Matthew Gallaway

The Magic of Hills (Week Twenty-One)

This morning I went for a long run, something I try to do once a week. Recently I've started going on a new route, which entails going south, mostly on Riverside Drive and West End Avenue, to 34th Street, before I turn around and run back along the river. I like this route because it feels like I'm mostly running downhill from Washington Heights to midtown, and then flat along the river, which leaves only a half-mile hill at the end (very steep, but relatively short). I've done this route in reverse and find it deadly because it feels like you're running uphill the last seven miles. Logically, I know that the total ascent is the same regardless of the direction -- it's a loop -- but somehow I'm certain that the geography is mutating as I run across it, which makes one direction better than the other. Or at least that's how it seems when I'm running (the right direction), when the world somehow feels more fluid and beautiful. My favorite moment is when the path going north cuts back to the river and you can see the bridge six miles away, somehow beckoning and warning. Six miles at this juncture can seem like a long way but somehow it gradually disappears if you keep going, drifting past the piers and the park benches and the other people who are out looking tired or not tired, which I sometimes think after twenty-one weeks of lockdown are the only states of being we have left.   

This week it rained a lot, which in a way was a relief because it's been so hot. But I'm still tired of the humidity. I sometimes worry that August will be as bad as July. 

Yesterday on my run I took a picture of the United States as we head into the final stretch of the presidential campaign. 

For some reason, our hellibores didn't bloom this year but they have gigantic leaves. One of these days I want to go out and find (small) dinosaurs foraging in the hellibores. 

Clio, the youngest of our three cats, is the only one who wasn't deterred by the rain. She's also constantly hoping to find small dinosaurs. 

This morning, I passed someone swimming north along the banks of the Hudson. They also seemed tired -- each stroke a slow clawing motion (and they had a small buoy tied to their waist?) -- but they were determined. I couldn't imagine swimming, especially after all the rain we've had, which means any runoff from the sewage system flows directly in the river, untreated. But it would be nice to go into the water, especially in this heat. Someday, I thought, when the city stops wasting billions of dollars on policing and starts spending it on upgrading our sewer system (among a million other pressing needs), I might venture into the Hudson, but for now, I'll just imagine it when I run past the beach. 

Cardigan (Week Twenty)

I've been thinking about something the governor said last week in response to a question about taxing billionaires. I wasn't paying close attention, so some of these figures might be off, but the idea was that a relatively small number of billionaires could be taxed quite heavily in order to close a $20 billion deficit that New York State now faces. Cuomo thought it was hilarious: 'If we taxed billionaires like that,' he said, 'there wouldn't be any billionaires left!' Sometimes people are so used to looking at the world through their own lens -- while assuming that the world they have always known represents the right way to do things, usually by way of their having acquired power in it -- that it doesn't occur to them that an idea they find ridiculous would, if implemented, actually be an improvement. 

This week the park was an oasis on my morning runs, which because of the hot, humid weather continued to fall on the (self-inflicted) torture side of the spectrum. But even when I'm dying, I always feel better running through the park; something about being with the trees and the flowers makes the rest of the world and its billionaires seem far away. 

One of the nice things about living uptown is that (I'm pretty sure), unlike the rest of Manhattan, it's free of billionaires. It makes me wonder what Cuomo would say if he visited. 'What's wrong with this place? Where are all my billionaires?' 

This week Taylor Swift release a new album called 'Folklore,' which made me think of one of my favorite Husker Du songs of the same name. My knowledge of Taylor Swift comes mostly from watching Terrace House, which featured at least two of her songs as themes for different seasons of the show. A few years ago, I surprised one of my nieces (a big TS fan) by singing along with her to 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.' So far I've only listened to one song from her new record -- 'Cardigan' -- which more than anything made me wish I could crawl through our piano bench and end up in a cool river in the middle of a forest. Maybe one day I'll hear it on Terrace House.  

