Archive for the ‘Dream’ Category
On Breakfast with the Damned
Each morning Zephyr wakes up and positions himself in front of the western window, where he sits perfectly still as the new day permeates the gray dawn. “For one so young, you seem remarkably serene,” we noted as we passed by to announce that breakfast would be imminently served. “It is true that I have […]
Filed under: Dream, Landscape, The Russian Blue, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Apartment Towers, Breakfast, Cats, New Jersey, Palisades, Sunrise, Zephyr
On Autumn Dreams
In winter we had no dreams; it was too cold to consider anything but the brittle landscape outside and the frozen tributaries of our past within. In spring we were nervous and agitated, our thoughts scattered like cherry-blossom petals in the wind. Summer came and we were boldly confident, perhaps even arrogant; who could not […]
Filed under: Dream, Landscape, Resignation, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Autumn, Books, Dreams, Fog, George Washington Bridge
On Albus Dumbledore
Last night at the midtown bistro ______, we were pleased to find Des Esseintes at the bar, his thin hand clutched around a tumbler of amber-colored liquid. We asked about this, and he confirmed it was a single highland malt from the ____ distillery, which he had long professed to be the most burnished yet […]
Filed under: Drag Queens, Dream, Gay, Opera, Writers-British, Writers-French | Leave a Comment
Tags: Albus Dumbledore, Aristocracy, Opera, Paparazzi, Whiskey
One day on the street in Washington Heights we passed an old man who invited us into his garden. Though barely the size of three parking spaces, the garden contained a vast array of unusual trees, including columnar varieties of a blue atlas cedar, a purple beech (the most magisterial of all trees), a Norway […]
Filed under: Dream, Longing, Resignation, The Autumn Garden, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Art, Beech, Blue Atlas Cedar, conifers, Dawn Redwood, Gardens, Hellebores, Life, Norway Spruce
On Flight
The bleak and vaguely militaristic atmosphere of the terminal is now behind us; we have endured the stifling tedium of the runway and the paralyzing terror of the lift-off, during which we considered the high likelihood of our imminent death and regretted our many missteps. We thought with great tenderness of Dante and Zephyr and […]
Filed under: Dream, Infrastructure, Resignation, The Autumn Garden, The Russian Blue, Travel | Leave a Comment
Tags: Cats, conifers, LGA, US Airways
I sat down in Terminal C next to an older woman, who in a long black dress and ostrich-feather hat appeared oddly elegant among all the business suits. “I hope it’s not too crowded,” I remarked in a somewhat stilted attempt to engage this mysterious woman in conversation, as if we were both waiting to […]
Filed under: Dream, Gay, Memory, Opera, Travel | Leave a Comment
Tags: LGA, Liebestod, Opera, Spleen, Tristan and Isolde, Wagner
We pull and tug at the blanket — the first cold night of the year is upon us — but it doesn’t move even an inch: it is trapped under the leaden weight of cats in the night. We shiver at the edge of the bed, longing to be covered and warm, to retreat to […]
Filed under: Addiction, Dream, Longing, The Russian Blue | Leave a Comment
Tags: Cats, Day, Insomnia, Night, Science, Sleep
It was the sight of a civil war hat — blue wool, with the truncated black rim and a small leather band across the front — on a fellow C-train passenger that made us think of the time, almost twenty years earlier, when we had last worn such a hat (yes, it is called a […]
Filed under: Drag Queens, Dream, Good Rock, Memory, Subway | Leave a Comment
Tags: Birthdays, C-train, Dreams, Memory, The Queen Is Dead, The Smiths
Whenever the gay recluse leaves home, we find our dreams inhabited by those we have left behind. Several times in the passing nights we feel the slight pressure of paws walking across the terrain of the bed, pausing now and again to balance on our legs, as if to ask us if anything we have […]
Filed under: Dream, The Russian Blue, Travel, Writers-French | Leave a Comment
Tags: Baudelaire, Dream, Russian Blue, Spleen, The Clock
According to an article in The Times today, “[h]omophobia directed at the elderly has many faces.” We learn of home health aides who “must be reminded not to wear gloves at inappropriate times, for example while opening the front door or making the bed, when there is no evidence of H.I.V. infection.” We learn of […]
Filed under: Dream, Longing, Pessimism, The Autumn Garden, Writers-American | Leave a Comment
Tags: Adirondacks, Aging, American Fiction, Death, gardening, Henry James, HIV, Picea Omorika Pendula, The New York Times, Weeping Serbian Spruce
Our first impressions of Lake Placid are oddly and unexpectedly reaffirmed by our continuing explorations, which reveal the existence of a completely inaccessible series of estates — here they are called “camps” — that ring the shoreline of the lake. Still filled with a naive optimism after descending from the nearby mountain, we had succumbed […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Decay, Dream, Memory, Pleasure, Travel | Leave a Comment
Tags: Adirondacks, Aristocracy, Class, Helicopters, Lake Placid, Lakes, Segregation, The Pleasure of Ruins
The Gay Recluse 