something disquieting
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Truly does one struggle against the darkness. A vast and slavering dog, it is checked and kept by sturdy chains with a stout collar, but it is always just a few steps behind. Were it let loose, the very pillars of the world would crumble and shake. Caged, a storm rages, with cyclonic fires whose winds carry exultations of lament- and all of hell follows in its wake. Better to get out than dwell upon existential angst, and visit that ribbon of urban neglect known as the fabled Newtown Creek, so off I went.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Witness, if you will, the sort of life which inhabits this debased waterway. Once common, wading birds like this (presumptively) Great Blue Heron have returned to the shallows and sediment mounds in recent years. While photographing this nearly cryptic specie, your humble narrator was approached by a private security man. Girding for the usual lecture given by the “rent a cops” of the Creeklands, I was instead pleasantly surprised when the fellow engaged me in conversation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The guardsman claimed that he had witnessed a startling and unexpected mammalian apparition on more than one occasion at Maspeth Creek. The animal he described as inhabiting the shoreline cannot possibly be here, as it would defy all logic and sense. Dogs, cats, rats- even raccoons and coyotes have been reported with some frequency over the years. Their presence is logical, explainable, and entirely mundane. The security guard however, told me that he has seen a Beaver here. “A musk rat” I suggested? “No, a beaver”, he said.
The Newtown Pentacle 
Life is amazingly resilient.
Much of the official pronouncements about the state of the Newtown Creek are politically motivated with money being the prime motivator. The solutions to whats wrong with the creek, after years of study by various groups all at considerable cost to the public purse, will be designed to profit a select few. What is said or shown in photographs to contradict the official view will be met with either the blank stare of an existential disconnect or the angry glare of the STFU variety reserved for heretics and spoil-sports.
Be that as it may. What I really would like to see a photo of around the Newtown Creek is a retro-mutant heron that has devolved back into a velociraptor. With the mutagenic pollutants known to be there, this may be possible and a way cooler photo than a beaver.
Cav
September 20, 2012 at 10:19 pm