Archive for the ‘Citi Building Megalith’ Category
harnessed shadows
– photo by Mitch Waxman
To begin with, you will be hard pressed to find someone who is a bigger supporter of the efforts of the NYPD than your humble narrator. Vast physical inadequacies and a timorous constitution render one a “victim waiting to happen” and the presence and oversight of the gendarme is the only reason that you haven’t heard about finding my corpse lying in the street somewhere, as we live in a community cursed with predators and a criminal element which threatens all. Saying that, I recently attended a meeting of the 114th pct. community council here in Astoria, and one of the speakers was a representative of the “Anti Terror” squad. I have long been a proponent of the single truth of a “Terror War” which is that the side which most scares the shit out of the other is the one who wins. Apparently, the other guys have the upper hand at the moment, as we continue to be a reactionary and terrified opponent given to wild flights of fancy about the capabilities enjoyed by the enemy- including the deadly martial art of photography.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This unit is tasked with subverting and detecting terrorist plots, gathering intelligence on “bad actors”, and performing a role few would ask for. The representative who spoke at this meeting, however, informed the community that should they witness- for example, someone taking photographs of bridges or other “odd” things- that they should call the police and report it as suspicious behavior. After his statement was concluded, the Lieutenant was suddenly faced with an odd mendicant named Mitch who confronted him on this. I asked “Did you actually just tell the room that photography is a precursor to terrorism”?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I let the Lieutenant know that I ran a blog, and was speaking to him in the manner of a journalist. “Other than the fact that there is no documented evidence of this, and that google maps would actually be a far more effective tool to scout a potential target than sending out an operative with a dslr, there are specific orders curtailing the harassment of photographers issued by Chief Kelly” I continued. Then, I asked him about the glaring lack of security and holes in the fences around the Sunnyside Yard and the energy infrastructure around Newtown Creek. I asked about the boats tied off to the Buckeye pipeline at Vernon Blvd. street end, the ferry boat on English Kills, and several other choice spots for undocumented and uncommented deviltry to occur. Additionally, did he know that there are websites which claim that anyone can find a free berth on Newtown Creek and that boats regularly show up there these days from unknown points carrying who knows what? I had to remind him where Newtown Creek and the largest rail yard in New York City was, as he seemed rather focused on Manhattan.
Also- Upcoming Newtown Creek tours and events:
for an expanded description of the October 20th Newtown Creek tour, please click here
for more information on the October 27th Newtown Creek Boat Tour, click here
for more information on the November 9th Newtown Creek Magic Lantern Show, click here
for an expanded description of the November 11th Newtown Creek tour, please click here
something sinister
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Shaken with the potencies of blackest revelation and shattered faith on a July evening, one found himself back at the loquacious Newtown Creek and once again straddling the currently undefended border of Brooklyn and Queens. Slaked with sweat, stricken by those fiery emanations pouring forth from the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself, your humble narrator decided to “lean into it” for the final push back to Astoria after a productive but quite humid summer day spent wandering about the Newtown Pentacle. An alarming lack of awareness of my surroundings overcame me, and I found myself fixated once more upon the sapphire tower.
My feet may have been moving, but my eyes never left the Megalith.
from wikipedia
A fugue state, formally dissociative fugue or psychogenic fugue (DSM-IV Dissociative Disorders 300.13), is a rare psychiatric disorder characterized by reversible amnesia for personal identity, including the memories, personality and other identifying characteristics of individuality. The state is usually short-lived (ranging from hours to days), but can last months or longer. Dissociative fugue usually involves unplanned travel or wandering, and is sometimes accompanied by the establishment of a new identity.
After recovery from fugue, previous memories usually return intact, but there is typically amnesia for the fugue episode. Additionally, an episode of fugue is not characterized as attributable to a psychiatric disorder if it can be related to the ingestion of psychotropic substances, to physical trauma, to a general medical condition, or to psychiatric conditions such as delirium, dementia, bipolar disorder or depression. Fugues are usually precipitated by a stressful episode, and upon recovery there may be amnesia for the original stressor (dissociative amnesia).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It must have just been the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself glinting off the artless blue glass as it dipped toward the terminal horizon beyond Manhattan, sending crepuscular arcs of refracted red and yellow light along unknown and incalculable parabola. For a moment- your humble narrator thought that that which cannot possibly exist up there was visible.
