Archive for the ‘Northern Blvd.’ Category
beckoning beyonds
Confused paranoia and insensate musing, in today’s post.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My feet hurt, as does a knee or two.
Worries abound, all sorts of existential threats present themselves daily. The neighbors are worrisome and curious, and many of them were born to foreign communists. Some hail from terribly artificial nation states whose judicial system is built around medieval religious law, like Italy. There are public defecators and licentious drunks without, a riot of noise erupts constantly, and my dog has been curiously alert and watching the western sky of late. This Russia/Ukraine thing is also noisome, but we need the Russians, just in case Earth is ever invaded by an alien army.
For the same reason, we must preserve the felid specie of Tigers – for service as shock troops on the front lines of a true world war.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Surely, the universe has never been more unsettling than at the present moment, one can sense that the gears of fate and the clockwork of dharma spin inexorably toward doom, with a state of jellyfish like psychic dissolution awaiting the human infestation. Fearfully, willingly, entering into a dark age of ignorance and intolerant barbarism simply in the name of forgetting the horrible truths of our time.
How one longs for the good old days of centuries past. Things are so much worse now than they were a mere hundred years ago, during the opening shots of the “World War,” don’t you think?
Note: One prefers referring to WW1 to as “Phase One of the second Thirty Years War.” The First World War was merely a consolidation and clearing away of the medieval system, removing the decayed Austro Hungarian, Chinese, and Turkish Imperial players from the chess board and making room for the modern big guns to step up in Phase Two.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Alright, a hundred years back is a bad example. Let’s do two hundred years then, in… 1814…
OK, 1714… 1614… Jeez… 1514, well, let’s just say things in the present might not be as dire, loathsome, or squamous as we might believe them to be. Things could be a lot worse. An invasion fleet of alien starships could be driving asteroids at us from just beyond Mars, shelling our cities and killing the oceans. There could be bacterial analogues, born in the horrible mouldering slopes of an alien world, festering in the throats and orifices of our livestock or offspring.
Of course, were some star born army of conquerors to arrive upon the earth with lascivious or malicious intent, tiger riding Russian troops will be there to answer them.
I think that’s fairly obvious.
There are two public Newtown Creek walking tours coming up,
one in LIC, Queens and one in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Glittering Realms: Brooklyn’s Greenpoint with Atlas Obscura, on Saturday May 17th.
Click here for more info and ticketing.
Modern Corridor: Queen’s LIC with Brooklyn Brainery, on Sunday May 18th.
Click here for more info and ticketing.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
crushed convulsively
A ritual observance observed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Spotted this on Northern Blvd. at 35th avenue last Sunday. Similar to prior findings, this assemblage of ad hoc sculpture seemed to be composed of common kitchen items. The best peasant magicks usually are. Oddly enough, Queenscrap ran a piece today about a similar find from nearby in Woodside – check it out here.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As to the “prior findings,” this looks eerily similar in technique and medium to the subject of the 2011 Newtown Pentacle post “little memories.” Incidentally, that find also happened during the month of March.
The Queenscrap post links out to a thread at Reddit which postulates that this is a Tibetan offering/arrangement, called a Torma. Ignorance is my watchword, and your humble narrator confesses to it. These things have stumped me whenever I’ve tried to figure them out, which is odd as obscure occult lore is one of my hobbies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’m pals with a Tibetan guy that lives across the street from me – a combat hardened U.S. Marine (and immigrant) with multiple tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq under his belt who is trying to readjust to civilian life. Think I’ll show him these pics. Maybe he’ll be able to confirm or deny their Tibetan provence, or perhaps he’ll take one look at them and run screaming into the night knowing that these idols signal the presence in the neighborhood of an unspeakable cult that was old when the world was young.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Project Firebox 103
An ongoing catalog of New York’s endangered Fireboxes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Naked City of Queens is home to many a firebox, and although there are not eight million of them here, each one has a story. Unfortunately, the stories are all tragic- house fires, auto accidents, heartaches of all descriptions. Fireboxes can’t talk, of course, except to summon a team of superheroes in a big red truck when crises emerge.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
sleepy inefficiency
Just cannot stomach the indolence, and not for one minute more…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Like Yogi and BooBoo, my busy time of the year seems to come between March and November. Accordingly, the month and change during which I have little reason to wake up at all that falls between Thanksgiving and the second week of January. During this a period a short break is enjoyed. A humble narrator watches a lot of TV, sits around, and entertains the dog. Not too much excitement comes along, and annually, this is when I get a bit itchy for fun.
from wikipedia
Seasonal affective disorder (SAD), also known as winter depression, winter blues, summer depression, summer blues, or seasonal depression, was considered a mood disorder in which people who have normal mental health throughout most of the year experience depressive symptoms in the winter or summer.
In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV and DSM-5, its status was changed. It is no longer classified as a unique mood disorder but is now a specifier called With seasonal pattern for recurrent major depressive disorder that occurs at a specific time of the year and fully remits otherwise. Although experts were initially skeptical, this condition is now recognized as a common disorder, with its prevalence in the U.S. ranging from 1.4% in Florida to 9.7% in New Hampshire.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s a good time to design new business cards, work on the book, and back up the hard drive. I also work on updating portfolios of photos, and retouching work, showing off notable jobs accomplished during the prior year. Lately, that includes blog stuff as well. One of the recent jobs which I’m kind of proud of is the redhookwaterfront.com site, for which I provided photos and did some historical workups and also did general blog writing. Check it out.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I have a couple of short adventures planned for the next few days, out there in the cold wastes, and hopefully there’ll be some cool stuff encountered to tell y’all about. Never know what Queens wants to show you next, as out of all the Boroughs, she’s the most coy.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
cold and cramping
Lurid shimmerings of pale light, that’s what I’m about.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The hours one spends marching about Queens are severely impinged upon by weather during the winter months, a fact injurious to both health and morale. A humble narrator attempts to fill the empty hours productively, but there is little solace for one such as myself in hours spent in the office. Perhaps relocating to a warmer climate is in order? That would mean that New York City had finally beaten me, and that a life long grudge match had been lost.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The various medications which my staff of doctors prescribe to manage those ailments which bedevil and weaken my material form have a certain downside – inducing a particular fragility to my homeostasis when the temperature dips down. Simply said, cold weather such as that which the City is experiencing is actually painful. Vital ichors run away from the extremities, and one begins to experience the sense of being in a long dark tunnel which terminates in a distant but brightly lit aperture. I call that aperture “April.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The hard reality of this, I’m only a quadragenarian after all, has made me truly love to see the oil companies delivering the fuel that stokes all the furnaces and boilers. I propose a new secular holiday, one which celebrates the constancy and efforts of the oil truck man, without whom we’d all surely freeze to death. Brr.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
The Newtown Pentacle 