Matthew Gallaway

The Politics of Contempt (Week 2)

I imagined that, like one of our indoor cats, I was living in a very small world that felt very comfortable and familiar, but was contained within -- or constrained by -- a much larger world about which I knew next to nothing. This latter world, just by virtue of being unknown, was enticing -- I was curious to know more, to see it with my own eyes -- but it was also frightening. Thousands were getting sick and some significant percentage were dying. I listened to the cacophony of sirens and scrolled through the numbers on Twitter. The accompanying graphs and hockey-stick projections were alarming, a reason to double down on my (our) resolve to stay home as much as possible. But then I would read something more optimistic, something about how we might get through this crisis without too much harm (relatively speaking), and even though I recognized that the source of these hopeful projections were political leaders known for half-truths, outright lies, and corruption, the constant repetition of these statements in the news and on social media had an almost narcotic effect on me, so that I could feel myself drifting into magical thinking.  

This effect was amplified by the weather. The spring light, the new flowers, the chirping birds: all of it worked to create a kind of surreal oasis in which it was impossible to imagine our society splintering apart. 

I kept asking myself why people weren't angrier at our leadership. Some were angry, and had been for quite a while, and they (we) were still angry, despite being dismissed as overly idealistic and immature with sneering, patronizing contempt by those who knew how 'the real world' operated, even if they couldn't justify the reasons why it had to operate the way it did. But even after the virus began to spread into our backyards, even as millions lost their jobs and -- in some cases -- their lives, a majority of people were -- apparently -- still, somehow, not angry. To the contrary, I kept seeing polls showing a widespread approval of how things were being handled by the leadership of our country (and state and city). No surprise, given that I was on record as a Bernard Brother even before the crisis, I sided with those who couldn't fathom the concept of a 'relief package' like the one that was passed, which -- as I saw it -- offered a pittance to the middle/working classes and otherwise marginalized people who were suffering the most while offering a huge windfall to their corporate overlords, the same ones whose reckless pursuit of profit had done much to lead us to this disaster. So where was the anger? Or more to the point, where was the widespread, volcanic, unassuageable anger, the anger of those drowning in debt or unable to afford rent, the ones who sat in traffic for hours every day and made monthly car payments, who lived paycheck to paycheck, in fear of deductibles and trips to the doctor? What would it take to mobilize this majority, to get them angry enough to demand actual political change instead of platitudes? Did these people -- much less their anger -- even exist? In the wake of Bernie's Super Tuesday Massacre, I had my doubts, but I still wanted to believe they were out there, ready to be awakened to the possibility of different kind of life. 

Being gay, I have a certain predisposition for anger. It's easy for me to distrust the government. I won't pretend to have been an active participant in the protests that defined the first fifteen years of the AIDS crisis, but it was always on the periphery of my awareness, shaping my understanding of society. What's apparent to me is that the government of that era, out of contempt, was valuing some lives more than others, and it was this contempt that sparked the outrage of those who did whatever it took to obtain the necessary medicine and, in doing so, altered the relationship of gays and our government in ways that are still unfolding today. When people around you start dying and your government does nothing about it -- or even abets it -- you have to ask yourself whether this is the government you actually want. If the answer is 'no,' then the question becomes how to change it.  

Whether and to what degree the current crisis is analogous to AIDS is open to debate, but I think in terms of political representation of those who are getting sick, a good case can be made for the comparison. Our leaders are making a bet that the majority of coronavirus deaths (the most important metric) can be contained in a demographic -- poor, urban (primarily those who lack the means to escape to the country) -- for which these leaders already hold great antipathy. Like any true bet, however, this one has a big risk, which is that these deaths will not be limited to urban and lower-class populations, but will afflict the rich and the suburban. And if it does, those who have never witnessed the death of their own families and friends at the hands of a negligent or contemptuous government might finally become angry enough to do something about it. 

Moral questions aside, it strikes me as a very risky bet for our leaders to be making, given how little we seem to know about how far the virus can be expected to spread and exactly who will be susceptible to it. But this scenario is far from hypothetical: over the next few weeks or months, we'll know the answers to these questions. Will the more rural and suburban areas of the country -- the areas on which our leadership draws its support -- suffer in the same ways that the cities are? And will this suffering lead to the kind of institutional change -- universal medical care, environmental protection, reformulated wealth distribution, and so on -- that will help to alleviate the possibility of another crisis? 

For the sake of those individuals who might one day pay the price, I hope the answer is no, but for the sake of those who are paying right now, I hope the answer is yes. 

My Life as a Mostly Indoor Cat (Week One)

I felt nervous coming back from Florida last Sunday. While I was there, it was obvious that the vast majority of people were not paying close attention to the news, and were paying even less attention to the social-distancing directives. For me, getting home meant passing through what I could only imagine were virus strongholds in the Orlando airport and at LaGuardia. Though I had no symptoms, it was of course possible that I was already infected: I had taken a business trip the week before and, before going to Florida, had moved around the city in the usual ways: subway to work, meetings and lunch with people in the office, and so forth. I had been compulsively washing my hands and trying to keep my distance, but -- like so many others who aren't professional athletes or otherwise swimming in the needed money and connections to get tested -- I couldn't be sure. 

I was less worried about contracting (or having contracted) the virus on my own account than I was about passing it to Stephen, who for his own reasons was being extra-cautious. By the time I walked through the door, he had already sanitized everything; all I had to do was remove and wash my clothes, clean my phone and luggage, and then join the rest of world -- or at least those of us who don't work in essential jobs -- in waiting. 

In some ways, the adjustment to my schedule has not been difficult. Although Stephen and I have been keeping our distance from each other -- which we will continue to do for at least another week -- we have plenty of space to do so; we also have a garden, which is just beginning its spring bloom. As always, the hellebores are first. 

We're particularly proud of our Helleborus foetidus 'Dunham,' whose alien flowers blossom in an unusual candelabra arrangement. 

Here's a view from above. 

The days have passed in much the same way they did for me before the virus, given that I already worked from home several days a week. I wake up, exercise, eat breakfast, take the cats out to the garden, and work, which is all done via my laptop. (Thank you, technology.) Time passes. I eat lunch and work some more. Then dinner, maybe some television or some reading (for pleasure) or playing guitar, which I find relaxes me before bed. The cats are very attuned to this routine; they modify their own habits so that we come together and drift apart several times a day. 