A quick change of lens on my camera allowed a vain search and fruitless attempt at a second look, but the phantom image was recorded nowhere else beside my own fevered brain.
Dehydration must have been setting in, with too many hours spent while marching involuntarily through the concrete devastations of North Brooklyn and Western Queens in the summer heat- causing hallucination and overt credulity.
from wikipedia
Theories of deindividuation propose that it is a psychological state of decreased self-evaluation and decreased evaluation apprehension causing antinormative and disinhibited behavior. Deindividuation theory seeks to provide an explanation for a variety of antinormative collective behavior, such as violent crowds, lynch mobs, etc. Deindividuation theory has also been applied to genocide and been posited as an explanation for antinormative behavior online and in computer-mediated communications.
Although generally analyzed in the context of negative behaviors, such as mob violence and genocide, deindividuation has also been found to play a role in positive behaviors and experiences. There still exists some variation as to understanding the role of deindividuation in producing anti-normative behaviors, as well as understanding how contextual cues affect the rules of the deindividuation construct.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Paranoia is omnipresent by default while scuttling about, as certainty states that one is being photographed every moment by automatic security cameras while out in public. Whether there is any single human watching or noticing these recordings is another thing entirely. It occurs that the stream of raw data captured by passive surveillance alone in New York City on any given day- the ATM’s and Deli cameras alone- would take years to catalog, let alone review. Likely, it will be artificial intelligences of the near future that will perform high speed analysis of such tasks.
An articulated and artificial thing which cannot possibly exist at the apex of the Megalith, of course, sees all. No utility can be found in hiding from it, as it casts its three lobed eye about and watches the world of men.
from wikipedia
Sigmund Freud considered that ideas of reference illuminated the concept of the superego: ‘Delusions of being watched present this power in a regressive form, thus revealing its genesis…voices, as well as the undefined multitude, are brought into the foreground again by the [paranoid] disease, and so the evolution of conscience is reproduced regressively’.
In his wake, Otto Fenichel concluded that ‘the projection of the superego is most clearly seen in ideas of reference and of being influenced….Delusions of this kind merely bring to the patient from the outside what his self-observing and self-critical conscience actually tells him’.
Lacan similarly saw ideas of reference as linked to ‘the unbalancing of the relation to the capital Other and the radical anomaly that it involves, qualified, improperly, but not without some approximation to the truth, in old clinical medecine, as partial delusion’ – the ‘big other, that is, the other of language, the Names-of-the-Father, signifiers or words’, in short, the realm of the superego.
nature transmutes
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator just can’t get enough of the Long Island Railroad yard in Long Island City.
Back in January of this year, while “wondering uneasily“, we established that the LIRR station in Long Island City accomplishes tasks which it would take some 30,000 horses to accomplish on a daily basis. Last year, in October- these very tracks were visited in “Deeply Hidden“.
Simply put, I’m kind of drawn to this spot.
from wikipedia
This station has 13 tracks, two concrete high-level island platforms, and one wooden high-level island platform. All platforms are two cars long and accessible from Borden Avenue just west of Fifth Street. The northernmost one, adjacent to tracks 2 and 3, is the only one used for passenger service. The other concrete platform adjacent to tracks 6 and 7 and the wooden one adjacent to tracks 8 and 9 are used for employees only. All tracks without platforms are used for train storage. The southernmost four tracks are powered by third rail while the remaining tracks are used only by diesel-powered trains.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Once upon a time, street grade rail crossings were pretty common in Western Queens, but these days there are only a few that I know about. As always, never will I claim to be an expert on this subject, as there’s too many alphanumeric terms involved for me to remember. As mentioned in the past, mathematics isn’t my strong suit, and I’ve always been cursed by a sort of numbers based dyslexia. I’m all ‘effed up.
from wikipedia
The Long Island Rail Road owns an electric fleet of 836 M7 and 170 M3 electric multiple unit cars, and 134 C3 bilevel rail cars powered by 23 DE30AC diesel-electric locomotives and 22 DM30AC dual-mode locomotives.
