Archive for the ‘Pickman’ Category
inevitably drawn
Where oh where can I find the direction home?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Everybody is going somewhere, coming from someplace else, or running errands. A humble narrator has no direction, no destination, no desire. All I want is to acknowledge Newtownian physics and prove that objects in motion tend to stay in motion until they encounter a force strong enough to arrest or alter their movement. Also, energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but that’s a longer term project that involves hanging odd charms from string in a series of bottles, and I’m still collecting the necessary glassware.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The world only makes sense when you force it to do so. This statement is something I constantly convince myself isn’t true, but unfortunately its diabolical truth is proven to me time and again. Tendencies to reticence and a desire to “trust,” which is a vainglorious attempt to believe in humanity as a whole, seem to be my metaphorical achilles heel. Experiences amongst the monkey tribes over the last few years argue against the mendacity of these apes, and one such as myself can only laugh his scary laugh and retreat back into the night.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I aspire to be “nice,” struggle with notions of absolute morality, and attempt to keep my true nature under some sort of control. Most of those who have long populated my life know this side of me, understand what it is that I keep chained up in the attic and basements of the soul, and have learned how unpleasant things can get when the fetters are loosed. Do not push a creature like me, as you will find the road you’ve entered upon to be quite a bumpy one.
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pitying moon
Darkness abounds in otherwise wholesome locales.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The dystopic setting of Queens Plaza, where tombstone like shards of cement and soaring steel parabolas rise, seems hostile to human life. That’s its paradox, of course, as the transit hub is all about human life but the only things missing from the scene are broken ended pipes that randomly shoot out fire and scarlet demons whipping the damned with barbed flails. The place is agonizing upon the ears, filled with fumes and engine exhaust, and if there is a public lavatory there- I haven’t found it yet. Gazing upon Queens Plaza, one realizes that this is one of the most populated spots upon the Earth- with a proviso that most of the people there at any given time are merely passing through on the subways, cars, bicycles, and buses they’re riding in.
Few ultimately set out with the destination of either Hell or Queens Plaza, but everyone ends up at one or the other sooner or later.
from wikipedia
Reduplicative paramnesia is the delusional belief that a place or location has been duplicated, existing in two or more places simultaneously, or that it has been ‘relocated’ to another site. It is one of the delusional misidentification syndromes and, although rare, is most commonly associated with acquired brain injury, particularly simultaneous damage to the right cerebral hemisphere and to both frontal lobes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Offered above is Dutch Kills Street, just down the block from the infernal conglomeration, looking south off of Jackson Avenue. A medium large (by LIC standards) residential property (of the modern sort) is nearing completion on one side of the street and a far larger project is set to begin on the other. The auto bridge above the roadway carries traffic from Queensboro towards Thomson Avenue over the Sunnyside Yards.
This street isn’t the same post industrial set piece riddled with green steel columns just exited, mind you, instead these steel beams are brown and beige and there’s no traffic except above. There’s something one might describe as foreboding about the street’s current incarnation, for some reason, a preternatural darkness. Intuition demands that one never find himself at the dead end of this street at night, although I have no empirical reason to believe that there is much lurking back there other than the odd feral cat or two.
There’s just something about the spot that feels sinister to me, perhaps the new real estate developments with their mirror glass walls shall brighten the street’s outlook in future times, or at least flush out whatever may dwell therein.
from wikipedia
Delusional companion syndrome is considered a neuropathology of the self, specifically a delusional misidentification syndrome. Affected individuals believe certain non-living objects possess consciousness and can think independently and feel emotion. The psychosis must coexist with a detectable brain pathology for delusional companion syndrome to be diagnosed. The syndrome is most often identified in patients who suffer from damage to the brain due to physical trauma, neuronal degeneration or developmental abnormalities. Especially in the latter case, patients also tend to present with many other symptoms and are diagnosed as having other established conditions. Comforting objects like cuddly toys are often the focus of delusion.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The mirror glass frontages currently in vogue do little to suit the tastes of a creature such as your humble narrator. Devastating planar surfaces rising inorganically, the logical melancholy and joy starved jaundice of a decadent and jaded age, covered in reflective materials whose action reveals too much… No, one such as myself prefers the inhuman scale of earlier times and the fortress of factories at the Degnon Terminal on Thomson Avenue. Their day is long past, the tenants today are colleges and offices, but the structures still exude solidity and inevitability nearly a century after they were rudely erected from the swampy waste meadows surrounding the Dutch Kills tributary of that squamous cataract of urban legend called the Newtown Creek.
from wikipedia
The criteria for failure are heavily dependent on context of use, and may be relative to a particular observer or belief system. A situation considered to be a failure by one might be considered a success by another, particularly in cases of direct competition or a zero-sum game. Similarly, the degree of success or failure in a situation may be differently viewed by distinct observers or participants, such that a situation that one considers to be a failure, another might consider to be a success, a qualified success or a neutral situation.
