This week, as I ran through the park, where the azaleas were in peak bloom, I thought about the end of lockdown. It was just a few weeks away, at least officially, but I felt more nervous than excited. Despite being vaccinated, I still felt leery of the virus, like it was only a matter of time until we faced a new and even deadlier wave. I didn't feel this way all the time, but the fear was there, like an itch or even a craving. Why was I being so pessimistic and cautious?
I'm not saying I would have ever chosen this option had it been presented to me, but being locked down has given me a greater appreciation for a more habitual, calmer mode of living that I fear will be lost if I return to society. In short, I've turned into one of our cats. I'm sort of kidding, but I'm sort of not kidding.
The outside world seems manic to me: everyone going somewhere, doing this, buying that, and documenting it on social media. All of the articles offering new perspectives on the hard partying people have on tap for this summer. People describing trips they've recently taken -- on airplanes! -- or are planning to take. While a part of me is attracted to mania, recognizing this attraction sounded a cautionary note: be careful what you wish for.
I get agitated watching the world from the sidelines: do I really need to be in it?
On my runs, I've noticed that most runners still wear masks. A smaller number don't, and a third category -- to which I belong -- have the masks on, but keep them around our chins unless passing another runner or group.
We put up our respective masks for a few seconds before taking them down again. Sometimes we nod at each other with a kind of fear and understanding.
I woke up early and went to the park, where the white tulips were busy preparing for a parade of azaleas.
This was the week when all the plants and trees seemed to exhale as they rolled out their leaves.
The tentative phase of spring was over. The main event had begun.
I spotted an azalea I had never seen (or at least didn't remember seeing) because it was hidden behind a wall.
I asked myself whether I was looking forward to the summer and then decided it was the wrong question to ask.
In fact, I was already dreading the summer. It wasn't just the heat, although that's always a good thing to dread. It was the litany of amazing things everyone was planning to do this summer to 'make up' for last summer. The mayor said that the city would be completely open by July 1; the newspapers were filled with warnings to book your beach house early; friends and family were discussing trips to wherever. Brunches were on the schedule. The good life was resuming.
Expectations could not be higher, which is always a questionable strategy but seemed particularly risky given the number of cases around the world. Was it really over for us? Maybe.
My qualms about rejoining society were somewhat different. Over the course of the pandemic, I've become more afraid, not of the virus, but of people; or more specifically, our institutions. Which is a hard thing to admit, because I believe in government -- like there's nothing I want more than a BIG government that spends money on healthcare and parks and clean jobs and libraries and etc (as opposed to tax cuts for the rich, weapons, and jails) -- and I find it increasingly difficult to reconcile this belief with the utter failure of our government to take care of (most of) its people over the course of not only the pandemic but also ... well, pretty much my entire life, which has coincided with the dismantling of the New Deal and its replacement by the neoliberal framework that continues to define most of our politics. But even within that framework, the last year has been a shock. Before going through it, I never would have believed that, as a country, we could allow hundreds of thousands of people to die while making only the most minimal adjustments to a system that for the most treats these lives as disposable, a cost of doing business. Another shock was to realize that this statement is true outside of the context of the virus. Even in the park, I couldn't escape a sense that we are failing ourselves.
But secretly I kept hoping for one of the azaleas to prove me wrong.
Earlier in the month I had thought that the park couldn't get more beautiful, but it turned out I was wrong. This week was the best. It helped that the temperature stayed in the magic zone between thirty-eight and sixty-two degrees.
Maybe the park was celebrating Earth Day, I thought, the official theme of which I had learned (via Google) was Restore Our Earth™. I was dismayed to see a trademark symbol front and center on the official Earth Day slogan, for it seemed to indicate a failure to recognize the corporate greed at the root of so many problems plaguing the earth.
The only problem this week: it was easy to pretend that global warming wasn't maybe such a big deal, after all. Like it was definitely happening somewhere, but no reason to panic. If I were a politician, I thought, I would honor Earth Day by making a strong commitment to reduce carbon emissions by the year 2080. (If I were in charge of Earth Day, however, I might -- in addition to un-trademarking my slogan -- consider moving it to July.)
It was too beautiful in the park to be cynical, though. (I also didn't want to think about July -- or intellectual property.)