Somehow I've reached a stage of my life where I'm incapable of appreciating mass American culture except when filtered through mass Japanese culture (or maybe just through Terrace House). Terrace House is the invisible audience I think about when I work on one of my own songs: I ask myself if it (or, more likely, five-fifteen seconds of it) could ever be used on Terrace House, and while I'm sure the practical answer is 'not in a million years' it feels good to imagine. Life goes on and our dreams evolve. Anyway, I was inspired by Taylor Swift to also write a song called 'Cardigan,' but from the vantage point of saying goodbye to the cardigan instead of *being* the cardigan (as in her song). I think a lot (especially in lockdown) about saying goodbye to things I've grown attached to; something like an old sweater, or maybe the metaphorical version of an old sweater. The spirit of these reflections is not just melancholy: to be aware of a looming goodbye can also help to make the present, while we still possess this thing, seem more valuable. I think a big part of life as an adult is learning how to balance the dread of death (in its many forms) with the pleasures of life. (If that makes sense.) Here's the song: 

And here's a link. 

Production notes (***New Feature***): Recorded and mixed on Cubasis (for iOS). I was happy to use my acoustic guitar, which is a very old (circa 1930) Martin. It's not always easy to record in this context but I think the tone came through nicely (I doubled the finger picking part). The electric guitar is a Fender Telecaster Custom from 1972, which IMO always sounds great. So far I haven't found a guitar distortion setting/plug-in I like in any electronic context. (Send recommendations!) Will it ever not be too soon to use a synthesized flute on the long outro of a song? Probably, but I couldn't resist. I would love to be able a record a real tambourine but all my attempts sounded like garbage, so for now the electronic version will have to suffice :) 

Be wide awake. 

 

Will July Ever End (Week Nineteen)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Air That I Breathe (Week Eighteen)

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

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

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

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

It's also been a good year for echinacea. 

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

Here's a link. 

Sleep, silent angel, go to sleep. 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stone Against My Palms (Week Sixteen)

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Stone Against My Palms'

Down to the pines, into the sea

Stone against my palms, skinned at the knees

Pain is a salve, wire wraps around a heart

Dream away, dream away a life

The sun came out to kill, the air was still

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

 

Cone Flowers and Astilbes and Gay Pride (Week Fifteen)

This week, the fifteenth of the lockdown, I was reminded that high humidity is the worst kind of running weather. Am I literally dying is a question that crossed my mind many times as I staggered up a hill that, in the past,* I would have glided up and over without a second thought. But it still felt good to reach the top, where I stopped to admire the cone flowers, just making their entrance onto the garden stage. I like how these flowers look like badminton birdies. Or maybe they're (also) called 'shuttlecocks' (?) as per an Amazon page I just found that had a 'Customer Question and Answer' that made me laugh. 

Q: May these be used in the pool?

A: Could give to your cat to play with.

By Amazon Customer June 14th, 2020.

*two weeks ago

Someone was apparently (heroically?) spending their lockdown providing hilarious, nonsensical answers to customer questions about obscure items on Amazon. I wondered if there were many people doing this, and if they traded the best answers with each other. It sounded like fun. (In theory.) Or maybe I could find some people to play badminton with. I had always loved playing badminton as a kid. Badminton would be a good Phase Two pandemic sport; you could play with a mask and keep physically distanced. I felt confident that our society would be a better place if we replaced our obsession with football/basketball/baseball/hockey/race-car driving/video games with badminton.  

Like wouldn't it be great if, in a hundred years, the history books said something along the lines of, 'In the course of emerging from the pandemic, the United States, after instituting a very progressive taxation system and outlawing professional sports leagues (and cruise ships), developed a national obsession for amateur badminton. As cities closed their streets to automobiles in lieu of more environmentally friendly forms of urban transportation, many cities -- in addition to replacing private automobile storage with trees and gardens and park benches -- erected badminton courts.' And maybe shuffleboard courts, too.  

Maybe this was the community I needed to find, but I knew I would never look. I didn't really care about badminton. Or shuffleboard. One of the things I've accepted about myself is that I'll never be a very social person. Most of my earliest memories involve being terrified of people, but I learned -- or was taught -- to overcome that fear. For a long time, I overcompensated: I went to parties, I lived in Brooklyn. In retrospect, being social was largely a disguise -- like another, more obvious disguise -- and, over time, I've learned to value my innate fear of other people, in the same way I've learned to embrace being gay.   

Here, in the empty park, I was grateful for the silence and for the astilbes, which were providing a different kind of fireworks than the ones everyone was complaining about. 

I felt grateful to be alone in the dawn, to have enough space to accept what the world was offering. 

