Matthew Gallaway

Notes on When the Meat Puppets Ruled the World (90210)

1. The midterm elections ended, but the underlying dread continued. Possibly, it was even worse. There seemed to be no evidence that Republicans were beginning to understand the grave consequences of their ways; and somehow, half the country (more or less) keeps voting for them. How are we supposed to solve the feral-cat crisis and stop global warming?

2. Part of me want to retreat to the garden and not think about anything but carpet of leaves now covering the path.

3. Somehow I found myself inside watching the pilot of the original 90210.

4. I remembered how everyone hated Brenda, but watching it now, she's the best part.

5. At least among the regular cast. The best part of the pilot are the Meat Puppets, who can be seen playing at a pool party thrown by the richest girl in school. I've always loved the Meat Puppets, but not in a million years would I have predicted (even in the 1980s when they were more popular, albeit in post-hardcore circles) that they would appear in a big Hollywood show. In case you forgot or have succumbed to noxious Ronald Reagan nostalgia, the '80s were also a horrible political era, only slightly worse than now, and somehow the Meat Puppets -- a band whose trademark sound seemed to arise from political anarchy -- made it to network television. It seems even more miraculous now than it did at the time.

6. It proved that anything was possible, which in turn -- maybe, by extension -- proves that anything is still possible. (And that maybe art is part of the solution to our social and political anxiety.)

7. I wondered if the past seems more benign because it's over. I detested Ronald Reagan at the time, but he doesn't seem so bad now that he's dead compared to Donald Trump. And given that Republicans keep getting worse and worse, I can't even imagine who's going to be leading the party in 2024.

8. It was a lot to consider. I understood the tendency to hide under the ferns on a blanket of leaves.

9. And to think about the Meat Puppets singing 'this is paradise' to the rich, oblivious teens pushing each other into the pool.  


 

Notes on the Changing Color of Leaves

1. Was it me, or -- especially at this time of year -- was there an inversely proportional relationship between the 'badness' of the news and the beauty of the park?

2. Rather than worry about the news, I focused on the park.

3. I always walk this same loop -- as regular readers won't be surprised to hear :) -- and even though the loop is maybe one eighth of a mile long, and even though I find myself taking the same pictures week after week, I always find new things to admire: for example, the branch of the birch tree that cuts through the top of the picture. Why had I never noticed it before?

4. It helps that the perennials -- such as these purple asters -- are always blooming to replace the older ones that have faded away, and these new colors cause other parts of the landscape to advance and retreat.

5. It also helps that the leaves of the deciduous trees are turning yellow, orange, and red.

6. I had never noticed the branches of this elm tree before, but they were hard to ignore when highlighted by the yellow leaves.

7. And while I always admire these elms, the constantly shifting light -- a function of weather and season -- always makes their branches seem otherworldly and shocking. Usually, overwhelmed by the practical needs of life, I don't think about how trees grow, but here it's hard not to ask: how is it even possible that such things exist? (The oakleaf hydrangea is also having a moment.)

8. It's nice to be reminded that not every rose blooms in the spring.

9. I had reached an age where time, as a practical matter, felt somewhat more limited. A person can only live so long.

10. Recently I started (sometimes) thinking about (my) age in terms of adding and subtracting decades, e.g., two decades ago, I was a certain age, which means that two decades from now, I will be a very different age. This calculation -- and its implications -- probably won't make sense to anyone who isn't at least as old as I am. There's a lot to do and see on the earth, and time is the limiting factor.

11. Sometimes, it seems tragic.

12. But here, in this kaleidoscope of perfect light and color, time is irrelevant, which I try to remember when I leave the park and it begins to press down.

Notes on Tree Care in Unforgiving Landscapes

1. The morning, as predicted, was rainy and windy. After listening to the dire weather reports, I half-expected to see a ten-foot wall of water barreling down Broadway, but it was just the usual array of soggy oak leaves and fluorescent light bulbs (not pictured) blowing across the sidewalk.

2. There was something apocalyptic about the birds circling in the sky. I wondered if they were as agitated as everyone else by the political climate. Had they registered to vote? Were the Republicans trying to keep them away from the polls? Were entrenched Democrats belittling this progressive wing of the party? You see how a mind works in these uncertain times.

3. To distract myself, I thought about the Acer pseudoplatanus leaves in the fountain. Did the autumn light make the water more reflective? It felt good to contemplate a politically benign question. I also knew it was a luxury not everyone could afford.

4. Earlier in the week, in related news, we had an appointment with an arborist. He admired the birch but agreed that it needed to be thinned. He turned his attention to the Acer pseudoplatanus. "Is that a variegated variety?" he asked. We assured him that it was, and he nodded his approval. We understood. Clearly the world -- even in the global-warming era -- did not need another Acer platanoides.

5. We have to get the birch trimmed every two years or the garden won't get enough light, even the shade plants.

6. Here's a closeup of the Acer pseudoplatanus. You can see how the shape of the leaf might arouse suspicion, particularly at this point of the year when the variegation has faded.

7. We used to hire a (cheaper) suburban tree company to trim the birch, but subsequently turned to a New York City-based arborist that specializes in small gardens and street trees. They trimmed everything perfectly and added some sort of magic (but organic) fertilizer to the trees that greatly improved their health. It was far from cheap, but we paid (sort of) happily, having learned the hard way that scrimping on tree care creates more problems than it solves (if you want living trees). (Like mass transit and public infrastructure.)

8. We won't do the actually pruning and fertilizing for another month or two, when the trees are dormant. For now, we have a plan.

9. Even the ivy looked happy.

10. As did the toad lily, which is the kind of plant that can make do with a little light but will always relish a bit more.

Is My Feed Working (Test)

Is my feed working? This is a test. 

Notes on Northern Skies

1. In this period of great uncertainty, it seemed important to find a few things that were dependable.

2. The mums, for example, were not exactly 'rare' or 'exotic' -- in fact, they arrived in disposable plastic pots -- but added some color to an otherwise dreary garden. I felt happy looking at them. Not everyone was feeling the love, however.

3. 'Mums are suburban and 'basic'." -- Clio

4. But in the right light, they looked perfect.

5. Global warming had changed the temperatures, it seemed, but not the angle of the sun.

6. Every day the sun was getting a little lower in the sky. There was less of it, but what arrived felt more beautiful.

7. By the winter it would be gone and everything would be perfect.

Notes on Late Bloomers (Toad Lilies)

1. After a brutal, dispiriting phase of existence, I went to the park, where I was happy to find the toad lilies in bloom.

2. They were not the only thing in bloom, but '[t]oad lilies bring an exotic flair to any fall garden' -- Better Homes and Gardens

3. I also like this late-blooming sedum, which I believe is called 'Autumn Fire.'

4. I'm always struck by the lack of urgency in the fall garden. You might think these late bloomers would be in a rush with winter pressing down, but they are serene and contemplative.

5. Or mostly serene and contemplative. Sometimes they remember the spring garden with a mix of disdain, embarrassment, and relief. 'Thank god I'm not a crazy daffodil or an arrogant tulip.' And -- if they're being honest with themselves -- a little jealousy, because early bloomers get so much more attention.

6. But mostly they are content to bring what they can to the garden before it shuts down.

7. Toad lilies, like many late bloomers, offer us the muted but refined beauty of acceptance and resignation, which we need after the exuberance of the spring garden has faded with our hopes.

 

Out of the Mainstream Into the Revolution (History Lessons)

1. I kept meeting people who claimed to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. 'Does it ever end?' said everyone, wondering how we had arrived in this alternate hellscape in which the biggest meatheads from high school were now literally being confirmed to the Supreme Court and where Republicans, despite representing a solid minority of the population, were -- because of structural problems with our outdated Constitution -- constantly winning and getting angrier and angrier. 'What exactly do they want?' was another question I heard, the answer to which remains a mystery.

2. I escaped to the park, which despite the surreal temperatures and oppressive humidity seemed to be flourishing. 'Hang in there, park,' I said. 'It can't last forever.'

3. I thought about my mother, who had fought so hard in the 1970s for women's rights. I remembered when nasty trolls used to call her a 'women's libber,' which sounded annoyingly familiar. So many good words begin with 'lib' and Republicans detest them all.

