Matthew Gallaway

The Year That Time Forgot (Week Forty-One)

I usually try to do a highlights post at the end of the year, and even though 2020 has obviously been more of a 'lowlights' kind of year, I decided to forge ahead. Below I've compiled a list of some of the things that occupied my thoughts (in a good way) as time went off the rails and left us in this strange world that somehow feels extremely normal -- by which I mean habitual, at least for those of us who have the ability (privilege) to work from home and prefer not to go anywhere in light of the pandemic -- and abnormal, given the pandemic and the political extremes we continue to collectively endure.   

THE CITY

This week, as I was putting my phone back into my pocket at the entrance of the park, a woman with a dog veered around me on her way out. Given that we were in the forty-first week of the lockdown, we were maybe a little close for comfort, but I didn't say anything: she (and her dog) were both very old, and she was muttering at it in a language that I guessed was Russian. She had a hunched back and a scarf over her head, while the dog, which seemed to be pulling her this way and that, was wearing a coat. As I watched, she surprised me by picking up the dog, which had a bit of a belly and seemed far heavier than her spindly arms could handle, and carried it across an icy patch, all the while talking to it in what sounded like a mix of admonishment and encouragement. Though I knew nothing about this woman except for what I had just observed, I imagined that she lived alone with her dog in a nearby apartment and that this year had been difficult for her, because -- as I'm beginning to learn myself -- age has a way of compounding problems. Seeing her interact with the dog induced a kind of pandemic-induced teariness that was offset or in some ways enhanced by an appreciation I felt for living in the city, which even at peak solitude and isolation gives us opportunities to envision lives that are very similar and different than our own. Later in the run, as I began my ascent up 158th Street, a very steep hill that extends from the river to Broadway, this sense of appreciation for the city continued as I saw in quick succession 1) a graffiti dick that someone had carved into the cement of the sidewalk (stupid but never not a little funny, as long at it's not on a sidewalk I paid for), and 2) two people talking in another language (some kind of Chinese, again guessing). I always like to hear people talking in languages I don't understand, because it reminds me that speaking English (like many things we associate with the lingua franca of capital, finance, and mainstream culture) shouldn't be a requirement for existing in 2020. I wasn't even bothered by the fact that these people had parked their car half in the sidewalk and half in the protected bike lane, which usually makes me furious (because seriously: cars are the worst, and especially in cities). I wasn't in the mood for rants. I ran the last half mile or so up Broadway and felt glad to be in New York, in Washington Heights, on my block. The media this year made a big deal about people fleeing the city for the suburbs or the country, and I can understand the appeal of leaving -- I think about it all the time, and I'm sure that, in many ways, life outside of the city, especially during a pandemic, is easier -- but even though my block was not at finest, thanks to the soot-covered snow and the mountains of uncollected trash, I knew that I would never be one of them.

CITY PARKS: Fort Tryon Park, as anyone who reads this blog knows, is my favorite park in the world, and was no less beautiful in 2020 than it has been every other year leading up to it. But also the Hudson River, where I spend a lot of time. Running through these urban oases is when I'm most optimistic, when I can believe in a higher power that so often seems implausible during the rest of the day. 

HIGHBRIDGE PARK: New York City has an unfortunate history of neglecting to maintain public services in lower-income/minority neighborhoods, which is why the renovation of Highbridge Park by the Parks Department (beyond being perfect unto itself) is noteworthy. Stephen has been walking past this park all year on his way to the pedestrian High Bridge to the Bronx (another landmark) and has been giving me glowing reports of the progress. Last week I went on a walk with him and was excited to note that they had even installed a parcourse, which always makes me think about the one we had in the park near my house in the 1970s, when they were popular (and generally more spread out than this one: the idea was to jog a few minutes between stations). 

CULTURE AND ENTERTAINMENT

TERRACE HOUSE: The show has been cancelled following the suicide of one the cast members, but it really helped to pull me (us, since Stephen is also a fan) through the earliest and most harrowing days of the pandemic. Even when contestants are fighting with one another, it's very calming to be immersed in a culture that is distinctly not American. 

DRAWING LINKS: Subscription newsletters have replaced blogs (so it goes), and one of my favorite subscriptions is Drawing Links by Edith Zimmerman. Edith draws comics about her life, sometimes veering into magical reality, often walking a delicate line between hilarity and melancholy and sometimes skipping between both. She likes to write about running (and its metaphysical appeal), which is a big draw for me, but I often find myself thinking (and laughing out loud to myself, like a maniac) about her observations of everyday life and the people she encounters -- like this one about a woman early in the pandemic wearing a salad container for a mask (and the imagined dialogue) -- which was a gift in 2020. 

