Archive for the ‘East River’ Category
colossal and protuberant
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There I sat, broken hearted…
Somehow that old Brooklyn Public School aphorism was on my mind as I scuttled along the street ends of Greenpoint. These shots were attained at India Street’s junction with the East River and depict the shield wall of a Shining City as viewed from the collapsing pierages of an ancient and crumbling competitor.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s difficult for us to think of the Boroughs as separate cities… well, it’s hard to imagine Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx as separate while with Staten Island it’s quite easy… but they were. This location upon which I was standing was, until quite recently (from a historical perspective), heavily industrialized. A workshop, this section of Greenpoint is in many ways responsible for the ascendency of Manhattan over not just it’s local competition but the Nation itself.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is another of the zones which the City fathers has designated for whatever they call “urban renewal” these days, and plans are both afoot and underway to convert certain structures to residential use (such as the “Pencil Factory”) or to clear away the existing building stock to make way for new construction.
The good news, or bad depending on your perspective, is that a condition set forward to the real estate interests by the City is that a waterfront pedestrian concourse not unlike the one nearing completion across the Newtown Creek in Long Island City must be built in return for certain laxities of enforcement regarding the zoned height of waterfront development.
At least there’ll still be a place down by the water where the kids in Greenpoint can go and dream of an age when you needn’t have to commute to get to work.
Additionally, the following event will be happening in Greenpoint on May 4th, 2011. I’ve met Shawn Shafner and he’s got a LOT of good stuff to say about some very bad stuff indeed. I’ll be there- at the Temple of Cloacina- how about you, Citizen?
Text from the flyer with links:
Water for Cities: Responding to the Urban Challenge*
Moderated by Shawn Shafner of The People’s Own Organic Power Project www.thePOOPproject.org
Wednesday, May 4th 2011 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm Talks followed by a panel discussion
Visitor Center at Newtown Creek 329 Greenpoint Avenue Brooklyn, New York 11222
The Speakers are: Frederik Pischke Interagency Water Advisor UN-Water, Vyjayanthi Rao Assistant Professor of Anthropology New School for Social Research, New York, Jennifer Farmwald Project Manager Water Supply Infrastructure & Watershed Assessment NYC Environmental Protection.
Visit DEP’s website at www.nyc.gov/dep Follow us at www.facebook.com/nycwater
shadowy corners
“they’re building another one?” – photo by Mitch Waxman
This is the final installment detailing my experiences in western Queens, on that day when I finally located the grave of Calvary Cemetery’s first interment (Esther Ennis, 1848), stepped in a dead rabbit, picked up a paranormal companion on my long walk, found myself in a state of “stupendous ruin“, soon realized that my perceptions had grown “bafflingly homogeneous“, and that my senses had become occluded due to “sleep filmed eyes“.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned in yesterday’s posting, tardy delivery of content to this- your Newtown Pentacle- has been caused by a cavalcade of obligations. Both personal and professional, these obligations have placed me in a room next to personages who enjoy the highest reputation and standing, lettered academics and eidelons of “the professions” both have taken me to a private corner of the room and confessed to having had similar experiences to those which I’ve been describing in this series of postings- which is VERY interesting.
This day, I was in Tower Town, down by the East River in Long Island City… or Queens West as its proponents call it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Former days of grandeur, industrial might, and utility seem to be over for this part of Queens. Perhaps it is overworked and deserves a pastoral retirement as a park and residential center. Such meta-lopolitan planning is beyond the understanding of one like myself, who is cursed to wander through this infestation of the human hive but forbidden to do anything but observe. When my nervous scuttling and vast perambulations are performed, dark glasses are worn and the earbuds of my iphone are firmly in place- serving to isolate and insulate.
Of late, I like to wear my hood up, but loss of periphery can be a fatal mistake in these places I go.
Perhaps this is why I was casting two shadows.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My companion was familiar to me somehow, an atavist and insistent presence. Definitely male, the image of a double headed ax was impossible to banish from my thoughts as I neared the bridge…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
…THE QUEENSBORO BRIDGE!!! Queensboro is its name, not 59th street nor anything else that Manhattan elites might attach to it.