It may also be difficult or impossible to ascertain whether a situation meets criteria for failure or success due to ambiguous or ill-defined definition of those criteria. Finding useful and effective criteria, or heuristics, to judge the success or failure of a situation may itself be a significant task.
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strange instruments
My neck hurts, I have to pee, and I think someone might be following me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Disturbing indications, delivered to the brain via input from that subcutaneous network of cabled sensors which are referred to as the nervous system (by layman and medical professional alike) and embedded within the skinvelope, abound. Certain sections of the decaying bag of meat in which one is housed were never much good when they were brand new and unsullied, and after nearly half a century of active service these sections have grown worn and are in a degenerate state of repair. Everything hurts, and the atmospherics surrounding the coming of winter irritate, causing my skinvelope to feel quite itchy.
For too long has my brain looked down upon the meatbag below from the perspective of master and slave, and I fear that a Marxist inspired revolution may be afoot, within.
from wikipedia
Details of delusional parasitosis vary among sufferers, but it is most commonly described as involving perceived parasites crawling upon or burrowing into the skin, sometimes accompanied by an actual physical sensation (known as formication). Sufferers may injure themselves in attempts to be rid of the “parasites”. Some are able to induce the condition in others through suggestion, in which case the term folie à deux may be applicable.
Nearly any marking upon the skin, or small object or particle found on the person or his clothing, can be interpreted as evidence for the parasitic infestation, and sufferers commonly compulsively gather such “evidence” and then present it to medical professionals when seeking help. This presenting of “evidence” is known as “the matchbox sign” because the “evidence” is frequently presented in a small container, such as a matchbox.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Crawling about in the dark of night, scuttling to and fro across the concretized devastations, my normally steady gait has become altered of late. Heavy camera bag and too many miles causes one to stoop his shoulders with the left held noticeably lower than the right. My right arm sweeps back slightly (steadying a camera) while the left comes forward, and at the waist I’m bent slightly forward a bit (from offsetting the weight of the bag). Also, I seem to pull myself inexorably forward using my right leg a bit more than the left these days, so my scuttle has evolved into a bit more of a squirm, reminiscent of the calamitous gait expressed by Hollywood zombies. Just a couple of years ago, my movements were somewhat more fluid, but I suppose I just have to deal with the aches and pain and work through this seasonal malady called winter.
Can’t just bury my head in the sand, and pretend I don’t have eyes and ears, or notice a world which is all around me.
from wikipedia
Worms live in almost all parts of the world including marine, freshwater, and terrestrial habitats. Some worms living in the ground help to condition the soil (e.g., annelids, aschelminths). Many thrive as parasites of plants (e.g., aschelminths) and animals, including humans (e.g., platyhelminths, aschelminths). Several other worms may be free-living, or nonparasitic. There are worms that live in freshwater, seawater, and even on the seashore. Ecologically, worms form an important link in the food chains in virtually all the ecosystems of the world.
In the United States, the average population of worms per acre is 53,767.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Current interests, “mah research” as I refer to it comically, have been leading me inexorably towards the history of an area known to modernity as Queens Plaza and the Sunnyside Yards- large sections which hosted either coastal marsh, flood plain, or littoral zone well into the 19th century. It’s plainly fascinating that the slab of fill and concrete upon which perambulation, vehicular, and mass transit occurs occludes the ancient patterns of flowing water. Somewhere, perhaps as little as 25-50 feet below the somewhat modern cut and cover tunnels underlying the streets, still flow the ancestral streams known by the Dutch.
Could there be underground grottoes inhabited by the atavist extant of the ancestral waters of Dutch Kills, or the Sunswick Creek down there?
from wikipedia
Myriapoda is a subphylum of arthropods containing millipedes, centipedes, and others. The group contains over 13,000 species, all of which are terrestrial. Although their name suggests they have myriad (10,000) legs, myriapods range from having over 750 legs (Illacme plenipes) to having fewer than ten legs.
The fossil record of myriapods reaches back into the late Silurian, although molecular evidence suggests a diversification in the Cambrian Period, and Cambrian fossils exist which resemble myriapods. The oldest unequivocal myriapod fossil is of the millipede Pneumodesmus newmani, from the late Silurian (428 million years ago). P. newmani is also important as the earliest known terrestrial animal.