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR FATHER: This podcast features a range of guests who talk about their fathers (along with a couple of great episodes in which the podcasters breakdown the archetypal Don Draper of Mad Men). The podcast is lo-fi and thought-provoking, and sometimes very funny. Straight men in this world have a lot to answer for; this podcast takes them to task but in a surprisingly endearing way (surprising because the underlying stories can be quite harrowing and sad). 

MARNIE T: I watched a lot of television this year, but tbh nothing post-Terrace House has grabbed my attention as much as spiritual guide Marnie T on Twitter. Why watch two or more hours of a show when ninety seconds can deliver inspiration, mockery, political analysis, crass commercialism, and personal (drug-induced) enlightenment? Marnie T is the gay/post-gay entertainment we desperately need. I will always sign up for her class. 

MUSIC

Sometime around the beginning of the year, I finally decided to join Spotify (notwithstanding its horrible revenue model for artists), which has been miraculous (for the music) and depressing (because the music has in some ways never felt cheaper/more commodified). But in the interests of focusing on the miraculous, Spotify has helped to reinvigorate my interest in music -- and especially new (to me) music -- which has felt like waking up from a coma. 

WEYES BLOOD: I learned about Weyes Blood from reading Brooklyn Vegan (Titanic Rising was BV's 2019 Album of the Year) and quickly became obsessed with that record and some of her earlier albums, as you can see from my Spotify 2020 Wrap-Up. (Lol.)

INDIE ROCK: Here are some other bands/musicians I loved (and played the most in 2020). One of the last things I did before lockdown was to see Torche at St. Vitus, which was mindblowing (and ear-shattering, even with ear plugs!). 

DEATH CULTURE @ SEA: Being in lockdown turned out to be a good excuse to finally learn how to record music with my iPhone, first with GarageBand and now with Cubasis. It's been a steep learning curve, but I'm continually astounded by the technology. Here's my latest, which is an attempt to stretch into the synthier side of indie rock. 

Link: 

DCAS Playlist:  

LAW AND POLITICS

For reasons both professional and personal, I sift through a lot of legal (and political) writing (and tweets). Here are a few things I found most compelling in 2020: 

KNOW YOUR ENEMY: This podcast is designed to help listeners understand how the conservative/libertarian movement in this country has, over the past fifty or sixty years, and in the interests of corporate greed, private property, and white supremacy, engineered the ongoing assault on democracy that may or may not be relenting as we head into 2021. 

LAW AND POLITICAL ECONOMY: I spent a lot of time this year thinking about my own education, particularly at law school, where I, like most law students at the time, was indoctrinated into a belief that the law, generally speaking, was apolitical, objective, and best employed in the interests of market efficiency. Reading this article, which dispels this idea in favor of crafting laws that works for the people, was a revelation to me and a source of hope in a political landscape that can often feel very bleak. 

CATS

How can anyone survive a lockdown without pets? It's a mystery. 

ZEPHYR AND ELEKTRA: On a blue blanket, in front of a large pillow. 

CLIO: Our gray panther in the snow.  

2021

In some ways, thinking about 2021 was the best part of 2020. Let's hope we get our collective act together! 

See you next year :)

Snow Days (Week Forty)

I had forgotten how snow can serve as a kind of filter through which you can see everyday objects with new appreciation.  Such as this doormat. 

Or the steps to our front door. 

I had planned on taking pictures at the park, but it was colder than I realized. As soon as I removed the phone from my pocket, the charge went from 90 percent to 'less than 10 percent.' I had images of a cartoon thermometer plummeting. 

Back home, I thawed out in the bright light. 

The cats were discussing politics and nobody was happy. I was looking forward to the vaccine but had mixed feelings about getting back to 'normal.' Was normal worth returning to? I wish that instead of people saying, 'soon we'll be back to normal,' they would say, 'soon we'll be entering a period of intense, collective self-assessment to ascertain the many (many -- really, an uncountable number of) failures that brought us to this point and the measures we can take now to make sure it doesn't happen again, and by 'it' we're talking not only about the virus but pretty much the trajectory of society over the course of at least two hundred years.'  

In retrospect, my pre-pandemic life seemed kind of manic: constantly riding the subway up and down the west side of Manhattan, taking flights and trains to wherever else, sitting in large, underground chambers with hundreds of other people, nobody wearing a mask, ever. Rushing here and there. Getting things done, making plans to get more things done. And not just in a work context, either! Was that life worth preserving? Maybe some of it. I felt paralyzed as I considered the idea of walking through an airline terminal and getting on a plane. I knew I would have to work up to it. 

At the same time, there are aspects of being in lockdown -- in some ways, a very long snow day -- that I've learned to appreciate and don't necessarily want to give up. Maybe it was time for a 'new normal.' 