The biggest change for me has been not running. When Stephen first mentioned the idea to me -- I was still in Florida -- it seemed a bit ridiculous; I couldn't imagine how I would contract the virus on a run, at least the kind of running I tend to do, which is relatively fast and solitary, usually in the early morning along the river. The vast majority of news reports downplayed the risk, so long as you continued to show no symptoms. But once I got back and began to assess the situation, it didn't seem like such a big sacrifice to give up a daily run. There are plenty of workout programs available online for free. I've been doing them. I miss running -- there's nothing like it, especially as we move into the spring season -- but it feels good to concentrate on other muscles, to teach my body to move in different ways, to be flexible, to adapt. 

I've now spent eight days in the house without going any farther than the sidewalk (once, to put out the trash). I'm reasonably confident that I don't have the virus, but there's always some continuing uncertainty. If I cough, is it just a cough -- my spring allergies are definitely kicking in -- or the beginning of something far worse? 

If the news is to be believed, it's possible that I'm infected but that the symptoms haven't appeared. It's also possible that when I finally leave the house -- eventually I'll need to go somewhere -- I'll be infected, notwithstanding every reasonable (or unreasonable) precaution I might take. 

This sense of uncertainty is not unfamiliar to me. If anything, it defined years and possibly decades of my -- young, gay, closeted -- youth. I remember being petrified after my first gay kiss, being certain that I was going to die, even though I knew I was being illogical. And after I did more than kiss, the fear never went away; I'm sure most gay men -- particularly of a certain age -- know exactly what I'm talking about, and I'm also sure that a lot of people who are not gay men are being introduced to this kind of uncertainty -- this question of 'have I been infected by a deadly virus' -- which, if you let it, can become completely consuming to an extent that it overshadows whatever pleasures life has to offer, even or especially the small ones. 

Let's hope that, at some point in the near future, this virus won't have to be so consuming; that we'll be able to go to a doctor or a clinic and find out in a few minutes whether we have the virus and, if so, get some medicine to treat it. (And not have to pay a ridiculous amount of money to do so.) 

But until that time comes, I know from my own experience that it helps to focus on other things. For me, it's the new leaves of our Japanese maple. 

And the red flowers of our cold-hardy camellia, which this year has multiple blossoms for the first time. 

And the daffodils, cheerful and curious, a perfect flower for early spring. 

And my gratitude that, for this period of time, that I am in a position to say that this day -- whatever day it is -- can be expected to look exactly like tomorrow.

Vero 2020

Last week, I went to Florida. I flew out of New York City (LGA) to Orlando on Tuesday and came back Sunday. I had planned the trip almost a year ago, with the expectation of spending a few days with my parents, something I've done for many years. 

My parents live in Pittsburgh but have a condominium in Vero Beach, where they spend winters. When they first announced their plan to go to Florida, I was skeptical: it seemed like they were somehow giving up on life, resigning themselves to aging and the inevitable decline that comes with it. Did they not have any dreams beyond sitting on a beach? I was also skeptical about Florida, which I viewed as an unfolding environmental disaster populated by a mix of leather-skinned seniors and vacuous spring breakers. Twenty years later, and more comfortable with the idea of resigning myself to aging -- especially if it involves access to a beach -- I've come to appreciate Florida. I like the people I've met. I like the big, Florida sky and its verdant landscape, the golden light that turns everything and everyone into silhouettes at twilight. (I know this happens everywhere, but somehow it's more magical in Florida: don't ask me why, it just is.) 

This year I went with three of my brothers. Two of them flew to Orlando around the same time as me -- we rented a car -- while a third drove from Tennessee. When we planned the trip, almost a year ago, we didn't expect to be on the precipice of a pandemic, but that's of course where we found ourselves. I'm not sure if you remember last Tuesday -- just ten days ago -- but the landscape was very different then than it is today (and, no doubt, will be tomorrow). The wave of cancellations and closures was just beginning; there were only a handful of deaths in the United States, far fewer, for example, than the casualties of a typical flu season or even the ~100,000 people who die every month around the world in car crashes.* 'Social distancing' mostly meant avoiding handshakes in favor of elbow bumps and half-heartedly trying to avoid touching your face. (How?) But for those of us inclined to scroll through Twitter in the middle of the night, there was cause for alarm. Italy was getting serious; they were supposedly digging mass graves in Iran. In the days leading up to our departure, my brothers and I began to debate if and how we should modify our plans. One of us was nervous about flying at all, another suggested we not attend a concert my mother had already purchased tickets for, another questioned whether the media was exaggerating the potential impact of the virus. I'm sure these are the kind of conversations that were happening everywhere: there was so much information -- much of it contradictory -- that it seemed equally rational to act as if nothing bad were happening, or, on the other hand, to go into complete isolation. (I tended toward the latter extreme.) On Monday, we agreed to go ahead with the trip, mostly on account of our parents. It still seemed reasonable to fly and to socialize in small groups, although we agreed that we wouldn't bring them (or attend) any large events. 

*Google it. 

But on Tuesday afternoon, as my brothers and I gathered at the baggage claim at the Orlando airport, our attitude had already shifted. The purpose of the trip, we agreed, had now changed from vacation to evacuation, or perhaps vacation + evacuation: we needed to convince our parents, who were not slated to leave Florida until early April, to leave now, or soon; maybe not in the next day, but definitely by Sunday, when we were scheduled to go.   

Having made at least the rough draft of an evacuation plan, there seemed to be little to do but go forward with the vacation part. We picked up the rental car and drove east. On the drive, we mostly discussed politics: as a Bernie supporter, I was still dismayed by the Super Tuesday results and the party and media machinations that -- in my view -- had led to it. I couldn't believe that the party was coalescing around someone I found as uninspiring and incoherent as Joe Biden, whose record was marked with unforgivable transgressions (Anita Hill, bankruptcy, social-security, the Iraq War) and in no way promised the kind of structural change I believed (and believe) necessary to address the systemic inequality and environmental degradation we've experienced in the post-war era. My brothers, though sympathetic to my arguments, felt that Biden, despite his record, was more 'electable' and could at least begin the process of getting our country back on course, even if the changes were only incremental. As siblings are often required to do to remain on speaking terms, we agreed to disagree. 

After picking up my mother and father, we went to our rental house, which was right across the road from the beach. Booking early had clearly paid off, I thought, building a flimsy wall between my immediate surroundings and the lurking fears that roamed beyond. 

The house was old and charming, filled with vintage knick-knacks, some of which cut against the grain of the stereotypical (beefy, male, lunkhead) lifeguard. I wondered who had inspired this artwork and where she was now. (Was she washing her hands?)

