Archive for the ‘Citi Building Megalith’ Category
imaginative stimuli
In today’s post- the chiaroscuro of Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Visual splendor makes Queens remarkable, with its open vistas and relicts of vainglory. Whenever the City of New York, since its consolidation, feels itself broken or in need of some experimental improvement- Queens is the place where it has tinkered with rail and expressway, bridge and tunnel, or with municipal zoning and tax abatement schemes. The old girl supports a lot of people these days, and all signs point to the Queens family growing larger.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There are things which we aren’t talking about in this election cycle, like what happened to the Bowery Bay Sewage Plant during Hurricane Sandy, or the alarming antiquity of the electrical grid. If you spend as much time as I do around Newtown Creek, specifically the Dutch Kills tributary of that infamous ribbon of urban malfeasance and political neglect, the future of Queens is very much reflected in its past.
How long, I wonder, how long before the tinkering begins anew?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My predictions for the future are dire, as one is pessimistic both by nature and through experience. The growing modern corridors of western Queens will require new power plants and a modernized waste water control system before long which “somebody” will have to pay for. How long before stainless steel digester eggs reminiscent of the type found in Greenpoint tower over Astoria? How long will it be before red and white smokestacks rise over Dutch Kills here in Queens?
When will the tinkering begin?
Things to do!
Working Harbor Committee presents: Great North River Tugboat Races and Competition, September 1st, 2013
9:30-11:30 a.m. at West 42nd Street and the Hudson River. Spectator Boat tickets now on sale.
everyday tourist
Lurking, in fear.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It would seem that much like the hordes of rodents who tunnel and writhe below, your humble narrator is always skittish and ready to bolt for safety. Recent travels carried me through the familiar and entirely wholesome Court Square zone surrounding the megalith here in Long Island City. Certainty that I was being watched, and not just by that thing which cannot possibly exist in the sapphire cupola of the aforementioned megalith, ruled over me. Waggling my whiskers and sniffing at the air, your humble narrator suddenly felt that the presence of predators was likely and decided to make for a hasty retreat.
l’m all ‘effed up.
from wikipedia
Insanity, craziness or madness is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity may manifest as violations of societal norms, including a person becoming a danger to themselves or others, though not all such acts are considered insanity. In modern usage insanity is most commonly encountered as an informal unscientific term denoting mental instability, or in the narrow legal context of the insanity defense. In the medical profession the term is now avoided in favor of diagnoses of specific mental disorders; the presence of delusions or hallucinations is broadly referred to as psychosis. When discussing mental illness in general terms, “psychopathology” is considered a preferred descriptor.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Perception is a deucedly odd thing, half instinct and half observation. A poor specimen, both physically and psychologically, I don’t fare well in any sort of challenge. I’ve never hit the game winning home run, acted the hero, or done much else other than cause angst and agony. It is for the best that I stay out of these bright places, and it would likely be preferable if one such as myself was exiled to a small guarded room somewhere and confined lest I corrupt or debase others.
Corrosive agonies abound in my presence.
from wikipedia
Before the American Civil War, the mentally ill were often placed in poorhouses, workhouses, or prisons when their families could no longer care for them. Patients were often forced to live with criminals and were treated likewise: locked in a cell or even chained to walls. By the 1860s, Americans wanted to provide better assistance to the less fortunate, including the mentally ill. The number of facilities devoted to the care of people with mental disorders increased significantly. These facilities, meant to be places of refuge, were referred to as insane asylums. Between 1825 and 1865, the number of asylums in the United States increased from 9 to 62.
The establishment of asylums did not mean that treatment greatly improved. Because doctors did not understand what caused the behavior of their patients, they often listed the possible causes of mental illness as religious excitement, sunstroke, or even reading novels. They believed that the patient had lost all control over their morals and that strict discipline was necessary to help the patient regain self-control. Asylums often employed straitjackets to restrain patients who could not control themselves.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This proclivity toward self recrimination is accelerated whenever I’m near mirrors, whose shocking imagery always offers horrible revelations that puncture those lies which one tells himself. Perhaps this is what set me off, while innocently traveling to and fro across the concretized realities of Long Island City, for when one observes that the absolute eidelon of senile corruption and debased sanity reflected in the mirror glass is no idle fantasy or wild illustration but is rather yourself…
How can one not realize the verisimilitude displayed, to those scurrying legions of the eternal subterranean night, and not enter into the comforting arms of madness?
from wikipedia
Paranoid personality disorder (PPD) is a mental disorder characterized by paranoia and a pervasive, long-standing suspiciousness and generalized mistrust of others. Individuals with this personality disorder may be hypersensitive, easily feel slighted, and habitually relate to the world by vigilant scanning of the environment for clues or suggestions that may validate their fears or biases. Paranoid individuals are eager observers. They think they are in danger and look for signs and threats of that danger, potentially not appreciating other evidence.
