Matthew Gallaway

The End of Lockdown

It seemed to me that everyone I knew -- friends, family, work colleagues -- was busy making plans to go places and do things that required significantly more preparation than say, a walk around the block. I remembered my pre-pandemic routines, when I, too, was always on the move, either within the city or between New York City and somewhere that wasn't New York City, when figuring out the logistics of getting somewhere -- planes, trains, and automobiles -- had been a constant feature of my life. Even at the time, it wasn't something I had always loved. Airport terminals -- high cathedrals of unadulterated capitalism -- had increasingly triggered in me a kind of existential despair, but like most adults I had learned to endure the angst if it meant arriving at my destination, often hundreds or thousands of miles away, in a space of hours. 

It was how society operated, and I was a part of society. I had never really questioned it; or maybe I had questioned it, but never in a way that felt anything but hypothetical. It wasn't like I could opt out. But now, having been given exactly that opportunity for the past fifteen months, I wasn't sure how much I wanted to opt back in. Others were taking the plunge; for me, there would be a lot of toe-dipping and nervous hesitation. It was going to be a process. I might never get in above my ankles. 

I went to the park, where the dianthus were in bloom. 

If we had more parks, I thought, maybe we would not feel as compelled to go everywhere all the time. It occurred to me that traveling is often a means to run away from something, a problem or a circumstance. I was no different, it was just that I didn't have to go very far to escape. 

I stopped to admire a kousa dogwood in full bloom. We have a miniature variety in our garden that has never flowered. It might be a question of light, or water, or fertilization. It was an ongoing dilemma. We could leave and forget about it, or try to figure it out, or just learn to be satisfied with a non-flowering tree. 

I realized that growing older has made me a little more selfish about time. It's increased my reluctance to wade into the morass of logistics, when I could do other things such as writing new Death Culture @ Sea songs, like the one I recorded this week :) 

Link 

My trip to the park made me think that while travel can never take you away from yourself, you don't have to go very far to realize that the world is a dream. 

Freedom Run (Week Sixty-Two)

As regular readers might remember, a few months ago, we went into our backyard and found a mother cat who had just given birth to three kittens. With the help of a local Trap Neuter and Return (TNR) group, we managed to trap the mother and the kittens, who were all taken to an informal shelter (someone's apartment). The mother raised the kittens but unlike her offspring was too feral to be adopted. After being spayed, she was ready this week to be returned to her home, which in her case was the streets of the city.  

The woman from the TNR group delivered the mother cat -- now named 'Mercedes' -- in her cage, which was covered with a sheet to keep her calm. I wondered what it would be like to be in her place, and whether she would miss the food and shelter she had received over the past few months. If she did, she didn't show it: she hurled herself against the cage, which we quickly opened. 

She rushed out of the cage and up the stairs. "You go, girl,' said the TNR woman between doing play-by-play for her Instagram followers. 'This is Mercedes and she's on her freedom run.' For her part, Mercedes seemed to know exactly where she going. 

After climbing to the top of a wooden fence, she paused for no more than a second. I tried to imagine how she felt: excited, relieved, angry, grateful, and afraid all seemed like possibilities. I wished that I could have interviewed her. I bet she would have interesting insights to offer the many others who, following a period of captivity, are about to embark on their version of a freedom run.

I also wondered if I would ever want to take my own.  

The Magic Mountain (Week Sixty-One)

This week, in accordance with the recently updated CDC guidelines, I started running again without a mask. It was a relief. Over the past few months, I've started listening to podcasts on my runs, which meant that between my glasses, my headphones, and the mask, the real estate represented by my ears was definitely overdeveloped. 

Losing the mask helped. I felt lighter. It made me consider losing the headphones, too. As recently as last year, I would have said that I would never listen to anything while running. It was time I used to meditate (I know: not officially, don't @ me), to let the mind wander, to come up with amazing ideas that would never occur to me when I wasn't running (even though running ideas, like dreams, are never as exciting as they first seemed when reconsidered in a static position). But I'm not quite ready to abandon podcasts, in part because I feel like I can learn relevant things, and in part because I feel like podcasts can almost trick me into feeling like I just went out and had coffee or a drink with some friends, even though they did all of the talking. One thing about lockdown life is that it's greatly increased the amount of time I spend with my voice in my head, and it's nice to replace it with some other voices for a while. 