We went to dinner with my parents, who -- after listening to our unanimously voiced reasons for doing so -- pretty quickly agreed to fly home early. My mother's biggest concern was that we spend the rest of the week in Florida; she didn't want the vacation to be ruined. She was close to ninety; she didn't have many vacations left. It was hard to argue with her, at least emotionally. We agreed to stay through Sunday, although I continued to have my doubts. The NBA had just canceled its season and the NHL was rumored to be next. Would it be possible to relax? 

It turned out that it was possible, or half-possible. The next few days passed in a slow-moving blur of unremarkable family gatherings (meals, games, beach) punctuated by frantic planning and anxiety. We bought new plane tickets for my parents and made other arrangements -- shutting down the cable and phone -- that seemed ominous and frightening. Then we went to the beach and rode the waves, just like we had always done. The surf was rough, but it felt good to be pummeled by the water. 

Each morning I went running, either along the sidewalk of Route A1A or through the streets of old Vero, which are lined with live oaks. The houses -- not pictured -- are understated and tasteful; they represent old money. They are built on one level to withstand hurricanes. The only people I saw were the landscapers. 

I veered onto a golf course and -- realizing my mistake -- quickly veered off. 

Would a virus be able to find a home in such a neighborhood? From what I could tell, it seemed like a lot of people were banking on the answer being no. 

On the early-morning beach, where I went after my run, there seemed to be little evidence of social distancing. 

There was even less evidence on the afternoon beach, where clumps of teens played volleyball and chased each other into the water. We huddled in a circle closer to the dunes, where one of my mother's acquaintances passed by and, after saying hello, scoffed at the idea of a global pandemic. 'She's a Fox News-er,' said my mother, who then confessed to having her own doubts about the virus while at the same time recognizing that her doubts were not politically motivated but were formed out of a very conscious desire not to have these perfect-weather days come to an end. 

I was anxious to get back to New York City -- to Stephen and the cats -- but I knew what she meant. Everything becomes more valuable when you realize that you're leaving it behind. Which of course is a constant of life, except that we train ourselves not to think about it except in unusual circumstances. 

After leaving the beach, I stopped to rinse off my feet and put my towel on one of the nearby park benches, each of which featured a memorial to someone who had lived here. I felt like I could be friends with Ronald Smith, unless he was also a Fox News-er. 

Would I have noticed these dedications at a different time? Would I have made fun of them? Possibly, or possibly not. Something that might seem pointless and trite now resonated with unspoken truth. It was no different than the Hallmark photos of the beach and the seagulls I was obsessed with capturing (and then deleting). A quick glance at Twitter confirmed that the news was getting worse. They had just closed Disney World in Orlando. Would the airport be next? Or if not, would it be mobbed with tourists trying to get home? Would they close state borders?  

I tried to push the uncertainty aside. I admired the small plant and the colonizing moss. 

I felt grateful to believe in nature, which always wins in the end.  

March Light

On Sunday, Clio and I went for a walk in the garden, which thanks to the unusually warm weather is about three weeks early.

Clio basked in the sun while I dreaded many things, including a flight to Indianapolis scheduled the next day. 

The flight was uneventful except that my glasses fell out of the seat pocket during takeoff and I spent the next two hours anxiously looking for and failing to find them. You can picture me crawling up and down the aisle using my phone as a flashlight. The flight attendant told me we could 'scour the plane' after everyone else had exited (sigh), which was not an enticing prospect on the verge of a global pandemic. But after we landed, a woman three rows back found them, and I felt happy to have them as I drove through the bracingly flat Indiana landscape. Living in New York, it's easy to forget that much of the country is flat and severe (yet still beautiful). 

On first glance, the city seemed very generic, defined by highways and a cluster of skyscrapers. Rather than fixate on the eradication of what was apparently once a vibrant downtown African-American neighborhood, I admired the clean, wide busway and thought about a recent tweet (from a satirical account: the New York City mayor but good) announcing the creation of several new bus lanes to build on the success of 14th Street.

Imagine Broadway closed to cars — or at least private vehicle store — so that buses (and bikes) could fly up and down the island. It feels like a pipe dream, but why? It would clearly benefit more people than not. Why is it so difficult to get anything done in our country that doesn't involve weapons or punishing the poor? Incremental change is more frustrating than no change at all during a time when -- for any number of reasons -- more radical change is needed. 

On the morning of Super Tuesday, I ran along the canal and thought about the primary elections unfolding all over the country. I had high hopes for Bernie a week earlier during the five seconds he was begrudgingly acknowledged as the front runner. ‘Anyone but Biden,’ I had thought countless times over the past eight months and then South Carolina happened. Now here we were, stuck with Biden, the most uninspiring candidate since John Kerry.

What could I do? The sunrise was beautiful in Indiana.

Back home, Zephyr enjoyed the March light.

And Elektra made plans for a future she wanted to see. 

 

The Week in Extremely Local News

SUNDAY

In the effort to expand my horizons, I ran across the GWB into New Jersey. The bridge and snake pit of highways getting on and off is a chore, but the park that surrounds the Palisades is beautiful and big, with miles of car-free roads and trails.

Here's a trail heading north on the cliffs overlooking the Hudson. As usual, I was fixated on the moss. 

MONDAY

On Monday I returned to more familiar -- and more beautiful, but much smaller -- territory in the form of Fort Tryon Park, where the heather was glowing in the late February sun. 

TUESDAY

On Tuesday, the orchid was in bloom. It wasn't the day it bloomed, but it was one of the many days when I stopped to admire it. I can never get enough of this color, which is closer to tangerine in reality but photographs a deeper red. 

WEDNESDAY

On Wednesday, the roses captured the weak afternoon light, which is reflected from the windows in the apartment building across the street. Sometimes we buy flowers and they don't last or don't open; these roses opened and lasted. 

THURSDAY

The garden, including this flowering Hellebores foetidus -- which we're very proud of, owing to its notoriously fickle temperament -- is coming to life very early this year.  

The winter aconites are also very early (and very cute). 

FRIDAY

On Friday, Zephyr and I pondered many things. Zephyr was relieved to be removed from so much that was happening; I -- being closer to these things -- was less sure how I felt. 

On Friday afternoon, on the way home from work, I picked up my guitar from the technician, who somewhat miraculously lives less than a mile away from me, in Harlem. (The miracle is that I was able to walk home.) My guitar, an old Martin from 1930, is comically small but has a lovely, warm tone. When I bought it -- in 1990 -- 1930 seemed like a very long time ago, but now, 1990 seems pretty far away, too. Whatever the case, I had forgotten how time stops while playing an instrument, even if your audience is a trio of reluctant cats. 

