Posts Tagged ‘Citibank megalith’
laced apertures
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An interval of soliloquy recently offered itself to your humble narrator, during a vast and shambling perambulation. Undertaken was a relaxed and lonely tour of the titan masonry which distinguishes the quite industrialized northern bank of the Newtown Creek, specifically in the hessian cursed hinterlands of Maspeth and Blissville.
Accessing obscure yet quite public locations, known to but a few, a thought occurred. Perhaps conventional wisdom is wrong, and the muddy sediments of the fabled industrial revolution- rich in all sorts of exotic materials- are actually what the great minds of earlier epochs were trying to achieve.
Could the Black Mayonnaise be some sort of vast environmental Peloid?
from wikipedia
Peloid is mud, or clay used therapeutically, as part of balneotherapy, or therapeutic bathing. Peloids consist of humus and minerals formed over many years by geological and biological, chemical and physical processes.
Numerous peloids are available today, of which the most popular are peat pulps, various medicinal clays, mined in various locations around the world, and a variety of plant substances. Also, health spas often use locally available lake and sea muds and clays. Peloid procedures are also various; the most common of them are peloid wraps, peloid baths, and peloid packs applied locally to the part of the body, which is being treated.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The grinding heel of finances, omnipresent and dire, drives one toward desperate fancies and fantastical schemes. Idiot plans, plots- even gambling- are possible when one’s outlook is grimly narrowed by looming disaster.
Moments so described will weigh heavily upon even those possessed of wholesome aspect and character, let alone a misshapen void in space in the approximate shape of a man that is a humble but quite disgusting narrator.
An unthinkable ideation… unknowable and indescribable… utterly and inconceivably hatched.
from wikipedia
Haitians consume a large variety of different non-traditional foods in an attempt to quelch hunger pains. Mud cakes are traditionally fashioned and consumed, but items such as clay and chalk can also be eaten. Due to recent increases in food prices and growing starvation in Haiti, this habit has been extended and received much media attention.
Outside of hunger, mud and dirt can be consumed accidentally during sports and other outdoor activities. This has led to dysphemisms for poor-tasting food such as “tastes like dirt”, based on the experience of getting mud, dirt, etc. in one’s teeth.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Clove like the belly of a rotten fish, or Zeus’s brow when Athena was explosively born, this extranormal notion flowered approximately three and one half inches behind my eyes.
Gaining the product would be laughably easy, one would suspect that officials and administrators would be overjoyed just to be rid of the stuff. Historical precedent exists. During the halcyon days of the Newtown Creek’s early chemical industry, when a byproduct of the large scale manufacture of sulphuric acid at the works of M. Kalbfleisch or William Henry Nichols – called sludge acid– was dumped directly into the water, kids would collect the stuff where it pooled up downstream (in glass lined buckets) and bring it to some small operators in the chemical business for use as raw material for distillation and refinement.
That’d be making lemonade, if handed lemons.
from hydroqual.com
The routing of potential Newtown Creek Flushing Tunnels along with the locations and sizes of the pumping stations were developed in a previous study (URS, 1994), which are shown on Figure 7-7. Two tunnels would be constructed, each with a water intake located along the East River. One tunnel would go to Dutch Kills and have a 70 cfs pumping station near the terminus at the head end of Dutch Kills. The other tunnel is proposed to go to English Kills and then on to East Branch with 150 cfs pumping stations near the head ends of each tributary. Both tunnels were routed as much as possible under existing rights-of-way to minimize the potential costs associated with easement acquisition. However, due to the number of dead end tributaries to Newtown Creek and their distance from the East River the flushing water option would require around three miles of tunnels, two water intakes, and three pumping stations. In addition, the background conditions in the East River are not substantially better than the target water quality and thus flushing requires larger flushing volumes.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Gaining financial freedom by mining the muds of Newtown Creek and offering it to the nations apothecaries as a miracle cure, growing rich off… a moment of lucid fantasy, then detonated and disintegrated with the force of an exploding bladder. These sediments were left here for a reason, laid down by the great and gregarious- men like Charles Pratt and Peter Cooper and John D. Rockefeller. These men were public benefactors, underwriters of great charities as well as medical and scholastic institutions, and hailed as exemplars by their contemporaries.
Surely there must something beneath the water, hidden away in subterrene pockets and masonry clad voids, something horribly and anomalously uncanny which spurred these titans of an earlier age to action and seal it in.
Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there?
from wikipedia
A molehill (or mole-hill, mole mound) is a conical mound of loose soil raised by small burrowing mammals, including moles, but also similar animals such as mole-rats, marsupial moles and voles. They are often the only sign to indicate the presence of the animal.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Also:
June 16th, 2012- Newtown Creek Alliance Dutch Kills walk (this Saturday)
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Newtown Creek Alliance has asked that, in my official capacity as group historian, a tour be conducted on the 16th of June- a Saturday. This walk will follow the Dutch Kills tributary, and will include a couple of guest speakers from the Alliance itself, which will provide welcome relief for tour goers from listening to me rattle on about Michael Degnon, Patrick “Battle Ax” Gleason, and a bunch of bridges that no one has ever heard of.
for June 16th tickets, click here for the Newtown Creek Alliance ticketing page
June 23rd, 2012- Atlas Obscura Thirteen Steps around Dutch Kills walk
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Additionally- the “Obscura Day” Thirteen Steps around Dutch Kills tour proved that the efficacy and charms of the Newtown Creek’s least known tributary, with its myriad points of interest, could cause a large group to overlook my various inadequacies and failings. The folks at Atlas Obscura, which is a fantastic website worthy of your attentions (btw), have asked me to repeat the tour on the 23rd of June- also a Saturday.
for June 23rd tickets, click here for the Atlas Obscura ticketing page
June 30th, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Kill Van Kull walk
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My various interests out on the sixth borough, NY Harbor, have brought me into association with the Working Harbor Committee. A member of the group’s Steering Committee- I also serve as the “official” group photographer, am chairman and principal narrator of their annual Newtown Creek Boat Tour, and occasionally speak on the microphone during other tours (mainly the Brooklyn one). This year, the group has branched out into terrestrial explorations to compliment the intense and extant schedule of boat tours, and I’m going to be leading a Kill Van Kull walking tour that should be a lot of fun.
The Kill Van Kull, or tugboat alley as its known to we harbor rats, is a tidal strait that defines the border of Staten Island and New Jersey. A busy and highly industrialized waterfront, Working Harbor’s popular “Hidden Harbor – Newark Bay” boat tours provide water access to the Kill, but what is it like on the landward side?
Starting at the St. George Staten Island Ferry terminal, join WHC Steering Committee member Mitch Waxman for a walk up the Kill Van Kull via Staten Islands Richmond Terrace. You’ll encounter unrivaled views of the maritime traffic on the Kill itself, as well as the hidden past of the maritime communities which line it’s shores. Surprising and historic neighborhoods, an abandoned railway, and tales of prohibition era bootleggers await.
The tour will start at 11, sharp, and you must be on (at least) the 10:30 AM Staten Island Ferry to meet the group at St. George. Again, plan for transportation changes and unexpected weirdness to be revealed to you at MTA.info.
for June 30th tickets, click here for the Working Harbor Committee ticketing page
fear eclipses
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The warmth was welcome, but the mists and fog were not. Multiple journeys into and out of the concrete devastations of the Newtown Creek watershed in recent weeks have garnered nothing but terror for your humble narrator. What unknown things, too small to notice, might have been carried aloft by those vapors? After all, if you can smell something… you are breathing it in.
That thing which cannot possibly exist in the cupola of the Sapphire Megalith was surely unaffected by those whose flapping and flopping might be observed only with the aid of microscopy, in its perch high above the mists.
I’m all ‘effed up.
from wikipedia
Delusional parasitosis, also known as Ekbom’s syndrome, is a form of psychosis whose victims acquire a strong delusional belief that they are infested with parasites, whereas in reality no such parasites are present. Very often the imaginary parasites are reported as being “bugs” or insects crawling on or under the skin; in these cases the experience of the sensation known as formication may provide the basis for this belief.
The alternative name of Ekbom’s syndrome derives from Swedish neurologist Karl Axel Ekbom, who published seminal accounts of the disease in 1937 and 1938. This term is also used interchangeably with Wittmaack-Ekbom syndrome, another name for restless legs syndrome (RLS). Although delusional parasitosis and RLS were both researched by Ekbom, and RLS sufferers sometimes describe some of their symptoms as if they have, for example, “ants in my veins”, they are distinctly different disorders. RLS is a physical condition with physical causes, whereas delusional parasitosis is a false belief.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Intimate associates and clandestine confidants have been acting oddly since those foggy days during the third week of March, leading me to experience entirely uncontrollable and unpermissive pulsations of paranoid wondering. It was so odd, experiencing the weather of early summer at this stage of the year, imparting a sensation to me that we had all somehow skipped ahead a month or two in time according to the whim of some extra dimensional overlord- but only for a short interval.
Perhaps time itself has come undone.
from wikipedia
The Capgras delusion theory (or Capgras syndrome) is a disorder in which a person holds a delusion that a friend, spouse, parent, or other close family member has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor. The Capgras delusion is classified as a delusional misidentification syndrome, a class of delusional beliefs that involves the misidentification of people, places, or objects. It can occur in acute, transient, or chronic forms. Cases in which patients hold the belief that time has been “warped” or “substituted” have also been reported.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Mayhaps it was was the influence of whatever it was that arose on the billowing fog that caused my reason to falter and imaginings to take on a sinister cast. The miasmic clouds which blanketed and caressed could not have been anything more than mere humidity, not some noxious atmosphere of industrial exhaust and foul microscopic life clinging to those tiny water droplets hanging suspended in the air. Such wonderings are merely paranoia, but one wonders… and more than wonders…
from wikipedia
Between people of different faiths, or indeed between people of the same faith, the term omnipotent has been used to connote a number of different positions. These positions include, but are not limited to, the following:
- A deity is able to do absolutely anything, even the logically impossible, i.e., ( 2 ) pure agency.