In 1997 and 1998, the LIRR received 134 double-decker passenger cars from Kawasaki, including 23 cab control cars, and 46 General Motors Electro-Motive Division diesel-electric locomotives (23 diesel DE30ACs and 23 dual-mode DM30ACs) to pull them, allowing trains from non-electric territory to access Penn Station for the first time in many years, due to the prohibition on diesel operation in the East River Tunnels leading to Penn Station.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Arithmetic challenged, in a Jewish family, this marks one as worse than an idiot. The stereotype which opines that Jews are possessed of a certain aptitude for mathematics is fairly accurate (or at least it generally is in my family), and black sheep status was assigned me as early as second grade when they rolled out long division. Consistently low scores on the math section of standardized testing always betrayed my inadequacies to scholastic authorities, and was a great cause of concern to my parents. Reports from teachers fed their dire suspicions that I would someday end up “a bum on da bowery” or “shovelin shit on da street”.
from wikipedia
The DE30AC and DM30AC locomotives replaced aging GP38s, Alco FA1/FA2s, F7As and F9As, and MP15AC and SW1001 locomotives, with GP38s used to push and pull diesel trains and other locomotives used to provide HEP for the trains. The bodies of the DE30AC and the DM30AC are similar; the difference is the ability of the DM30AC to use electric third rail while the diesel engine is off, enabling the locomotive to use the East River Tunnels into New York Penn Station. DM30ACs have third rail contact shoes, permitting direct service from non-electrified lines in eastern Long Island via the western electrified main lines all the way to Penn Station. A few such trains a day run on the Port Jefferson, Oyster Bay, and Montauk Branches. The engines’ naming scheme: DM = Dual Mode, DE = Diesel Engine, 30 = 3000 hp, AC = Alternating Current traction motors.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m told that people suffering from several different cognitive disorders spend their time memorizing train schedules and details about the rail system, and that they find some solace in the purely numerical language which governs the subject. Me, I just wander around aimlessly, and get the giggles when I’m lucky enough to randomly come across a train passing so close by. My major malfunction is taking too many pictures of trains and boats, it would seem.
from 1877′s “Long Island and where to go!!: A descriptive work compiled for the Long R.R. Co.“, courtesy google books:
Long Island City is the concentrating point upon the East river, of all the main avenues of travel from the back districts of Long Island to the city of New York. The great arteries of travel leading from New York are Thomson avenue, macadamized, 100 feet wide, leading directly to Newtown, Jamaica and the middle and southern roads on Long Island, and Jackson avenue, also 100 feet wide, and leading directly to Flushing, Whitestone and the northerly roads.
Long Island City is also the concentrating point upon the East river, of the railway system of Long Island.
The railways, upon reaching the city, pass under the main avenues of travel and traffic, and not upon or across their surface.
marble and porphyry
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Crazed by heat and a lack of slumber, one nevertheless must continue the never ending walking of the earth and incessant inspection of relict districts, as such activity is nepenthe to one such as myself.
This day, perambulation carried me to the so called “Boulevard of Death”, the Appian Way of Queens- Queens Boulevard itself. Radiant heat rising from the thermally charged pavement, coupled with the blasting emanations streaming down from the thermonuclear eye of god itself, combined to disorient and dehydrate.
