I started out in the Robison York State Herb garden, where-because it was August and the campus was deserted-it was just me and 500 herbs (and "plants that have human use or significance"). These included Herbs of the Ancients, Bee Herbs, Culinary Herbs, Dye Herbs, Economic Herbs, Fragrant Herbs, Herbs in Literature, Medicinal Herbs, Herbs of Native Americans, Ornamental Herbs, Sacred Herbs, Tea Herbs, Savory Seed Herbs, Tussie-Mussies and Nosegays (used to ward off the contagion of conservative assholes since the middle ages), Scented Geraniums, Salads and Potherbs, and Edible Flowers.

I gravitated toward the dye herbs, which included the zinnias, whose orange petals were among the brightest in the garden. I learned that every zinnia, no matter what color, has the same dye substance, which means that each will turn wool a shade of yellow. Not being a scientist, I had no idea why this might be the case, but I regretted that I would not be returning back to New York City with a bright orange wool sweater. I wondered if the Hopi Red Dye Amaranth would turn the wool of my imaginary sweater red, but the sign did not indicate one way or the other.

In the Echinacea patch, I was struck by the fame of the flower as a homeopathic remedy against the common cold, when more obscure plants (at least to me) are possibly more deserving of fame, such as the Madagascar Periwinkle (part of the awesomely named Dogbane family), which is the source of chemotherapeutic drugs used to treat childhood leukemia and Hodgkin's disease. I imagined a corporate conference room twenty years ago, where some marketing genius made a pitch to sell Echinacea to the masses: "Everyone gets colds, right?" says Don Draper. "But everyone hates hippies. We'll just clean up the label to make it look ‘scientific' and we'll pay some real doctors for testimonials. Peggy, quit being a stupid bitch and get me a drink!"

I went to the winter garden, which despite the lack of snow was still beautiful, filled with exquisite conifers whose branches languidly draped over the stone walls. If I had to pick a favorite, it would probably be the Colorado Blue Spruce (Picea pungens ‘procumbens'), although even the lowly Juniper looked magnificent with its tiny, variegated needles spread out like a miniature forest.

I next went up to the plantations, which is what the arboretum is called. I had actually spent time here as a student, running fartleks (that's Swedish for "intervals," Beavis) with the cross-country team, and-as I walked around, enjoying the panoramic views-I felt relieved not to be on the verge of puking my guts out. I drifted over to a sugar maple (Acer saccharum ‘arrowhead') and absently turned over the identification tag; next to it I was surprised to find a second tag, explaining why the tree had been planted.

I did not know this guy. Yet I felt a genuine sorrow that of late has been largely absent for me in New York City, where I tend to view the political machinations surrounding Ground Zero with nothing but cynicism. I know this is a defensive reaction; in some ways the day is still too close and too politically charged to think about with the sensitivity it deserves, at least if we focus on those who died (each a tragedy, as the simple tag in my hand made clear). In the city, I can't separate my grief for what actually happened from my anger about what the day has come to represent, so it all sits atop my psyche like a heavy, undigested stone. But here, two hundred miles away, this uncomplicated tree seemed like the most appropriate form of remembrance. I was grateful to discover that my capacity to grieve had not been completely destroyed, when over the past decade there have been too many times when I have been inclined to think the opposite.

Matthew Gallaway lives in Washington Heights and is the author of the forthcoming novel The Metropolis Case.

---

See more posts by Matthew Gallaway

16 comments

In a delirium of heat and fatigue (one that will be familiar to anyone who has endured any portion of this eternal summer), I left Washington Heights and eventually crossed seven bridges, five railroad trestles, six islands (including three apparently never before seen on any map of New York City, and which were almost as big as Manhattan, albeit populated only by forests of 200-foot virgin oaks, an array of songbirds and a few stray cats), and finally passed through a serpentine series of one-way streets lined with increasingly ornate but decrepit mansions.

I stopped the car, rolled down the window, and (along with the strains of an unseen player piano) detected a sweet aroma that called to mind the peach pies my grandfather used to bake when I was a child. (It was his signature dish.) I parked and tried to orient myself according to the street numbers, which turned out to be an exercise in futility. As was later explained to me, numerical addresses in Queens are assigned to houses at random, and often include dashes, symbols and decimal points that are indecipherable except to those who have studied the system for years, if not decades.