4. She has reserves of optimism that I did not inherit. As I strolled through the park talking to plants and ghosts, she was organizing like-minded individuals at her senior center and canvassing for several candidates in Western Pennsylvania.

5. The thought of her knocking on doors in 'Trump Country' was troubling. One thing Republicans clearly seem to want is to put everyone in jail, so why would they make an exception for an 80-something?

6. My mother wasn't worried, however. After all, she had picketed the (Jimmy Carter) White House and had experienced Ronald Reagan's hands around her neck when she -- wearing a monkey suit -- greeted him at the Pittsburgh Airport on Halloween night before his winning election. 'You women don't know anything,' he screamed at her. #truestory

7. The episode again sounded very familiar in 2018. Did anything ever change?

8. My mother likes to focus on the fact that there are more (progressive) women running for office today than forty years ago, despite ongoing attempts by the Republican leadership to 'roll back the clock' to 1792, when only white men who owned a 'shitload of property' were allowed to vote.

9. A few years ago, she gave me a t-shirt from 'The Majority Caucus,' which was a faction, formed in 1975, of the National Organization for Women whose motto was 'Out of the Mainstream Into the Revolution.' Defending this idea, its leader Karen DeCrow explained: 'I stated, very clearly, all along, that what I wanted to do was not enter the mainstream in full partnership with men, but to change the mainstream.'

10. Forty years later, the motto seemed relevant.

11. I'll be wearing this shirt a lot, because I want to remember that some ideas -- unlike certain people -- never get old.

 

The Search for a Better World Begins Here (Fairmount Park)

1. I woke up early on Saturday morning in Philadelphia, where I had traveled by train to attend a non-heterosexual wedding. I was staying just a few hundred feet from Fairmount Park and the Schuylkill River, which splits the park into two halves (east and west). I started on the east side and ran south, where I passed a number of bridges, some old and some less old. 'This is way nicer than Central Park,' I said to myself as I continued down the not-too-crowded and sufficiently wide path (for bikers and runners) adjacent to the river. It felt good to run in a new city.

2. I stopped to watch a short, depressing play about the dying Constitution.

3. At the end of the play, an eagle turned to stone, symbolizing the ossification of our democratic institutions.

4. Returning to my run, I saw many bridges but had no idea how to access any of them. Eventually, I found myself in a rock garden.

5. In the distance, neoclassical architecture gathered under the rose-tinted dawn.

6. Some paths are worth taking, I decided, even if you don't know where they lead.

7. I still needed to figure out how to get to the other side of the river and the Schuylkill Expressway, which was constructed in an era when people still thought it was a good idea to build highways through the middle of parks.

8. I followed a path to a road to a bridge, where I took another road to a tunnel, which led to another road and finally a path next to the opposite side of the river. (Actually, the route I took was even more complicated than it sounds.)

9. But I made it to the other side, which was no less beautiful than the one I had left. The highway was camouflaged by the trees. There were paths and specimen conifers and no angry white heterosexual Republicans seething with belligerence about a system that had given them every advantage.

10. 'This world is way better than the real one,' I said to myself as the waters beneath me whispered and frothed.

 




 

Notes on Rebuilding Brick Paths of Our Own Making

1. When I first moved here, approximately 18 years and 11 months and 22 days ago, the backyard was a dirt patch surrounded by a chainlink fence. There were dead bodies* and rats everywhere, symbolically foreshadowing our current political landscape. (*cats)

2. I spent a lot of time wondering what I was going to do with it. Though I had spent a portion of my twenties working as a professional plant waterer, my knowledge of plants was limited to the indoor, office variety. I knew nothing about gardening.

3. One day that spring, I spotted a dumpster full of old bricks. I took a closer look and fell in love a thousand times. Each one was a work of art, made of beautiful red clay and imprinted with the trademark of the manufacturer. I had to rescue them. I spent several days hauling them back to the house, through the basement, and out to the backyard. The bricks seemed to like being stacked up and arranged; even without mortar, they held together pretty well. They were doing the job they were created to do.