Shivering with excitement, one dared to stand still for a moment and record the omnipresent flow of machines, streaming toward the center of the human infestation in Manhattan.
from wikipedia
Ganser syndrome is a rare dissociative disorder previously classified as a factitious disorder. It is characterized by nonsensical or wrong answers to questions or doing things incorrectly, other dissociative symptoms such as fugue, amnesia or conversion disorder, often with visual pseudohallucinations and a decreased state of consciousness. It is also sometimes called nonsense syndrome, balderdash syndrome, syndrome of approximate answers, pseudodementia, hysterical pseudodementia or prison psychosis. This last name, prison psychosis, is sometimes used because the syndrome occurs most frequently in prison inmates, where it may represent an attempt to gain leniency from prison or court officials.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long imprisoned by such motivations, your humble narrator’s fever crashed mind began to wander, with every thought resolving into some kind of incomprehensible gibberish.
Were your humble narrator truly alive, instead of some partially animated mass of shambling flesh, standing in this traffic cursed spot would have surely caused his blood to run cold. Unfortunately, the black ichors which carry certain vital gases about within me have long since ceased their proper fluctuation, and some unknown motive force keeps my feet moving. Stubborn purpose is all that causes me to pretend to be one of the living, and it is hard to shake the delusion that current experience is not some hallucination being suffered in a temporally displaced hospital bed.
I’m all ‘effed up.
from wikipedia
The Cotard delusion, Cotard’s syndrome, or Walking Corpse Syndrome is a rare mental disorder in which people hold a delusional belief that they are dead (either figuratively or literally), do not exist, are putrefying, or have lost their blood or internal organs. In rare instances, it can include delusions of immortality.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Often have I wondered why I’m drawn to locales of morbidity such as this “Boulevard of Death”, whether they be cemeteries or other places of tragedy. Scuttling across the concrete devastations provides all manner of time for introspection, and time to craft cogent fantasies, some of which are shared with others.
Also, on a completely unrelated note, if one walks directly beneath this barrel vaults of the viaduct (which carries the 7 train) pictured above- beginning at 33rd street- a curious effect might be observed. A parking lot exists beneath the structure, and the high arches above are shaped in such a manor that sound waves travel through the spot in a bizarre manner, forming an echo chamber. Stand in the center of the parking lot at 34th street, and shout or sing, and it will reflect back to you.
One has tried this with the chorus from Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, and the effects are startling.
from wikipedia
Folie à deux (English pronunciation: /fɒˈli ə ˈduː/, from the French for “a madness shared by two”) (or shared psychosis) is a psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from one individual to another. The same syndrome shared by more than two people may be called folie à trois, folie à quatre, folie en famille or even folie à plusieurs (“madness of many”). Recent psychiatric classifications refer to the syndrome as shared psychotic disorder (DSM-IV) (297.3) and induced delusional disorder (F.24) in the ICD-10, although the research literature largely uses the original name.
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Click for details on Mitch Waxman’s
Upcoming boat tours of Newtown Creek
July 22nd, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Newtown Creek Boat Tour
lands adjacent
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Found along Jackson Avenue in Long Island City, in the stretch between 21st Street and Queens Plaza, there are several truncated little blocks. Part of an earlier street grid pre dating the 20th century and the Queensboro Bridge, some host residences while others are partly residential while others are entirely industrial. All of these lanes share one commonality, which is ending where the Sunnyside Yard begins. Dutch Kills Street starts at Jackson Avenue and ends a mere block later at the fenced in rail yard.
from wikipedia
Dutch Kills is an area within Long Island City, in the New York City borough of Queens. It was a hamlet, named for its navigable tributary of Newtown Creek, that occupied what today is centrally Queensboro Plaza. Dutch Kills was an important road hub during the American Revolutionary War, and the site of a British Army garrison from 1776 to 1783. The area supported farms during the 19th Century, and was finally consolidated in 1870 with the villages of Astoria, Ravenswood, Hunters Point and Blissville to form Long Island City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Perpetual shadow stains the street here, titan masonry is sky flung and the steel of mighty Queensboro’s exit ramps is singing high above the pavement. Tumultuous passings of rail on the other side of an overgrown fence declare themselves loudly, and all around is evidence of poor drainage. A lonely dead end, it is one of the places where the residents of Queens enjoy indulging in the two art forms that the Borough is known for- illegal dumping and graffiti.