They tend to be guarded and suspicious and have quite constricted emotional lives. Their reduced capacity for meaningful emotional involvement and the general pattern of isolated withdrawal often lend a quality of schizoid isolation to their life experience. People with this particular disorder may or may not have a tendency to bear grudges, suspiciousness, tendency to interpret others’ actions as hostile, persistent tendency to self-reference, or a tenacious sense of personal right.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Want to see something cool? Summer 2013 Walking Tours-
Kill Van Kull– Saturday, August 10, 2013
Staten Island walking tour with Mitch Waxman and Working Harbor Committee, tickets now on sale.
13 Steps around Dutch Kills– Saturday, August 17, 2013
Newtown Creek walking tour with Mitch Waxman and Newtown Creek Alliance, tickets now on sale.
abysmal descent
I’ve got 99 problems, here’s three.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At least once a day, and moreso as the years have advanced, your humble narrator finds himself unable to maintain consciousness and suddenly finds himself unconscious. During these intervals of helpless autonomic writhing, vast hallucinations occur, and immediately upon reacquiring cogency an enormous disorientation is experienced. Physical symptoms, apparent to all witnesses, include a display of clumsiness and overt muscle stiffness. Additionally, unpleasant expulsions of waste products are urgently required upon a return to regency over the body, which is worrying. This has been happening to me since early childhood, and one wonders how long this condition will last.
I endeavor to increase the resiliency of my psychological infrastructure.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The tender pink envelope in which my viscera and skeleton are contained has- on more than one occasion- been found punctured, blistered, crushed, torn, or slashed open by environmental interactions. Additionally, enormous nervous system signal activity, which I understand as being commonly called “pain”, has been generated by this skinvelope when overexposed to the damaging radiation which emanates from the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself. This too is a problem which has afflicted me for decades.
It is my goal to install some sort of armor about myself, before the next assault is offered.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Little trust exists for my perceptions, either, as I’m all ‘effed up. Some sort of damage exists in the wiring between those sensors which adjoin the outside world and which transmit environmental data into the skull with its underpowered central processing unit. Inability and organic weakness cause one to experience odd intuitions and bizarre ideations, no doubt due to limits and defects in the CPU’s wetware. Perhaps this is why I slavishly record everything I see, an attempt to visually catalog and contain those torrents of information which assault and inform, and explain away that which is witnessed.
Were it only possible to fix and fortify the brain.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Want to see something cool? Summer 2013 Walking Tours-
Kill Van Kull– Saturday, August 10, 2013
Staten Island walking tour with Mitch Waxman and Working Harbor Committee, tickets now on sale.
13 Steps around Dutch Kills– Saturday, August 17, 2013
Newtown Creek walking tour with Mitch Waxman and Newtown Creek Alliance, tickets now on sale.
dogged patience
Sector one, one, one, zero, one.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An area which most refer to as Long Island City has been assigned the postal zip code of 11101. That translates from the binary to the decimal as the number 29.
Oddly enough, that’s the average number of days it takes earth’s moon to complete its cycle (actually 29.530589 days) and roughly the number of earth years it takes the planet Saturn to orbit the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself.
In the I’Ching, the number 29 is referred to as K’an / The Abysmal.
from wisdomportal.com
In man’s world K’an represents the heart, the soul locked up within the body, the principle of light inclosed in the dark— that is, reason. The name of the hexagram, because the trigram is doubled, has the additional meaning,
“repetition of danger.” Thus the hexagram is intended to designate an objective situation to which one must become accustomed, not a subjective attitude. For danger due to a subjective attitude means either foolhardiness or guile. Hence too a ravine is used to symbolize danger; it is a situation in which a man is in the same pass as the water in a ravine, and, like the water, he can escape if he behaves correctly
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The zip code of any community is somewhat arbitrary, the Post Office basically started the numeration of postal zones up in Massachusetts and worked their way down the East Coast and then moved west. The Zip Code system was introduced in 1963, and the way it works is that the first three digits describe a Sectional Center Facility (Mail Sorting Center) which handles a particular region. The last two digits are a bit more specific, referring mail sorters to a group of delivery addresses within a particular city or region. Midtown Manhattan, for instance is in 10001, which translates to 17 in binary. LIC’s 11101 indicates SCF 111, delivery area 01, and again- translates as 29 in binary.
Element 29 is Copper.
from wikipedia
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from Latin: cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; a freshly exposed surface has a reddish-orange color. It is used as a conductor of heat and electricity, a building material, and a constituent of various metal alloys.
The metal and its alloys have been used for thousands of years. In the Roman era, copper was principally mined on Cyprus, hence the origin of the name of the metal as сyprium (metal of Cyprus), later shortened to сuprum. Its compounds are commonly encountered as copper(II) salts, which often impart blue or green colors to minerals such as azurite and turquoise and have been widely used historically as pigments. Architectural structures built with copper corrode to give green verdigris (or patina).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Occultists believe in the symbolic power of numbers, although I believe this to be “twonk”, as my English father in law would say. Perhaps my prejudice against the viewpoint stems from a basic inability to perform simple mathematics accurately. I had the Chicken Pox in second grade when they taught long division and have never been able to catch up since. Cursory research on the way that those who ascribe to the occult worldview indicates that 29 is an ill omen, and associated with unlikely conspiracy theories centering around unholy bargains which the Rothschild and Rockefeller families are said to have entered into with extraterrestrials.
