Archive for 2013
this impression
Name a phobia, and I probably exhibit symptoms of it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m afraid of anything meant to represent a sentient being, so Automatonophobia is on my list, As is Algophobia- which is what my fear of pain is called. One presents Frigophobic symptoms when a fear of cold flares to life, which usually happens to me between the months of November and March. Globophobic fits keep me away from any public event wherein balloons will be displayed, especially ones which are yellow. I’ve never liked being touched, but rampant Haphephobia relegates one to a horrid and crumpled mass of quivering defeat whenever someone brushes past on the subway and makes physical contact- no matter how casual. These conditions are all quite debilitating, and I demand pity.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Obsessions and compulsions notwithstanding, the work must come first. Nyctophobia must be denied, for what is there to fear about the dark that isn’t also there during the day? For those who suffer from an inverse affliction- a fear of the sun known as Heliophobia, the night is nepenthe. I believe that the non medical term “panphobia,” or the fear of everything, best describes my outlook. Despite this, a humble narrator dares both the fuligin night and the emanations of the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself, but does remain scared of all that might be hidden, out there, in plain sight.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lengthening shadows and shortened intervals between dawn and dusk indicate strongly that the wheel of the year has turned once again to Halloween. Fundamentalists of modern times decry this most Christian of holidays as “the devils night,” lambasting the celebration of manifest fear and terror as antithetical to their limited interpretations of biblical narrative. One such as myself, however, prefers to embrace the army of phobias and trooping night terrors as they gambol along with the goblins and ghasts.
Upcoming Tours
Saturday – October 19, 2013
The Insalubrious Valley of the Newtown Creek with Atlas Obscura- tickets on sale now.
Sunday- October 20th, 2013
The Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek with Brooklyn Brainery- tickets on sale now.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
almost homogeneous
Xanthophobic horrors abound, here in the Newtown Pentacle.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If light may be observed, and if its wavelength is between 570 and 590 nanometers, one can be reasonably assured that they are witnessing a color known as yellow. Xanthophobia is the fear of the color yellow, a sickness of the mind one must avoid at all costs, for contemplation of it serves only to populate the mad house. As a note- Sexual organs like the ones pictured above are likely to contain carotenoids- yellow and red pigments that are found in the chloroplasts and chromoplasts of plants and other photosynthetic organisms. These colorants are also present within certain algaes, amongst certain strains of bacteria, and even within fungi. All of them scare me, as I am afraid of the color yellow.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As a boy in Brooklyn, an aged neighbor named Klein farmed sunflowers, vast ugly things whose bee infested faces leered over the insufficient fence that separated his property from our own familial plot. Many a summer afternoon was passed by a young narrator in a state of mortal terror at the thought that Klein’s cyclopean flowers might achieve some form of malign sentience and free themselves from the ground.
A bizarre notion, but I was a very strange child, according to those who knew me in those days.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Commercial fisherman’s outerwear departments, safety vests, even the sudden appearance of a taxi- all can send one such as myself into a sickening spiral of hallucination and panic. It is no stretch to say that the DC comics superhero Green Lantern and I would have a lot in common and would find quite a few things to converse about concerning the subject of the color yellow.
It goes without saying that riding the otherwise wholesomely orange Staten Island Ferry can sometimes be so unbearable to me…
Upcoming Tours
Saturday – October 19, 2013
The Insalubrious Valley of the Newtown Creek with Atlas Obscura- tickets on sale now.
Sunday- October 20th, 2013
The Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek with Brooklyn Brainery- tickets on sale now.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
shadowy colloquy
Sometimes I fear that I will fail to feel Atychiphobic.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Failure is indeed something to fear, despite the platitudes offered by scout masters, clerics, and well meaning friends. There is nothing an American hates more than not succeeding. Winning is the name of our game, with contest winners and touchdown champions awarded the greatest of mass accolades. Think of poor old Mitt Romney, and I’ll bet it’s the first time you’ve thought of that loser since November of 2012. The only thing I’m more afraid of than failing, I think, is the idea of actually succeeding at something.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Should signs of success appear on the horizon, it is part of my nature to undermine and thwart its happy arrival. Perhaps it’s actually a fear of success which holds me back from living a life of deep meaning leading to a realization of some mythical “potential” that some have prophesied for me. It isn’t heredity, genetics, brain chemistry, or life experience that cordoned off the winners circle for me, though- instead it’s fate. Losing is a comfortable and well known experience, and I’m all about embracing the “known” rather than the undiscovered. Show me my foot, and I shall shoot it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Amongst the multitudinous things I fail to fear while submerged in my fits of Atychiphobia are a failure to anticipate, the failure to perceive, and inability to carry out a task properly and within specifications. I’m terrified of being considered generally undesirable or professionally unsuccessful, even though Murphy’s Law is the only jurisprudence which one such as myself can acknowledge or reminisce about. Cursed, I tell you, this humble narrator was born under the influence of a ill omen, which is probably all I deserve anyway, for if tales of reincarnation are true – one shudders to think what this soul did in its last mortal guise. Into the darkness, like a leaf blown upon indifferent winds, and always an Outsider – go I.