I spotted a peach tree. Gnarled, broken-limbed, and situated in a sloping lawn of dry, yellowed grass, the tree nevertheless dripped with ripening fruit. The peaches were not the grotesquely huge specimens-like big baby heads-that you find in gourmet delis and supermarkets but were the size of a large apricot. I could not resist reaching up to touch one, and without any resistance it fell into my palm. My host appeared as if by magic and without any introduction told me I should eat the fruit. I bit into it, and was amazed not only by the sweet taste but also the firm consistency of the flesh. (Is there anything worse than a mealy peach?)

My host subsequently took me on a tour, and as we walked along the streets and then into the alleys behind the streets, the surrounding yards of each subsequent house was adorned with more and more peach trees, from which an infinite number of peaches hung (and sparkled) like stars on a clear summer night. (Not that I would know about that lately.) My head swam with the promise of fresh peaches, peach cobbler, smoked peaches, grilled peaches, fresh peach ice cream, peach liqueur, peachy bread pudding, peach slump, peach salsa, caramelized peaches (with sweet ricotta) and cold peach strawberry soup.

"Do you know where these peach trees came from?" I asked, after I remembered that I was technically on assignment and expected to deliver some hard facts to interested readers. "No clue," said my host, "but I know who does." We stopped at a nearby real estate office, where the managing agent informed us that his grandfather had a century earlier brought saplings to the neighborhood from a small island-half Italian and half Croatian-in the Adriatic Sea, and that the rest were cultivated from these original trees. In the old days, he continued, there used to be a parade each summer to celebrate the harvest.

"Why did it stop?" I asked.

"It didn't, really," he said, but went on to confess that most of the remaining marchers were ghostly souls returned to earth after expressing disappointment with the nectar of the gods.

Matthew Gallaway is a writer who lives in Washington Heights. This is where you can learn about The Metropolis Case, his first novel.

---

See more posts by Matthew Gallaway

23 comments

It may be more controversial to say that the Internet has ushered in an era of unprecedented branding, and that this is driving our current fatigue. Allow me to make the case: in my experience, it's impossible to go online and not to have a constant stream of corporate logos pass in front of your eyes, whether these belong to computer hardware or software companies, site owners, or the products we continually ignore (or not) in the sidebars and banner ads. (Related: the primary reason I'm not yet inclined to buy an "e-reader" is my fear of logos; when I read a book, I want my escape to be unsullied by a lurking symbol only inches away from the prose.) It may be that we are so oversaturated with brands and logos at this point that they have become meaningless, but I tend to think otherwise. Because the Internet is a boundless medium of transporting information-largely immune to traditional constraints of time (to the extent that digital content does not decay) and location-there's a sense that brands associated primarily with the internet and its infrastructure are relatively eternal and more powerful than any dating from the pre-Internet era.

I remember living in Brooklyn after I graduated from college in 1990 and how one of my roommates became increasingly obsessed with a brand-free existence; he stripped the labels off cans of food in the kitchen, along with that of the dishwashing detergent, and even pulled off the marker on the refrigerator (he covered the hole with a handwritten quote by Richard Rorty); he threw away everything he owned with an identifiable corporate tag or mark and placed what remained into a small one-foot square cabinet he built into his closet, which held five white shirts he wore to work and an equal number of white t-shirts he wore when he was off. (The only books he kept were the old yellow editions of Walter Benjamin's essays.) At the time, I was mostly amused or nonplussed by his behavior and privately did a lot of eye-rolling; I felt vindicated when at some point I picked up Generation X by Douglas Coupland and discovered that my roommate was effectively a caricature of the brand-haters so pithily described by Coupland, freaks who were far too serious about life and should really learn to relax. It wasn't that I didn't on some level share my roommate's sensibility, but it seemed pointless to fight. Would it really make any difference for me to be so vigilant about scrubbing brands from my life? It seemed ridiculous. I was willing to spend five seconds peeling off the label of my deodorant (because it also looked oddly striking in generic plastic), but I wasn't about to take an hour soaking a bottle of liquid detergent in hot water to unglue the label. (Although it did look pretty awesome in the end.) To cut brands out of your life struck me about as easy as processed sugar: what sounds good in theory is going to make you a miserable motherfucker.

I attribute this sense of futility to shaping larger discussions of "selling out" that were quite popular and heated in the early nineties, particularly in the context of music. What exactly did it mean for a band to "sign with a major"? Would they necessarily "blow" going forward? (All too often it seemed to be the case.) On the other hand, would you turn down six or seven figures for your next record? Unless your name is Ian MacKaye, I think not! Then Nirvana changed the equation, and ever since, to even mention "selling out" is generally regarded as cringe-inducing. Like politics or religion at a family dinner, it's understood that maybe there's something to discuss, but it's so fucking boring and beside the point that nobody wants to hear it.