When Clio looks back on the pandemic, she's going to tell people, 'I spent most of it in the plant.' 

Running Mantras (Week Thirty-Nine)

Lately, I've been reading a lot about mantras and distance running, specifically how there are many runners who like to find a few words or a phrase to repeat to help direct their thoughts away from the physical discomfort of a hard run. (You probably knew that, but it does seem to be something of a trend in the running blogs and newsletters that come across my screen, along with vibrating foam rollers, which as I can attest have gotten Very Serious over the past few years: here's one that will rattle the teeth out of your mouth.) 

As you might expect, most mantras I've read about have a tendency to be nauseatingly saccharine. Can you imagine saying (thinking) something like 'stronger with every step' or 'steady forward momentum'  or -- most disorienting to my ear -- 'up and over' thousands of times over the course of ten or twenty or more miles? Maybe dying would be a better choice than using one of these mantras, I thought. 

Then again, the mantra I've found that works best for me -- 'fast, easy, light, strong' -- isn't exactly in a different genre than the ones I was just (lightly) mocking. This mantra seems kind of boring and obvious to me as I look at it on the page -- like I consider myself a writer, couldn't I come up with something more interesting? -- but when I'm running, my oxygen-deprived mind loses its usual (and, in my case, infinite) capacity for crippling doubt and superficial judgment. Fast, easy, light, strong: these words, each one giving way to the next in an infinite loop, are imbued with meaning and direction and -- as I make minor adjustments to my stride -- nuance. While running, I feel calm and confident as I assess projects and developments in my life that, when I'm not running, are the source of stress and anxiety. Fast, easy, light, strong. It's a nice way to exist. 

But when I stop, I always return my default mode of assessment, which is hard to distill into mantra form but would be something like 'bureaucracy, corruption, tedium, despair.'  

This week, I asked myself if it would be possible for me not to return to the default but to remain optimistic, to keep believing, after I stopped running. I remembered the revelation from my Feldenkrais lesson as I assessed the two sides of my body: 'One side is how you live your life and the other is how you *could* live your life.' Why did I have to be so pessimistic and cynical? What exactly was the evidence for this position? Or was it a choice? I quickly reviewed the decades of my existence. I had done some things, I had failed at some others. And what about society? Couldn't the same be said? (I resisted the urge to say that, actually, society had mostly failed.) There seemed to be support for both positions. Maybe pessimism was a choice and maybe I could make a different one.  

Or maybe, I thought, there's a middle ground that doesn't require any choice at all. 

Every Tree a Superstar (Week Thirty-Eight)

It was sad to see the birch tree's leaves go, but the curve of some of its branches would be good inspiration, I thought, for my recent Feldenkrais work. Every day at the end of a lesson, Bruce Holmes asks his students to stand up, walk around the room, and notice if anything has changed since we started: our gait, our posture, anything else. Almost always, for me, the answer is 'yes.' My muscles are relaxed, my body feels centered and light, I am breathing deeply without concentrating on breathing deeply, my head is buzzing a little. 

I often think about something Bruce Holmes said about halfway through one of the lessons. 'Do you feel the difference between the left and right sides?' he asked after guiding us through a sequence that focused on just one side of our bodies. At this second, my left side felt like zombie corpse, whereas the right felt like a tree sapling stretching toward the sun. 'What you're feeling,' he continued, 'is the difference between how you live your life and how you could live your life.' Is that inspiring or demoralizing? It probably depends on how you feel at this juncture. But in either case, it's something to consider. 

It was a good year for leaves in the garden. Here's an oak leaf from a columnar pin oak we started from an acorn and which is now probably four feet tall. We don't really have room for it, but I've grown attached to it, much the way (I imagine) people get attached to their children. I want to see it grow up and lead a healthy life. 

Our climbing hydrangea was one of the first plants we bought, over twenty years ago. It's doing okay, but hasn't exactly flourished in the way we had hoped. I don't think it likes its wall, and it might need more light. But there's also this certainty: not every plant can grow up to be a superstar. 

I've convinced myself that our Chinese dogwood, which has never flowered (another disappointing child), is on the verge of big things. 'Its leaves have never been this red,' I said to Stephen. 'Yes they have,' he said. 'But it's still very pretty.' Every parent brings different expectations to the table. 

INTERMISSION: 'Hope Is a Broken Wing' by DeathCulture@Sea. 

Link and DCAS playlist. 

Song notes: I recorded the vocals with a new microphone (AKG C-214), which I think sounds better? If you have any recording tips, please pretend it's 2009 and let me know in the comments! 

When I look at the aging trees, it seems possible that maybe I can move with more ease and grace as I get older. There's only one problem with this theory: I am not a tree.