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heard messages
It’s dark and cold, and I can’t feel my feet any more.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another Newtown Creek meeting drew me in recently, this time it was the Newtown Creek CAG. CAG stands for Community Advisory Group, and its role is mandated as part of the Superfund process. The EPA was there to discuss and disseminate some early data, which they stressed as being raw and entirely uninterpreted. This is an important distinction for we non scientists to understand, as they distributed disc copies of these early findings to several of us that asked, since a lot of the terms and subjects discussed by these documents can be a little off putting. The presence of arsenic in 100% of sampled sediment may not be something to worry about, after all, as arsenic is actually in 100% of the apples you’ve eaten over the course of your lifetime- its naturally occurring, just like in roses (my analogy, not EPA’s). It’s the “levels of” and “concentrations of” you need to worry about.
from wikipedia
The theory of cognitive dissonance in social psychology proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by altering existing cognitions, adding new ones to create a consistent belief system, or alternatively by reducing the importance of any one of the dissonant elements. Cognitive dissonance is the distressing mental state that people feel when they “find themselves doing things that don’t fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold.” A key assumption is that people want their expectations to meet reality, creating a sense of control. Likewise, another assumption is that a person will avoid situations or information sources that give rise to feelings of uneasiness, or dissonance.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The EPA data reports are highly technical, and richly illustrated with thousands of photos describing the process of sediment, atmospheric, and water sampling. Materials collected from Newtown Creek are sent to the laboratories of Federal contractors and other specialists, whereupon arcane tests, dilutions, and dissections are performed upon it. The raw data, which was collected during the last couple of years, presents the need for further investigations (which EPA indicates will be commencing in the coming year). The data is housed on 5 DVD’s and as mentioned- is completely uninterpreted. Your humble narrator has just begun to scratch through it, but so far nothing has jumped out at me, other than a vague sort of dread. You really wouldn’t want to swim in English or Dutch Kills, it would seem, and an amazing variety of worms were found living in the sediment layers- some of whom are not native to NY waters and hail from the overseas.
from wikipedia
Affective forecasting can be divided into four components: predictions about emotional valence (i.e. positive or negative), the specific emotions experienced, their duration, and their intensity. While errors may occur in all four components, research overwhelmingly indicates that the two areas most prone to bias, usually in the form of overestimation, are duration and intensity. Immune neglect is a form of impact bias in response to negative events whereby people fail to predict how much their psychological immune system will hasten their recovery. On average, people are fairly accurate about predicting which emotions they will feel in response to future events. However, some studies indicate that predicting specific emotions in response to more complex social events leads to greater inaccuracy. For example, one study found that while many women who imagine encountering gender harassment predict feelings of anger, in reality, a much higher proportion report feelings of fear. Other research suggests that accuracy in affective forecasting is greater for positive affect than negative affect, suggesting an overall tendency to overreact to perceived negative events.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The CAG is a good group, a sort of congress for those of us whom the Newtown Creek has claimed. The Newtown Creek Alliance is well represented, as is Riverkeeper, NCMC, the local elected officials, corporate and Business Improvement District associations, and the so called “Responsible Parties.”
These “Responsible Parties” are those corporate entities who have entered into an agreement with EPA which names them as culpable for the environmental issues that drew the Federal agency’s notice in the first place, and which binds the various corporations named so into financially and materially supporting the clean up process and its monumental cost. EPA acts independently, but the CAG exists to alert EPA to the unexpected or tangential results of the Superfund process and creates a point of access to its managers. It’s as complicated a set of relationships as you can get, I suppose, the sort of thing a person like me avoids like the plague- but at least I get to be around people.
The meetings are public, you know!
from wikipedia
The term fallacy is often used generally to mean an argument that is problematic for any reason, whether it is formal or informal.
The presence of a formal fallacy in a deductive argument does not imply anything about the argument’s premises or its conclusion. Both may actually be true, or even more probable as a result of the argument, but the deductive argument is still invalid because the conclusion does not follow from the premises in the manner described. By extension, an argument can contain a formal fallacy even if the argument is not a deductive one; for instance an inductive argument that incorrectly applies principles of probability or causality can be said to commit a formal fallacy.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Interesting things reveal themselves occasionally. Something which came up last year at a CAG meeting, for instance, was that business owners around the Maspeth Creek area were having a difficult time securing long term credit due to trepeditious inclinations displayed by the banking community toward lending to clients with unknown environmental liabilities. Another was that there’s a strata of discarded metro cards lodged in the sediment. When I get through the stack of discs, I’ll let y’all know what I think I see, but we will all have to wait for the interpretation which will be offered by someone else who is smart enough to actually understand it. Addled, my aging mind can barely comprehend the meaning of these dancing columns of numbers, nor the multitudinously cryptic scatter graphs, and photos of those dark things which slither and flop through the Black Mayonnaise.
