Matthew Gallaway

A Trip To St. Petersburg (Travel Diaries)

Somehow, I ended up in St. Petersburg. 

I was immediately struck by the strange vegetation. 

I ran to the harbor, which was downtown. 

I found a small swimming beach. 

The water was disturbingly warm, but I went in anyway. 

I relaxed for a while and wondered where everyone else was. 

On the way back to my Airbnb, I stopped to take more pictures of a trumpet tree (I think), whose flowers according to the internet are considered 'perfect,' having both male and female parts. (They are not permitted to compete in track meets, of course.) 

After changing, I walked through the 'East Village' of St. Petersburg. 

The next morning, on the way to a museum, I decided to stop in at the local branch of the Social Security Administration, but everyone had been fired. 

On my last morning in St. Petersburg, I went back to the harbor. 

The sky was beautiful. 

I ran through the the Royal Poinciana (Delonix regia) trees. 

It was another world. 

And then I flew back home. 

 

Notes on Chicago (2025)

I arrived in Chicago for a work-related conference and quickly realized that this trip was not going to be an 'escape from reality.'

The weather on the first day was chilly and overcast, but the lake was beautiful. 

I found my way to a beach. 

The lifeguards had been deported. 

I followed a grassy trail to the shoreline. 

Someday, I thought, our country will be broken pieces of asphalt and concrete littering the shore of a new world. 

The next morning, I went running on the river, which is lined with skyscrapers and touristy boat tours and restaurants. 

The 'River Walk' is like a combination of South Street Seaport and the High Line. Every time I'm in Chicago, I wish that New York City could make our waterfront more accessible, especially in Manhattan, which is ringed with highways. 

It seems that anywhere in the city that's inaccessible to cars is going to be relatively interesting. 

All cities look great at night. 

On Saturday morning, the skies were clear. I ran back to the beach and jumped into the lake for two seconds. The water was very cold, but I made myself do it and felt better after I was out, my skin tingling as I dried off in the sun.  

Where was this boat coming from, I wondered, and where could it take me? 

March of the Rhododendrons (May)

A friend of mine who I ran with in high school wrote to me recently and we were talking about getting old. The miles, we agreed, feel a lot longer than they used to. 

But after the past few years, I felt grateful to be running at all, especially in the park, where the irises were in bloom. 

I'm also happy in a different way not to be biking so much, which is what I've done when I've been injured. I hate to say it, but when I contemplate biking in the city, I feel some dread. The cars are immense and the drivers are more aggressive than they used to be because the police don't ticket them. I also worry about getting a criminal summons, which the police starting issuing to bikers who run red lights and commit other minor infractions that for drivers would result in a regular ticket. There's no data to support this policy change -- bikers cause a tiny percentage (like less than one) of the injuries that drivers do -- but the police are doing it anyway, with the mayor's support. To bike in this city, in other words, requires engaging with a Trumpian world -- no facts and the demonization of a minority -- that's exhausting. 

The poppies were also in bloom. 

The rhododendron made me think about the Tiergarten in Berlin, which I visited twenty years ago this month to attend a conference for work. I don't remember anything about the conference, but I remember walking along what seemed like an endless network of paths, all lined with flowering rhododendron. It was a dream world. 

I also remember thinking to myself while I was in Berlin that I could live there. The parks, the trees, the birds -- it was unexpectedly magical. 

But New York City, I reminded myself, has its own pleasures and its own magic. 

Which is why people who voted for Trump tend to hate it. 

 

Life in Fog and Flowers (March of the Azaleas)

During a break in the rain today, I went for a run. I was happy to see the fog settling down over the bridge. The hidden landscape was green and lush. 

At the park, I found the azaleas in peak bloom. 

Seeing them, I 'shrieked with delight.' Actually, I didn't, but I've been thinking about what might make me shriek with delight since I read about someone doing it after they learned that an American had been selected as the new pope. Someone else talked about how 'thrilled' her children were going to be. It was hard to fathom living in world in which fervor for nationalism and organized religion -- two strains of the same cancer -- was still so unrestrained. 