One of my favorite things about April is that it's when our camellias bloom, filling the garden with tiny, pink clouds.
In the early years of our shade garden, we often wished that we could plant camellias, whose quiet, cheerful flowers we thought would provide a perfect canopy above the elegant, subdued hellebores. But we always refrained, knowing that winters in New York City were too cold (even during the era of global warming), until one year we discovered that science had created a cold-hardy variety. We bought one in the mail from an independent, non-chain nursery, which are like independent, non-chain bookstores, but for plants.
For the first few years, it struggled, but then we moved it to a different spot, where it settled in and began to flourish. We now have three -- pink, white, and red -- but the red one (the youngest) didn't bloom this year. Our hope is that it's still getting established, which I imagine is a something of a prayer in the religion of gardening. But the white one has two blooms, and the pink is overflowing with flowers.
The flowers don't last more than a few weeks, which makes me appreciate them while they're here.
And a little sad to think about how they're already preparing to go.
In New York City, the fifty-sixth week of the pandemic was marked by warm, sunny weather. I went to the park, where the trees were in full bloom. As I ran past them, I found myself comparing last April to this April and tried to imagine what next April might look like. I had been considering buying tickets to see Godspeed You! Black Emperor, whose (amazing) new album I've been listening to on repeat since it came out a few days ago. But I'm not sure I believe that next April (when they're scheduled to play in New York City) will be viable for me. I'm vaccinated and cases are (sort of maybe) going down in New York City, but there are many questions: how long the vaccine will work, whether new variants will arise here or somewhere else, and how much risk I want to tolerate in any given circumstance. I love the new GY!BE record, but am I willing to die for it? Or even catch a mild case of the flu (but with potential long-term effects)?
That I don't have to tolerate much risk made me feel lucky -- and guilty. And angry that we -- as a country, even now -- are still forcing millions of people to shoulder most of the risk; that we -- as a society -- seem incapable of making changes that would reduce or spread this risk more equitably, in the same way that we can't seem to take global warming seriously or even -- to put a hyperlocal spin on it -- turn over more than the tiniest fraction of street space to bikes and buses.
I'm never angry in the park, though.
And I've been trying to bring that feeling to other parts of my life, too, by which I mean the parts I control.
Which admittedly isn't very much, and in practical terms means small adjustments and resolutions: to spend less time on Twitter, to watch less television, to read more.
And maybe to buy those tickets, even with the understanding that I might not go.
Last April I didn't go to the park, so I was excited to see it this year. The daffodils, like a group of school kids, reminded me of being in the schoolyard at recess, running around with mindless exuberance until the bell rang and it was time to go back inside, which for me was always accompanied by a pang of dread. Elementary school was on some levels (mostly but not completely unconscious) a disturbing institution. The naked authority, the indoctrination into a system in which I felt fundamentally out of place, the intense pressures to conform (for me, made more intense by a growing fear that I could never conform).
I realized that the dread I had felt at as child on the steps of my elementary school was not so different than what I felt now contemplating the end of lockdown and a 'return to society.' In some ways it seemed that life was an ongoing cycle of dread and not-dread, feelings that correlated to one's proximity to the system. Maybe spring was a good time to focus on the not-dread (without denying that the dread was still present, just further away for the moment, like the tides).
I felt very little dread enjoying the banks of forsythia spilling over the edge of the rocks.
Or thinking about how yellow is the color of early April.
Sometimes I think that forsythia deserve more acclaim, but it's hard to begrudge the magnolia.
A month ago, this landscape was covered with snow, and now it's covered with complicated daffodils.
Spring is a good reminder that the natural world is waking up, and to hope that we can do the same. To enjoy this brief phase of minimal dread.
It's also a good time to think about what happens if we don't wake up, and to begin dreading the same.
Two exciting things happened this week, the fifty-fourth of the lockdown. The first was the fog, which settled in on Thursday morning. Fog adds depth to the landscape as the mist shifts back and forth to highlight and obscure things I pass all the time but usually take for granted. It also appeals to my inner Dungeons and Dragons adolescent, which on some level is always craving the existence of magic and parallel dimensions filled with strange, beautiful creatures. Somehow the existence of such worlds bleeding into our own feel more plausible in the fog.