At the same time, I passed many people -- pedestrians and fellow runners -- who were still wearing masks, and I wanted to reassure them, to explain that I was vaccinated and had never voted for a Republican. (I didn't do this, fortunately.) 

So far, it's been a cool spring, which is my favorite kind of spring. It felt good to breathe. But even without a mask on, I found it difficult to envision returning to pre-pandemic life: taking the train back and forth to work, flying to conferences and vacations. Sitting in the airport lounge, eating granola and fruit from the buffet. I feel like I've lost some trust in society, or maybe my ability to navigate through it. I imagine going back to pre-pandemic life would be like going back to high school or something; fun for a few seconds but then pretty awkward once the novelty wore off. 

I kept thinking about what my friend Natasha tweeted: "I could do another year in quar, tbh." Lol but also hard same. 

I also kept thinking about the end of The Magic Mountain, when Hans, after spending seven years at the sanatorium, finally leaves and is last seen on a WWI battlefield. 

Life as a Domestic Cat (Week Sixty)

This week, as I ran through the park, where the azaleas were in peak bloom, I thought about the end of lockdown. It was just a few weeks away, at least officially, but I felt more nervous than excited. Despite being vaccinated, I still felt leery of the virus, like it was only a matter of time until we faced a new and even deadlier wave. I didn't feel this way all the time, but the fear was there, like an itch or even a craving. Why was I being so pessimistic and cautious? 

I'm not saying I would have ever chosen this option had it been presented to me, but being locked down has given me a greater appreciation for a more habitual, calmer mode of living that I fear will be lost if I return to society. In short, I've turned into one of our cats. I'm sort of kidding, but I'm sort of not kidding. 

The outside world seems manic to me: everyone going somewhere, doing this, buying that, and documenting it on social media. All of the articles offering new perspectives on the hard partying people have on tap for this summer. People describing trips they've recently taken -- on airplanes! -- or are planning to take. While a part of me is attracted to mania, recognizing this attraction sounded a cautionary note: be careful what you wish for. 

I get agitated watching the world from the sidelines: do I really need to be in it?  

On my runs, I've noticed that most runners still wear masks. A smaller number don't, and a third category -- to which I belong -- have the masks on, but keep them around our chins unless passing another runner or group. 

We put up our respective masks for a few seconds before taking them down again. Sometimes we nod at each other with a kind of fear and understanding.  

Azalea Season (Week Fifty-Nine)

I woke up early and went to the park, where the white tulips were busy preparing for a parade of azaleas.    

This was the week when all the plants and trees seemed to exhale as they rolled out their leaves.

The tentative phase of spring was over. The main event had begun.  

I spotted an azalea I had never seen (or at least didn't remember seeing) because it was hidden behind a wall.  

I asked myself whether I was looking forward to the summer and then decided it was the wrong question to ask. 

In fact, I was already dreading the summer. It wasn't just the heat, although that's always a good thing to dread. It was the litany of amazing things everyone was planning to do this summer to 'make up' for last summer. The mayor said that the city would be completely open by July 1; the newspapers were filled with warnings to book your beach house early; friends and family were discussing trips to wherever. Brunches were on the schedule. The good life was resuming. 

Expectations could not be higher, which is always a questionable strategy but seemed particularly risky given the number of cases around the world. Was it really over for us? Maybe. 

My qualms about rejoining society were somewhat different. Over the course of the pandemic, I've become more afraid, not of the virus, but of people; or more specifically, our institutions. Which is a hard thing to admit, because I believe in government -- like there's nothing I want more than a BIG government that spends money on healthcare and parks and clean jobs and libraries and etc (as opposed to tax cuts for the rich, weapons, and jails) -- and I find it increasingly difficult to reconcile this belief with the utter failure of our government to take care of (most of) its people over the course of not only the pandemic but also ... well, pretty much my entire life, which has coincided with the dismantling of the New Deal and its replacement by the neoliberal framework that continues to define most of our politics. But even within that framework, the last year has been a shock. Before going through it, I never would have believed that, as a country, we could allow hundreds of thousands of people to die while making only the most minimal adjustments to a system that for the most treats these lives as disposable, a cost of doing business. Another shock was to realize that this statement is true outside of the context of the virus. Even in the park, I couldn't escape a sense that we are failing ourselves.  

But secretly I kept hoping for one of the azaleas to prove me wrong.