I was comforted by the knowledge that at least some of my cynicism was generational, which I learned while reading another article (paywalled, in the Economist if you want to find it) about how Generation X has 'suffered' more than other generations, both in terms of the attention we receive (measured by Google searches), and a number of economic indicators (wages, home ownership, etc.) I felt a small thrill of validation when I read that my generation was 'cursed.' 

For years, I've suspected that my siblings -- all of whom are technically boomers, thanks to a large age gap between me and my next oldest brother -- didn't understand me because I'm gay, but it now occurred to me that our generational divide was at least as important. I had grown up listening to their music and watching their television shows and movies, but they knew nothing about the music and movies I loved. I remember once asking my oldest brother if he had ever heard a song by the Smiths, and he said that he had not. (Lol.) There's a language that people from the same generational cohort often share -- and part of this language comprises cultural references that inform a kind of perspective or 'outlook' -- and while I, despite being a foreigner, was relatively fluent in the language of their generation, they not only didn't know how to talk to me in the language of Generation X, they didn't even know it existed. No wonder I was 'half a person' to them. 

I've learned that being 'Gen X' is often accompanied by a sense of isolation -- sometimes harrowing, sometimes comforting -- that's hard for boomers (and millennials, by virtue of their numbers, and even Gen Z, who are still very earnest) to understand. A few months ago, I was reading an op-ed in the NYT about a 56-year-old woman whose father had dementia, and I said to myself, 'there aren't that many 56-year olds in this country -- I probably know her,' and when I looked at the byline, I was amused but not exactly surprised to see that she had been in my freshman-year literature class in college. We had been friends and spent a semester abroad in France on the same program. Being a part of Generation X, though, I didn't try to contact her. I'm sure she would understand; if anything, she would probably be annoyed to hear from me. 

Although it can be legally and economically fraught to belong to a cursed generation, it's sometimes nice to be ignored. I had a similar feeling recently while watching a French thriller set on the shores of lake known as a gay cruising spot. 'This movie never could have been made in the United States,' I said to Stephen, who agreed. It captured an aspect of gay culture that most straight people in my experience have no idea exists, or if they do know, it's not something they ever talk about. 

In the same way that most boomers have no curiosity about Gen X, most straight people have no curiosity about gay life. 

But to live in the fog, where life is hidden -- even neglected -- and (sometimes) all the more beautiful as a result, is maybe not so cursed after all. 

Let the Trees Grow (Early May)

In an era of political turmoil marked by the active dismantling of the government, I allowed myself a few minutes of unbridled joy and redemption as I watched a crew install sidewalk trees on our block. Admittedly, there were some 'issues': they only installed trees on one side of the block (and were vague about plans to return for the other side) and I'm worried that one of the trees they planted is already dead :( Still, it was very nice to be reminded that the government is capable of using public money to help beautify the landscape (even though our horrible mayor has consistently underfunded the parks department, which administers the sidewalk-tree program).  

In private garden news, we've had a good camellia season. 

We pruned our birch tree over the winter, which means more sunlight reaches the ground.

Our dicentra -- aka 'bleeding hearts' -- has also done well this year. 

As have the epimedium, whose flowers look like flocks of birds. 

Our wild geranium are flowering for the first time. 

Along with our crested iris, another plant that (in theory) does well in the shade. Ours could be doing better -- we have some very shady spots in our garden that are notoriously difficult for even shade-loving plants -- but we'll see what happens. 

We planted a columnar gingko, which in ten years (if the world is still here) will be fifteen feet tall and provide a nice screen from the neighboring buildings. We placed the gingko next to our dawn redwood with the hope that the trees would become friends, given that both species are hundreds of millions of years old. 

The flowers of the camellia are cheerful and a little hallucinogenic. 

