Matthew Gallaway

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. 

In the Time of the Butterflies

1. Yesterday afternoon, in a gesture of solidarity with the climate-change strikers, I rode my bike to the park. 

2.   It was a little unnerving at first. I recognized most of the plants but the light was very different that what I'm used to in the morning. Somehow I had been dropped into a parallel universe. 

3. I thought about something I read not too long ago about why time seems to speed up as we age, which is that we tend to do the same thing over and over. Our minds become acclimated to this pattern and less attuned to the passage of time. I think this is probably true, and not necessarily always bad, either. Habit is comforting, and it's good to be comforted, particularly when -- another thing about aging -- we are increasingly exposed to the problems of the world and increasingly aware of our impotence to do much to solve them, or at least in a timeframe where we can expect to see the results. 

4. One thing about the afternoon is that the butterflies were awake. I'm pretty sure this is a 'painted lady' or via Wikipedia: 'Vanessa cardui is a well-known colorful butterfly, known as the painted lady, or formerly in North America as the cosmopolitan.' If I were a butterfly I would prefer the gender neutral 'cosmopolitan.' (But that's a different protest.) 

5. The autumn crocus were lining up for a demonstration. 

6. As I contemplated the state of the world, it was hard to feel optimistic. I thought about a tweet I read by a local bike advocate in response to the mayor's statements about the uncompromising need for 'profound change' to fight global warming. In the tweet, the bike advocate talked about how it took him two years of advocacy and fighting to get one parking spot removed in front of his kid's school so that they could install a bike rack. New York City has something like three million parking spots, which means it would take six million years of community board meetings to get rid of them. Where to even begin? 

7. I couldn't worry about it right now. Here, with the painted ladies glowing in the sun, I felt like time had stopped. 

 

Night Running

1. For most of my life, the night -- and specifically its final hours -- has been the most neglected part of my day, a time when, if given the choice, I always wanted to be sleeping.

2. But lately, I've been waking up restless, almost with a sense of being summoned. It seems a little ridiculous -- it's still dark and it would be easy to get back under the covers -- but sleep feels too far away. There's no point fighting the impulse. I get up and go outside, where the air is cool and the block is calm. At this hour, the city is familiar -- I know where I am -- and foreign, as if I'm seeing it for the first time.

3. Over by the river, I pass the new billboard erected by Amtrak in the face of community opposition. It does ruin the view, but I guess it's worth it to line the pockets of an Amtrak executive help the trains run better.

4. The early morning is a time of quiet optimism -- there are no people -- and quiet despair, because so much of the landscape feels like the aftermath of something destructive. Still, the mind is flexible and permeable at this hour and in this light. I'm running through a dream and a nightmare.

5. The path through the park is hilly and uneven. It feels dangerous to let myself go, to run fast down the hill -- and I have fallen in the past (and probably will again in the future) -- but it's also difficult to resist. To fly down a hill releases the mind, an effect that's compounded by the night.

6. I find money on the steps.

7. The stairs from Riverside Drive lead me into an abyss.

8. Here is Manhattanville, the new campus of Columbia. The enormous scope of the construction site makes me feel like I'm on the moon.

9. The path on the river is my reward after navigating the hills, the steps, and the construction. Here I can run as fast as I want without fear of tripping.

10. Moving north, the path transitions from post-industrial wasteland to Victorian-park fantasy.

11. The bridge, always beckoning, reflects against the river.

12. Stone sentries guard the riverbank, some facing south.

13. And others facing north, wondering as the sky brightens what what they might find on the other side.

September Dreams and Nightmares

1. The kids went back to school and the high winds from the hurricane blew the caterpillars out of their tents, so they were crawling around everywhere (replacing the kids). I went to the park, where the cool temperatures felt like a resurrection. I was thankful not to be going back to school (or at least any of the schools I attended).

2. I ran laps around the park, which was relaxing until I passed someone (not pictured) who appeared to be staggering down the hill toward me on a pitch-black section of the path where the lights had gone out in the predawn. Having watched my fair share of The Walking Dead (miss u Seasons 2-5), it occurred to me that the zombie apocalypse had arrived; in a way, I thought, it might be a relief to have a new and literal apocalypse to replace the political one that has been unfolding. As it turned out, it was just an older (than me) man who appeared to be a bit stiff. Or maybe it was a zombie: I didn't stop to figure it out.

3. I was still thinking about a dream I had the previous night where I was sitting next to Elizabeth Warren and asking her about lightbulbs. Clearly, I was reading too many political blogs. I was also thinking about someone from my high school who responded to a very friendly group email from the class secretary asking for updates -- kids and/or life achievements -- for the alumni newsletter; this classmate was not pleased to have received the email and screamed back to the entire group IN ALL CAPS that he wanted nothing to do with our high school and had repeatedly asked to be taken off this list. He referred to the email as SPAM. (I get maybe one such email every two years or so to give you an idea of the frequency.) I didn't know him well in high school but I remembered him playing drums in a talent show. It was hard to reconcile that memory with this email. Had I already reached an age where my classmates were suffering from dementia? It seemed possible, maybe inevitable. Still, I thought it was a testament to our class that nobody responded and, as a result, the risk of a 'reply allpocalypse' was averted. I wondered if I should send an update to the class secretary but all I could think about in terms of children and/or life achievements was the fact that we had recently replaced the sidewalk in front of our house, which didn't seem like the right kind of news to share with the rest of my class (although I did take pictures and amused myself by visualizing the usual shots of children or exotic vacations juxtaposed with my new sidewalk). These are a few of the things that occupied my thoughts as the sky turned from black to silver to blue.

