Archive for December 2013
uneasy voices
Quite the hullabaloo over in Astoria last Friday.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Rainy, last Friday evening, a sudden explosion of sirens and a characteristic strobing of red and white light announced that members of the Fire Department had arrived to pursue their occupation. I grew interested when Rescue 4 showed up, which I understand to be a sort of mobile command post and which I’ve only seen when the situation is truly serious.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There were two crewed trucks, a hook and ladder unit and an engine unit. In addition, the Rescue 4 truck and this “Haz Tac” unit arrived on scene along with a couple of ambulances. The setting is Broadway in Astoria, by the way, between 43rd and 44th streets.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There were enough FDNY personnel down there to start a soccer team, but they all seemed to be milling about, rather than the rushing around and “crash bang” action which normally describes the pursuit of their occupation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
NYPD sent an ESU (Emergency Services Unit) truck as well as a highway patrol and several ordinary unit cars, and being the nosey sort, this motivated me to throw the filthy black raincoat on and find out what was going on.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The municipal employees were tight lipped, as usual, but my network of local Croatians had already created a cogent narrative. The whole thing revolved around this van.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As transmitted to me by the Istrian witnesses, there was an accident. A typical fender bender with no injuries, the driver of the van nevertheless fled the scene and abandoned the vehicle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Some unknown municipal threshold must have been achieved, in terms of ascertaining the threat posed by the vehicle, and the FDNY began to pack up and leave. NYPD got busy with traffic cones and redirecting traffic. One wonders, however, what triggered this massive response to an abandoned van.
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Project Firebox 99
An ongoing catalog of New York’s endangered Fireboxes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This 99th portrait of a Firebox depicts that which stands proudly upon Northern Blvd at the eastern extant of the Carridor in Queens. Great expectation has been expressed by certain readers of this, your Newtown Pentacle, that some Götterdämmerung of a Firebox posting will arrive for the 100th iteration, but that misses the point of these ubiquitous columns of street furniture and will surely leave one disappointed. This scarlet sentinel survived 12 years of Michael Bloomberg’s best attempts at firebox genocide, like its brothers, and that alone is worthy of comment.
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inevitably drawn
Where oh where can I find the direction home?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Everybody is going somewhere, coming from someplace else, or running errands. A humble narrator has no direction, no destination, no desire. All I want is to acknowledge Newtownian physics and prove that objects in motion tend to stay in motion until they encounter a force strong enough to arrest or alter their movement. Also, energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but that’s a longer term project that involves hanging odd charms from string in a series of bottles, and I’m still collecting the necessary glassware.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The world only makes sense when you force it to do so. This statement is something I constantly convince myself isn’t true, but unfortunately its diabolical truth is proven to me time and again. Tendencies to reticence and a desire to “trust,” which is a vainglorious attempt to believe in humanity as a whole, seem to be my metaphorical achilles heel. Experiences amongst the monkey tribes over the last few years argue against the mendacity of these apes, and one such as myself can only laugh his scary laugh and retreat back into the night.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I aspire to be “nice,” struggle with notions of absolute morality, and attempt to keep my true nature under some sort of control. Most of those who have long populated my life know this side of me, understand what it is that I keep chained up in the attic and basements of the soul, and have learned how unpleasant things can get when the fetters are loosed. Do not push a creature like me, as you will find the road you’ve entered upon to be quite a bumpy one.
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pitying moon
Darkness abounds in otherwise wholesome locales.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The dystopic setting of Queens Plaza, where tombstone like shards of cement and soaring steel parabolas rise, seems hostile to human life. That’s its paradox, of course, as the transit hub is all about human life but the only things missing from the scene are broken ended pipes that randomly shoot out fire and scarlet demons whipping the damned with barbed flails. The place is agonizing upon the ears, filled with fumes and engine exhaust, and if there is a public lavatory there- I haven’t found it yet. Gazing upon Queens Plaza, one realizes that this is one of the most populated spots upon the Earth- with a proviso that most of the people there at any given time are merely passing through on the subways, cars, bicycles, and buses they’re riding in.
Few ultimately set out with the destination of either Hell or Queens Plaza, but everyone ends up at one or the other sooner or later.
from wikipedia
Reduplicative paramnesia is the delusional belief that a place or location has been duplicated, existing in two or more places simultaneously, or that it has been ‘relocated’ to another site. It is one of the delusional misidentification syndromes and, although rare, is most commonly associated with acquired brain injury, particularly simultaneous damage to the right cerebral hemisphere and to both frontal lobes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Offered above is Dutch Kills Street, just down the block from the infernal conglomeration, looking south off of Jackson Avenue. A medium large (by LIC standards) residential property (of the modern sort) is nearing completion on one side of the street and a far larger project is set to begin on the other. The auto bridge above the roadway carries traffic from Queensboro towards Thomson Avenue over the Sunnyside Yards.
This street isn’t the same post industrial set piece riddled with green steel columns just exited, mind you, instead these steel beams are brown and beige and there’s no traffic except above. There’s something one might describe as foreboding about the street’s current incarnation, for some reason, a preternatural darkness. Intuition demands that one never find himself at the dead end of this street at night, although I have no empirical reason to believe that there is much lurking back there other than the odd feral cat or two.
