Matthew Gallaway

The Politics of Evasion

1. Lately I've been running without a watch, which raises an increasingly relevant question: namely, if you run without recording the time, pace, distance, heart rate, and calories burned, have you even run at all? 

2. I want to say the answer is yes, of course I ran, but there's a part of me that, over that past decade or so, has been conditioned to answer in the negative, that if I do something that isn't somehow monitored, tracked, and measured, than I haven't done it at all. 

3. Exercise has been ruined by this kind of data-tracking obsession, although I'm trying to resist; book reading is another area where I'm trying not to record what I've read. Would you believe that sometimes I read books and don't rate them on Goodreads or Amazon, or discuss them with a book club, or even Tweet about them? It's true. I check many books out of the New York Public Library, read them, and return them without comment. I'm trying not to feel guilty about it. 

4. Sometimes I miss the garden in the winter, because gardening is an activity that hasn't been completely colonized by apps and digital performance. If I were rating the beauty of the snow on the orange dogwood leaves, however, I would give it five stars. 

5. It's more fun to rate things that can't be bought or sold, like watching a wild gray panther pad across the rocks of a snowy mountain range. 

6. This decade was all about digital tracking; the next one is going to be about disappearing without a trace. 

 

Every Landscape Is Political

1. As I walked through the park, which in late fall had become a comforting assortment of browns, greens, and grays, I tried to imagine the mindset of a conservative. From what I've gathered, there are millions of them, and their representatives and allies are currently holding the most important jobs in the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of our federal government. Many more can be found running things at the state and local level. But what do conservatives think about as they go through their days? Do they not encounter the same problems as other non-conservative people? Do they not wait for hours on hold with their banks and insurance companies and cable television/internet-service monopolies? Do they not have high co-pays and deductibles? Do they not feel the water on their ankles and knees when the tide comes in or when there's a rainstorm? If so, what is their response? What are the solutions they envision to the problems they encounter?   

2. In some respects, the answers are obvious enough: they would deport, incarcerate, or eliminate anyone who wasn't white or straight (and many who were) or whose net worth fell below a certain threshold TBD; they would allow businesses to operate completely unfettered by environmental, financial, labor, or antitrust regulations; they would build up the army to prevent other countries from invading our lands (or cyber lands) with their armies and to protect companies operating outside of our borders. They would drive everywhere in their Tesla Cybertucks. But then what? In short, what does the future look like for a conservative?  

3. For a test case, I decided to focus on climate change. As far as I can tell, there seems to be one conservative answer, which is to gamble that we can 1) find another planet after we've depleted this one, or 2) engineer a technical solution that would restore some semblance of climate stability. As for the first option, I suppose it's possible, given the size of the universe, that the earth is merely one of an uncountable number of planets, the destruction of which is no more consequential than, say, crushing a little piece of styrofoam. As for the second, it will require a lot of technological wizardry -- and we've seen how well that's going with the internet -- and it also implies a kind of satisfaction with the status quo, namely that if we could 'fix' climate change, we could continue to drive (and park) and fly and consume indefinitely without any serious consequences. 

4. I was beginning to worry that our conservative rulers (who can be found in both parties) were incapable of acknowledging the implicit relationship between the passage of time and change.  

5. Here's what I could say for sure: there are parts of the park that come to life, even as the rest of it prepares for winter. 

6. And the colors are perfect, for all who are willing to behold. 

 

The Architecture of Elm Trees

1. When I got out of the subway station at Amsterdam and 163rd, the sky was filled with pigeons. Perched on the tops of the surrounding buildings, they circled in waves over the intersection of Saint Nicholas and Amsterdam, which served as a kind of parade grounds for the birds. 

2. Earlier that day, I had gone to my office, which is in the same neighborhood as one of the buildings regularly featured in Mr. Robot. I think one of the things that keeps people in New York City is the sense that your life isn't quite real because so often you pass buildings and streets that you've seen on television. As you walk around doing the same things as everyone else -- going back and forth to work, maybe going out for lunch or dinner or drinks -- this odd familiarity and dislocation gives you the feeling that somehow you're secretly on television, too, performing for an imaginary audience, which makes you feel important, maybe a little famous. One thing television never gets right, though, is how long it takes to get from one part of the city to another. In a recent episode of Mr. Robot, Elliot, running away from the 'Dark Army,' sprints into Central Park at 57th Street and two seconds later is running down the steps toward the Bethesda Fountain, and then a few seconds after that is escaping onto a bus on 110th Street. A real show about New York would spend most of every episode sitting on a subway in a tunnel waiting to pull into the next station, but I guess that wouldn't make for very compelling drama.  

