Archive for the ‘Pleasure’ Category
On “Whatever Homo Tendencies I Have Are Basically a Minor Health Problem” (Valentine’s Day 2k8)
In which The Gay Recluse revisits the past, both distant and not-so-distant. As many of you may or may not know, last year we wrote an essay that was published by Gawker on Valentine’s Day as part of a “Gay Modern Love” contest sponsored by Sheila (miss u!) and inspired in part by our rants […]
Filed under: Competitions, Dream, Gay, Health, History, Longing, Memory, Nostalgia, Obsession, Pleasure, Search | 2 Comments
Tags: 2k8, Gawker, Gay Modern Love, Sheila, Valentine's Day
In which The Gay Recluse holds a contest. Sort of. Recently we heard from Mike, an American expat (and blogger!) living in Denmark who writes: I didn’t know about your blog this summer when I went to Florence, but now that blog-whoring’s brought us together, here’s a humble contribution: Though we’ve already covered Florence — […]
Filed under: Architecture, Hot Gay Statues, Infrastructure, Landscape, Photography, Pleasure | 4 Comments
Tags: Denmark, Expats, Florence, Hercules and Caucus, Photographic Eye
In which The Gay Recluse launches a new contest. Smokin. Seen anything hotter? Send us your pix.
Filed under: Capitalism, Competitions, Gay, Hot Gay Statues, Pleasure, Search, Stereotypes, Travel | Leave a Comment
Tags: Amenities, Do Not Disturb, Hotels, Service, Shhh, Sleep, Vienna
In which The Gay Recluse cooks. Yesterday we went for a walk in the rain, in part because we wanted to check out what was happening uptown, and in part because none of the grocery stores around us carry the curly parsley that we needed for the lentil soup we planned to make. We’ve been […]
Filed under: City Pattern Project, Dissonance, Food, Gay, Health, Landscape, Longing, Memory, Nostalgia, Photography, Pleasure, Science, Search, The Autumn Garden, Washington Heights, Weather | 4 Comments
Tags: Cultural Revolution, Enbalmed Bread, Health Food, Lentil Soup, Recipes, Sugar Cereals, Uncle Jimmy
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with the firethorn. Orange is one of the best colors in the autumn garden. It will have to sustain us through the winter. Fortunately, we never get tired of looking at it. Today as we contemplated the clusters of tiny fruit, illuminated by the eastern sun, we […]
Filed under: GWB Project, Memory, Nostalgia, Obsession, Pleasure, The Autumn Garden | Leave a Comment
Tags: Colors, Firethorn, Mountain Ash, orange, Sadness
On the Corsican Mint Project
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with Corsican mint. This was just a few days ago: politics aside, it’s been another good season for Corsican mint! Of all the groundcovers we introduced into the garden, Corsican mint (Mentha requienii) has attained a particular affection for us. Although it has thrived in several places […]
Filed under: Pleasure, The Autumn Garden, The Gay Recluse | 3 Comments
Tags: Bricks, Corsican Mint, Gardens, Moss
On a Story of Floating Weeds
In which The Gay Recluse is entranced. Tonight we watched A Story of Floating Weeds, the 1934 film by Yasujiro Ozu. It’s a silent movie, which takes some getting used to (and we say this with regret, not about the movie, but the state of our frenzied existence). Like the other Ozu films we’ve seen […]
Filed under: Drag Queens, Dream, Film, Gay, Language, Longing, Pleasure | 2 Comments
Tags: A Story of Floating Weeds, Gay Directors, Japan, Silent Movies, Yasujiro Ozu
In which The Gay Recluse records and tumbles. Hey fans of the British Invasion (by which we mean the one with Spacemen 3 and My Bloody Valentine)! Why not tumble on over to the latest in Saturnine Death Culture at Sea — recorded by us like five seconds ago on this very laptop — where […]
Filed under: Bad Rock, Capitalism, Communism, Death Culture at Sea, Dissonance, Dream, Good Rock, Photography, Pleasure, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Evergreens, New Songs, Saturnine
In which The Gay Recluse takes what he can get. Summer is by far the worst season in Washington Heights. Stereos are constantly blaring, there’s trash everywhere, the elevators and street corners are filled with macho-man drunks. When a woman walks down the street and these geniuses make a big production of staring at her […]
Filed under: Gay, Pessimism, Pleasure, Search, Sickness, Small Pleasure Project, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights, Weather | 8 Comments
Tags: Corner Huggers, Drunks, Faggot, Losers, N-word, Shadows, Shower Curtains, Summer, Trash
In which The Gay Recluse retires to our garden in Washington Heights. Date of photograph: April 28, 2008, around 6:30pm It’s hardly a secret that sometimes the spring garden looks better in the rain. Today was one of those days… One of our favorite plants is the creeping yellow groundcover, which we bought a few […]
Filed under: GWB Project, Language, Longing, Memory, New York City, Obsession, Pessimism, Photography, Pleasure, Resignation, Ruins, Search, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, The Spring Garden, Washington Heights, Weather | Leave a Comment