The second source of excitement involved cats, which in a way is another world filled with strange and beautiful creatures. On Monday afternoon, in our backyard, I found a feral cat having kittens. I had seen the cat over the past few weeks and we had looked at each other, but she was not domesticated in the way other cats we've found in the backyard have been (Clio, Elektra, and Dante, along with a few others we found homes for). Stephen posted a message on NextDoor asking for advice, and within a few hours, we had two Trap Neuter Release (TNR) experts at the house -- two women who lived only a few blocks away and were part of a larger TNR network in Upper Manhattan, which is ground zero for abandoned and feral cats (at least in Manhattan).
I imagined that that they would whisk in like a 'special ops' unit and leave with the mother and kittens within a few minutes. They had traps and backpacks filled with food and other things that I learned can be useful in this kind of situation, such as a sock filled with rice that can to be heated in the microwave and kept close to the kittens if they need warmth.
Unfortunately, the situation was more complicated than I had anticipated, mostly because of the question of how to trap the mother without frightening her, which can lead cats to move the kittens somewhere else or abandon them completely. It was also about to get dark and cold, which meant the kittens could freeze if they were away from the mother for more than a few minutes. One of the TNR women called a friend who recommended scruffing the mother, which didn't seem realistic, given that the mother was positioned in a corner behind an azalea, and that she had already made clear (via hisses) that she wasn't comfortable with being picked up. Wanting to assess the situation herself, this third TNR woman soon arrived, and within minutes was followed by a fourth. It was by far the most people Stephen and I had been around in more than a year. We knew that underground raves and nightclubs were being shut down, but what about gatherings of TNR cat ladies? At least everyone was masked. Ultimately, after a LOT of debate, they tried to capture the mother by throwing a blanket over her, which didn't work. Having escaped, the mother was now separated from the kittens, who we had to bring inside to keep warm in between putting them back outside with the hope to lure the mother back by putting a trap (like a tunnel) in front of a carrier where the kittens were nestled in a blanket. But now the mother was too nervous. There were also other stray cats milling around, which made it hard to tell if the cat pacing back and forth was the mother or someone else. It was dark and chaotic. Around midnight, we gave up. One of the women took the kittens home to bottle feed but left a trap so that Stephen and I could try to capture the mother the next day. It was a disheartening result; I felt like we had failed the mother and, possibly, the kittens.
The next morning, I saw no sign of the mother, but Stephen and I set the trap. To entice her, we put in one of the placentas that the mother hadn't eaten. We also put a recording of the kittens we made the night before next to the trap with the hope that the mother would hear it and come over to investigate. Which she soon did! Except this time -- urgh -- the trap failed to close, which meant that she walked in, picked up the placenta, and walked right out. Stephen and I reset the trap with some food and, finally, we caught her. Not long after, two of the TNR women arrived, congratulated us on our first trap, and took the mother away to be reunited with the kittens at a shelter they maintain. The next morning, we learned that the mother was nursing the kittens and everyone is doing well. Here is some footage. (If anyone's looking for kittens, get in touch!)
In another unrelated development, I also finished recording a new song this week, which reflects my ongoing interest in fuzzy shoegaze, which I suppose represents another kind of fog.
Everyone agreed: it was a pretty good week. Rescuing a mother cat and her kittens was not how I expected to be re-introduced to society, but it turned out to be a nice way to do it.
This week I spent a lot of time with the cats, thinking about posture and trying to figure out whether it was warm and dry enough to go outside. I've read a lot of things that say that running in the cold and rain is good for you because it prepares you for bad conditions you might encounter in races and maybe in life, too. I think this might be true, but I also think that I've reached a point when I would rather not prepare for future trauma and instead just enjoy the good weather I've been offered.
Sometimes I look out the window at the sideways sleet and think, 'Ugh, nasty. But I can do this -- after all, I've run so much farther in much worse conditions.' But lately, I tend to reconsider and think, 'those past experiences have actually made me less excited about ever running in the rain again -- do I really need to torture myself?' Sometimes I think that we, as a culture, focus too much on the 'value' and 'lessons' of painful experiences, the ways we can 'grow' or improve instead of acknowledging that some things don't have silver linings or make us more capable to deal with the future. This dynamic is especially frustrating when, as so often happens, we focus on lessons but don't actually do anything to change, which means we ignore both the pain and the potential. At times, my running has followed this pattern.