3. Back in the park, I found another kind of comforting illusion, the kind where the rest of world doesn't exist. 

4. Looking at the red berries, my mind returned to the recent season of The Great British Bake Off, in which -- several times -- Prue Leith said something along the lines that blueberries have no flavor. It was a potentially alarming idea, given that I've long considered blueberries to be one of my favorite kinds of fruit. I guess they don't have a ton of flavor, but I think they fall on a very subtle line between sweet and tart, and that subtlety is part of the appeal. Maybe the problem is not blueberries, but that we live in unsubtle times. 

5. I always forget how much I love this ancient birch tree until the leaves have fallen off. 

6. If I were running the world, I would shut down every other block in the city to cars and instead have a series of narrow paths lined with garden plots.  

7. The elm trees also look impressive without their leaves. Over the past 100 years, something like 50 million elm trees in North America have died from Dutch Elm Disease. You have to wonder if our country would still be falling apart if these trees were still around, entrancing people with their magical branches. If something vanishes without 'impacting the GDP' has it even existed? 

8. It was time to leave the park, at least for now. I said goodbye to the heather garden, which looked like a tropical reef. 

9. Like the pigeons, I continued my infinite circles around Washington Heights, always under the watch of the George Washington Bridge. 

November Views of the George Washington Bridge

1. After the resumption of standard time, the afternoons became very short and the shadows very long.

2. The light was disorienting but beautiful.

3. I tried not to think about anything except the air, the sun, and my hope that the media would accept the fact that a majority of Democratic voters support the kind of institutional change espoused by the two most progressive candidates, and not the incremental change represented by the other candidates. There is, I thought, only one bridge to the future. And then I stopped thinking about anything but the air and the sun.

4. I parked my bike and walked to the steps, which offered a better view.

5. In the distance, I could see a bridge or the shadow of a bridge, behind which the sun was sinking fast.

Some News about Moss and Ferns

1. It rained most of the week, but on Friday -- the first day of November -- fall finally arrived.

2. Branches and birch leaves littered the ground. 

3. Red berries dotted the miniature cotoneaster. 

4. The ferns grew pale and stretched toward the sun. 

5. The toad lilies hovered like a flock of birds over ragged leaves. 

6. It was easy to pretend that the entire world had stopped, frozen in the sun.  

The Unicorn Is Killed and Brought to the Castle

1. The unicorn tapestries at the Cloisters were made roughly 500 years ago by artists who are unknown to us today but who were -- as my mother pointed out when she visited a few years ago -- probably women. On a more recent visit, I found myself asking what the unicorn represented, which is apparently a common question because the museum has a sign devoted to it. I peered down to read the sign and found the answer -- maybe the unicorn represented Christ, or maybe love -- unsatisfying. It seemed obvious to me that the makers of this tapestry had anticipated the state of democracy in the current era and had created an allegory of its capture by an an aristocratic elite who, in addition to being rather grotesque in their appearance were completely oblivious not only to the pain they caused this miraculous animal but also to the beauty of their surroundings. 

2. 'Should we lower taxes today or slaughter endangered animals? My wife gave me this stupid spear for my birthday and keeps asking me when I'm going to use it.'

'I find myself in a strange conundrum. I'm bored by everything money can buy and yet I find myself craving nothing but money.' 

'I'm not sure how I'm going to live for the twelve to fifteen months it's going to take before Season 3 of Succession drops.' 

3. In this scene, a bunch of Republicans (and, sadly, many Democrats) are lol-ing at one of the Democratic presidential candidates who's trying to win over 'the Establishment' without realizing he has a javelin running through his head, a scene made even funnier (and sadder) when you realize it's the Republicans who inserted the javelin into this desperate thirst-trap of a creature. Even 500 years ago, the anonymous women of Flanders understood the futility of 'centrism,' of trying to appease those in power by addressing them in their own terms, and how such gestures not only make you look ridiculous but betray the ranks of those you purport to represent. 