There’s just something about the spot that feels sinister to me, perhaps the new real estate developments with their mirror glass walls shall brighten the street’s outlook in future times, or at least flush out whatever may dwell therein.
from wikipedia
Delusional companion syndrome is considered a neuropathology of the self, specifically a delusional misidentification syndrome. Affected individuals believe certain non-living objects possess consciousness and can think independently and feel emotion. The psychosis must coexist with a detectable brain pathology for delusional companion syndrome to be diagnosed. The syndrome is most often identified in patients who suffer from damage to the brain due to physical trauma, neuronal degeneration or developmental abnormalities. Especially in the latter case, patients also tend to present with many other symptoms and are diagnosed as having other established conditions. Comforting objects like cuddly toys are often the focus of delusion.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The mirror glass frontages currently in vogue do little to suit the tastes of a creature such as your humble narrator. Devastating planar surfaces rising inorganically, the logical melancholy and joy starved jaundice of a decadent and jaded age, covered in reflective materials whose action reveals too much… No, one such as myself prefers the inhuman scale of earlier times and the fortress of factories at the Degnon Terminal on Thomson Avenue. Their day is long past, the tenants today are colleges and offices, but the structures still exude solidity and inevitability nearly a century after they were rudely erected from the swampy waste meadows surrounding the Dutch Kills tributary of that squamous cataract of urban legend called the Newtown Creek.
from wikipedia
The criteria for failure are heavily dependent on context of use, and may be relative to a particular observer or belief system. A situation considered to be a failure by one might be considered a success by another, particularly in cases of direct competition or a zero-sum game. Similarly, the degree of success or failure in a situation may be differently viewed by distinct observers or participants, such that a situation that one considers to be a failure, another might consider to be a success, a qualified success or a neutral situation.
It may also be difficult or impossible to ascertain whether a situation meets criteria for failure or success due to ambiguous or ill-defined definition of those criteria. Finding useful and effective criteria, or heuristics, to judge the success or failure of a situation may itself be a significant task.
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strange instruments
My neck hurts, I have to pee, and I think someone might be following me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Disturbing indications, delivered to the brain via input from that subcutaneous network of cabled sensors which are referred to as the nervous system (by layman and medical professional alike) and embedded within the skinvelope, abound. Certain sections of the decaying bag of meat in which one is housed were never much good when they were brand new and unsullied, and after nearly half a century of active service these sections have grown worn and are in a degenerate state of repair. Everything hurts, and the atmospherics surrounding the coming of winter irritate, causing my skinvelope to feel quite itchy.
For too long has my brain looked down upon the meatbag below from the perspective of master and slave, and I fear that a Marxist inspired revolution may be afoot, within.
from wikipedia
Details of delusional parasitosis vary among sufferers, but it is most commonly described as involving perceived parasites crawling upon or burrowing into the skin, sometimes accompanied by an actual physical sensation (known as formication). Sufferers may injure themselves in attempts to be rid of the “parasites”. Some are able to induce the condition in others through suggestion, in which case the term folie à deux may be applicable.
Nearly any marking upon the skin, or small object or particle found on the person or his clothing, can be interpreted as evidence for the parasitic infestation, and sufferers commonly compulsively gather such “evidence” and then present it to medical professionals when seeking help. This presenting of “evidence” is known as “the matchbox sign” because the “evidence” is frequently presented in a small container, such as a matchbox.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Crawling about in the dark of night, scuttling to and fro across the concretized devastations, my normally steady gait has become altered of late. Heavy camera bag and too many miles causes one to stoop his shoulders with the left held noticeably lower than the right. My right arm sweeps back slightly (steadying a camera) while the left comes forward, and at the waist I’m bent slightly forward a bit (from offsetting the weight of the bag). Also, I seem to pull myself inexorably forward using my right leg a bit more than the left these days, so my scuttle has evolved into a bit more of a squirm, reminiscent of the calamitous gait expressed by Hollywood zombies. Just a couple of years ago, my movements were somewhat more fluid, but I suppose I just have to deal with the aches and pain and work through this seasonal malady called winter.
Can’t just bury my head in the sand, and pretend I don’t have eyes and ears, or notice a world which is all around me.
from wikipedia
Worms live in almost all parts of the world including marine, freshwater, and terrestrial habitats. Some worms living in the ground help to condition the soil (e.g., annelids, aschelminths). Many thrive as parasites of plants (e.g., aschelminths) and animals, including humans (e.g., platyhelminths, aschelminths). Several other worms may be free-living, or nonparasitic. There are worms that live in freshwater, seawater, and even on the seashore. Ecologically, worms form an important link in the food chains in virtually all the ecosystems of the world.
In the United States, the average population of worms per acre is 53,767.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Current interests, “mah research” as I refer to it comically, have been leading me inexorably towards the history of an area known to modernity as Queens Plaza and the Sunnyside Yards- large sections which hosted either coastal marsh, flood plain, or littoral zone well into the 19th century. It’s plainly fascinating that the slab of fill and concrete upon which perambulation, vehicular, and mass transit occurs occludes the ancient patterns of flowing water. Somewhere, perhaps as little as 25-50 feet below the somewhat modern cut and cover tunnels underlying the streets, still flow the ancestral streams known by the Dutch.
Could there be underground grottoes inhabited by the atavist extant of the ancestral waters of Dutch Kills, or the Sunswick Creek down there?
from wikipedia
Myriapoda is a subphylum of arthropods containing millipedes, centipedes, and others. The group contains over 13,000 species, all of which are terrestrial. Although their name suggests they have myriad (10,000) legs, myriapods range from having over 750 legs (Illacme plenipes) to having fewer than ten legs.
The fossil record of myriapods reaches back into the late Silurian, although molecular evidence suggests a diversification in the Cambrian Period, and Cambrian fossils exist which resemble myriapods. The oldest unequivocal myriapod fossil is of the millipede Pneumodesmus newmani, from the late Silurian (428 million years ago). P. newmani is also important as the earliest known terrestrial animal.
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