from wikipedia
The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) completed construction of the yard in 1910. At that time Sunnyside was the largest coach yard in the world, occupying 192 acres (0.78 km2) and containing 25.7 mi (41.4 km) of track. The yard served as the main train storage and service point for PRR trains serving New York City. It is connected to Pennsylvania Station in Midtown Manhattan by the East River Tunnels. The Sunnyside North Yard initially had 45 tracks with a capacity of 526 cars. The South Yard had 45 tracks with a 552 car capacity.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A lurking menace is sensed here, the surety that one is being watched from cover. A risible smell colors the air, one which betrays the odors of mold and rot and urine. It is odd to be so close to the center of the human infestation, yet so totally alone. It would be very easy to disappear here, and imagined perils spring into the forefront of ones mind. The shining promise of the Degnon Terminal glowers with ambition and thwarted aspiration, providing backdrop and counterpoint.
from nytimes.com
PROGRESS is the watchword of Queens Borough at the present time, especially of the Queensboro Bridge Plaza and the adjacent parts of Long Island City. Never before have there been so many striking object lessons of this forward movement in that long-neglected borough as may be seen today within a few blocks of the spacious approach to the bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Some poor soul calls this place their own, living in a makeshift shanty. So many of the “working homeless” are observed around these back alleys and forgotten corners, lonely vagabonds ekeing out a subsistence living while living in squalor, surviving by craft and guile. What strange experiences and odd tales could they relate about what happens in the dark of night, here on Dutch Kills Street?
from wikipedia
Modern homelessness started as a result of economic stresses in society and reductions in the availability of affordable housing such as single room occupancies (SROs) for poorer people. In the United States, in the 1970s, the deinstitutionalisation of patients from state psychiatric hospitals was a precipitating factor which seeded the homeless population, especially in urban areas such as New York City.
The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 was a predisposing factor in setting the stage for homelessness in the United States. Long term psychiatric patients were released from state hospitals into SROs and supposed to be sent to community mental health centers for treatment and follow-up. It never quite worked out properly, the community mental health centers mostly did not materialize, and this population largely was found living in the streets soon thereafter with no sustainable support system.
Also, as real estate prices and neighborhood pressure increased to move these people out of their areas, the SROs diminished in number, putting most of their residents in the streets. Other populations were mixed in later, such as people losing their homes for economic reasons, and those with addictions (although alcoholic hobos had been visible as homeless people since the 1890s, and those stereotypes fueled public perceptions of homeless people in general), the elderly, and others.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Although nothing of the sort was observed on this visit, one often sees candles and small altars to unknown gods in these places. Offerings of coins, foodstuffs, and cigars have often been noted amongst these arrangements. Peasant superstition and magicks are often the recourse of the desperate and desolated, however.
from wikipedia
Beliefs in witchcraft, and resulting witch-hunts, existed in many cultures worldwide and still exist in some today, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. in the witch smellers in Bantu culture). Historically these beliefs were notable in Early Modern Europe of the 14th to 18th century, where witchcraft came to be seen as a vast diabolical conspiracy against Christianity, and accusations of witchcraft led to large-scale witch-hunts, especially in Germanic Europe.
The “witch-cult hypothesis”, a controversial theory that European witchcraft was a suppressed pagan religion, was popular in the 19th and 20th centuries. Since the mid-20th century, Witchcraft has become the self-designation of a branch of neopaganism, especially in the Wicca tradition following Gerald Gardner, who claimed a religious tradition of Witchcraft with pre-Christian roots.
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Click for details on Mitch Waxman’s
Upcoming walking and boat tours of Newtown Creek
July 8th, 2012- Atlas Obscura Walking Tour- The Insalubrious Valley
(note: there was just one ticket left for this one when I hit “publish”)
for July 8th tickets, click here for the Atlas Obscura ticketing page
July 22nd, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Newtown Creek Boat Tour
The Newtown Pentacle 