4. Here we see the fate of democracy in the current era, at least as it was foreseen 500 years ago by those whose fingers were no doubt calloused after spending thousands of hours weaving dyed silk and wool. They saw the future and understood that there's no joking around when it comes to killing something whose sublime beauty may be undeniable but whose existence threatens the elite and powerful. 

5. At best a unicorn may be kept captive, but the moment it strays beyond these narrow confines, the horns will blow and the dogs -- and their masters -- will give chase. 

Notes on Chrysanthemums

1. As they've done for the past few years, the tiger lilies bloomed, piercing the green torpor of the autumn garden with miniature spotted fireworks.

2. We also bought mums, which were cheap, garish, disposable, environmentally destructive, and -- somehow -- perfect. 

3. I kept thinking about the tapestries of mums I saw covering the medians on Park Avenue. I was happy to have seen them, but I was also happy not to have seen them more than once. 

4. I felt less conflicted about the October light, which every afternoon for about forty minutes slanted through the gap in the adjacent apartment buildings. 

5. If I can, I always try to make it outside for part of this small performance.   

6. To watch the leaves glow for a few minutes is comforting; it's like when you wake up in the middle of the night and, after looking at the clock, realize that you still have five or six hours to go, at which point, filled with relief, you roll over and go back to sleep. Except here it's the garden that's waking up and rolling over.  

7. There was a mystery this week: someone was digging holes, exposing the bulbs. I replaced the dirt and covered the area with bricks to deter future excavations. 

8. We speculated that it was probably a squirrel, since cats don't typically dig so deep. 

9. Defying expectations, our orchid also continued to bloom. I wondered if it was happier outside than inside, or if it was just trying to make the best of what time remained, knowing that winter isn't that far away.   

10. In a way, life seemed easier -- less complicated -- for the mums, which weren't fighting anything. After a few days of showing off, they were already beginning to fade. 

The End of the World Has Beautiful Light

1. North of the bridge, it's possible to imagine Manhattan before -- or after -- anyone lived here.  

2. The October light slants through the leaves to create grottos in the understory. Here, it's easy to believe in strange things. 

3. Was this path of asters here last week? I couldn't remember. 

4. Higher up, the sky is layered with the clouds and mists illuminated by a faraway sun, as if we're on a different planet. 

5. In most other places, it would never cross my mind to think about having wings of stained glass, or being covered by polka dots, like some creation of Kusama. 

6. I fantasize about ripping up just ten of the six hundred Central Parks (in terms of equivalent space) devoted to parking in New York City and replacing them with fields of heather. 

7. South of the bridge, cars and highways circle madly under a hard blue sky. There's an old walking bridge I haven't figured out how to access, or if it even goes anywhere. 

Leaves of Glass

1. One day it was summer, the next it was fall. Feeling overwhelmed as usual by the ongoing passage of time, I went to the park, where I discovered that leaves had started falling and were gathering on the path.

2. The cool air was a relief. I had enjoyed the 'zombie summer' of the previous few weeks, but I had been feeling a lot of pressure as I confronted unusual weather, especially when it was the opposite of catastrophic. Were the warm days evidence of climate change? I knew it was wrong to conflate weather and climate, but whatever, I was doing it: how could I not, given that we were enduring one of the hottest years on record. In any event, I felt guilty, but maybe not that guilty. I couldn't hold myself responsible for the weather (or climate), but at the same time, I was an American during an unprecedented era of material consumption and greenhouse-gas emission, which made me relatively guilty (even if I didn't own a car). 

3. Anyway, I wasn't sure I had ever seen these orange flowers before, but they looked amazing against the perfect blue sky (and brought to mind the Huysmans passage about blue and orange -- in stripes -- being the perfect color combination to reflect alternating states of mania and reflection).

4. Or even if I wasn't guilty, to ponder the question added to the white noise of denial-and-admit (or reckon) that I think is required to participate in today's society. It's hard to live a peaceful, contemplative life if, whenever you step back and consider the state of the world, you have no choice, after taking all of the variable into account, but to conclude that we're seriously fucking things up. I'm not saying we are or we aren't (actually, I'm saying we are), but in either case, we've arrived at a point when there's a need to admit (or reckon) or deny, the former accompanied by either a demoralizing, party-killing futility (hi!) or nauseating optimism (anyone who decides to have biological children or devote themselves 24/7 to political activism), the latter (meaning those in denial) by a bottomless fury at those perceived to be admitting (or reckoning), seeking to lift the curtains on your denial and change the way things operate, which if you're already in denial about how fucked up things are seems like a lot of unnecessary hassle and risk (this camp's permanent members include Republicans and, increasingly, the liberal NIMBYs who protest things like high-density housing and bike lanes). My point is that there's no frame of reference these days that isn't accompanied by a lot of trauma, and that it's not really possible to exist between these extremes, although it is possible to flip from one to the other depending on the time of day and the context in which the calculus is unfolding.