Over the past few years, I've gone through many cycles of running and injury. My resolution this year was to break the pattern by trying something different, and to not just pretend or pay lip service to the idea. (Even if it meant going very slowly and not very far.) Using my understanding of Feldenkrais as a guide, my goal is to be more 'relaxed' with my stride by not engaging 'parasitic' muscles and by not manipulating or twisting my frame in ways that lead to pulled groins and strained hamstrings and whatever else I've had to deal with (it's a long list). For me, this means hitting the ground on the outside edges of my feet before rolling up to push off closer to the toes, along with a bunch of other adjustments related to the angle of the pelvis, the coordination of the ankles and the knees, and the swinging of the arms that I also try to consider. All of these ideas apply to walking, too, and sometimes sitting.
By the way, living with cats helps with any assessment of form and posture. I think it's fair to say that cats never engage a muscle if they don't need to.
When I started using this new stride in January and February, I was still getting over the worst of a groin injury and my legs seemed very confused. Even running a few hundred yards felt awkward and left me sore in places I haven't felt in a long time. I'm trying to be patient though, and remind myself that there's no rush or pressure. The objective is to run in a way that's enjoyable and sustainable. And this month, even though I'm still running very slowly, I can feel my body acclimating. I'm regaining some of the distance. I haven't tried any intervals yet, but there are moments when I can feel the speed lurking.
As always, it helps to know that the cats are watching.
The fifty-second week of the pandemic, it seemed, was marked by an onslaught of optimism. Cases and deaths continued to fall, vaccinations were up, and the Biden administration had managed to pass a major recovery bill. By the Fourth of July, the president said, everything would be pretty much back to normal; maybe not quite to the point of congregating mask-free in your favorite Christian mega-church or corporate sports venue, but a backyard barbecue with friends and family was very much within reach. It was also the first week of spring weather; in the park, a new carpet of spring crocus had transformed the landscape into something out of a fairy tale. It had been a tough year, but life was again beautiful.
As much I tried to summon the spirit of this optimism, I found it ephemeral. The recovery bill was obviously better than nothing, but it was still hard to believe that, after a year in which 500,000 people and counting (in the United States alone) had died from a largely preventable disease, we still lacked any form of universal health care, not even a public option. It begs the question of how many deaths it *would* take: a million, maybe two? Or is possible that no number is too great if it requires making fundamental changes to the 'market economy,' changes that might result in more resources being channeled in a systematic way to those scraping by in the lower percentiles of the wealth and income grids? Sadly, if the recovery bill is any indication, we still seem to be in death mode, with the primary objective to shovel as much money as possible -- via Cobra extensions and ACA premium subsidies -- into the insurance industry, which is already seeing record profits as a result of people foregoing regular medical care over the past year. The legislation gets cash to people who need it, which yes to that, but -- given the sunset provisions -- there's almost nothing about it that could be considered transformative in the long or even medium-term, with the result that -- my political fear -- it's going to lead to a lot of very dissatisfied voters, and we know how that story goes.
I understand the desire to get back on the road, which in the context of the pandemic means the end of lockdown. It would be nice to make plans with (some) people, maybe even to have a barbecue on the Fourth of July. But for me, as I began to realize this week, I'm still ambivalent about returning to 'normal,' and not just because I fear that normal will feature the same structural inequities that have defined the last fifty (or more) years, but also because the distance I've created (or been given) during lockdown has allowed me to better envision a social structure that's less antagonistic to those (like me) who are less interested in a life defined by expectations of income, marriage, and children. When you're immersed in this structure, it doesn't seem so bad, and -- if you have a position of relative privilege -- better than so many other scenarios, a comparison that's easy to make because so many of these bad scenarios are perpetuated by the same system. We are trained to tell ourselves: 'Be grateful -- things could be so much worse!' Which, as long as you're in the system, is true. But when you're removed from it, there's an opportunity to assess the system with more distance, to understand the ways in which it effectively punishes you for not adhering to the norm. Much of this punishment is rooted in the material -- the threat that deviation will prevent you from earning the money necessary to survive -- but much is psychological to the extent that deviation from the norm is viewed as a moral failure.