With the passage of time, I've become more sympathetic to my old roommate. (Not living with him helps.) One of the reasons I love gardening is that it's generally a non-branded experience, at least superficially. When you stare at the leaves and flowers, you don't (yet) see logos, even peripherally. Gardening (or camping or going to the park or the beach) is not without its flaws, however, in terms of an unadulterated brand-free experience. The problem is that it's still very "active"; you essentially have to choose to create a non-branded environment for yourself, and-as every gardener or vacationer can attest-it's a lot of work to get to the point where you can sit back and say, "ah, this is fucking sweet, I am at one with the natural world, and all you multinational corporations can go fuck yourselves."

What takes much less work is to observe something like the subway panels of 163rd Street in Washington Heights, which offer a completely passive non-branded experience, outside of anyone's power to create or refute. In the essential conduit of its time (by which I mean to compare the subway to the Internet) we see the graveyard of brands, a place where the once-envisioned posters and advertising have given way to derelict, ruined spaces, deemed without value by the corporations of our era. In the peeling paint and glue you can moreover find a kind of abstraction that resonates with art and creation (albeit a type of art without a creator). Here I'm consoled to a degree that extends far beyond what I find in the garden. When I'm suffocated by the relentless assault of brands, I turn to these panels and am reassured by the certainty that nothing is eternal, and here is your proof.

Matthew Gallaway is a writer who lives in Washington Heights. This is where you can learn about The Metropolis Case, his first novel.

---

See more posts by Matthew Gallaway

11 comments

No doubt other plant lovers have their favorites during this time of year; for me and Stephen, the Adriatic Bellflower (Campanula garganica) takes center stage. Our campanula is a low, spreading variety that occupies a promontory overlooking a sea of moss-covered brick. It gets nice early-morning sun and (thanks to us, if not always Mother Nature) ample water and organic, fishy-smelling fertilizer, which is all it needs to send forth a carpet of blossom-covered tendrils to cascade over the rocks.

I can't use the word "cascade" without thinking of our friend T, a rather large, garrulous, and for that reason, perhaps imposing man who used to spend summers with his boyfriend in Tarrytown, where his flower boxes of cascading annuals attracted the attention of a local outfit, the Ladies Village Improvement Society, or something similar. One day some representatives knocked on his door and asked if "the lady of the house" was present because they wanted to invite her to join. "You're looking at her," he responded archly, which at the time (the late 80s) caused shockwaves to ripple through the Westchester gardening community. Recently I overheard some young queen refer to his love of "hanging" or "falling" plants and I felt compelled to pass along this important terminology: if you're going to embrace a life in the garden, there's little point in going halfway.

Last weekend a much younger friend joined us for dinner. In the early-June heat we admired the flowering blue stars and discussed our friend's imminent travel plans, which include a long-anticipated vacation to ___ and ___, countries he has never before visited, but which Stephen (who has) assured him has gorgeous beaches and famous cruising grounds populated by legions of very attractive non-heterosexual men. "I am so getting fucked every single night of this trip," our young guest did not so much confess as proclaim, and I appreciated his candor and enthusiasm, particularly when I compared it to the sad, overwrought inhibition I suffered at his age. My mother often likes to try to convince me (or more to the point, herself) that society is improving for non-heterosexuals, and as evidence of this she regularly points to the inclusion of gay kids at high-school proms around the country. "I guess that's promising," I usually say to her, and there's a part of me that wants to believe; after all, there's a new generation at hand, and I try to take the same comfort in their existence as I do the new flowers in the garden.

"Would you like to visit the Adriatic Sea, home of our lovely bellflower?" I asked Stephen after our young friend had left. "Maybe someday," he offered after a few moments of consideration, but with a kind of wistfulness I understood. Traveling more than a day or two-what with the expense and airport ordeals and abandonment of our cats and dread of returning to the same problems we left behind-has lost some of the appeal it once held for us. These days, we're more inclined to stay in the garden and watch the campanula bloom, creating the illusion of a night sky, allowing us to remain insulated from the larger and more maddening uncertainties of the larger world beyond.

Matthew Gallaway is a writer who lives in Washington Heights. Come, let us go together and learn all about his first novel, The Metropolis Case.

---

See more posts by Matthew Gallaway

22 comments