 

Dancing On My Own (Week Fourteen)

This morning, after a long run through the park and -- after I returned home -- a shower, I went back to bed and drifted into a hypnagogic dream state. I saw a beautiful apple with unpolished skin, the kind you can only get at an orchard. Then a wasp appeared whose body seemed to be made out of amber-colored glass, so that I could see its organs pulsing and moving like the inside of a watch. Finally, I heard a voice speaking and I recognized it as belonging to a friend, except she wasn't speaking to me alone, she was speaking at a protest. She was holding a sign. As I listened, I was jostled by the crowd. It felt familiar and good and a little frightening in the way that things we used to take for granted are now forbidden but -- maybe? -- becoming less forbidden.  

Time this week continued to feel oddly elastic. There's so much news. Much of it is horrifying -- anything Trump & Co say or do, the ongoing toll of the virus, the utter failure of the mayor to prepare the city for the next phase of our existence -- and much of it is encouraging: the Black Lives Matter protests offer hope for a kind of reinvention that seems like the only antidote to the conservative/neoliberal nightmare we've been living for as long as I can remember.   

This week, I've been floating on a sea of questions. What will happen to the economy? What will happen to my job? (Is it selfish to worry about my job when 40 million others have lost theirs?) Why is the city not picking up any trash in the parks? What's going on with global warming? Who's going to win 'Top Chef'? Why are there so many motorcycles racing around the city at 110 mph? Is the virus 'over' or will there be more waves? How big does a protest need to be in order to not only defund the police, but also to defund chillingly obsolete and antidemocratic institutions like 1) the Senate, 2) the Supreme Court, and 3) the pro-parking community boards of New York City? I'm constantly worried and constantly trying not to worry, and these thoughts -- worrying and not worrying -- are amplified by the lockdown. I'm sure I'm not alone in this respect. I'm also sure there are a lot of people who want to escape this dynamic, which explains (in part) the rush to reopen, even though we don't seem to be much better prepared for another wave. 

I try to concentrate on good news. I don't know if you've noticed, but this was the week the oak-leaf hydrangeas reached full bloom. Sometimes they will surprise you. Like this morning on my run, on Riverside Drive, I saw something flash in the corner of my eye and realized it was a cluster of oak-leaf hydrangeas growing under the trees on the steep hillside that leads down to the river. I didn't know they were there until I saw the flowers shooting through the morning mist.  

In our garden this week, the jasmine is in bloom. For many years, Stephen dreamed about having a wall of jasmine but feared that it would never survive our winter. A few years ago, he discovered a cold-hardy variety; fast-forward and the dream has been (mostly) attained. The scent of the flower -- a sweet (but not too sweet) vanilla -- is intoxicating. Sometimes, when the wind is right, the cats will sit in front of the jasmine and sniff the air and look at each other, as if wondering what could have  created this miracle. 

This week, I recorded a cover of Robyn's 'Dancing on My Own.' I heard it on a television show the other day and I thought, 'I've always loved that song -- I should cover it!' not realizing that tons of others have already done the same thing. But it seemed like a good 'gay pride' song -- it perfectly captures gay longing in a straight world -- and is appropriate given that there are no parades this year :( Click through here if the embedded video doesn't feed through. 

"I'm right over here, why can't you see me?" -- Clio

 

The Ivory Silk Lilac Tree (Week Thirteen)

After all of the rain, the park this week -- the thirteenth of the lockdown -- was very lush. I've always loved this tree, which I *think* is an ivory silk lilac. Most of the year, it's very unassuming, but right now, with its small clouds of silver flowers, it hovers above the fray; or maybe, thanks to its beautiful branches, it controls the landscape. Like so much in the world right now, it's something I couldn't quite imagine if I didn't see it for myself. 

I was also struck by these oak-leaf hydrangeas and the skinny trunks of the sumacs.  

On the way to the park, a sign reminded me of the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests. I felt hopeful knowing that masses of people were taking to the streets and -- despite the risks -- standing up to the police. 

I wanted to believe that these protests would spark a wave of reform, but the tepid reaction of our political leaders was dismaying. Though quick to align themselves with the BLM slogans, they showed little interest in concrete reform; the mayor of New York City latched on to 'youth services' as a talking point and promised to divert from the NYPD budget a few thousand dollars to various programs around the city, as if that would address any of the systemic bloat and racism that brought us to this point. 

