zephyr, and Clio.

Best Visconti movie about a gay Bavarian king: Ludwig.

Best most underrated birds that symbolize life in the modern era (with proximity to a new gay bar): the circling pigeons of 159th Street and Broadway, just above 'Boxers'.

Best park on November 1, 2018: Fort Tryon Park.

Most curious cat: Zephyr.

Most least curious cat: Elektra.

Most beautiful day for a snowstorm: April 2, 2018 (Monday).

Best day to run 26.2 miles through Boston in a nor’easter: April 16, 2018.

Hottest gay statue: this one by Rodin in Philadelphia :)

Best ‘cat in the campanula’: Clio.

Best reason to ‘double down’ on your dislike of empty superhero movies and instead watch emotionally resonant literary adaptations that may not be ‘perfect’ but are beautifully shot and acted and remind us how boring and utilitarian so much of the English language has become (via commerce): My Brilliant Friend (HBO).

Cutest cat couple: Dante and Zephyr.

Best remnant of a not-too-distant but still pretty far away creative past that Jennifer found in her garage and texted a few weeks ago: this shot of Saturnine circa 1996.

The best cat + succulents in a picture: Elektra and potted succulents, July 6, 2018.

Best path through a heather garden lined with flowering azaleas in 2018: Fort Tryon Park.

Best trees to remind you of hallucinogenic experiences from your youth, and specifically that one time in a field not far from Stonehenge: the elms of Fort Tryon Park.

Best Frank Lloyd Wright reproduction framed by a Japanese maple (Acer Palmatum ‘Elizabeth’) and a cold-hardy camellia.

Best television secretly about the ancient gods and the people who entertain them: Terrace House.

Best bridge: The GW.

Best reason to hope: today the light will last a little longer than yesterday :)

Best reason to keep reading this blog: I’m taking a short break but will be back on January 12th, 2019 to resume regularly scheduled posts about GoT (jk) and cats galloping across the hibernal tundra.

Notes on Tom Sawyer

1. The morning after the company Christmas party, I staggered out into the cold. I wasn't exactly hungover -- I had adhered to the two three-drink rule -- but I felt beat up and slightly nauseated in a way I associated with drinking too much.

2. I had reached an age, it seemed, when I stayed out past 10:00 pm exactly one night each year, and that night was the Christmas party. As in the previous year, the night unfolded in two stages: the official party (drinks and [self-conscious] dancing with colleagues) and the unofficial one (drinks and [self-conscious] karaoke with colleagues and ~ ten thousand other people, all crammed into a cavernous space found under an otherwise unassuming Irish bar somewhere in the maze of Wall Street). Walking in, I had the sense that everyone present had been trapped here for the entire year, and perhaps longer. It was similar to Подземље by Emir Kusturica, except in this case swapping in New York City capitalism for Soviet-bloc bureaucracy, and with revolutionaries replaced by financiers subsisting on big pitchers of beer, onion rings, and earsplitting karaoke of songs I had never listened to but recognized from my gym.

3. When everyone was getting ready to go from Party A to Party B, the deejay at the first venue slipped into an unexpected zone of music that I associated with 1) my classic-rock dentist, and 2) the kind of 'midwest metal' that defined my suburban Pittsburgh youth: I heard one song from each member of 'the trinity': Zep, Aerosmith, and Rush.

4. I heard the opening drum beat and synthesizer/laser effect from 'Tom Sawyer' and was back in eighth grade, afraid and intrigued. Kids who listened to Rush were 'freaks' who lurked in the smoking area and wore jean jackets. I was friendly with a few of them -- one played hockey with me (goalie) and another was in my math class -- but I never hung out with the freaks. They were too dangerous and I -- like many young gays of the time -- was very rule-bound in the attempt to compensate for not adhering to the biggest rule of all. But I also remembered going to the arcade where the freaks gathered to play video games and how Rush was pretty much a soundtrack of those nights. There was something transgressive about the arcades; video games were entertaining, mindless and possibly self-destructive in a way that no adult understood, not that any were around. The music was always punishingly loud, which made the dystopian repetition of feeding coins into the slots and playing the same games over and over that much more rebellious and satisfying, even for an interloper like me.

5. Later -- in both my life and that of Western society -- as indie rock became more popular, Rush was fun to hate; their songs defined the kind of decrepit, bloated arena-rock that inspired punk and hardcore and everything truly excellent that defined underground music through the 1980s and into the Smells Like Teen Spirit era, when a new kind of bloated, arena rock inspired a new kind of underground.