5. There are moments when I feel like I can escape the admit/reckon/denial dilemma: most of them occur when I'm watching Terrace House walking through the park.   

6. I will always love standing in front of the heather and thinking about Heathcliff and Catherine on the moors. 

7. It's not that time stops at the park, but while I'm here, the pressure to define myself in relation to the rest of the world -- and the corresponding need 'to do something about it' -- relents.

8. For example, I stopped thinking about how the NYFD has recently started using the sidewalks on my block as a parking lot and, how, if I wanted to stop this illegal parking (or make the attempt), I would have to endure hours and hours of community board and police precinct meetings, discussions and lobbying with my neighbors, and fighting with trolls on social media. And that's just ten parking spaces that could easily be reassigned to the street. And how, despite all this effort, I would probably fail unless/until we have a new mayor and city council who decides to enforce laws about not parking on sidewalks. 

9. Or maybe it's not that I've stopped thinking about it; it's that, for a few minutes, I'd rather watch the shadows of the clouds as they ripple over the hammered steel of the river.  

Impeach Most of the World (Except City Parks and Terrace House)

1. After arriving from the train station, my cousin and I discussed things she might like to do while visiting the city. She asked if I had ever been to Fort Tryon Park, which apparently wasn't too far away. It's where the Cloisters are, she said. I told her that I was vaguely familiar with it :)  

2. It was a little disorienting to walk through the park with someone else. We found places that seemed completely new to me. Some were completely untamed, like this hillside smothered in vines. I feared for some of the smaller conifers, whose branches were wrapped in tendrils. Another symptom (or symbol) of climate change.  

3. My cousin confided to me that she was reckoning with life in her early forties, when so many of the opportunities she had taken for granted in her twenties and thirties seemed to be on the verge of disappearing (and not just the biological ones). Imagine what it's like being fifty, I said, unhelpfully, although in fact it had been a relief to let go of just about everything I had once envisioned doing twenty or thirty or forty years ago. I never saw myself aimlessly walking through the park, for example, and here I was, doing something I now consider the apex of a good life. 

4. We spent a few seconds talking about impeachment and our wish that the process could be expanded to cover so much more that was unsatisfactory if not in all cases criminal. In the political realm, it meant every member of the Republican party and everyone who had voted for them (starting with Nixon or maybe Goldwater or even Eisenhower for his administration's shameful and largely forgotten persecution of homosexuals), along with many of the Democrats, too. Maybe we should impeach the two-party system, my cousin suggested, to which I added dysfunctional parliament and the many forms of autocracy to the list. Actually, my cousin said, we could include every major governmental system in the world right now. Would we impeach the U.N.? Probably. Why not. Could we impeach time? What about periods of our lives that, as we reflect upon them now, fill us with regret? Could we impeach ourselves? It seemed like a good idea, and one that many religions had engrained into their rituals, which did not spare them from the impeachment tribunal we were planning to convene. How about obnoxious emails and robocalls? My cousin, who had already described heterosexuality as her 'cross to bear,' added straight men to the list. Impeach all of them, basically. Had we gone too far? Really, what or who wouldn't we impeach if given the power? 

5. For starters, we agreed on the park, and whatever forces of nature and humanity had miraculously aligned to bring it into existence. Libraries (in theory) would not be impeached, though some of them could surely benefit from some critical self-examination. I had been agitated for the past few weeks since I had looked up gay literature on the NYPL ebook app and had failed to find 'Dancer from the Dance' on the list, while noting several other titles that would be good candidates for impeachment. I remembered Terrace House, the one television show that I would never impeach. What other show spends entire episodes with two people discussing self-actualization and cascading emotions? My only regret watching Terrace House is that I don't speak Japanese. 

6. And then we were done speculating about the condition of the real world, because a magical one had already taken its place.