Archive for 2012
morning bright
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For once, the smell at the corner of 49th street and 56th road/Laurel Hill Blvd./Rust street isn’t being caused by the infamously aromatic Maspeth Creek tributary of the larger Newtown Creek.
It’s the three headless chickens which are rotting away on the train tracks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These bird corpses turned up at this crossroad shortly after the last full moon, without their heads, and have been left to moulder away. My personal theory, which has been enhanced by a recent addition on the other track of dinnerware adorned with coins and candles, is that this is some sort of “Santeria” thing- however- there are other logical possibilities…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It is entirely possible that this trio “made a break for it” from a nearby “pollo vivo” establishment, were walking down the tracks, and were struck by a passing train which decapitated them. Often has this, your Newtown Pentacle, adjured against walking these active and street grade trackways- proclaiming the existential and mortal dangers of such activity to urban explorers and other photographers. Here is tangible evidence of what might happen to you.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There might also be some sort of bird mafia at work around West Maspeth, and these three chickens might have been left out in public view as a lesson to those who might snitch to the authorities about their illicit activities. “Dese boids mights beze Canaries takins a doit nap”. You don’t screw around with the Goodfeathers around Maspeth.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Jocularity notwithstanding, it is likely a religious thing we are looking at here. The number three is significant, as is the positioning of the bodies at the crossroads of a north/south and east/west path. As stated in the past, your humble narrator is not overly familiar with the syncretic religions of the Caribbean or Central American cultures, but can spot “magick” at a hundred paces.
often done
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Imagine my surprise. Just the other day, while onboard a Working Harbor Committee Newark Bay trip, along came the Mary H. Another denizen of the Newtown Creek, it was so very odd encountering it somewhere else- sort of like visiting a foreign city and finding a neighbor or coworker is there simultaneously. Maritime Sunday’s are often composed of such “co-inky-dink”. Jung would have called it “synchronicity”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pictured above is Mary H in the place I most often expect to find her, delivering a barge to the Bayside depot on Metropolitan Avenue on the obliteration of rational hope known as the English Kills, some three miles back from the East River in Brooklyn.
Project Firebox 50
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lying in wait, mere steps from the fabled Newtown Creek, sits this centurion. Caring not for the sloppy manner in which its duty scarlet is maintained, nor the obsequious graffitis which deface and detract from department patina and regulations. There is only the mission.
It waits, ever ready, to announce that trouble has arrived and to issue a clarion call.
more sights
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A short one today, just a shot of a cool van recently spotted in Astoria. Today’s a summer friday at this, your Newtown Pentacle, it would seem.
evil counsel
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in prior postings, there are certain dates on the calendar which are remarkable for the long list of significant events which have made their mark in the historical record. August 9th is one of those days.
In 586 BCE, for instance- the Temple of Solomon was toppled during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, and in 1483- the Sistine Chapel was opened for Mass in Rome. In 1936, Jesse Owens won his fourth gold medal in Berlin.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Charlie Manson sent his Helter Skelter squad to Sharon Tate’s place on the ninth of August in 1969, and the Victorian era ended when the Edwardian began in Great Britain. In 48 BCE, Julius Caesar and his Legions won the Battle of Pharsalus against Pompey. In 117 AD, a Caesar named Trajan died, and two hundred sixty one years later in 378- another named Valens was obliterated by the Visigoths.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Today is the “national day” of Singapore, the Eastern Orthodox feast day of Saint Herman of Alaska, and the day that Jerry Garcia died. It’s also the day that history changed forever, for the second time, when the city of Nagasaki ceased to be.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is the 222nd day of the 12th year of the 2nd millennia, and the anniversary of Richard M. Nixon resigning the Presidency of the United States. It’s also the United Nations “International Day of the World’s Indigenous People“.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
We’ve just passed through the halfway point of summertime in the Northern Hemisphere, on this oddly propitious date. History is a series of coincidences, strung together after the fact, but any calendrical marker which ties together the fall of the Temple of Solomon with the rise of Caesar, the fall of Dick Nixon, the great working of Charlie Manson, and the use of an Atomic Bomb betrays something else. Dire portent abounds.
The Newtown Pentacle 