Is it wrong that I don't miss interacting with thousands of people every day, some percentage of whom can be counted on to make a homophobic remark that is reinforced by the barrage of advertising and mainstream news and entertainment to which we are constantly subjected? Yes, there's widespread acknowledgement, if not quite consensus, that homophobia (and racism, and misogyny) are wrong, and there is always discussion of making accommodations for those who don't quite fit the mold, although these accommodations are always premised on the idea that those who benefit must in turn conform to the prevailing model. But what if homophobia (like racism and misogyny) is built into the system itself, in the same way that sacrificing millions of lives for economic profit is also -- apparently -- built into the system? Is not reasonable to want to avoid such a system, to maintain even the small distance from it that lockdown has provided? This isn't a question with an easy answer, but it's one I find myself asking as we breathlessly anticipate getting back to normal.
I used to think that the trajectory of my life could be framed from social butterfly to misanthrope, but what I've come to realize is that I have no problem with (most) people; in fact, (most) people are amazing. We make the best things. We are often hilarious. We are all (subjectively) sexy and talented. Some of us try to forget about the world by writing and recording cool, shoegaze-y songs like this one :)
Would I be writing songs if I hadn't been given some distance (in practical and psychological terms) during lockdown? Maybe, or maybe not. It's a question I could ask about many parts of my life as I compare it before and after the lockdown (and contemplate a new, post-lockdown routine).
So yes, I'm looking forward to the end of the pandemic, but I also fear the end of this period of (relative) insulation from a system that, at the moment, is still ravenous and destructive.
As the one-year mark of the lockdown began to approach, I ran through the park and thought about where we were last year at this juncture. It was a very disorienting time: the virus was beginning to tear through New York City, which despite plenty of (or at least some) lead time seemed completely unprepared -- with the mayor and governor fighting about where and how to implement a stay-at-home order, the governor (in addition to asking subordinates to have sex with him) working behind the scenes with lobbyists to ensure that nursing homes were shielded from legal liability in the upcoming storm, the mayor telling people to relax and go out and enjoy themselves while he was sneaking in a final trip to the gym, etc. -- a situation exacerbated by the complete abdication of leadership and clear communication from the federal government. More understandably, the science was still very murky: Could you catch the virus outdoors? Or from touching things? Should you wear a mask or not? Should you sing 'Happy Birthday' once or twice while washing your hands? There were animated videos getting passed around online showing walkers, runners, and cyclists creating trails of danger zones of tens of yards behind them. There was speculation that the virus was a New York City problem, that it would never spread in parts of the country that were less densely populated and basically cleaner: that, if you thought about it, New York City probably deserved it for failing to embody the American suburban dream.
A year later, a few things have changed for the better. We have a pretty good sense of how the virus is transmitted (although it's less clear with variants), we have vaccines that prevent the vast majority of people who receive them from dying from the virus (although, again, variants); we have a national leader who does not seem delighted by the prospect of murdering hundreds of thousands of the country's most vulnerable, exploited people.
But what has not changed are the underlying conditions of a system organized in a way that allows for the death of literally 500,000 people from a mostly preventable disease (as other countries have proved) and an ongoing refusal to acknowledge that a strong government, which provides no-strings-attached care for those in need, is the only coherent way to organize a society. Even after so many deaths, we are pretending that, collectively speaking, we were healthy until this virus descended upon us and that, with a little forbearance, will soon return to the way things were a year ago, when everyone was happily going wherever they wanted, doing whatever they wanted, and buying whatever they wanted, the only constraint being the amount of money one possessed, which given that everyone competed equally in 'the market' was the best (and certainly the most objective) measure of your worth as a human being.
The system could improve. The Democrats may pretend otherwise, but they have the necessary power at the federal level, where it matters. They could reverse the Trump tax cuts; they could provide M4A; they could pass voting reform; they could pass a Green New Deal; they could cancel student debt; they could raise the minimum wage to $15 or $24. There are SO MANY things they could do, things that poll after poll have shown are popular with their Democratic constituents, the vast majority of whom are not 'centrists' or 'moderates' but are people who want and need help (and who, when they don't receive it, become angry Republicans and conspiracy theorists). Why don't these measure unify the politicians in the way they unify the electorate? Could it be that the politicians themselves are financially beholden to corporate interests that are less interested in the kind of structural change the majority of people in the country want? It's one theory. Do they think that the richest government in history can't afford it? Or do they actually believe in the arbitrary tenets of fiscal and moral 'moderation,' of only giving people the barest minimum to survive, of punishing them a little bit for arriving at place where they need help? Somehow this theory seems even worse. Whatever the reason, it's hard to watch the drama and angst from Democrats during the passage of a 'stimulus bill' that contains what would seem to be the barest minimum of help, a few thousand dollars to those who need it most (and god forbid this money gets to anyone who is only mildly desperate), a piece of legislation that, in order to be considered, must be framed in economic terms, as a means of 'stimulating' the economy, instead of, say, a care package, a money-for-basic-survival-in-our-brutal-system package.
The question -- for me, anyway -- becomes how to cope with living in a dysfunctional, doomed world. Next week, if I remember, I'll talk about some strategies on that front.
For now, I want to share a new song I wrote and recorded over the past few weeks. It's called 'When the Major Comes To Town' and it falls pretty squarely into the guitar-oriented, psychedelic 'dream pop' that I've always loved listening to and -- to some extent -- writing.
A RADICAL NEW MYTH ABOUT SEX, FAITH,
AND THOSE OF US WHO WILL NEVER DIE
A young boy wanders into the woods of Harlem and witnesses the abduction of his
sister by a glowing creature. Forty years later,
now working as a New York City homicide
detective, Gus is assigned to a case in which he
unexpectedly succumbs to a vision that Helen
is still alive. To find her, he embarks on an
uorthodox investigation that leads to an ancient
civilization of gods and the people determined
to bring them back.
In this colossal new novel from the author
of The Metropolis Case, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice collides with a new religion founded by three corporate office workers, creating something
beautiful, illogical, and overwhelming. Part sex
manifesto, part religious text, part Manhattan
noir—with a dose of deadly serious, internet inspired satire—#gods is a sprawling inquest
into the nature of faith and resistance in the
modern world. With each turn of the page,
#gods will leave you increasingly reborn.
Praise for #gods
“#gods is a mystery, an excavation of myths, an index of modern life, a gay coming-of-age
story, an office satire, a lyrical fever dream, a conspiracy. One of the most ambitious
novels in recent memory—and a wild, possibly transformative addition to the canon of
gay literature—it contains multitudes, and seethes with brilliance.” —Mark Doten,
author of The Infernal
“Matthew Gallaway’s #gods is a novel so brilliant, so funny, so full of strange and marvelous
things, I couldn’t stop writing OMG WTF I <3 THIS SO MUCH in its margins. It’s rare to
find a novel that so dazzlingly reinvigorates age-old meditations on faith and f&!*ing, art
and eros. Luminous, enterprising, and sublimely cheeky, #gods tells the story, the myth,
the dream of the human soul in all its glorious complexity.” —Suzanne Morrison,
author of Yoga Bitch
“Matthew Gallaway’s storytelling manages to be both dreamy and serious; lean and luxurious.
His words carry an incantatory power of mythic storytelling where beauty and
savagery wrap around each other like bright threads in a gorgeous tapestry.”
—Natasha Vargas-Cooper,
author of Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America
“If the ancient gods were just like us, only more so, then the same could be said for this
strange, wonderful book, in which the mundane sorrows and small triumphs of very
ordinary lives glow ever so slightly around the edges, sometimes quite literally. At once
an oddly romantic send-up of dead-end office culture and an offbeat supernatural procedural,
#gods is terrifically weird, melancholy, sexy, and charming.” —Jacob Bacharach,
author of The Bend of the World
The Metropolis Case
'It’s to the credit of Matthew Gallaway’s enchanting, often funny first novel that it doesn’t require a corresponding degree of obsession from readers, but may leave them similarly transported: the book is so well written — there’s hardly a lazy sentence here — and filled with such memorable lead and supporting players that it quickly absorbs you into its worlds.'
Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.
Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past
Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.
Video: The Chaos Detective
The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.
