The Newtown Pentacle

Hiding, dodging, weaving.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

My carefully chosen route through the human infestation of Western Queens on a recent evening, a path which was chosen for its probable lack of inhabitants, nevertheless brought me into near contact with the other primates. Given that one such as myself fears others, without delimiting criteria involving their interior microbial population, avoidance of any sort of human interaction is definitively part of my skill set. Despite this, other hardy adventurers were out and about whom a humble narrator afforded a wide berth. In the shot above, captured on 43rd Avenue in LIC, I had spotted a bicycle rider approaching from about three blocks away and flung myself against that brick wall you see.

Luckily, the filthy black raincoat is adaptive for use as urban camouflage. The bicyclist probably perceived a filthy black bag of squirming rats out of the corner of his eye. What? You’ve never encountered a bag of rats? Well, what do you transport your rats in, a box? Wait… I’ve said too much again.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A rough looking passerby was silhouetted in the distance as my roadway interface scuttled along the pavement, and soon I found myself crouched down behind a garbage bin. Whomsoever left this handy hiding place in the middle of the sidewalk for me to cower behind has my thanks.

While crying for a few minutes as the stress chemicals bled out of the brain and spinal column, a humble narrator began to reconsider his various choices in life.

Regret at having not pursued an interest in product photography, or perhaps macro studio work, gnawed. From behind me came the sound of sneakers shuffling across the diseased cement, and yet another eidolon of “stranger danger” – likely cloaked in a rich cloud of microscopic predators – was turning the corner.

All that fellow was allowed to perceive of me likely appeared to him as a hurtling black shape moving spasmodically away at untold thousands of inches an hour towards Queens Blvd. while uttering a terrorized sound not unlike that of a burning duck mixed with the cry of a newborn goat.

In other words, a black bag of rats with a bunch of camera gear.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

My escape path was arrested by an uncaring traffic signal at Queens Boulevard, the legendary “Boulevard of Death” itself. There did one encounter a sparse amount of passing automotive traffic, and eventually egress to the southern side of this “Via Mortis,” or the “ölim bwlvarı” as you would say in the Kazakh tongue or “leofóros tou thanátou” in modern Greek, was accomplished.

One was sure he could feel the pinpricks of Corona viruses bouncing off his face, a deadly series of plasmic projectiles carried upon the easterly wind. That’s what I thought at first, but luckily it was just some disgusting rain water dripping out of the elevated 7 line tracks overhead.

People, people!

Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next couple of weeks at the start of the week of Monday, March 16th. My plan is to continue doing my solo photo walks around LIC and the Newtown Creek in the dead of night as long as that’s feasible. If you continue to see regular updates as we move into April and beyond, that means everything is kosher as far as health and well being. If the blog stops updating, it means that things have gone badly for a humble narrator.

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Buy a book!

“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.