from wikipedia
In science, cognition is a group of mental processes that includes the attention of working memory, producing and comprehending language, learning, reasoning, problem solving, and decision making. Various disciplines, such as psychology, philosophy and linguistics all study cognition. However, the term’s usage varies across disciplines; for example, in psychology and cognitive science, “cognition” usually refers to an information processing view of an individual’s psychological functions. It is also used in a branch of social psychology called social cognition to explain attitudes, attribution, and groups dynamics. In cognitive psychology and cognitive engineering, cognition is typically assumed to be information processing in a participant’s or operator’s mind or brain.
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monstrous guilt
The farbissina hunt rides again.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Eschewing the behavioral requirements by which social graces are enforced amongst those who aspire, the qualities of polity and well mannered conviviality are not normally mentioned when the subject of discussion is your humble narrator. Oft has this lack of civilized manner called down unexpected storms- which offer, induce, and deliver personal angst and derision. The path I walk and life I’ve lived has been pedantic and painful at best, and many have volunteered that my personality is tolerable only in short doses. Vast physical inadequacies, and the social status of an ineluctably feckless quisling, demand that one such as myself retreats when trouble comes. There is no chance that a stand will be taken and instead to the shadows will I flee.
From my hermitage of shadows, lurking amongst the night, do I stab at and shun the world that surrounds. Humbug.
from wikipedia
Shunning can be the act of social rejection, or mental rejection. Social rejection is when a person or group deliberately avoids association with, and habitually keeps away from an individual or group. This can be a formal decision by a group, or a less formal group action which will spread to all members of the group as a form of solidarity. It is a sanction against association, often associated with religious groups and other tightly knit organizations and communities. Targets of shunning can include persons who have been labeled as apostates, whistleblowers, dissidents, strikebreakers, or anyone the group perceives as a threat or source of conflict.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When this- your Newtown Pentacle- first appeared on the vast interwebs a few years ago, the accusations hurled my way were many and varied. Some said that I was some sort of shill for the real estate people, given the wonderment expressed about western Queens. Shortly thereafter, some said that I was a pompous windbag pontificating to a nearly empty room of slack jawed Hipsters. Next up, I was accused of being some sort of sleeper agent placed by deep pocketed and borough wide political gangs with shadowy goals. After that, a sudden wave of auto cthonic attention from the press caused some to characterize me as a careerist and carpet bagger. Can you see why I stick to the shadows and shun a world populated by crazy people? If I was any of the things above, wouldn’t I be able to afford to own a car?
It’s mostly night time in December anyway, and I’ve always hated being asked to drink any flavor of Kool-Aid. Back in the old neighborhood, in Brooklyn, we just called it bug juice.
from wikipedia
“Drinking the Kool-Aid” is a metaphor commonly used in the United States that refers to a person or group holding an unquestioned belief, argument, or philosophy without critical examination. It could also refer to knowingly going along with a doomed or dangerous idea because of peer pressure. The phrase typically carries a negative connotation when applied to an individual or group. The phrase derives from the November 1978 Jonestown Massacre, where members of the Peoples Temple, who were followers of the pro-Communist cult leader Reverend Jim Jones, committed suicide by drinking a mixture of a powdered soft drink flavoring agent laced with cyanide.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What this little invective has to do with the photos presented in today’s post, captured nearby Manhattan’s Flat Iron district in the east 20’s, is surprisingly simple. These were the thoughts roiling and boiling between my ears while I was shooting. It has been a long, long time since I’ve allowed myself to feel anything at all- let alone allowing an old and familiar cauldron of hatred and bile to come to a simmer. Here’s the deal, lords and ladies, and I’m saying it for the umpteenth time: There is no hidden agenda, nor guiding principal, nor shadowed paymaster behind the scenes around these parts. I show you what Queens and the Creek show me, that’s it. I take shots of seemingly significant structures and locations out in the field. I go back to HQ, research to the best of my ability, and present them here. Sometimes, I’m wrong, and count on the wisdom of crowds to point me in the right direction when I am.
Meanwhile, I’m busy shunning the whole world for awhile. Bah.
from wikipedia
Green Infrastructure or Blue-green infrastructure is a network providing the “ingredients” for solving urban and climatic challenges by building with nature. The main components of this approach include stormwater management, climate adaptation, less heat stress, more biodiversity, food production, better air quality, sustainable energy production, clean water and healthy soils, as well as the more anthropocentric functions such as increased quality of life through recreation and providing shade and shelter in and around towns and cities.
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The Newtown Pentacle 