6. I wasn't expecting to hear Rush on the Night of the Christmas Party, even during the transitional phase between parties. As I waited for a few of my colleagues to find their coats, I played some 'freakin' huge' (air) drum fills. Was I being half-ironic or half-serious? It didn't matter. I looked around and wondered if anyone else could relate. It didn't seem like it. I felt very alone, but not in a bad way. As a Gen-Xer, I was used to being overwhelmed by boomers and millennials. But then, walking out, I passed three old-school (Gen X) goth/punkers at the bar dressed in black leather jackets and with Siouxsie Sioux levels of teased hair and black eyeliner. Where they had come from? It didn't matter: Manhattan was still capable of surprises. One of them liked Rush; she was nodding along to the odd meter of the song in a way that conveyed serious familiarity with it. She caught my eye and we each smiled a little, the way you do when you see someone with whom you share something in common but have no intention of ever talking to.

7. 'Freak,' I whispered below the din of the laser synth, not sure whether I was describing her or me.

Notes on Balancing Techniques

1. We had entered a period of cold, clear weather that would have been temperature-appropriate in the pre-Anthropocene. It felt good to be somewhat 'colder than average' in December without the theatrics of a weather calamity.

2. To pass the time, I had made up a fill-in-the-blank game, which goes like this: How are we supposed to solve global warming when we can't even figure out how to _________________? (Fill in the blank.) Here are four five possible answers: 1) end the plague of stickers on fruit, 2) fix the subway, 3) reform our democracy, 4) stop cars, 5) save the giraffes.

3. I thought about how I had recently learned that it's much harder to balance on one foot with your eyes closed than with them open, especially if you're trying to do it while brushing your teeth.

3.5 And how Jennifer B had sent me some old tour pictures of Saturnine she found in her garage. I admired the 'sweet '90s style' but found it a little jarring to see a version of myself that I hardly recognized. Had I really spent my twenties 'rocking out'? Once the shock wore off, it felt good to remember having done things that now seemed inconceivable.

4. I also thought about a corporate reorganization I read about last week in which a person involved in a vicious attempt to destroy my second novel was 'sent packing,' as so often happens in the Game of Thrones machinations of C-level suites. This particular senior vp had tortured me for the better part of two years, asking for insane (and seriously unwoke) rewrites while holding out the promise of a book contract that never materialized. I wondered if it was wrong to hope that this person was suffering (despite probably receiving a huge 'package').

5. I decided it wasn't :)

6. But mostly I felt relieved not to be degrading myself with 'market-friendly' rewrites of my novel and biting my fingers off waiting for a response. But notwithstanding the memory, I appreciated having endured this trial, because it taught me important lessons about the arbitrary nature of publishing and, by extension, the world; lessons I wouldn't have learned had I not done things that now seemed inconceivable.

7. I had moved on to balancing on one foot with my eyes closed (while brushing my teeth) and trying to capture the dawn light as it reached through the twisting elms. The passage of time, in combination with existence in the Anthropocene, felt like enough of a challenge without subjecting myself unnecessarily to the whims of corporate overlords.

8. I focused on breathing perfectly chilled air.

9. In another century, I imagined, it will be bottled and sold with the waning December light as an inconceivable remnant of a beautiful past.

Notes on Rising Waters and Shorter Days

1. The waters of the Hudson, ominously high, made me wonder if our days were numbered, as if I hadn't read every dire report about our days being numbered (via global warming).

2. I decided to ascend to the park, where I didn't have to think about the rising waters.

3. The December light was gauzy and beautiful. As usual, the park was deserted. It was a warm day that had followed a series of record-breaking cold ones. It was also World AIDS Day, which like global warming seemed like an exercise in fear and denial, as much of the disease itself as the way -- at least in the Western world -- it separates the gay experience from the straight one, which cuts against the trope that 'we are all the same.' Are we the same? In some contexts -- like gardening -- it seemed possible; in others -- like politics and literature -- I continued to have doubts.

4. Coincidentally, Stephen and I on this day were also celebrating the two-decade anniversary of the day night we met. I remembered writing about this first date for Gawker before the internet died and everyone understood that 'old media' like Styles of the Times (and especially 'Modern Love') was a laughable forum designed to reinforce antiquated stereotypes about gays. It was depressing to remember that Gawker had died with the internet while 'the Style section' (a synecdoche for the 'mnstm media') was still churning out nonsense.

5. Twenty years ago, more naive, I couldn't have imagined it. But if it was painful to acknowledge the truth, it was also a relief to be more 'realistic.' The passage of time had allowed me to appreciate what I have more than what I don't.

6. Me twenty years ago: I want to quit my 'day-job' and be a famous writer/musician/etc.

6.5. Me today: I hope my 'colonoscopy' goes okay.

7. But also me today: I want to go for a walk in the haunted park. Or watch some Terrace House with Stephen and the cats. Or admire the russet leaves of an oakleaf hydrangea. Or the twisting, ancient branches of an elm or a birch.

8. Maybe there are similarities between the passage of time and the rising temperatures. We have trained ourselves to ignore the former -- death, notwithstanding its certainty -- which makes it easy to deny the latter (despite its certainty).

9. But there's another similarity, which is acknowledging or even 'embracing' the inevitable allows us to see what we might otherwise walk by.