The Newtown Pentacle

Holy Cow!

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Saturday last, one found himself aimlessly wandering down Skillman Avenue in Long Island City’s Degnon Terminal and towards the Smiling Hogshead Ranch. The community garden was deserted, of course, and offered one such as myself little succor. My uncharacteristic desire for the company of others thwarted, my languid steps began to scuttle towards the Waldes Koh I Noor complex, whereupon I discovered a herd of cattle. A single one of them was scarlet in coloration, which might have some significance to certain shunned societies which live amongst the Uigar of North Western China’s cold waste.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As has often been posited at this, your Newtown Pentacle, the native art form of the Borough of Queens is surely illegal dumping. Nowhere else do you see the sort of attention to detail, the little splashes of color, the artful composition and theatrical presentation that is commonly witnessed here. Accordingly, presented for consideration… a herd of unwanted cows, shattered and slaughtered in the former “Workshop of America” here in LIC.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Presumptively, these were meant for some sort of Christmas nativity scene and didn’t make the cut. Polychrome, the cattle were all in a decidedly ruined state, and one or two of them were painted in a manner which suggested a metallic patina. One wondered if smallish ceramic Neanderthals might have driven the herd over some tiny cliff during a hunt? The stylings of the sculpt suggest a nativity scene to me, but I’m pretty sure there’s supposed to be donkeys and camels in one of those (as well as a few folks in robes, a kid playing a drum, and a glowing baby). One is certain that he has never witnessed the depiction of the Christian nativity scene as having a brazen bull present.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Perhaps these are representations of the Golden Cow, from that whole Moses and the Exodus story arc (published in “The Bible” issues 1-5), which have been cast down symbolically? I can’t imagine the late night scenario wherein this bovine statuary was dumped, right across the street from a largish NYPD location which serves the gendarmes as an evidence warehouse. Perhaps the cattle statues were an offering left nearby some totemic item of a malignant occult significance which the Police have kept locked away from the public since the spring of 1923, out of an abundance of caution and concern for the collective sanity of mankind? I mean, it sort of logically follows, right?

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The burning thermonuclear eye of god itself was beginning to stare towards someplace else which wasn’t Queens, so a humble narrator began to trudge back towards HQ in far off Astoria, all the while contemplating the cows. Why a single red one? Why the brazens? Why not pitch them into any one of the hundreds of open containers and garbage bins which line the streets in front of every business? Did the Dumper say “hey, community garden and farm! Here’s the spot, crash the cows over by that police car over there”? Conundrum notwithstanding, one had to quicken his pace as darkness fell because of… well, y’know… Vampires.

“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle