Archive for the ‘Dream’ Category
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with The George Washington Bridge. Time and date of photographs: April 3, 2008, wheneverness. Work was difficult this week. It was hard to concentrate. Life felt very distant. We wished we could take a nap. Somehow it never ends. “I, too am obsessed with the George Washington Bridge, […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Dream, Gay, GWB Project, History, Photography, Quotes, Resignation, Ruins, Technology, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: George Washington Bridge, Sunsets, Work
In which The Gay Recluse is momentarily disturbed. Of all the natural vistas we have encountered — desert landscapes, arctic tundra, the badlands — the rooftops of Washington Heights remain one of the most tranquil and undisturbed. Originally carved from the bedrock some 10,000 years ago by the retreating glaciers, the surreal beauty of these […]
Filed under: Architecture, Conspiracy, Dissonance, Dream, Landscape, New York City, Resignation, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Artic Tundra, Badlands, Birds, Desert, Glaciers, Ice Age, Palisades, Rooftops
On Deirdre’s Terrain: Cube Party
In which The Gay Recluse imagines a life more exciting than his own. Our newest correspondent — Deirdre’s Terrain — sends in pix of her desk at work, which she labeled only half-ironically as “CUBE Party!” along with the following report: Look @ my cube This is the view from where Deirdre sits. (Note the […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Communism, Conspiracy, Deirdre's Terrain, Dream, Memory, New York City, Technology, Television | Leave a Comment
Tags: Deirdre's Terrain, Manhattan, Office Cube, Office Design, Permalance, Television
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with The George Washington Bridge. Time and date of photographs: April 1, 2008, 7:00 – 8:00 pm (ish). The sunset sky — even this tone of blue — is perhaps not as promising as we’d like to believe. (We think of someone we recently overheard describing her […]
Filed under: Architecture, Dream, GWB Project, Longing, Resignation, Ruins, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: April, George Washington Bridge, Sunsets, Waiting
In which The Gay Recluse celebrates Easter. It was not until eleventh grade — in Mrs. S____’s English class — that we began to appreciate the obsessive and illogical side of literature, which of course is to say we were reading Wuthering Heights. Do you remember Mrs. S____? How thin and small and severe she […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Dream, Landscape, Language, Literature, Memory, Obsession, The Gay Recluse, The Spring Garden, Washington Heights, Weather, Writers-British | 1 Comment
Tags: Catherine, Easter, Emily Bronte, Fort Tryon Park, Heathcliff, Heather, Sylvia Plath, The Moors, Wuthering Heights
In which The Gay Recluse photographs birds. Mary-Kate and Ashley? Elliot and Silda? Tristan and Isolde? You decide. (Our Jonathan Livingston Seagull moment for the day.)
Filed under: Animals, Dream, GWB Project, Longing, Memory, Photography, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Ashley Olsen, Birds, Elliot Spitzer, Isolde, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Mary-Kate Olsen, Seagulls, Silda Spitzer, Tristan
In which The Gay Recluse reports on life at home.
Filed under: Dream, Nostalgia, Photography, The Gay Recluse, The Russian Blue | Leave a Comment
Tags: Home Life, Hunger, Russian Blue, Snacks, Treats, Zephyr
On Gay Modern Love (or Thanks to Stephen, I Came Out Twice: First as Gay, Then as a Recluse)
In which The Gay Recluse — as part of a Valentine’s Day special feature — encourages readers to visit Gawker. For those of you who have followed our informal-but-rather-telling quantitative analysis of the “Modern Love” column in The Times — in which openly gay writers almost never appear and even less frequently write about romantic […]
Filed under: Dream, Gay, The Gay Recluse, The Times | Leave a Comment
Tags: Daniel Jones, Gawker, Modern Love, The Gay Recluse, The New York Times, Valentine's Day
In which The Gay Recluse live-blogs the Super Bowl. 5:58. Our friend T___ arrives to give us haircuts. He tells us that his mother, who is only 64 years old, has just been diagnosed with an inoperable form of brain cancer. She has just begun chemotherapy, and to give him encouragement, we tell him about […]
Filed under: Addiction, Dissonance, Dream, Film, History, Landscape, Photography, Technology, Television, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Contempt, Giants, Haircuts, Hong Kong, In the Mood for Love, Jean-Luc Godard, Le Mepris, Maggie Cheung, Netflix, Patriots, Super Bowl, Tawaa, Tony Leung, Wong Kar-wei
Today we dreamed of traveling to a small island off the coast of Japan called Gukanjima. Only three-quarters of a mile around, during its heyday it nevertheless was home to over 5000 people, which for decades made it the world’s most densely populated island. Looking at pictures of it now, we imagine a city block […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Decay, Dream, Gentrification, New York City, Nostalgia, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Edwardian Architecture, Gukanjima, Japan, Manhattan, Washington Heights
The bright and cool December air brings us back to the years we spent in Brooklyn, when each weekend we walked up Third Street to the park, and there on one of the inner fields — away from the strollers and the “ultimate” Frisbee players — met for a game of soccer. As ex-athletes and […]
Filed under: Brooklyn, Dream, Memory, New York City | Leave a Comment
Tags: Brooklyn, Nethermead, Pickup Soccer, Prospect Park, Saturnine
Music courtesy of Saturnine from the album Remembrance of Things Past (VictoriaLandRecords 2007); released under a Creative Commons license here.
Filed under: Dream, Good Rock, Longing, Memory, The Gay Recluse, The Russian Blue | Leave a Comment
Tags: Indie Rock, Life, Proust, Saturnine, Shadows, Zephyr
Do you remember what it was like to be sick as a child, when you would stay home from school and relocate to your parents’ bed to watch television? Some days we were faking and would do anything to avoid the tedium of school (if only that were an option now!) but when we were […]
Filed under: Dream, Gay, Memory, New York City, Sickness | Leave a Comment
Tags: Childhood, Delirium, Fever, Queens, Television, Wallpaper
On Giving Thanks
While this day is not so different than so many others, to the extent we feel like we are under siege — fending off sickness and financial ruin and political censure at every turn — as we survey our past and contemplate what lies ahead, we are grateful for many things. Such as? Well, life […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Communism, Dream, Government, History, Memory, Pessimism | Leave a Comment
Tags: Clementine, Conservative, Democrat, Liberal, Libertarian, Religious Right, Republican, Thanksgiving
On Birds and Cats
But did you not hear about the trial of the man who killed a cat that was stalking migratory birds in a Texas sanctuary? What a nightmare! On one hand, who can deny the allure of the cat, creature of the night, possessor of dreams? Yet who has not stood in awe of birds flying […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Communism, Dream, History, Obsession, Pleasure, The Autumn Garden, The Russian Blue, The Times | Leave a Comment
Tags: Birds, Cats, Conscious, Freud, Jung, The Soviet Union, The United States, Unconscious
On Beatrice
When the russet hues of the setting sun stream through our western window, as happened today, it is quite possible to imagine Beatrice in the distorted, filtered light, contemplative and hovering as if she were still there, peering into the distance, longing for something to take her away. The first time we saw her, however, […]
Filed under: Drag Queens, Dream, Drivel, Good Rock, Memory, Orchids, Resignation, Sickness, The Russian Blue, The Times, Writers-French | Leave a Comment
Tags: 9/11, Animal Medical Center, Baudelaire, Beatrice, Candy Darling, Cannanes, Cats, Dante, Daphne Merkin, Death, Lipidosis, Love, Robert Moses, Russian Blue
On the Empire State Building
In our dreams, the Empire State Building hovers and glows with a radiance that is seriously awesome to behold; it is a beacon to all who seek refuge in the city, and furthermore is not — as Fay Wray tells us — unstinting or cold in this respect, even if like the rest of us […]
Filed under: Architecture, Dream, Film, Gay, History, New York City, Sickness | Leave a Comment
Tags: Architecture, Empire State Building, Fae Wrae, New York City, Walter Benjamin
On Marathons
Good luck, runners! On this day of the New York City Marathon, we remember years ago, when we too joined the tens of thousands who sprinted across the Verrazano Narrows before stretching out into a line of hope and desperation that snaked through the five boroughs. Then of course we were strong and idealistic enough […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Dream, Gay, Memory, Pessimism | Leave a Comment
Tags: Death, Life, NYC Marathon, Past, Running
There was a sleeping man, presumably homeless, in the subway station; as we approached, he turned over and gazed at us with eyes like those of a beaten animal, which is to say both fearful and imploring. He cleared his throat and began to speak in a surprisingly deep and resonant voice, which echoed in […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Dream, Infrastructure, Subway, Writers-French | Leave a Comment
Tags: Baudelaire, History, MTA, NYC, Spleen, United States
The Gay Recluse 