SATURDAY

On Saturday, Clio and Zephyr said goodbye to February and looked forward to the March sun.  

I Skipped the Nevada Debate and Went to a Metal Show (Torche)

I bought tickets to see Torche at Saint Vitus before I realized that the show was on the same night as the Nevada presidential debate, which like all parts of the nomination process I've been following closely. As much as I was looking forward to seeing Michael Bloomberg get eviscerated -- something I predicted before the debate (just ask my cats) -- I wasn't about to skip the show. I discovered Torche a few months ago by way of a tour preview on BrooklynVegan; I won't pretend to know anything about the contemporary metal scene (except that there are a lot of sub-genres, and that one of my favorite bands from last year was a metal-adjacent Belgian band called Bruno), but the Torche song featured on the post -- 'Admission' -- was intriguing to me: it sounded like some of my favorite post-hardcore bands of the 1980s (Hüsker Dü) with a tremolo-bar shoe-gaze sheen by way of My Bloody Valentine. The rest of the album was more recognizably metal, although I would say it's more dirge-like with metal 'references' -- certain chord progressions, drum fills, the inflection of the singer's voice, and so on -- than what I would typically associate with 'metal.' If you Google the band, their genres are listed as 'sludge metal' and 'stoner rock,' which paints a basic but not-completely-inaccurate picture, as labels tend to do. Another reason I was intrigued: when I saw the band photo, my gaydar went off, and it only took two clicks to learn that the singer/guitarist Steve Brooks is, in fact, gay. (Sometimes gaydar works.) I soon had tickets to see them. As someone who sometimes feels like an empty circle in the Venn Diagram of Contemporary Gay Culture, I wanted to know more about what was happening in the gay corners of sludge metal.    

After taking the 2 to the L to the G and walking ten blocks north on Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, I found the club, which thanks to its lack of signage and windows also had interesting parallels with a kind of gay bar slash sex dungeon that (to my knowledge) has mostly gone the way of the dinosaur. I felt a little nervous about going in, which I'm sure was just a residual reaction to the dread and longing I used to feel contemplating the idea of going into a gay bar.  

Inside felt more familiar. I had spent thousands of hours in similar venues all over the continent and abroad. The club comprised two rooms; in one, a long bar, in the other, a small (but perfect) performance space, maybe big enough for 250 people or so. The bathroom, heavily stickered and decrepit, reminded me of hundreds of others I had seen (and used) back in the day, with the worst BY FAR being the one in the basement of CBGB. (If there's a museum somewhere dedicated to CBGB, I hope they reconstructed the bathroom, because there was nothing else like it.) Back at the bar, I spent time analyzing the crowd: no surprise, it was mostly male and mostly white (in probably Iowa/New Hampshire/Park Slope percentages if I had to guess). (I didn't see any MAGA gear, however.) Most were 25-45 and many were appealingly sturdy in build. There was a certain look -- beard, leather/flannel, maybe a pocket chain -- that made it sometimes difficult to say whether the guy in question was 1) a metal fan, 2) a gay leather bear, or 3) both. According to an interview I read with Steve Brooks, the band doesn't have a large gay following; he lamented that Torche has never been asked to march in a Pride event and that he once received a fan letter telling him to enjoy the 'hot chicks' in Sweden. (File under: the dispiriting fan letters of straight men.) Having some experience in gay crowd assessment, I can say with confidence that there were some fellow gays at the show; like always, how many was a question, but there were some, which is always better than none. 

The band was amazing. They opened by playing the first four or five songs from their latest record -- the one I'd been listening to -- which for a few minutes made me feel young. It's hard to describe how loud it was; every kick of the bass drum and every bass note felt like a hammer ripping through my chest as a Category 5 hurricane of guitars lashed down from above. (I had thick gobs of wax in my ears.) A mosh pit formed and dissolved and formed again, like tide pools. I stayed on the fringes, admiring a pair of tall women who were in the thick of it. It was a polite mosh pit; someone's glasses were knocked off and people stopped so that he could pick them up. Mostly I felt blanketed by the wall of sound. It was headbanger music. I loved it. 

There's something very purifying about being immersed in music that for building blocks uses a kind of primeval anger and impulse for violence -- music that, to appreciate it, demands that you literally 'bang your head' -- to construct something towering and beautiful. After the show, as I thought about the debates I had missed and the underlying political process of our times, I realized (not for the first time) that one of the reasons I support Bernie (first) and Elizabeth (second) far more than any other candidate is because they also give voice to a kind of deep, fundamental anger with the hope to transform it into something good, something helpful, something that will benefit more than it will harm. When people claim that Bernie supporters are 'too angry' or that Elizabeth is 'too strident' (or whatever they said after the debate), it always seems to me that these critics -- let's call them 'moderates' -- are positioned in a place where 'change' might seem desirable in an abstract but incremental way, but they don't know what it's like to be erased or marginalized or otherwise oppressed by a class of corporate management drones like Michael Bloomberg (never mind Donald Trump). 

We live in angry times. There are countless good reasons to be angry. It seems pointless to deny it and better to recognize it, to harness it before it leads to actual (as opposed to symbolic) violence. (Or more violence than we already have.) 

In the same way anger has a place in art, it has a place in politics.  

The Week in Pictures: February 7 - February 15

SUNDAY

At home with the cats, Zephyr and Clio getting along. 

A look of death from Clio. 

Elektra stays above the fray. 

Clio in a better mood. 

MONDAY

I like the rain on the city streets, the streaky lights, the windy chaos. (It helped that I was only three blocks from home.) 

Broadway around 7:00 am. 

The rain reminded me that there's been almost no snow this winter. 

I've always liked this block. The apartment buildings are decorative without being ostentatious. I always think about how much nicer it will be when we eliminate private car storage on public streets ('parking'). (My prediction is that this will happen within ten years.) 

Meanwhile, our local NYFD members have taken to parking on the sidewalks, which is another way the rule of law breaks down under the current administration. 

Bikers also park on the sidewalk, but in their case, it's understandable given that they have no place to park on the street, which *should* be their right as much as car owners. Here's a radical idea: how about we eliminate two parking spots on every side of every block and replace them with bike corrals. 

Our current mayor hates bikers, though, so we're going to have to pin our hopes on the next one (or move to Paris). 

