Archive for the ‘The Gay Recluse’ Category
In which The Gay Recluse ponders some recent search terms used to find the very pages you are now reading. Note: All search terms listed are in the exact form provided by WordPress.com, which is the host (at least for a while) of this blog. Hyperlinks to relevant posts included. Search: where to find sweetie […]
Filed under: Architecture, Gay, Longing, Obsession, Search, The Gay Recluse, Traffic | Leave a Comment
Tags: Arthur Schopenhauer, Corsican Mint, Die Walküre, Friedrich Nietzche, George Washington, Leonard Cohen, Metropolitan Opera, Michael Kimmelman, Peter Nadas, Stephanie Blythe, Sweetie Clementines, The Gay Voice, Velcro Jeans
In which The Gay Recluse contemplates an uncommissioned masterpiece from the walls of an uptown subway station.
Filed under: Film, Gay, Infrastructure, Subway, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: C-train, Dumb Movies, Emotions, Funerals, Graffiti, MTA, Rambo, Sylvester Stallone, Tears
Given the long-ascendant Manhattan real-estate market, people are often surprised to learn the extent to which abandoned, burned-out property still plagues Harlem and Washington Heights. On our block alone — which is not even close to one of the worst around here — there are three completely annihilated townhouse “shells” and several other larger buildings […]
Filed under: Architecture, Decay, Gentrification, Government, Landscape, New York City, Pessimism, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | 1 Comment
Tags: Ailanthus, Ann Coulter, HPD, Marcus Millichap, Massey Knakal, Pigeons, Rats, Real Estate, Shells, Uptown Manhattan
Back at work this morning we find our blood still coursing with the slow, oscillating melodies of last night’s third act of Die Walküre at the Met. By the end (and really, by the middle of the first act) it was sublime and transcendent, so that all of our quibbling about the final dress seemed […]
Filed under: Good Rock, Opera, Pessimism, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Die Walküre, Jim Morris, Richard Wagner, Stephanie Blythe, The Metropolitan Opera, The United States
Yesterday as we approached Ft. Tryon Park for our weekly promenade in Washington Heights‘ most beautiful cliff-side heather garden, we were confronted by a small regiment of bagpipe players, apparently rehearsing for an upcoming event. We sat for a few minutes on one of the adjacent benches and observed these maneuvers, in which the band […]
Filed under: Government, New York City, Politicians, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: 2008 Presidential Campaign, Bagpipes, Bette Midler, Ft. Tryon Park, Heather Gardens, Parade Maneuvers
On Repulsion
As we watch Repulsion, the Roman Polanski film starring “the young” Catherine Deneuve, it’s hard not to be impressed by the way Polanski — like so many great artists — seems to predict the future. Released in 1965, the film presents a tightly wound portrait of a London which — and as a metaphor of […]
Filed under: Film, Government, History, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Catherine Deneuve, Horror Movies, Iowa Caucus, Nervous Breakdown, Repulsion, Roman Polanski
Did you see the story in today’s Times about the man — the window washer — who fell 47 stories (500 feet) and survived? He’s in the hospital and while basically a bag of broken bones, doctors say he should be walking within a year. Incredible. It reminds us of when we were at Cornell […]
Filed under: Addiction, Animals, Drag Queens, Faith, Memory, Sickness, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Ann Coulter, Cascadilla Gorge, Cornell University, Miracles, Raccoons, Tragedies
As we have discussed before, some of the best art in Washington Heights is in the subway stations. Here we pause to admire the genius of a delicate, floating (if raw and mildly distorted) line drawing of Jack Nicholson, which miraculously transforms a garish Hollywood poster into something subversive and entertaining, which is to say […]
Filed under: Graffiti, Infrastructure, Subway, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Art, Graffiti, Jack Nicholson, MTA, Posters, The Bucket List
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
In our daily travels, we are regularly confronted by some of our more clever but literal-minded critics with the question of why we would ever want to publish our thoughts and observations, if in fact it is our unending desire to be reclusive, or to obtain — in our own lexicon — a “community-free” existence. […]
Filed under: Gay, Infrastructure, Philosophers, Resignation, The Gay Recluse, The Winter Garden, Weather, Writers-German | Leave a Comment
Tags: Best of 2007, Community, Corsican Mint, Deserts, Gy Rclus, Gy Rcluse, Gy Recluse, Kant, Schopenhauer, Search Engines, Site Meter
Though we’ve long planned to honor the genus Picea — or more commonly, the spruce — for playing such a pivotal role in the continuing drama that is our backyard garden, we felt that it would be even more appropriate to offer a special acknowledgment to three of these trees who have graced us under […]
Filed under: The Autumn Garden, The Gay Recluse, The Winter Garden | Leave a Comment
Tags: Norway Spruce, Picea Abies Cupressina, Picea Abies Hillside Upright, Picea Omorike Pendula, Weeping Serbian Spruce
More than any other neighborhood in Manhattan, Washington Heights — except for a few enclaves north of the George Washington Bridge — has existed in a state of commercial paralysis, so that as we stroll up and down Broadway, we are tempted to say (and with the expected derision) that nothing has changed for at […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Gentrification, Landscape, New York City, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: 2007 Awards, Broadway, Columbia Medical, Florist, Joa, Starbucks, Uptown, Vantage Properties, Washington Mutual
True, there’s a part of us that wants to mock this display in the entrance to our parking garage in Washington Heights; to note with derision the odd juxtaposition of the toy sports-car bear with the postcard portrait of a baby Jesus; to look with disdain at the tree itself, oddly pathetic and completely garish, […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Longing, New York City, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Christmas, Faith, Jingle Bells, Logic, Outsider Art, Parking Garage
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
Today we were both amused and disheartened to find a panoply of gay code words used in a N.Y./Region (long our favorite section) piece in The Times on Mr. William J. Dane, a curator and art scholar who has maintained the Newark Library’s collection of prints and rare books for more than six decades. To […]
Filed under: Drivel, Gay, Language, The Gay Recluse, The Times | Leave a Comment
Tags: Gay Code Words, Gay Euphemisms, Stereotypes, Stilted Prose, The New York Times
On Decembers Past
With so much pressure and anticipation, this — namely, the week before Christmas — was when we could stand it no longer: it was time to mount an expedition into that most forbidden and exotic of all domestic locales, our mother’s bedroom closet. To even enter our parents’ bedroom felt dangerous; it was the one […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Communism, Memory, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Bedroom Closet, Christmas, Family, Gifts, Pittsburgh, Transgression
In yesterday’s Times, we were told that Italy has sunk to new depths of despair on many fronts, “struggling as few other countries do with fractured politics, uneven growth, organized crime and a tenuous sense of nationhood.” There is widespread malaise, or malessere. Quoted is Walter Veltroni, the mayor of Rome: “It’s a country that […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Decay, History, Nostalgia, Resignation, The Gay Recluse, Travel | Leave a Comment
Tags: Economy, GNP, Italy, Schopenhauer, The New York Times, Turin, Venice
The Gay Recluse 