Upcoming Tours
Saturday – October 19, 2013
The Insalubrious Valley of the Newtown Creek with Atlas Obscura- tickets on sale now.
Sunday- October 20th, 2013
The Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek with Brooklyn Brainery- tickets on sale now.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
winks ruddily
More things I am irrationally afraid of in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whilst transversing a vast system of labyrinths, those ones which underlie the shining city, and anxiously awaiting the arrival of a certain chain of electrically driven aluminum and glass boxes whose motive path would carry this humble narrator deep into the expanses of infinite Brooklyn, my attentions became fixed upon this ridiculously steep staircase and the so called escalator it adjoined. The term “Escalator” has always sounded kind of French to me, and anything emanating from what Caesar called Gaul is not to be trusted.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This particular escalator steeply spans an incredible distance, here in the center of a great human hive which is known as Manhattan. Populations of labor and management utilize it to move between high and low throughout the day, and few realize the existential danger which an individual dares when surmounting one of these Gallic sounding things. Have you ever seen what happens to primates when one of these escalator mechanisms malfunctions?
These stairways to heaven can chew up flesh and bone, inhaling living meat into their spinning gears – spitting out the sort of crimson spray one would expect from a Sam Raimi film – and are capable of reducing a wholesome citizen down into a broken chowder of gruesome countenance in mere seconds. Brrr.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Vertigo inducing, examining this “via subterranea,” with its vastly Euclidean angles, caused a humble narrator to experience no small amount of nausea. The horrible potentialities of “might” or “could” began to overwhelm, and no small amount of nervous energy powered an anticipatory hopefulness that the electrically driven chain of aluminum and glass boxes might hasten their arrival at the platform, announced by the usual piston blast of powderized rat feces driven before them and gathered enroute via pneumatic action. One such as myself no longer feels disappointment, as it is my fate to experience only a lukewarm existence, but I was crestfallen when no sign of relief thundered in.
Darkness began to creep into the periphery of my vision as I pondered the possibility of falling up, instead of down, this soaring flight of mechanically moving steps.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Afraid of the dark- a humble narrator always carries a variety of portable lights with him, just in case of the unplanned absence of light on my daily round. When I stop to think of all that must scurry about within these tiled walls of rotting cement, the untold things which slither amongst those shadowy pillars of concrete, iron, and brick which encase and imprison the trackways, it is enough to drive one to the gates of a madhouse forthwith.
Upcoming Tours
Saturday – October 19, 2013
The Insalubrious Valley of the Newtown Creek with Atlas Obscura- tickets on sale now.
Sunday- October 20th, 2013
The Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek with Brooklyn Brainery- tickets on sale now.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
public squares
Prejudice and Ursidae derision in today’s Columbus Day post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Call me Ursophobic, but your humble narrator has had it up to some proverbial line – drawn somewhere around his eyebrows – with these occasionally bipedal inebriates who have been turning up in Astoria for the last few years. Admittedly, their days are difficult, but that’s no excuse for them to just pass out on the street in some honey induced stupor, like the derelict pictured above. Who are these bears, where did they come from, and why were they allowed to come here in the first place? Is it ok to pass out in the trash where they come from? I think not.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Does he have a family somewhere nearby, with a brood of anchor cubs? Is there some she bear staring out the window wondering where he is, growing increasingly anxious that he might be honey drunk again, or that the bees exacted a horrible revenge upon him? Where are the cops? How can a dangerously besotted creature like this be allowed to just pass out on Broadway in Astoria? This neighborhood is going to the caniforms, if you ask me, and I won’t be a bit surprised if in a couple of years Astoria is known as an Ursidae neighborhood. This is how it starts.
Upcoming Tours
Saturday – October 19, 2013
The Insalubrious Valley of the Newtown Creek with Atlas Obscura- tickets on sale now.
Sunday- October 20th, 2013
The Poison Cauldron of the Newtown Creek with Brooklyn Brainery- tickets on sale now.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 