The Newtown Pentacle

Apocalyptic Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It’s lovely feeling the earth shift under your feet, ain’t it? There’s little I can do about the state of the world, so the only option is to continue walking the earth alone and at night. This is the bad time of the year for me, as it’s so very cold, but that – at least – is something predictable which I can cling to. Given that what I’m trying to do when leaving the house, in addition to getting some exercise for both my rotting body and the camera, is avoid the presence of disease carrying humans my routes usually involve walking through the most deserted and lonely places I can think of.

Luckily, Western Queens offers a lot in the way of deserted and lonely. Also lucky is the recent activity of whomsoever it is that Amtrak has put in charge of popping tiny holes into the fences surrounding the Sunnyside Yards in recent months.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I detest having to wear an extra layer of insulating clothing under my normal “mitchsuit,” but what are you going to do when it’s freezing cold outside? What? Stay at home when it’s below freezing, you say? That would be insane.

As I’ve often opined, NYC looks best when it’s slightly moistened and the streets are all shiny with slime and ice. One of the things catching my eye at the moment are the creepy looking skeletal trees of the industrial streets, grasping their bony branches accusingly toward the sky. Everything smelled salty, due to the de icing efforts of the Department of Sanitation, and furtive shadows were observed darting around the dumpsters. At night, the rats come out.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

On this particular evening, wherein I described my goals to Our Lady of the Pentacle as being a “short walk,” my path led from Astoria to some of the less travelled sections of Long Island City surrounding the Dutch Kills tributary of Newtown Creek and then through Blissville on my loop back home – about 4-5 miles. My practice through the pandemic has involved doing all of the banal things I do during daylight hours here at HQ, then donning “outside clothes” and the filthy black raincoat and venturing forth. Upon arriving back at HQ, whatever photos have been collected are then transferred from camera to computer and the “first pass” is done. What that means is that I look though the average 2-300 shots on my camera and throw at least half of them out. Before I go to sleep, the remaining shots have been keyworded and cropped.

The next day, I do the developing process and upload them to the web. An every other day schedule has been more or less maintained during the pandemic, with a few hiccups here and there. You control what you can control, and don’t try to control what you can’t.

Note: I’m writing this and several of the posts you’re going to see for the next week at the beginning of the week of Monday, January 11th. 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 here, 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.

“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle

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“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.