'What are these strange, pink clouds doing everywhere?' -- Clio

I'm a bit sad that camellia season is already over. 

It's nice to spend a few seconds with the flowers, which are oblivious to what's happening in the world. 

Gardens and parks bring a lot of happiness to the world, but we only spend a fraction of a percent of our public money on parks (compared to thirteen percent for 'defense' and six percent for roads and highways). In New York City, each year police officers get paid almost three times more in overtime alone than the budget for the entire parks department.  

Camellias for mayor, 2025. 

April Showers (Time Passes)

I ran to the park this morning in a light rain that was perfect for April. 

The new growth on the plants vibrated with color and life under the gray skies. 

Not everyone made it through the winter, sadly, including this clump of heather. 

I was a little bit hungover from a pre-reunion party I went to at my friend Jessica's house in Park Slope. It's been thirty years since we graduated from law school. 

We talked about professors we liked and didn't like, as well as fellow classmates. Some of them are powerful Republicans now. I wondered if they were all convening at a different house in a different neighborhood. Maybe they were gloating about Trump. 

Jessica and I talked about how relatively clueless we were in law school at NYU, specifically with regard to a kind of 'elite track' for certain students who are either very good at taking law-school exams or very good at networking with the right people to line them up for prestigious legal careers. We speculated that some of this knowledge comes from families. I described a law professor I know who told me that as a child, her parents -- both professors -- used to sit around the dinner table gossiping about who was going to get a job at which university. Neither Jessica nor I grew up in what would be considered an 'intellectual environment,' which we understood put us at a bit of a disadvantage with those who did. It's almost like growing up in a family that speaks a second language; you are going to be more fluent in that language than most other speakers. 

Being closeted in my twenties added to my overall naivete about many things in the world. 

It was good to see people from thirty years ago and to realize how much in some ways that I've changed. (And how much in other ways that I've not changed.) 

Standing in the park and mulling over the passage of time, I realized, is a great pleasure of being old enough to stand in the park and mull over the passage of time. 

 

Notes from Western Pennsylvania (Green Carpets of Spring)

Flying into to Pittsburgh on Tuesday, I didn't see much evidence of spring. But on Wednesday morning, I discovered a carpet of green in the woods where I went running. 

I was unfortunately too early for the trilliums. 

But it was exciting to see them getting ready. I felt like I was backstage before a big performance. 

Small signs of spring were everywhere. 

I took my mother to a nearby lake, where swimming was prohibited. My mother longed to be in the water. 'There's something so nice about not having to worry about falling,' she explained, which made me think about being ninety-three years old. 

I felt a bit precarious running across a narrow bridge in the woods. 

But the green carpet was reassuring. 

I crossed a dry creek bed, which made me think about changing weather patterns. Was this dry creek a sign of more to come or a remnant of the past? 

For now, it was enough to enjoy the flowers in the trees. 

March of the Forsythias (2025)

I waited for a break in the rain to go to the park, which I had been thinking about all week. I didn't want to miss the forsythias, which are always a highlight for me. 

Many trees were also in bloom. The otherworldly beauty of spring was an escape from the otherworldly chaos enveloping our country.  

The forsythias cascading over the cliffs did not disappoint. 

If anything, they looked better under the gray skies. 

It's been unusually cold this spring, the way it used to be when April was considered 'the cruelest month.' 

I thought about how Trump is killing anything related to the study of global warming and its many effects. 

And if the cool, wet weather this April is evidence that Nature 'got the memo' and planned to 'go back to normal.' 

But mostly I didn't want to think about Trump. It was nice to take in the landscape for a minute as I practiced my 'box breathing' technique. 

I imagined that I was young and wide-eyed, just one in a flock of daffodils about to take off. 

Notes on Cambridge (Leave Home)

If you have the time and the option, I recommend taking a day-time flight to Europe. My flight left JFK at 9:00 AM and arrived in London at 7:30 PM, which allowed me to avoid the thing where you take off at night and a few hours later are confronted with nauseating specter of the rising sun as the light forces its way through the cracks of the window shades. After landing, I found my driver, who dropped me off in Cambridge -- where I spent the week for work -- at around 10:30 PM. I was able to go to sleep by around 1:30 am, which isn't too far off of my usual schedule.

On Sunday, a work colleague took me on a bike ride in the countryside north of Cambridge. We stopped at a bridge that was built a few years ago to allow pedestrians and bikers (and probably a few animals) to cross the highway. On the way back to town, we went to a pub, which was crowded with people taking their mothers out for Mother's Day, which is much earlier in the UK than in the US.

Bike infrastructure in Cambridge is much better than it is around New York City (and probably anywhere else in the US). Above is a shot of one floor of a three-story parking garage dedicated to bikes.

On Monday morning, I went for a run on the path adjacent to the 'dedicated busway' and was astounded by the constant stream of bikers commuting into the city. Why can't we build such things in the United States?

Every morning, I managed to go for a run. The weather was unusually sunny, and I didn't want to let these perfect days go to waste. 

Some of the greens around Cambridge still have cows.

All the greens are crisscrossed by pathways for bikers and runners to get from one side to the other.

It's still daffodil season in the UK.

The center of the city is dominated by the many 'colleges' of Cambridge University, each of which has its own walled-in campus.

There are many footbridges that cross the canal, which circles the northern half of the city.

On Wednesday morning, I spent an hour in the Cambridge University Botanical Garden, whose magnificent trees reminded me that I was in a new (old) world.

Much of the garden was bathed in the shimmering, effervescent green of early spring.

Leaves were just starting to unfurl, which meant I could admire the architecture of the tree branches.

There are also many evergreens, such as this Scots pine.

I was enthralled by the rock garden. 'Please take over the world,' I whispered to the low, creeping plants. 'It's time for the Anthropocene to end.'

The rock garden has a grotto-esque feature where you can descend between the rocks.

As I walked through the gardens, I enjoyed a sense of contentment. Some of this feeling arose from the relief of being outside of the United States, which has obviously been a source of intense chaos and turmoil, and some of it arose from being removed from the other obligations of daily life that are suspended while traveling. There were things that I missed about being home -- or people, like Stephen and Clio -- but I felt like I could envision a different, better life, one stripped of the more exasperating features of how I live now. Change seemed desirable, even feasible.

I also enjoyed having the chance to spend a week with my non-American work colleagues, which is a kind of 'immersive' travel experience that I found satisfying because it allowed me to feel like I was 'at home' even though I was abroad, in contrast to how I usually feel, which is like 'a foreigner' in my own country.

It helps that most of my colleagues, by nature of the work we do, are interested in books and ideas that can reflect and sometimes change society.

For a few days, I became a slightly less cynical version of myself.

It made me hope that one day, instead of complaining about things that make me unhappy, I might leave them behind forever.

Late March (Daffodil Season)

Every day, I thought, the park gets slightly more beautiful, just as the government gets slightly more unhinged. 

I tried to focus on the flowers, whose beauty was surprising but nevertheless predictable. It's the perfect combination, something we could all try to emulate, and by 'we' I mean the government. 

Each year, I know the daffodils are coming, but when they finally arrive, I feel like I've forgotten how perfect they are, dotting the landscape in cheerful clusters. They never have any idea what's happening, which is funny and sad. 

Next week, I'm going to another country (not a metaphor), where the spring is 'slightly further along.' Everyone keeps telling me that the weather is going to be 'perfect' and offers as evidence a temperature in Celsius, which I can never seem to fathom. My ignorance has made packing a challenge! 

I'm looking forward to seeing the gardens abroad, but I know I'll miss seeing the slow progression of the flowers here. 

It's been a long time since I've left the country. One of these times, I think, I might not come back. 

But this is not that time, and I'm still looking forward to April, when the forsythias will be in full bloom, cascading down the hillside like they did last year, and the year before that.