4. In the meantime, I had read a few gardening books and knew that, with these old bricks, I had some excellent 'pavers' on my hands. I'm not what you would ever describe as 'handy' but I managed to buy a few long pieces of wood (aka 'one by [some bigger number]') that I used to frame a path. I pretended to use a level and maybe some string, but mostly I did it by feel. It was like making a lasagna: the bricks went on top of several layers of materials known as Step One and Step Two, which came in bags with no instructions because there was no question about which one went first (and which went second). Despite fumbling through the dark, I managed to make something serviceable.

5. A few years passed and it occurred to me and Stephen that the design of the garden could be improved, which required disassembling the brick path and reconstructing it several times. It was a lot of work, and though it was never perfect, each iteration was a little better. I also found more bricks at vacant lots in Harlem. Working with the same bricks over and over, I began to recognize them. Oh, I remember you, I would think as I pulled up a brick named Rose or JJJ or Gold. It was like when I was a kid, having mental conversations with my Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars. (Or my stuffed animals, or the pencils in my pencil collection.)

6. We also started adopting some of the cats -- Dante was first -- and, gradually, the rats disappeared. (I'm not saying there was causation; except for supervised time in the garden, our cats live inside.) Like the bricks, the cats wanted a home.

7. Eventually, as we grew increasingly reclusive, we hired someone to enclose the garden in high walls, at which point I disassembled and rebuilt the brick path for the final time. This design, which curved from one end of the garden to the other, seemed ideal. I couldn't have done it at the beginning of my bricklaying career, when I was too constrained by right angles and hard edges; I didn't yet realize the magic of blending something rectangular into a curving form, or if I did, I didn't have the experience to pull it off. The execution wasn't flawless -- I was still mostly pretending to use a level -- but it was very satisfying to walk from one end to the other. The cracks and moss that soon developed helped to make the garden look much older than it really was, which is the effect we wanted. It was relaxing in the way an old cemetery is relaxing: each brick, like a tombstone, has a story to tell if you can decipher its language.

8. But gradually, because these bricks are very old and had to endure global-warming era winters (perversely cold), some of the them splintered apart (RIP) and needed to be replaced. Even though I had built the path, I found myself oddly reluctant to undertake the repairs. We had plenty of good bricks, but I had lost the will to arrange them. (Having published two novels during this time period, I now possessed the temperament of 'a writer,' meaning that I was afflicted with crippling self-doubt.) When I looked at the path, I couldn't imagine having built it, even though I knew I had. Or was pretty sure I had. Except I was no longer that person, so it might as well have been someone else. I procrastinated for a few years until the path became perilous, even for the cats. Then, a month ago, I finally summoned the will to begin. I started small, replacing a few broken bricks. It felt good to hold the bricks and the shovel. I found an old bag of Step Two in the basement. I couldn't imagine what I had been afraid of. This led to a somewhat bigger project and then another in which I repaired a big section of the patio. It still wasn't perfect; it didn't look as nice as the patio of the modern castle in Portugal I saw featured on the BBC show 'The World's Most Extraordinary Brick Paths,' but it was still a big improvement.

9. As I swept piles of Step Two (aka 'sand') into the crevices, I felt like I had learned something important.

10. But with the path speaking for itself, it wasn't for me to say what.

;

Evidence that What Is Lost May Someday Be Found

1. Over the course of the last week I began to worry that, in the global-warming era, September was becoming the new April. Or another April, a month spent pining for weather that never seems to arrive. Every day the forecast called for clouds and high humidity. Only the park offered any relief.

2. Not all of the news was so bad. The New York State Democratic primaries -- in which SIX incumbents lost their seats in the State Senate -- were encouraging.

3. There was also a heartwarming story on Twitter about a cat. Its owner had left the 18-year old cat with a friend, who I guess left the door open and let the 'senior citizen' wander away. Days passed and hope dimmed, but then -- after the owner left one of his shirts outside (so the cat could trace the scent in an unfamiliar neighborhood) -- the cat came back. Having four cats, I could relate to this happy reunion, even if it didn't change much about the state of the world, which -- news flash -- has been not the greatest.

4. If only we can make it a little while longer, I thought, as I contemplated 1) the weather (and especially the humidity), 2) politics, 3) my injury-prone and aging body on a 20-mile run, 4) the subway, 5) car-centric culture (especially in the cities), and 6) book conferences and festivals.

5. We will look back at ourselves and say that, like the cat from San Antonio, we were lost but we were also found.