not voluntary
The banal joy of it all is what today’s post explores.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Have to admit that despite my confession to suffering from a bit of a rut, which is a seasonal complaint often offered at this time of year, the places which I continually find myself seldom disappoint. Case in point today are shots collected from the Queens side of the fabled Newtown Creek, amongst the concretized wasteland of DUPBO (Down Under the Pulaski Bridge Onramp). Pictured is a view of my beloved Creek looking towards Greenpoint and the GMDC (Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center) found at the Manhattan Avenue Street End in Brooklyn from DUPBO, which is ultimately kind of a depressing image for me. Your humble narrator has been spending far too much time in Brooklyn lately, and not enough in Queens.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Brooklyn is lost in soliloquy again, currently obsessing over ways to spend its ExxonMobil settlement money. There’s all sorts of stuff going on over there, with everyone in 11122 cooking up an idea to mulch this or compost that and applying for funding. It’s all good stuff, but gardening isn’t going to do much against the torrents of waste and sewage which flow out of Manhattan everyday. Greenpoint is the Mississippi delta of municipal waste, and Manhattan is an upstream pig farm whose shit pipes flow directly into the river. Western Queens, on the other hand, knows exactly what role it is expected to play in Manhattan’s gang of subordinates and doesn’t pretend not to know.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Carpet baggers from all over the City and State, sometimes from other states even, can smell the cash over in Brooklyn and want to take a bite. Foundations and think tanks roam about over there, pronouncing the need for “green infrastructure” (gardening) and other buzzy concepts which the masters over on Manhattan (and their Brooklyn representatives) have decided on as the fix for all things related to sewage runoff. I’m not against it, of course, how can you stand up against gardening? It’s just that over in Queens, We’ve got a highway which feeds a couple of hundred thousand auto trips a day into a tunnel that is just a couple of blocks from the Creek. Said highway runs alongside the concentrating point of all rail on Long Island, which is neighbored by two major automobile bridges (Queensboro and Triborough).
How can you garden your way out of that?
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
not necessarily
Sunset at Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In Greenpoint to attend a meeting of the Newtown Creek Monitoring Committee, a community group whose mission is citizen oversight of the DEP construction process at the sewer plant, one found himself ridiculously early for the event. Accordingly, having no place else to go due to the pariah status I enjoy when nobody requires something from me, retreat was made to the banks of the loquacious Newtown Creek to confirm that it was still there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Happily, the waterway had not been paved over in the intervening week since my last visit, and given the specific chronology of my residency there- the diurnal arc of the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself was waning. Atmospherics resulted, as the outer space based fusion ball attained an acute angle to that section of the planet occupied by the great human hive called New York City, painting airborne fumes and miasmas in orange and fuchsia- as pictured.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The NCMC meeting which followed discussed several topics. The disturbing role and intentions of a corporate entity called Veolia (which has been given managerial control over the NYC DEP) came up, as did the subject of a dredging project which the DEP requires to complete a certain phase of the plant’s construction, and the ongoing saga of getting horticultural staff in place at the Nature Walk public space (from which these photos were shot) was also explored. It was all very depressing, but its always nice to be amongst people who aren’t chasing or hurling things at me.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
not conjecture
Preternatural darkness and solemnitude, that’s the ticket.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Under assault from all quarters, condemned to waiting for everyone else to finish eating before I might scoop up discarded scraps from beneath the master’s table, go I. Seldom considered except as an after thought, your humble narrator is nevertheless always watching from the depth of shadow, day and night alike- staring out through a monocular lens. If most knew what I’ve met lurking out here, in the night, they would stoutly lock their windows and doors. Shadowed groups of anonymous men huddle in doorways, whispering to each other in languages which were ancient in the Americas in the uncounted millennia before Columbus, lit only by sodium lamps on high.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A wandering mendicant, clad in a filthy black raincoat and armored in a skin of calcified scar tissue, the cold waste offers naught but nepenthe to one such as myself. Industrial quarters, such as the ill fortuned section of Long Island City pictured in todays posting which are routinely transversed and travelled by this lonely pedestrian, offer nothing but opportunity when the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself is occluded by the earth. The sodium lamp illumination be damned, City Hall has declared, and all the street lamps will soon be replaced with newer and so called energy efficient ones. One worries about the impending arrival of these LED street lamps in NYC, and the sociological and psychological effects which the cold flicker and narrow wavelengths of light typically offered by such devices will have on the human hive.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It is a firm belief, dearly held, that it is possible to induce madness architecturally. If this statement strikes you as hyperbole, consider how the crypto fascist teachings of LeCorbusier led to the creation of the monolithic columns of the city housing projects and the cultural degradations suffered by those whom fate has entrapped within them. When all of NewYork is awash in LED light, with its peculiarly cool color and perceptual flickering bouncing to and from the mirror walls of condominium towers, what will their strange radiances do to the minds of those of us who dwell in the deep nocturne? Don’t worry about me, I like it dark and scary, and enjoy the expressions of madness and the exultation of chaos which the humans create.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
retreat directly
Lament, for fresh posts begin anew.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s my curse, I guess. Always an outsider, and asked to leave the room so that the grown ups can talk seriously. Not that another stodgy, labored, and somewhat boring conversation is actually something I’d like to participate in, mind you, but one grows tired of sitting in the cheap seats after awhile and the next person who tells me how shit I am is going to be very, very surprised at what I say back.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One does enjoy watching them gesture and display for each other, as they roil and rumble. Pack mentality rules both canine and primate behavior, presumptively, with both species weeding out their sick or weakened members. Nature of the beast, I guess.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Dispassionate is the way a humble narrator rolls, and my function is as an observer. Look at the lens, not at me, as I’m not here.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
no exit
Maritime Sunday leaves every thirty minutes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The seldom considered Staten Island Ferry – the most popular tourist destination in New York City – transiting forth and back from St. George on… Staten Island… to the Whitehall terminal located on the island of Manhattan. This shot from the archives depicts the latter leg of the transit, and provides for the opportunity to offer a rousing Maritime Sunday “huzzah” to the crews that handle the job.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