His reaction to BLM was not my only complaint about the mayor. After going on my first lockdown-era bike ride on Friday afternoon, I found myself stuck in rush-hour traffic on Riverside Drive, trying to avoid getting squeezed between two rows of gigantic, moving SUVs and a third row of parked SUVs. (I also found myself cursing the mayor.) I almost can't bring myself to think about the opportunity we -- New York City -- had to address transportation in the city, and how the mayor has completely squandered it. 

All of these problems -- racism, environmental degradation, infrastructure, labor -- are all related; it's exhilarating to read articles explaining these connections and proposing solutions, but demoralizing to consider the reactions of our political leaders. So few of them seem equipped to diagnose the extent of what needs to be done, much less have the power to do it. Is it possible for a progressive movement to set the political agenda in the United States?

There were so many people -- so many corporations and lobbyists -- who needed to step or be pushed out of the way. New York City can't even find the political will to put in a few bike lanes: how are we going to start taxing the rich? 

If nothing else, it was consoling to think about the lines -- lines of protest, lines of reform, lines of action/inaction -- becoming increasingly clear, which made the idea of crossing them feel almost possible, if not quite inevitable. 

Open Streets and Political Resistance (Week Twelve)

During the 12th week of the isolation, I started getting up earlier to go for my morning runs. Because of the curfew, I couldn't go too early. I waited until five o'clock to leave the house, as I didn't want to be assaulted by the roving bands of police that have been rioting all over the city against #blacklivesmatter. But even in a sea of unrest, five o'clock continues to be a very serene time; the streets are open to anyone who wants to use them. The park is even emptier than usual and that much more beautiful. 

As I considered the open streets and the ongoing protests, it occurred to me that the former had to some extent facilitated the latter. These protests, as many have noted, seem somehow 'different'; more spontaneous and decentralized, harder for the police to control. I was struck by the idea that today's streets, because of the virus and the greatly reduced traffic of the lockdown, more closely resemble streets that existed before the automobile, the kinds of (car-free) streets that hosted revolutionary uprisings in the biggest cities in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries. When streets have less (car) traffic, police have a harder time controlling protesters: the streets lack the constant (and dangerous) barricade to which we are all accustomed, quartering the city with hundreds of miles of what might as well be electrified razor wire. To have this barrier removed, even partially, has provided an unprecedented (at least in this century) opportunity for protesters to move, to assemble, to challenge the (racist in so many ways) status quo. I also wondered if this connection between open streets and policing might also help to explain the mayor's maddening intransigence on both issues. He -- and others of his ilk, at once arrogant, feckless, and sinister under a guise of compassion -- clearly understand that traffic creates a kind of self-enforcing police state; if you remove traffic from the equation, the ability of protesters to maneuver increases dramatically, which in turns leads to increasingly desperate, violent policing (because they know they are losing). 

Like many ideas, this one was depressing and exciting to consider. The city was slated to begin opening on Monday: traffic was already increasing; as with so much in this administration, there was no plan. But as with Black Lives Matter, there seemed to be increasing recognition that a plan was needed. Would these protests lead to meaningful policy changes? I hoped so. Or I wanted to be hopeful, but I cautioned myself. I've spent most of my (increasingly long) life being disappointed with the outcome of protests (which is never a reason not to protest -- or to support them -- but just a reflection of my experience, or perhaps just the nature of history).  

The park -- which is managed by an agency that receives less than one percent of the city's budget (versus almost seven percent for the NYPD) -- did not prognosticate. 

On an unrelated note, I recorded a new Isolation Song. (Is anyone else still isolating? I know the answer is yes, but sometimes it feels like the world has already opened, notwithstanding the risks.) This song was inspired by a pair of cats/brothers I read about on Twitter, probably five or six months ago, who were surrendered at a shelter by their owner, who could no longer afford to care for them. To be on social media is to come across sad stories of abandoned pets all the time, but something about the expression of one of these cats (he and his brother had had been separated for some reason) -- fearful, uncomprehending -- haunted me. And what kind of name is Stepi? Some questions will never be answered. 

If the video doesn't feed through, here's the link.

But this week, as I recorded the song, I realized that it's the same expression you see on people all over the world who are being thrown in jail for the crime of being alive.