Archive for October, 2007
There is a tawdry quality to the buildings lining the main street into town that even we find it difficult to romanticize, as it does not recall an excess of abandoned grandeur (in this regard we have been literally ruined by Washington Heights) but a desperate, opportunistic desire to skim off the hordes (us among […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Longing, Travel, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Goth-Punk, Lake Placid, New York City, Saranac Lake, Washington Heights
The Eastern White Pines cover the rolling hills like a sphagnum moss, dotted with patches of silver (the Quaking Aspens, shimmering like schools of fish) and the burned red of the Sugar Maples. A little higher up these give way to spruces — tall, drooping and dignified — hemlocks, birches — whose gnarled white trunks […]
Filed under: Good Rock, Longing, Pessimism, The Autumn Garden, Travel | Closed
Tags: Adirondacks, Maple, Route 87, Schopenhauer, Spruce, White Pine
It is not only that the C delivers us to Washington Heights, while the B veers east at 145th Street to the Bronx; there are, most notably, the seats; on the B they are oddly flat without the slight trough that allows us to lean back, to settle in and resume our contemplations. And is […]
Filed under: Infrastructure, Pleasure, Resignation, Subway, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: B-train, C-train, Ergonomic Design, MTA, New York Yankees, Washington Heights
Thank you so very much for your keen insight and generosity, your willingness to come all the way up here to protect us! Your words have been so reassuring; we feel so much better knowing that you will do everything in your power — including next week’s important meeting with the mayor — to prevent […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Decay, Drivel, Gentrification, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Gentrification, New York City, Washington Heights
On Franklin’s Tower
Today in the locker room we heard the distant strains of “Franklin’s Tower” coming through the walls. While undressing, we listened to Jerry’s high, reedy voice and the watery textures of his guitar, and considered with some disdain the detached and meandering quality of the music — like so much of The Grateful Dead, vaguely […]
Filed under: Addiction, Bad Rock, Good Rock, Longing, Memory | Leave a Comment
Tags: Cornell, Grateful Dead, Ithaca, Jerry Garcia, la memoire involuntaire, Velvet Underground
We were recently informed via e-mail of the fait accompli retirement of Glitza Gardenia, a woman who had labored in the administrative trenches of our organization for over three decades. Despite efforts of her manager — the author of the e-mail in question — to honor these years of unflinching service, Glitza refused to consider […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Drag Queens, Pleasure, Resignation, The Autumn Garden | Leave a Comment
Tags: Commuter, Gardenia, Glitza, Midtown, New York City, Retirement, Work
It has been two days since we saw Tropical Malady, the 2004 film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and still we are haunted by his depiction of the small joys and disappointments of a new love giving way to sickness and obsession; the mythological and alchemical transformation that takes place as we stalk our love, and in […]
Filed under: Film, Longing, Pleasure, Sickness, Writers-American | Leave a Comment
Tags: Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle, Tropical Malady
Today we read about Exit Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 2007), Philip Roth’s new book in which his alter ego Zuckerman is said to be (ahem) a recluse, which led us to think he might at least be on familiar terms with the sublime metaphorical/metaphysical qualities so critical to the reclusive state. We wondered if it were […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Drivel, Pessimism, Resignation, Writers-American, Writers-French | Leave a Comment
Tags: 9/11, Fiction, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Philip Roth, Technology
Thank you, New York Times, thank you! In your recently published article, “Despite Denials, Gays Insist They Exist, if Quietly, in Iran,” you have finally proved just how wrong President Ahmadinejad was when he claimed that his country contained not even a single gay recluse! Before we read this brilliant piece of investigative journalism, we […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Drivel, Pleasure, The Times | Leave a Comment
Tags: Iran, Larry Craig, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, The New York Times
Of all the outer boroughs, Brooklyn seems to offer the least potential for the gay recluse in search of refuge and contemplation. Having once lived in Park Slope — there, we admit it — we remain mystified by the unceasing torrent of adulation heaped upon the borough — and in particular, we address these comments […]
Filed under: Decay, Resignation, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, Cobble Hill, Heath Ledger, Park Slope, The New York Times, Washington Heights, Williamsburg
The Gay Recluse 