TUESDAY

As the New Hampshire primaries started, I was going to tweet about how the youth were rushing to the polls and somehow use this picture from our garden as a metaphor. (This tweet did not see the light of day.) 

On the way to the accountant, I remembered how I used to walk through Bryant Park every morning on my way to a job I detested. This park now feels like an old friend. 

This statue in front of the New York Public Library is another old friend ;)

This stretch of Seventh Avenue also used to be part of a different commute. 

WEDNESDAY

It finally stopped raining on Wednesday. One of the things I love about my Planet Fitness is that it has beautiful views from the treadmills and ellipticals.  

THURSDAY

Lately, I've been trying to find things to love about the Financial District -- where I work now in a much better job -- such as the afternoon light on these columns. I often think about Darlene Alderson when I'm walking around, which makes me feel a little optimistic, because she hacked the bank accounts of the richest people in the world and gave the money to literally everyone. (The show made this seem pretty easy?)

FRIDAY

On Friday I took my guitars to a 'guitar guy' to be set up. He works out of his apartment, which used to be on the Upper West Side but is now in the 140s, which meant I could walk home. I passed the Invisible Man sculpture and plaque in honor of Ralph Ellison: 'The very idea of being in New York was dreamlike ... ' 

SATURDAY

Saturday arrived sunny and cold, but with the orchids in bloom. 

Tremors in San Juan

On Friday afternoon, I found myself standing next to the Castillo San Felipe del Morro in Old San Juan. A few minutes earlier, it had been raining, but the sun was now breaking through, silhouetting the ancient battlement on the castle wall. The beauty of this scene was not completely unexpected -- after all, I was taking in a historic site on a Caribbean island, with warm breezes that smelled of flowers, the exact thing I had been hoping to find in the weeks and months leading up to this trip -- but it was still exhilarating and maybe a little jarring, in the way beautiful things can be when we find them so far removed from our daily lives. It's a reason to travel, to find these moments and preserve them, to remember them when they seem far away, to hope to find them again in the future. I extracted my phone from my pocket and -- after the fingerprint identification failed (twice) due to the wet screen -- entered my security code. I opened the camera app and held up the phone, taking shots until I captured one in which the sun was hidden but its light could still be seen, like a fading halo.

A day before, while confronting the need to pack, I had felt distracted, anxious, and impatient. Despite having mentally prepared myself for the task for the better part of a week, I was procrastinating. Stephen, under the impression that I was already done, had just given me a five-minute warning before he summoned a car to the airport, but I continued to be mired in distraction. I had gone in to the office that morning for a meeting and had emails and other loose ends to tie up. Somehow I had touched something on the subway home, which despite repeated washings had left my hand reeking of perfume or cologne, a small bane of my existence (along with cars). I wanted to take a nap with the cats, not leave them in the hands of the cat sitters (twice/day) so that we could spend a long weekend at a San Juan resort. Was this self-inflicted torture worth what was, in my mind, at this second, looming as a few days of imperialistic, manufactured relaxation?  

It was a moment, not uncommon for me, when I realized that I'm still not very good at expressing myself -- even to myself -- particularly if I sense that what I'm about to say or do might be perceived as irrational or "emotional," traits I had long ago learned to associate with effeminate, unmanly behavior. It's an association I strongly disavow now, but even after many years of refuting, it still exists within me and feels oddly dependable when I'm having doubts. Sometimes I wonder if this inability to permanently escape the past -- or this part of it -- has condemned me to chronic uncertainty, an incapacity to do anything inhabitual, let alone extraordinary, without a quavering sense of playing a role whose lines I haven't yet learned, of being a reluctant, judgmental participant in some of the best things life has to offer. I reminded myself that I wasn't going to war or to the moon, that it was good to have a reprieve from the daily grind. It was a long weekend in a beautiful part of the world, where I could expect to see new people and places. It was time to take a deep breath and step off the diving board.  

I threw some summer clothes and a post-9/11 shaving kit (ziplock bag) into a backpack. I shut down my laptop and made sure I had my charging cables. I ran downstairs, pausing briefly to say goodbye to each the cats. Stephen told me that the car was two minutes away. I carried our luggage to the sidewalk, and thirty seconds later, when the car arrived, put it into the trunk. Inside, I watched the drab afternoon city roll by until we were mired in the inevitable traffic jam on the Van Wyck, where I silently scrolled through Twitter, unable for once to complain about cars because I was in one. 

There were other, more objective reasons to feel anxious about a weekend in Puerto Rico. Earlier in the week, a swarm of earthquakes centered on the southern side of the island had leveled many buildings -- thousands had lost their homes -- and interrupted power; more problematic, the earthquakes showed no sign of abating. Would you want to visit New York City if you knew that Philadelphia was the epicenter of unpredictable seismic activity? We weren't sure it was such a good idea, but Stephen called the hotel and they had assured him that they were open for business; we checked the airline schedules and none of the flights into San Juan had been cancelled. Though we had trip insurance, it seemed cowardly to cancel. We hadn't taken a vacation in a few years and had never been to San Juan, which seemed like an ideal escape from New York: one direct flight and one cab ride to a city hotel where we could sit on the beach for a few days and snorkel without going on a boat. Since we were only going for four days, we didn't want to rent an AirBnB or a car. We wanted to go somewhere gay friendly, which contrary to what you might have read in the travel section of The Times is not always the case in the Caribbean. San Juan seemed like the best option. After Hurricane Maria, to say nothing of these earthquakes, Puerto Rico needed our tourist dollars. 