Tags: Alpines, Chasing Amy, Creeping Jenny, Green Markets, Groundcover, Lesbian Conversions, Lysimachia nummularia, Perennials, Rain, Rocks, Sighs, Union Square, Washington Heights
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with The George Washington Bridge. Time and date of photographs: April 17, 2008, 7:00 – 8:00 pm (ish). Originally the George Washington Bridge was meant to be clad in stone but fortunately they ran out of money. This is not a pattern we ever get tired of […]
Filed under: Architecture, GWB Project, Landscape, Obsession, Photography, Pleasure, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Blur, Sunset, The George Washington Bridge, Zoom Lens
In which The Gay Recluse promotes remembrance of things past. Today we received this letter from reader Steve in Manhattan: I, too am obsessed with the George Washington Bridge, and have been ever since as stoned youths me and my friends cavorted in the park on the New Jersey side that is directly below the […]
Filed under: Architecture, GWB Project, Infrastructure, Letters, Memory, Photography, Pleasure, The Gay Recluse | 3 Comments
Tags: Drugs, New Jersey, Parks, Paths, Picnics, Readers, Stoners, The Gay Recluse, The George Washington Bridge, Walks, Youth
In which The Gay Recluse provides a postscript to our gay alternative to this week’s Modern Love piece in the Times by Kayla Rachlin Small. (For those looking for our informal-but-telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, click here.) Dear TGR, I loved your riff on “The Steep Price of Your Forbidden Kiss” (a title which, […]
Filed under: Drag Queens, Film, Graffiti, Letters, Longing, Obsession, Photography, Pleasure, Ruins, Search, Sickness, The Gay Recluse | 1 Comment
Tags: Cystic Fibrosis, Gay Modern Love, Kayla Rachlin Small, Lesbian, Modern Love, Other, The New York Times
In which The Gay Recluse goes to a new restaurant (twice) and is totally psyched. For all of you doubters in doubterville, take note: there’s a new restaurant on 166th Street between Broadway and Saint Nicholas, right around the corner from Dallas BBQ. And get this: it’s vegetastic! We’ve eaten there twice already this weekend […]
Filed under: Animals, Capitalism, Food, Health, Infrastructure, Pleasure, Retail, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | 10 Comments
Tags: Collard Greens, Drumsticks, Fried Bake, Guyana, Heights Vegetarian, Restaurants, Rice and Beans, Smoothies, Trinidad, Vegetarian
In which The Gay Recluse is inspired by a classic. Of all the French photographers who documented Paris at the turn of the last century (and we don’t mean 8 years ago), we are most obsessed with Eugene Atget. Who can resist his urban streetscapes, his ghostly renderings of the city of light? And his […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Memory, Nostalgia, Pessimism, Photography, Pleasure, The Winter Garden, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Eugene Atget, Litter, Paris, Roots, Trees
That cloud overhead — you really don’t recognize it? That hovering and inescapable dread, which makes New Year’s the longest Sunday of the year, particularly now that we no longer have to endure the last day in August before returning to school? No, it’s not so much the prospect — or let’s be honest, the […]
Filed under: Brooklyn, Memory, New York City, Pleasure, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: 2008, New Year's Day, Resolutions, Saturnine
On the Beauty of Extreme Weather
What? Only two inches of slush? That’s not a storm! It’s a transition, a pause, a hiccup and (most of all, after all the buildup) a disappointment. But seriously, do you remember the time — we were still in school then, so it would have been at least 100 years ago — when it snowed […]
Filed under: Landscape, Memory, New York City, Pleasure, Weather | Leave a Comment
Tags: Down Jacket, Snow, The Great White Hurricane, Winter
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
Bravo, Andrew! Your dismissal of “community” was a pleasure to read, even if it did make us wish you would find a similarly pessimistic lens through which to analyze political regimes and nation building. But no matter, this is an important notion, one that faithful readers of The Gay Recluse will recognize as the foundation […]
Filed under: Longing, Pessimism, Pleasure, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Andrew Sullivan, Arthur Schopenhauer, Community, Community-Free Existence, The Gay Recluse
A young runner — perhaps twenty years old — had stopped to stretch at one of the Parcourse installations in Rock Creek Park; it did not take more than a single glance to realize why he looked so familiar. In a short conversation, he confirmed that he had in fact just this year graduated from […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Decay, Good Rock, Infrastructure, Landscape, Memory, Nostalgia, Opera, Pleasure, The Gay Recluse, Travel | Leave a Comment
Tags: Center for Marine Conservation, Cornell University, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Parks, Rock Creek Park, Running, Stretching, The Meat Puppets, The Smiths, Washington DC
The Gay Recluse 