CALL HUNTERS POINT SOUTH OR WILLETS POINT “KOCH CITY” instead…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
…sorry that sort of thing just blurts out of me these days…
At right about this spot that I suddenly perceived that my spectral companion was no longer present, and when I noticed my nervous shadow had returned to its altogether wholesome and expected aspect. Whatever it was… perhaps it was just the moment when “one of my states” had passed…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was here in the shadows of that great machine called Queensboro that the splendid isolations which your humble narrator so enjoys returned, and roamed once more alone amongst the multitudes. The disturbing vision of that double headed ax though, seemed to stay with me and caused ponderings to begin.
What connection could there be between Long Island City, a largely Irish cemetery, and a battle-ax?
sense of pursuit
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Oh boy, I’m all ‘effed up…
Just the other day, while innocently searching through Calvary Cemetery for a certain interment (wholly separate from the one described yesterday), your humble narrator must have suffered some sort of seizure. That would explain the malign paranoia which suddenly infected and disordered my thoughts, birthing a desire to move to a more populated section of the ancient villages for the sake of safety alone. The last time misgivings such as these came upon me was during a November 2009 trip to hoary Mt. Zion, when I was menaced by a certain group of children and their curiously polydactyl feline.
As always, it was a rambling walk-that half dogtrot/half stumble which I call scuttling- that had brought me to the place, and handicapped any chance of escape or avoidance of those extant dangers encountered in the Newtown Pentacle.
As always, solitude and otherness and massive vulnerability were my companions. As always, your humble narrator- physical coward, feckless quisling, and the least of men…
As always, an Outsider.
from wikipedia
The World Health Organization’s ICD-10 lists avoidant personality disorder as (F60.6) Anxious (avoidant) personality disorder.
It is characterized by at least four of the following:
- persistent and pervasive feelings of tension and apprehension;
- belief that one is socially inept, personally unappealing, or inferior to others;
- excessive preoccupation with being criticized or rejected in social situations;
- unwillingness to become involved with people unless certain of being liked;
- restrictions in lifestyle because of need to have physical security;
- avoidance of social or occupational activities that involve significant interpersonal contact because of fear of criticism, disapproval, or rejection.
Associated features may include hypersensitivity to rejection and criticism.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was just a trick of the light- the shadow of some statue distorting through thickly polarized prescription sunglasses.
Often, when the brain cannot make sense of; or is overwhelmed by a flood of sensory information; it will perform a sort of short hand during the processing of visual or auditory observation. That’s why kids see dragons in the clouds, and representations of cultic deities are often presented as having spontaneously appeared on foodstuffs. It’s the way the organ functions– using pattern recognition.
That’s why, as my steps hurriedly swept over and through Calvary’s dusty desolations, I chose to ignore that shadowy and peripheral shape which seemed to be dogging my progress and declared it to just be an hallucination. If only it didn’t seem to be the same shape- everywhere I went- there it was- ducking around a tombstone or slipping around a tree.
One observance in particular upset my delicate equilibrium, and forced me to ingest a dosage of the esoteric prescription drugs which my doctors advise consumption of whenever one of “my spells” comes upon me.
Light headed from the medications, the abyssal potions were useless- and your humble narrator was thunderstruck- consumed by cowardice and shock.
from wikipedia
Blasphemous thoughts are a common component of OCD, documented throughout history; notable religious figures such as Martin Luther and St. Ignatius were known to be tormented by intrusive, blasphemous or religious thoughts and urges. Martin Luther had urges to curse God and Jesus, and was obsessed with images of “the Devil’s behind”. St. Ignatius had numerous obsessions, including the fear of stepping on pieces of straw forming a cross, fearing that it showed disrespect to Christ. A study of 50 patients with a primary diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder found that 40% had religious and blasphemous thoughts and doubts—a higher number than the 38% who had the obsessional thoughts related to dirt and contamination more commonly associated with OCD. One study suggests that content of intrusive thoughts may vary depending on culture, and that blasphemous thoughts may be more common in men than in women.