After our flight got in on Friday morning, we found a cab at the airport. When Stephen asked about the earthquake situation, the driver told us that the power in San Juan had sputtered out a few times, but was mostly on. More maddening to him was the psychological trauma of living in an earthquake zone, the way, every few hours, the ground shifted and the buildings began to shake. You might be in bed, he said, or walking out the door, or getting into your car, when the trembling began and you wondered if these seconds were the last you would ever know. He was less concerned for himself, he added, catching my eye in the rearview mirror, than for his daughter, who was only a few years old. For all he cared, he added with a laugh, his wife could stay under a pile of rubble, but not his child. I smiled benignly; it was understandable to say things you didn't quite mean in an active earthquake zone. In response, as if possibly feeling guilty about his earlier comment, he explained that he and his wife had recently separated; he didn't really mean her any harm, he said, but the feelings were still raw. Stephen and I both nodded, possibly encouraging him to go on, or at least not discouraging him; though we were a captive audience facing the prospect of a monologue we hadn't asked to hear, something about being in a taxi at the beginning of a vacation, while sleep-deprived and a little greasy from the plane, made us more forgiving than we would have been in New York City. Meanwhile, our driver was already explaining how, a few years earlier, he had held a much better job -- an office job with a good salary -- but that he had lost it not long after the hurricane, after which he had been forced to start driving a taxi. It was not a bad job for a younger person, he said -- maybe an artist or a musician -- or an older retiree, because it offered flexibility, but it was difficult for someone like him, used to making more money, to downgrade. Children were expensive! He felt compelled to work long hours to make up the difference in pay -- or some of it -- and his absence from home, he emphasized, had resulted in the fracturing of his marriage. He was working all the time, she was working almost as much, they were constantly exhausted, they began to view each with antipathy, as if each were the sole cause of the their collective problems. Put in those terms, he concluded, the separation, in retrospect, now seemed inevitable. It wasn't really anyone's fault, but his wife had made a bad situation worse by choosing to leave him for, of all people, his brother! Could you believe it? Still, it was probably for the best, he said, because his brother had more money than he did -- and to his credit, wasn't stingy about the daughter -- and the driver had recently moved in with a new girlfriend. Families were complicated, and perhaps this new arrangement was for the best. Besides the earthquakes, his biggest concern was Uber and Lyft, which were just starting to invade San Juan. Their drivers, he heard, made even less than he did. Really, what was wrong with the modern world? Somehow, he had circled back to a subject on which Stephen and I had a lot to say.   

As we commiserated, I looked out the window. We were driving on an elevated highway through a dense, urban landscape. The highway -- like the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, the Cross Bronx, and hundreds of others across the country and around the world -- appeared to be a classic example from the Robert Moses era, erected for the convenience of suburban drivers with no thought of how it would tear apart the fabric of the neighborhoods through which it passed. Many of the buildings -- most three or four stories tall -- were dilapidated and missing walls or windows; some were covered with graffiti. The driver confirmed that much of what had been damaged in the hurricane was still not repaired. The way things were going, he wasn't sure they ever would be. Maybe the earthquakes will finish what the hurricane started, he said with a morbid grin as we pulled off the highway. But as before, he seemed to reconsider his comment, which led him to conclude by offering a more earnest assessment: what's strange, he said, is that the earthquakes are so frequent that, when he considered the upheavals to which he had been subjected, they had begun to feel as if they were a part of him, somehow inextricably tied to the past and future of his own life, so that, as they happened, he wasn't sure if they were coming from inside or outside of him.

I felt a little nostalgic considering the ruins, including one right next to our hotel. I had spent many years living in and around urban squalor -- in Brooklyn, in the East Village, and in Washington Heights and Harlem -- and its slow but inexorable eradication from New York City seemed to symbolize the loss of some form of urban spirit; it wasn't quite artistic, but something rooted in entropy and a churning of physical space that makes art seem plausible or even necessary in ways that are impossible when everything has been converted into spreadsheet-ready capital or magazine-feature charm. I felt conflicted: I didn't want to romanticize poverty or the kind of institutional neglect that leads to it, nor -- at the same time -- was I opposed to many of the features commonly associated with gentrification: coffee shops, restaurants, grocery stores, and so on, the sorts of things I've often heard my neighbors in ungentrified neighborhoods lament not having easy access to, notwithstanding the fact that these enterprises tend to be the harbingers of exclusionary real estate. Maybe San Juan, I thought, was a middle ground, one that in New York City, where so many neighborhoods these days feel suffocated by money -- and its polished architectural/commercial manifestations -- was increasingly hard to find. New York was beginning to feel more and more like the internet, where the biggest brands -- Amazon and Apple and so forth, along with a substrata of corporations that are less recognizable but not so different in form and power -- are ubiquitous and immortal. Theirs is a world in which we are increasingly forced to live; it's a world without ruins and graffiti, where, because nothing ever dies, nothing can be born. 

After navigating the open-air lobby of our hotel, we checked in and took the elevator to our room on the seventh floor, where we unpacked and looked out the window at our partial ocean view. We hadn't been there more than a few minutes when I felt the room begin to tilt. Why is this building moving, I thought, despite having just spent a good percentage of the previous few hours and days contemplating earthquakes and the prospect of being in one. The mostly despicable but occasionally useful internet quickly confirmed that we were feeling the tremors of another fairly sizable earthquake (5.9) in the south. Stephen and I agreed that now would probably be a good time to go back downstairs for some on-the-ground activity; he wanted to relax in one of the lounge chairs and I wanted to go for a run.

I headed west, toward Old San Juan, which was maybe two or three miles away. After leaving the grounds of the hotel and jogging past a public beach that was mostly deserted on account of the not-exactly beach friendly weather, I was pleased to find a protected bike path (and sidewalk) of a kind that I dreamed about having installed on more streets in New York City. Between the ruins and bike lanes, I was already beginning to appreciate San Juan in ways that I hadn't expected to. Of course, my mood was also improved by virtue of having made it through the gauntlet of airline travel and realizing that now, finally, after the expectation and dread, I was here, doing exactly what I had been hoping to do, which was to see new things. I was also happy to be running; I had spent much of the past year recovering from nagging injuries but was finally back to a regular schedule. Though I wasn't close to being in the kind of shape necessary to run another race, there were moments when I could finally catch my breath and envision a return to form in a way that seemed feasible and exciting, as though I weren't getting older but had a newer version of myself waiting to emerge, if only I could find or create the right conditions. 

After reaching Old San Juan, I continued along the perimeter road until I reached a vast green field, at the end of which I could see the castle. I stopped to appreciate the view and the wonderful sense of feeling so small but privileged to witness this confluence of history and nature. The ground seemed to undulate; maybe, I thought, it had been formed by earthquakes. 

I resumed my run, working my way across the field and down a series of roads and staircases and tunnels to a path at the base of the fortress wall. The rock formations, strangely sculptural, seemed to pulse with a kind of power I wanted to somehow absorb or harness. It occurred to me that my hope for running -- of finding a new version of myself -- was equally applicable to other parts of my life. I had been working on a draft of a new novel for the better part of year; and though I was reasonably satisfied with its progress and confident that I would be able to finish a draft, I knew that I was more ambivalent about the process than I had been with my previous books, which were written in a frenzy of desperation, as if my future had depended on getting the words on a page and, somehow, out to a larger audience. Now, armed with the incontrovertible evidence that my future didn't depend on writing novels, I unexpectedly found myself contemplating other ventures with a sense of relief and excitement that, while mired in novel-writing -- and other difficulties of life -- I had forgotten was possible. Looking at these magnificent cliffs, I didn't care that I was no longer young. I was filled with ideas of what to do next. My thoughts were frantic, illogical, oxygen-deprived -- there were hard limits to what I could expect to accomplish at this point of my life -- but the exuberance was there, and I wanted to savor it.

And while the golden light slanted through through the clouds and turned the water to hammered bronze, I felt as though I had already found something important, which I soon realized -- as I continued to think about it -- actually had nothing to do with running faster or finishing a book or writing a song or finally figuring out what to say on Twitter. The future I wanted, and which now felt within my grasp, was one in which I stopped thinking about my life in terms of benchmarks, particularly the competitive kind that I had spent so much of my past using to present a more acceptable version of myself to the world -- and to myself -- when I felt uncomfortable with the actual version, to the extent I could even say what the actual version was. Life in the modern world is inherently competitive; it felt good to realize that, in many ways, I had been making it worse, which meant that I could also make it better.  

Whether by coincidence or fate, I had reached a section of the waterfront populated by feral cats. They moved into and out of the rocks and bushes like phantoms, with only one or two stopping to regard me with an expression that seemed to fall somewhere between mild curiosity, ambivalence, and disdain. Despite living only feet from a violent sea, they were not afraid. I liked how they looked at me for a second or two before turning to something else, maybe an itch that needed a lick, maybe a sound from one of their neighbors, maybe something otherworldly in the gauzy light, another spirit only they could see. 

Back at the hotel, I found Stephen upstairs in our room. After spending a few minutes dozing in a hammock, he had been forced inside by one of the rain squalls. When I told him I was thinking about going for a swim at the beach -- one of my favorite things to do after a run -- he said that high winds had led to the closure of the hotel beach, but that the pool might still be open.  

Down at the pool, everyone was pretending it was warmer and less windy than it really was. It seemed like a good strategy. We commandeered some chairs and and positioned them at an angle to best enjoy the sun, which in the past few minutes had reappeared, quickly warming the scene, as if we were all in a giant toaster oven. I decided to go in, and was not unhappy: the water, neither too warm or too cold, added to the pleasant numbness I felt from the run. As I slid down the wall, I remembered how, just one day earlier, I had been stuck in traffic on the Van Wyck. I thought about everything I had seen and felt on my run and wondered if I was really capable of changing, or if these thoughts were merely vacation thoughts, the kind of thing everyone felt as they ran their fingers under the falling water and let their eyes gaze over the infinity horizon of the pool.  

After I dried off, Stephen and I walked to a small pier and looked at the ocean, which was rough. The forecast called for increasing winds over the next three days, which meant we probably wouldn't be snorkeling, or even sitting on the beach. We didn't mind. It felt good to be away from New York. In fact, it was something to celebrate. The Hilton Caribe was famous for having invented the piña colada during the Mad Men heyday of the hotel. If I were learning this fact on an airport billboard, I'm sure I would have rolled my eyes, but now we were here, and I was trying to be more open-minded. Stephen asked if I wanted to get one, and I definitely did.

Later that night, somewhat more inebriated, we returned to this same spot along the edge of the water. We stepped back to avoid getting sprayed by the breaking waves. The tops of the palm trees whipped, while the trunks remained stoic, unmoving in the fierce winds. 

The next day, with the hotel beach still closed, we walked across a small bridge to the Condado, where the beach was open but not crowded. It was nice to feel the sand, to dip our feet in the water. We watched the surfers in front of us and enjoyed knowing that, behind us, a good percentage of our fellow beachgoers were gay like us, and, like us, not sorry about it.  

It was a little intoxicating to take everything and everyone in. The sand and the rock formations reminded us that we were at a beach, while the graffiti reminded us that we were in a city. 

The flowers reminded us that we were in the tropics. 

Over the next few days, time passed very slowly and very quickly, as it does while traveling. We acclimated to the tremors. At the hotel, we periodically joined the other guests by the pool for a few minutes until the skies turned gray and the rain, first in drips and then in sheets, sent us fleeing for cover. Inside, we watched the palm trees shake while hats and towels tumbled across the patios. We made more excursions beyond the hotel. I ran east and then south, to the Central Park de San Juan, and I looped around the Laguna del Condado. We found a new favorite restaurant (Paulina Escanes Gourmandize: look it up), also in the Condado, where we returned three times (twice for dinner and once for brunch, after being told -- accurately -- by our server that they had the world's best pancakes, although the same could be said of the TORTA de ELOTE ESCANES and maybe ten other things on the menu). While we ate, we sat outside with our fellow diners and watched pedestrians -- again, a mix of tourists and non-tourists -- parading and in some cases sashaying up and down Ashford Avenue. One second the skies were clear and in the next everyone rushed off the streets to cower for a few minutes under the awning. These scenes possessed a kind of festive camaraderie, something that, until now, I associated with countries of the Mediterranean and the movies of Almodóvar, and did not at all associate with the United States, where we labored under a form superpower misery that has infected almost every aspect of our lives. 

On our final day, we went back to Old San Juan, where we spent time walking through the narrow streets. It was again something of a revelation because I hadn't expected to find old Europe in Old San Juan. (I know: I could have figured it out in ten seconds on the internet, but even so, no matter how good the camera, there's a difference when you see something IRL.) As beautiful as it was, the neighborhood didn't feel like a museum piece or a shopping mall; there were touristy sections -- particularly near the water, where the cruise ships docked -- but most of it seemed to be free of the upscale venues that have invaded similar cities around the world. Or, even if I was wrong -- and it seemed likely that someone from San Juan would probably roll their eyes to hear me touting the 'authenticity' of Old San Juan, much the way I do when I hear tourists say the same about the West (or East) Village -- it was easy to pretend. 

We found a city square where a tall statue of Christopher Columbus seemed ripe for reconsideration. I remembered how, in New York City, there was an initiative to replace statues of problematic white men from history with more diverse people from history, and how I, when this initiative was announced, had proposed (via Twitter) that the statue of Christopher Columbus at 59th Street be replaced with a statue of Donika Roem, who had just been elected to office in Virginia. It still seemed like a good idea to me.  

Other artwork, such as this mural, struck me as far more beautiful and less politically problematic than the Columbus statue.  

We were enthralled by the blue cobblestones -- or 'adoquines' -- which we learned were originally cast from the iron slag used as ballast in the ships that went back and forth (carrying sugar to Spain) in the sixteenth century. 