The number 29 has always terrified me personally, however, as it indicates that the rent is soon due.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Want to see something cool? Summer 2013 Walking Tours-
Kill Van Kull– Saturday, August 10, 2013
Staten Island walking tour with Mitch Waxman and Working Harbor Committee, tickets now on sale.
13 Steps around Dutch Kills– Saturday, August 17, 2013
Newtown Creek walking tour with Mitch Waxman and Newtown Creek Alliance, tickets now on sale.
strange cries
All we have to fear is fear itself.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An infinite capacity for terror and hysteria grips one such as myself, who is just some flapping and flopping thing often observed alongside the road while it coruscates and pulsates and squeezes along and across the concretized devastations of the ageless borough of Queens. Layer upon layer of thwarted ambition is found hereabouts, a fitting locale for your humble narrator- amongst the battered, the bruised, the abandoned, and that which has seen better days. Existential crises abound, and the eternal road only stretches forward into a tunnel of darkness and despair.
As you may have guessed by now, I agree with and celebrate the song “I don’t like Mondays.”
from wikipedia
In psychology and psychiatry, anhedonia (/ˌænhiˈdoʊniə/ an-hee-doh-nee-ə; Greek: ἀν- an-, “without” + ἡδονή hēdonē, “pleasure”) is defined as the inability to experience pleasure from activities usually found enjoyable, e.g. exercise, hobbies, music, sexual activities or social interactions. While earlier definitions of anhedonia emphasized pleasurable experience, more recent models have highlighted the need to consider different aspects of enjoyable behavior, such as motivation or desire to engage in an activity (“motivational anhedonia”), as compared to the level of enjoyment of the activity itself (“consummatory anhedonia”).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
“Monday’s child is fair of face” says the old rhyme, but the origins of the word in English actually mark it as “moons day,” or the day of the moon (that name goes all the back to Old English’s mōnandæg). Perhaps this is why a creature as unwholesome as myself– said unsavoriness should indicate an affinity for the moon day, incidentally- is so uncomfortable on what the Chinese would call xīngqīyī (星期一) which clinically translates to “day one of the week.”
In Britain, a recent study concluded that Monday is the statistically most likely day for suicides. Hecate, triple lobed goddess of the moon, seems to deserve her reputation as a harsh entity whom occultists call the “mother of angels.”
Angels have always scared the hell out of me.
from wikipedia
Dysthymia has a number of typical characteristics: low energy and drive, low self-esteem, and a low capacity for pleasure in everyday life. Mild degrees of dysthymia may result in people withdrawing from stress and avoiding opportunities for failure. In more severe cases of dysthymia, people may even withdraw from daily activities. They will usually find little pleasure in usual activities and pastimes. Diagnosis of dysthymia can be difficult because of the subtle nature of the symptoms and patients can often hide them in social situations making it challenging for others to detect symptoms. Additionally, dysthymia often occurs at the same time as other psychological disorders, which adds a level of complexity in determining the presence of dysthymia, particularly because there is often an overlap in the symptoms of disorders.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It has been awhile since one has found himself overcome by panic and animalistic instinct, and been reduced to a shivering jelly slaking with greasy perspiration. The ministrations of a team of doctors, and their vials of tablets and potions, seems to have found an equilibrium in me but my greatest fear is a return to fear. I fear fear, fearing that fear might overcome me, rendering all about me fearful. I fear this, and if all we have to fear is fear itself, then I’d like to point out that Fear is hanging up there in the sky behind me as I write this and he’s brought his brother Terror with him.
Of course, I refer to the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos, after all Monday is the so called day of the moon.
from wikipedia
Phobophobia (from Greek: φόβος, phobos, “fear”) is a phobia defined as the fear of phobias, or the fear of fear, including intense anxiety and unrealistic and persistent fear of the somatic sensations and the feared phobia ensuing. Phobophobia can also be defined as the fear of phobias or fear of developing a phobia. Phobophobia is related to anxiety disorders and panic attacks directly linked to other types of phobias, such as agoraphobia. When a patient has developed phobophobia, their condition must be diagnosed and treated as part of anxiety disorders. This patient with this phobia is not afraid of this phobia thus preventing a paradox.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Want to see something cool? Summer 2013 Walking Tours-
Kill Van Kull– Saturday, August 10, 2013
Staten Island walking tour with Mitch Waxman and Working Harbor Committee, tickets now on sale.
13 Steps around Dutch Kills– Saturday, August 17, 2013
Newtown Creek walking tour with Mitch Waxman and Newtown Creek Alliance, tickets now on sale.
The Newtown Pentacle 