Matthew Gallaway

Will July Ever End (Week Nineteen)

Something about the heat, when combined with the (in)elastic sense of lockdown time, made me wonder if July would ever end. When I remembered the beginning of July, it seemed like it had been years ago, and yet here we were, years later but with so much time left before the month ended. I had also been thinking about time in a more functional way after reading a piece by Edith Zimmerman about running. Edith is relatively new to running and has a gift for it -- and for writing (and drawing comics) about it -- but recently found herself running slower than usual. Instead of worrying, she resolves to focus on the process of becoming an athlete, which doesn't have anything to do with speed or time. I found this message reassuring, given that I, too, have been running a lot slower than usual, something I like to attribute to the humidity or technology -- me, after every run last week: 'I wonder if my watch is broken?' -- but which (let's face it) is part of getting older. As someone who's been running for my entire life, there's no question that my speed is on the wane. It could be depressing to consider (and sometimes it is), but I always remind myself that I don't need to beat anyone, including my past self; I don't need to set a 'PR' to be 'a runner.' There's no reason I can't go out, the way I did this morning and most of the ones before that, and turn north onto the Hudson River and feel overwhelmed with insignificance and gratitude at the sight of the George Washington Bridge -- six miles to the north, miles that will slowly disappear as I approach -- floating across the water, its aura of industrial ambivalence bathed in the pink haze of the dawn. 

It's a lesson I've also tried to bring to the garden, which has entered a phase I call the 'doldrums,' this year made worse by the fact that we did not take our usual trip to the suburbs to buy annuals. But there are always new things to appreciate in the garden, such as these native begonias, which have finally established themselves in the shadiest corner. I even transplanted a few sprouts to another shady spot, and they seem to have taken, which makes me look forward to next year -- or maybe the one after that -- when they will presumably be as big as their parents. 

And, somehow, finding something new to appreciate makes it easier to also appreciate what we have, such as our toad lilies, which seem to be doing well and, going by the past few years, will bloom in the fall. 

I also like this little strand from a clump of coreopsis we planted a few years ago, when we were still pretending that the garden gets more light than it does; somehow it's managed to survive and has a few flowers.   

I spent some time watching ants rush up and down the trunk of the birch tree. Where were they going and why? It was the same question I asked watching cars on the West Side Highway, or -- sometimes -- when I looked at myself in the mirror. 

I never feel lost when I look at our ferns, which exude confidence and certainty about their place in the world. If only I could be a fern. 

Another nice thing about this time of year is that the birch tree starts to shed seeds and leaves, which gives me an excuse to sweep the path. That way, when I'm on a video call and someone asks what I did over the weekend, instead of saying 'I scrolled through Twitter and felt very stressed out about the imminent collapse of society at the hands of greedy Republicans and oblivious Democrats,' I can say, 'I swept the path -- it was very satisfying.' 

Our potted dwarf conifers don't have quite the same effect, but they're getting by in an imperfect world. A few years ago, they were really struggling and we moved them out of the ground and into pots to maximize their exposure to the sun. Now, they seem healthy and comfortable (if not as exuberant as the ferns, but really, what is?). 

The cats are always with me in the garden. Here's Clio asking for permission to climb to the top of the wall, which I never give to her. 'You just can't go everywhere,' I tell her. 'Especially in 2020. You'll get lost or beaten up by the police or catch something you don't want.' Lecturing the cats like this makes me relieved that I never had children. 

Recently, a new stray showed up and has been watching us from its spot on the wall. My heart always breaks a little when I see friendly ones, because I want to adopt them all and we're already maxed out. (But if anyone's interested, let me know: my gut tells me that this one would make a very good pet. Or let me go full-on Cat Lady and say it has 'an old soul'.)

There are actually four cats in this picture (our three and the little black stray, on top of the wall), everyone -- at least in my imagination -- trying in a very uncertain world to figure out where they belong and how best to get there.  

The Air That I Breathe (Week Eighteen)

The air this morning was heavy and damp -- hard to breathe -- but it captured the light of the rising sun in a way that I tried to remind myself, because I was sure that I was about to die of heat/humidity, was very beautiful. It was especially striking down by the river (not pictured), where threads of mist hovered above the water and sun turned the ugly New Jersey high rises into plinths of gold or gigantic flatscreen televisions. Or something prettier than how they appear for the other twenty-three and a half hours of the day. It made me feel a little more beautiful too, just to see it from across the river. 

In some ways, these early morning runs are torture: I wake up at 4:30 or 4:45 and ask myself if I'm really that interested in going out for an hour in my least favorite weather. The answer is obvious: no, I'm not interested at all. I could do it later, or skip a day or a week or a year. Who cares? But somehow I usually manage to crawl out of bed and stagger out into the street, where city life is both tranquil and disturbing; tranquil because the light is perfect and the streets are depopulated; disturbing because the city at this hour is relatively naked, so it's easy to see the increasing numbers of homeless sleeping on park benches and on the concrete ledges of the West Side Highway. I don't really understand the mechanics of agency budgeting, but based on the garbage and litter piling up on the corners and in the parks, it seems like the cuts are already having a bad impact on the kind of maintenance and care the city needs to take care of itself and -- of course -- its most vulnerable residents. (I haven't noticed a decrease in the number of NYPD-branded SUVs idling menacingly on the sidewalks, however.) 

