#metropolitan life

[macrolit]

4:15 pm — I get up feeling curiously unrefreshed.

Fran Lebowitz, Metropolitan Life

[vitaminwatersupreme]

jordan peterson for the gays

[thepopculturearchivist]

TIME, December 21, 1959

[odettecarotte]

Under the jurisdiction of the Commissar of What Is Appropriate, the adage "A place for everything and everything in its place" has been broadened to include "A place for everyone and everyone in their place." You are not in your place or are responsible for something that being in its place, if you were to blame in any of these instances: A. You Are a Man Who Attends Consciousness-Raising Meetings. B. You Are a Woman Who Attends Consciousness-Raising Meetings. C. You Are a Dog and You Live in New York, Probably in My Neighborhood. D. You Are an Army Camouflage Combat Uniform Being Worn by Someone Who Is Not a Soldier in Southeast Asia. E. You Are Wall-to-Wall Carpeting and You Are in the Bathroom. F. You Are on Your Way over to My Apartment and You Have Not Called First. G. You Write Poetry and You Are Not Dead.

Fran Lebowitz, "The Right of Eminent Domain Versus the Rightful Dominion of the Eminent," in Metropolitan Life, 1974.

[inthedarktrees]

Two ballerinas thoughtfully gazing out of studio window while standing on sill in rehearsal room at George Balanchine's School of American Ballet

Alfred Eisenstaedt, “The American Ballet,” Life, December 28, 1936

[life-imitates-art-far-more]

Charles Ethan Porter (1847-1923) "Untitled (Cracked Watermelon)" (c. 1890) Oil on canvas Located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York, United States

Porter was among the first African American artists to exhibit his work nationally and the only one to specialize in still lifes. The painting's subject—originally an African gourd brought to the New World by seventeenth-century Spaniards and cultivated by colonists—is significant. Porter chose to paint a watermelon, an earlier symbol of American abundance—and during the Civil War period one particularly associated with free Blacks—when it was increasingly defined by virulent stereotyping. By reclaiming the subject in artistic terms, Porter challenged a contemporary racist trope.

[fox-teeth]

Went to The Met's Egyptian wing to draw jackals, for my agonies.

9B pure graphite pencil on sketchbook.

[flower-biter]

flowers in art, details xx

[didoofcarthage]

Three Peonies and Two Roses by Anne Vallayer-Coster

French, c. 1810

pen and gray ink, with brush and gray wash, over black chalk

Metropolitan Museum of Art

[collectionstilllife]

William Merritt Chase (American, 1849-1916) • Pink Azalea—Chinese Vase • c. 1880-90 • Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

[rthko]

Too many people assume that your politics or "how queer" you are are a direct reflection of how easy or difficult your life is but that's just not true. I work an office job and am free to wear dangly earrings and flamboyant prints because it's the kind of environment that has DEI measures so people know discrimination will be punished. It was when I worked as a dishwasher, kept to myself and wore the same uniform as anyone else that my coworkers called me "faggot."

I know people who are barely scraping by who know they have nothing to lose and embrace community and radical politics as a result, and people in the same material condition who have had normativity literally beaten into them and think it's the way out. I know stereotypical upper middle class "Pete Buttigieg gays," and people with all the same privilege if not more who posture themselves as the underclass. And I think pointing at random people you know nothing about beyond the fact that you dislike them and saying "you've never suffered" is cruel, especially if the accuser has unacknowledged privilege of their own.

There is a tendency online to attribute absolutely any bad behavior to privilege, and it draws to mind the line from Parasite: "I'd be nice too if I were rich." I'm not rich except in a global context, but yeah, I can admit the arguably "queer enough" life I live now a lot easier now that I'm college educated, can afford wardrobe overhauls and rent in a decently larger city, and am no longer physically exhausted all the time from my job.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Life cover from December 28, 1936 featuring members of the Metropolitan Opera's ballet company practicing. This company, called the American Ballet, eventually morphed into the New York City Ballet.

Photo: Alfred Eisenstaedt via Life magazine Instagram

[toyastales]

New York, New York

[someday-dreamlands]

Torre del Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, Nueva York

[thegayneapigs]

Two of our fosters were adopted yesterday!

Sloop went home with Elvina, and Tank fell in love with Riviera. Both ladies were also adopted from within the rescue.

[downfalldestiny]

Evening Vibes 🌇🚉 !.