I had a song from Titanic Rising (Weyes Blood) going through my head. It was only in the past year or so that I had started listening to new music -- or restarted, after a long break during which I focused on opera -- and something about this record had captured me in a way I had forgotten possible. I was spellbound by the singing and songwriting, the lush arrangements, the operatic expression of conflicting emotions, the allusions to 1970s soft-rock classics. In musical form, it encapsulated so much of everything I wanted to say about grief and hope, but hadn't realized until I heard these songs, if that makes any sense.     

I had also been listening to the earlier Weyes Blood records, which was interesting for slightly different reasons. Namely, I could see (hear) traces of what was to follow in these earlier songs, but at the same time, the music created a trajectory -- from experimental drone to orchestrated pop -- I never could have predicted had I not know what was to come. If that makes any sense.  

I tried to picture these streets in a larger historical context. What had they looked like fifty years ago, and what would they look like fifty years from now? Were they still alive? Were they still evolving? There were no answers other than to ask the same thing about myself: was I still alive in any but the most literal sense of the term? Was I still evolving? 

Another cat we met seemed to have none (and all) of the answers to any question I could possibly ask. 

As did this pair of gods, frozen in time while slowly rusting in front of a beautifully decaying wall.  

Maybe it was enough to acknowledge that our lives did not comprise one circle but an uncountable number of smaller ones, constantly growing or expiring so that others could take their place. (But also: let's not ignore the fact that this statue is very well endowed.)

Back at the water, I followed a woman's gaze up to the sky and felt the ground tremble. Another aftershock, I thought, until I remembered our cab driver, at which point I reconsidered. Was this tremor coming from far away or somewhere inside of me? I wasn't sure, but to ask the question made me hope that, for a few moments, I had captured exactly what I came here to find. 

It Was a Hard Week, Let's Go to the Heather Garden

As you would expect in early February, most of the park is still asleep, which makes the flowering heather that much more beautiful, almost surreal. 

There's no snow this year, but the dried oak leaves and bare trees are a reminder of the season. 

As are the low, gray skies. 

I don't know exactly why I feel calm and hopeful when I'm walking through the heather. It's not like anything has changed anywhere else, and it's not like I've forgotten the rest of the world. 

Viewed by itself, a single plant is often scraggly and unkempt, lonely in the hard dirt. 

But a patchwork -- flowering in shades of red and white and purple -- is reminder of how a transformative landscape is always greater than the sum of its parts.   

One Night in the TWA Hotel

Our hotel room at the TWA Hotel at JFK overlooked a runway, which meant we were only a few hundred yards from the many airplanes lined up for takeoff. It was strange to take this in without any of the usual pressures and indignities of postmodern travel: there were no other people in the room, nobody coughing, crying, or laughing, nobody checking their phone for the latest gate change, nobody fighting with an airline employee, nobody ordering airport food from a tablet, nobody settling in for the night on three lounge chairs under a coat. The collective nightmare of the terminal had been replaced by a serene chamber in which you could suspend all knowledge of the hordes and their corporate overlords, in which you could believe that the last fifty or so years hadn't happened, or in which you had somehow stepped into a different universe filled with order and tranquility. 'I could get used to this,' I said, thumbing through a LIFE magazine from 1963.   

The furniture and design of the room added to this surreal effect. Stephen and I began taking notes: would it be feasible to cover at least 30 percent of the walls in our house with this vertical slotted wood? Paint seemed so predictable; wallpaper was even worse. The lamp reminded me of a similar model -- albeit a desk lamp -- my oldest brother had in his bedroom in the house where we grew up in the early 1970s, when I was a young kid and he was a teenager. I understood that I was in the grips of a nostalgic frenzy, but I didn't care: it felt good to be assuaged by these relics and reproductions from a past that felt remote but not unlived. I wanted it to last indefinitely. 

Eventually, Stephen and I roused ourselves from our stupor and explored the former terminal. Every curve, every step, and every tile had -- as far as I could tell -- been perfectly restored. I had forgotten what it felt like to be awakened and stimulated by architecture. This  building, it seemed, was the opposite of the surveillance/luxury nightmare that is Hudson Yards, for example, or even the Oculus, which though open to all still feels like a cathedral to capitalism. Here, although the main room was open, there were many pools of space -- in, around, and under the staircases and platforms -- that, in contrast to the terminals we have now, offered a sense of privacy and refuge. There was no barrage of advertising or purchasing opportunities.

The hallways were long and devoid of any branding, except for the TWA red, which, given that TWA is dead, added to the nostalgia. Imagine if, every time you went to a new place, you were able to walk through a passage like this, with thick padded carpet and blank walls. Imagine if you were able to walk through a hallway like this and board a plane. Why would you ever care about anything else? In retrospect, this sense of escape -- when combined with a relentless individualism or selfishness -- seems like more a problem than a solution. 

The illusion of living in the past only began to break down when we went to a cocktail lounge that had been crafted into the interior of an old plane. Like everything at this hotel -- and every upscale hotel -- the drinks were expensive. It was a reminder that this experience -- by which I mean an immersion into a stimulating, optimistic architectural environment or museum set from the past -- was beyond the reach of most, which is an economic reality of the society we've built over the last fifty years. 

The illusion was further shattered by an uncomfortable proximity to the people who can afford this kind of experience, by which I mean the British man sitting next to us who was mansplaining the benefits of a leader like Margaret Thatcher to his American female companion who had suggested her preference for Elizabeth Warren; or the group of investors who spoke of football scores and the best resorts in the Caribbean (with one criteria: to make their demanding wives happy).

Listening to these conversations, I had to wonder: were we also horrible, oblivious members of a privileged class of people? Granted, we were only staying one night, and it was a bit of splurge, but how do you draw a line in these times? My sense is that if it were actually drawn -- using any number of metrics -- a lot of us would be surprised to find ourselves on the wrong side of it. It was, I realized after we left the cramped bar, more comfortable to view people from a distance, to against immerse ourselves into a nostalgic haze, to imagine that, by virtue of being in this building, we were aligned in collective our desire to make society modern and equitable, accessible and hopeful. 

The next morning, the hotel, which no longer serves as an actual terminal, looked a little sad from across the road. It was not very big, and the vintage cars in the parking lot made it look like a carnival after the lights are off and the tents have been taken down. 

I reminded myself to remember the glowing passageways, a symbol of the possibility we all need of moving from somewhere old to somewhere new.