The city seems unusually manic right now. The sirens of a few months ago -- and the fireworks of a few weeks ago -- have been replaced by the periodic roars of a motorcycle or souped-up car on what sounds like a speed test on the desert flats. More understandable to me are the people on my block, a group of whom each night spill out into the street and drink and yell and laugh until three or four in the morning; sometimes when I go out for my run, I'll see a straggler from the night before and we'll nod hello to each other, each of us bleary-eyed but for different reasons. Washington Heights, unlike the Upper West Side (where everyone seems to have fled to their country homes), is still densely populated, demographically poor, and crowded. Hanging out in front of apartment buildings is a summer tradition here, but this year, the vibe is more raucous than usual. The city is struggling: thousands (millions?) are out of work and the government, after offering a little help, is once again on the verge of returning to its status quo of punishment and austerity (and violence). The mayor is feckless. The governor is decisive but arrogant and untrustworthy. Let's not talk about anyone in the federal government, or at least not anyone with power. There's a lot of steam that needs to be let off; it's not surprising that the kettle is blowing. Having lived here for a good chunk of my life, I believe the answer to urban (and probably non-urban) violence is not more policing, but 'economic opportunity,' which is a term I find hard to use because it's become a cliche but is nevertheless obvious and true, and has predictably by and large been ignored by the leadership of both political parties for the past fifty (four hundred?) years. (Is there any problem we have that couldn't be solved by taxing the rich? And breaking up some corporate monopolies?) Will a Biden administration fundamentally change things? (Will Biden win? Will there be an election?) It's a hard question to ask, knowing what history tells us the answer will be. 

This is my favorite path in the world at my favorite time of the day. 

It's also been a good year for echinacea. 

Part of being gay for me has been my unabashed love of 1970s soft rock: The Carpenters (obv) but also some of the hits by Bread and -- relevant here -- the Hollies. 'The Air That I Breathe' was released in 1974 and is a cover of a song written by Albert Hammond, whose son, Albert Hammond Jr., is in the Strokes. Rock history! Anyway, I heard 'The Air that I Breathe' -- the more popular Hollies version -- a few years ago on the softies station they play 24/7 at the pool house of my parents' condominium development in Florida; after learning how to play it, I recorded my own version :)

Here's a link. 

Sleep, silent angel, go to sleep. 

 

The (Bike) Path of Most Resistance (Week Seventeen)

As I rushed around the house, I felt nervous and excited, the way I do (or used to do) when I'm preparing to leave for a a few days or longer, even though I was just going to the office. Our office remained officially closed, but management was allowing employees to go in for thirty minutes and I wanted to pick up my headphones and reading glasses. After learning that the building had recently installed a storage room in the basement for bikes, I decided to bike in. It took me around fifty minutes, which is about how long the A-Train takes. If we had better bike lanes, I would use my bike all the time (assuming there's a scenario where I return to the office). 

Here's a very nice protected bike lane -- maybe the nicest one in the city? -- on Church Street. Unfortunately, if this one rates ten stars, most of them are zero to one stars. (Keep reading for more examples, which I documented on my trip home.) 

After I picked up my things, I left the office and walked to Battery Park City, which was pleasantly uncrowded. On the way there, I passed the Irish Hunger Memorial, which (according to Wikipedia) is 'dedicated to raising awareness of the Great Irish Hunger ... in which over one million starved to death between 1845 and 1852 as a result of British policies that prioritized the exportation of profitable foods as most of the potato crop was wiped out by a fungus-like organism called Phytophthora infestans (or P. infestans).' In a few years, I thought, they'll be building a memorial to raise awareness of the Republican (and neoliberal) policies that prioritized lining the pockets of a tiny minority of billionaires over the lives of millions of Americans. (In a show of contrition, the memorial will be paid for by one of the billionaires.) 

I tried not to think about politics as I enjoyed having to myself an entire bay of park benches. In the pre-Covid era, these benches would have been packed with office workers and tourists. As with so much from the pre-Covid era, I missed these people and I didn't miss them. 

A few locals (I assume) were out jogging and lounging. 

As I biked home, I noted how the bike path is now cluttered with dangerous obstacles. It wasn't like this a few years ago, when I was running on this path regularly (via going to the gym near my old office in Tribeca). 

Even when the police are absent, their NYPD-branded barricades are menacing.

Who decided it was a good idea to install these Jersey barriers at every intersection? This is the busiest bike path in the city and someone was like, 'hmmm ... this needs to be a dangerous obstacle course ... can we install Jersey barriers everywhere?' and everyone else in the room was like 'damn, why didn't I think of that?' 

There are still a few blessedly open stretches of path. I dreamed about the city creating a network of similar (unobstructed) paths covering the five boroughs. There are already plans to do this, but it's hard to be optimistic about implementation given the bone-headed intransigence of our local leadership (and to be fair to the leadership, many of their equally bone-headed constituents). 