According to Fred Penzel, a New York psychologist, some common religious obsessions and intrusive thoughts are:
-
- sexual thoughts about God, saints, and religious figures such as Mary
- bad thoughts or images during prayer or meditation
- thoughts of being possessed
- fears of sinning or breaking a religious law or performing a ritual incorrectly
- fears of omitting prayers or reciting them incorrectly
- repetitive and intrusive blasphemous thoughts
- urges or impulses to say blasphemous words or commit blasphemous acts during religious services.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Shaken, and stirred as well- transit from the cemetery into the surrounding “once upon a time” hamlet called Blissville was accomplished by crossing Greenpoint Avenue at Gale Avenue and a hurried flight was carried out along the concrete of Borden Avenue. Two sets of footprints were carved into the sooty deposits which distinguish the walkways of the ancient village, and the second one sure wasn’t Jesus…
In shattered automotive glass and an occasional plate glass window, notice was additionally made of a skirting movement just at the edges of perception. As mentioned- my cognition was altered by the pharmaceutical remedies offered and prescribed by my concerned doctors, but something odd really did seem to be following me.
Before long, I found myself at Hunters Point in Long Island City by the East River… but we’ll be talking about that in a few days…
I had decided that if this specter insisted on stalking me, it was in for one mighty long walk…
more tomorrow…
from wikipedia
A hallucination may occur in a person in a state of good mental and physical health, even in the apparent absence of a transient trigger factor such as fatigue, intoxication or sensory deprivation.
It is not widely recognized that hallucinatory experiences are not merely the prerogative of those suffering from mental illness, or normal people in abnormal states, but that they occur spontaneously in a significant proportion of the normal population, when in good health and not undergoing particular stress or other abnormal circumstance.
The evidence for this statement has been accumulating for more than a century. Studies of hallucinatory experience in the sane go back to 1886 and the early work of the Society for Psychical Research, which suggested approximately 10% of the population had experienced at least one hallucinatory episode in the course of their life. More recent studies have validated these findings; the precise incidence found varies with the nature of the episode and the criteria of ‘hallucination’ adopted, but the basic finding is now well-supported.
shadowed lips
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The fairly excellent Watercourses blog presents this post on Sunswick Creek, a waterbody which once existed here in Astoria, and still runs to the East River through manmade corridors deep below the modern streets. No, really. Watercourses has been down there and has photos! More importantly, the post also carries two maps from the 1870’s which show the early street plan of Astoria.
You’ll notice, on the 2nd one, a “Ridge St.” and a “Camelia St.”. The road running between them is Broadway, and at its intersection with Vernon Ave. the latter takes a wicked hook and becomes Sunswick Creek XXX (at this moment, it remains obfuscated to me whether this is a street or avenue or road, I think I can hear somebody at Greater Astoria Historic Society sighing right now).
This bit of geographic reckoning, of course, is simplified by saying- “Stevens Est.” = Costco, and that weird mouth of the creek is Socrates Sculpture Garden, and these photos were shot just beyond where that little dock shape is, between the “n” and second “s” in Sunswick. (I also wanted to send a shout out to Watercourses. Well Done!)
Whew!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
According to certain sources, two aboriginals named Shawestcont and Erramorhar (as witnessed by their cohorts Warchan and Kethcanaparan) sold much of what we know as Astoria (but which they called Sintsinck) to William Hallett (who was similarly accompanied by a company of witnesses and countrymen) on August 1, 1664- which is how the place got its name.
For a more complete view of highlights from Hallets Cove, and Sunswick Creek- check out this Newtown Pentacle post from February of 2010, and the “The Horrors of Hallet’s Cove“ from June of 2009.
The very fact that temperatures have risen once again to the point at which the atmosphere can sustain water in a liquid state, by the way, is a font of joy for your humble narrator- as walking the East River shoreline is once more possible for both man and duck. Which means that a winter’s worth of book research can finally be explored materially.
Whew!
I’ll be that weirdo in the dirty black raincoat you might spy scuttling along the waterfront…
a ghastly plot
“Newtown Creek for the Vulgarly Curious” is a fully annotated 68 page, full-color journey from the mouth of Newtown Creek at the East River all the way back to the heart of darkness at English Kills, with photos and text by Mitch Waxman.
Check out the preview of the book at lulu.com, which is handling printing and order fulfillment, by clicking here.
Every book sold contributes directly to the material support and continuance of this, your Newtown Pentacle.
The Newtown Pentacle 