4. Meanwhile, Dante's ashes had arrived in the mail. They were placed in a small, wooden box that Zephyr -- who had taken to wandering around in the middle of the night and yowling -- immediately curled up next to and fell asleep. Maybe, I thought (not for the first time) animals know more than we think they do. A friend asked if we were going to scatter Dante's ashes in the garden and we said no; for now, they will live on a shelf next to Beatrice's, until I can figure out how to achieve my dream, which is to have a big family crypt, ideally overlooking the Hudson River, and ideally falling apart and covered in moss, like the ones at Trinity Church Cemetery in Harlem. My wish was to be forever associated with the eternal beauty of ruination.

5. Like most dreams, however, I'm not so sure how realistic this one is.

6. For now, I'll continue to enjoy the living dreams of the park, still the best place to escape the nightmares of the world.

Notes on Nashville (Travel Diaries)

1. As often happens when I visit cities, my favorite part of Nashville was the park; in this case, Centennial Park, the centerpiece of which is an exact replica of the Greek Parthenon. Constructed in the late 1800s as part of an exposition, its kitschy pointlessness is a refreshing antidote to the wave of capitalistic development ruining transforming the rest of the world.

2. I stayed in a trendy 'boutique' hotel not far from the conference I was attending. The eighth floor offered nice views of the skyline, dotted with construction cranes. According to my brother, who has lived in and around Nashville for several decades, hundreds of people are moving to the city every day.

3. Automotive traffic is intense and there's no infrastructure for the many brands of dockless scooters that can be seen everywhere. Several Nashville residents told me how annoying they found the scooters and I gently tried to suggest that the problem is really cars, which I quickly gathered isn't a widely shared perspective here. "Imagine if, instead of parking, a lane for bikes and scooters were installed on every street," is the kind thing you might as well say in another language.

4. My niece and her nonheterosexual relationship partner took my brother and me to a secret cocktail bar, where we discussed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and specifically the social isolation that afflicts so many of its victims. I had just finished reading 'I Can Give You Anything But Love' by Gary Indiana, which was brilliant, sad, and abrasive; brilliant because he's incredibly well read (there's a reason why he was friends with Susan Sontag); sad because of the self-abnegation with which he (consciously) infuses the work; abrasive in his critique of straight society (but reaffirming if you happen to share his viewpoints: sometimes it's easy to forget the truth of things until you read someone like Gary Indiana). After a few drinks, I was happy to expound on my theory that many and possibly most gays -- particularly in my generation -- could be diagnosed with PTSD after growing up in our homophobic society, except that I'm not sure we've reached the 'post' part yet. Is there such a thing as Ongoing Traumatic Stress Disorder? The subtext to this conversation, like so many, was the question of whether 'Trump will ever be over.' It's not a simple question to answer, unfortunately.

5. The next day, I went to the park and communed with the magnolias.

6. I had also just finished reading 'The Overstory' by Richard Powers (interesting in its treatment of nature/trees, but Very Straight and a bit too melodramatic for my tastes in terms of its human characters) and was thinking about the beauty of trees. The best thing about 'The Overstory' is the idea that we (people) are really an insignificant blip on the natural timeline in comparison to trees, which in a way provides an answer to what will happen when Trump (literally and metaphorically) is over. The trees will come back and the earth will be better off for it.

7. Centennial Park has some strikingly decrepit monuments.

8. This monument symbolizes the idea that nationalism is -- despite everything we hear -- on the wane in 2019.

9. This monument also celebrates the certainty that no country is immortal.

10. Unlike beauty and nature, which will always last.

Finding Beauty in the Late August Garden

1. In late August, the garden is tired. We can remember the flowers from a few months ago, but have a hard time recalling the autumn from almost a year earlier. Everyone is despondent.

2. 'It's too hot to stay outside but I'm too tired to move.'

3. 'I'm sick of looking at these stupid walls.'

4. 'Is he *still* in office?'

5. Cutting through the despondency requires a change of focus: the crumbling bricks of the path are hundreds of years old, each one a masterpiece of longevity and ruin.

6. As long as moss carpets the world, it will be worth pondering.

7. We moved one our orchids outside in a technique we refer to as 'pot on a rock,' which in a way is cheating but adds a splash of color in a sea of green.

8. After hearing about our troubles getting our miniature Chinese dogwood to bloom, a botanist friend recommended trimming the interior leaves from the tree. Whether it will help the bloom remains to be seen -- we read the news and ask ourselves: will we even make it to next spring? -- but revealing the architecture of the branches was an unexpected pleasure.

9. The grape vine, when viewed from a certain angle, seems to rise to the sky.

10. The ferns are quiet but resilient, a reminder to #resist.

11. The ivy makes the best of what little light it can find.

August Is the Longest Month

1. As the summer fades, the park becomes less buoyant. The colors -- more muted than in the spring -- don't burst forth so much as seep through the green. The beauty feels more composed, the work of a mature artist.

2. A rose still blooms, but its leaves are yellow and mildewed, which -- in a way -- makes the flower seem that much more valuable.

3. Except for a few pools of color, the landscape is quiet and subdued.

4. The petals of a cone flower are burned and clipped, but somehow -- with so many working together -- it doesn't matter; if anything, these imperfections elevate the overall effect.

5. In August, our sense of appreciation is muted but genuine. There was so much we wanted to get done and, fortunately, we finished some of it.