A little farther north, I passed 'The Pier 55 project,' which according to Google 'is being funded by billionaire Barry Diller and overseen by the Hudson River Park Trust ... and includes over two acres of public green space across a wave-shaped structure near West 13th Street in the Meatpacking District.' Not for the first time, it occurred to me that if we taxed billionaires, we wouldn't have to rely on their largesse (or maybe better: 'largesse'). 

I remembered how, when I was young and social, I used to go to record-release parties on the Frying Pan, which is creaky old boat filled with strange jars and the spirits of dead sailors. It's a lot bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside.  

Q: 'How many bollards can we pack into this curving path to make it as dangerous as possible?' A: 'Maybe six, but just be sure when you're installing them to inch them out as far as possible from the edge to increase the likelihood of a biker smashing into it or [lols] each other.' 

At 72nd Street, I negotiated the infamous 'bypass' -- installed just last year -- which is another dangerous and confusing obstacle course designed to torture bikers.  

I'm pretty sure that I'm supposed to be on the right-hand side of the left portion of the path here, but who knows? 

Since I'm here to complain: people who ride motorcycles on the bike path ruin the vibe and should be told to stop. (At least the driver has a mask on though?) 

Still, I welcomed the sight of the GWB on this very beautiful stretch of path that was built not too long ago out onto the river. 

Here's a (not very good) picture of (another) one of my least-favorite things, which -- and you have to look toward the back of the shot to see it -- is an NYPD car slowly cruising up the middle of a narrow path that -- unlike 99 percent of the asphalt in NYC -- is not meant for cars. Why do they do this? So much of policing these days seems to involve antagonizing the community for no reason. 

At 96th Street, the path is not obstructed by bollards, but -- unlike the pristine highway five feet away -- is buckled and cracked. I felt like I was skiing moguls (badly). 

Someone had outlined the worst bumps for reasons I can only imagine. 

Dear Mayor: I'm sending you this message by way of the oldest form of communication, which is a slab of rock. The message is 'repave.' I have helpfully outlined many of the worst bumps in green spray paint. Yours truly, a concerned citizen.  

I put my camera away and pedaled north. The path of most resistance stretched on, and I looked forward to seeing more.  

Stone Against My Palms (Week Sixteen)

I've never been a fan of the traditional blue hydrangea -- and I had to suppress an initial wave of nausea at the sight of patriotic colors at this juncture -- but like everything in the heather garden at Fort Tryon Park, these flowers quickly won me over. Plants that elsewhere would appear garish and suburban achieve a certain magnificence in a beautiful garden.   

This week, New York City passed its annual budget, which contained severe cuts for the Parks Department. (Specifically, a 14 percent cut to a budget that was already less than 1 percent of the overall city budget.) It was demoralizing to consider yet another way that the city's leadership has failed to acknowledge the importance of creating and maintaining outdoor space when we're being inundated by a virus that spreads indoors. Like everyone who's not a politician gets that, right? And yet here we are, still getting crumbs from the lavish buffets served up to cars and police. 

I'm not too worried about Fort Tryon, which like a handful of other parks around the city receives private funding, but I think it's a terrible precedent that only parks capable of generating their own funds should prosper. Obviously this impulse toward privatization and private funding is not limited to parks, and in all contexts represents a failure of the government to raise (via taxation) and allocate money in equitable ways. Usually parks are a metaphor for healthcare (or just 'care') in these posts; today, they continue in that role but sadly become more literal. 

For me, the one thing this lockdown has clarified is the concept of political choice. In normal times, it's easy to forget that so many of our policies are the result of choices made at some point by our political leaders, but which happened so long ago as to seem preordained (for example: we chose to build highways instead of railways; in New York City, we chose to give car owners a huge amount of public street space). But now, we can see these (bad) choices -- and the repercussions -- with unprecedented speed and clarity. Last week, our city leaders made a choice to fund police overtime the mayor's ferry system instead of allocating more money to the parks. (And to probably twenty other social services designed to help underserved people.) At the national level, it's a choice to 'open the economy' -- to force people back to work (often for punishingly low wages) and to open restaurants -- instead of paying people to stay home for a few months until the virus could be monitored and controlled, as they've done in other countries whose leaders have made different (better) choices than we have. There are so many choices being made right now at every level of government, and an astounding percentage of them are bad choices. When people are beaten down by these choices over years and decades, they forget that there was ever another option. My hope for Fourth of July 2020 is that, along with expressing regret about the horrendous choices, we've made, we can remind ourselves that, with regard to the laws and policies that affect so much of our lives, we can make better ones going forward. 

In this week's entertainment news, I made a less dire choice to record a new song :)

Here's a link if the video doesn't feed through. 

'Stone Against My Palms'

Down to the pines, into the sea

Stone against my palms, skinned at the knees

Pain is a salve, wire wraps around a heart

Dream away, dream away a life

The sun came out to kill, the air was still

What's a man to say? Shook his hand and paid