- A deity is able to do anything that it chooses to do.
- A deity is able to do anything that is in accord with its own nature (thus, for instance, if it is a logical consequence of a deity’s nature that what it speaks is truth, then it is not able to lie).
- Hold that it is part of a deity’s nature to be consistent and that it would be inconsistent for said deity to go against its own laws unless there was a reason to do so.
- A deity is able to do anything that corresponds with its omniscience and therefore with its worldplan.
Under many philosophical definitions of the term “deity”, senses 2, 3 and 4 can be shown to be equivalent. However, on all understandings of omnipotence, it is generally held that a deity is able to intervene in the world by superseding the laws of physics, since they are not part of its nature, but the principles on which it has created the physical world. However many modern scholars (such as John Polkinghorne) hold that it is part of a deity’s nature to be consistent and that it would be inconsistent for a deity to go against its own laws unless there were an overwhelming reason to do so.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Your humble narrator must simply be drinking too much coffee.
from wikipedia
Caffeine overdose can result in a state of central nervous system over-stimulation called caffeine intoxication (DSM-IV 305.90), or colloquially the “caffeine jitters”. The symptoms of caffeine intoxication are comparable to the symptoms of overdoses of other stimulants: they may include restlessness, fidgeting, anxiety, excitement, insomnia, flushing of the face, increased urination, gastrointestinal disturbance, muscle twitching, a rambling flow of thought and speech, irritability, irregular or rapid heart beat, and psychomotor agitation. In cases of much larger overdoses, mania, depression, lapses in judgment, disorientation, disinhibition, delusions, hallucinations, or psychosis may occur, and rhabdomyolysis (breakdown of skeletal muscle tissue) can be provoked.
ALSO:
Your humble narrator will be narrating humbly at this year’s Obscura Day event on April 28th, leading a walking tour of Dutch Kills. The tour is already a third booked up, and as I’m just announcing it, grab your tickets while you can.
“Found less than one mile from the East River, Dutch Kills is home to four movable (and one fixed span) bridges, including one of only two retractible bridges remaining in New York City. Dutch Kills is considered to be the central artery of industrial Long Island City and is ringed with enormous factory buildings, titan rail yards — it’s where the industrial revolution actually happened. Bring your camera, as the tour will be revealing an incredible landscape along this section of the troubled Newtown Creek Watershed.”
For tickets and full details, click here :
obscuraday.com/events/thirteen-steps-dutch-kills-newtown-creek-exploration
searing gusts
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That which does not think nor breathe yet instead hungers, a malign intelligence which cannot possibly exist yet nevertheless stares down upon the world of men from the apex of the Megalith, sits upon what can only be called a Hlidskjalf.
Odin had one, a chair set upon the highest peak from which he would dispatch his all seeing ravens- Huginn and Muninn– to spy upon men and report tales of mortal vanity and sin back to his “high seat”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A feverish and singular eye gazes down from its sapphire high seat, its vantage affording it the 53rd highest point of view available in New York City.
Your humble narrator maintains a vast cadre of whistle blowers, neighborhood cranks, idle laborers, low level government workers, and casual informants in the prosecution of this blog. Reports returned from this network who have witnessed the tableau laid before them from atop floors of the Megalith are tantalizing.
One might see the Battery and Hell Gate, Brooklyn’s East River and its Jamaica Bay coastlines, and every bridge to Manhattan for the price of turning ones head from up there- or so I am told.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That behemoth which cannot possibly lurk there, squatting diabolically atop the highest point on Long Island as it searches the land below for rapacious profit, what can it know about the human world it gazes upon? Can it understand individuality, and environment, or does it just see numbers?
Were such an impossibility to exist, would it believe itself to be some sort of god as Odin did- an undying and omnipresent entity served globally by a growing and humorless army of mortal acolytes?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All this is idle speculation, of course?
quite submerged
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Today, I’m going to be uncharacteristically quiet, it’s all about the pictures. I was dreaming about flying again, in the manner of a super hero, and pulled these shots (some of which you’ve seen in other posts) together.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whenever I can attain some altitude, an attempt is made to record it, especially in the low lying areas of western Queens and North Brooklyn. In this shot, it was the Roosevelt Island Tram which elevated my point of view.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Attempts and entreaties have been made- but so far- nobody in Long Island City has offered me roof or high floor access to shoot from one of the tower buildings. Haven’t asked anyone on Roosevelt Island yet, but the views of Queensboro and the East River must be glorious at night from there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I have been to the Ravell Hotel roof, which is in the lower right hand corner of the shot, which offers amazing views of the bridge and whose vantage lines up with the burning thermonuclear eye of God itself for “Manhattanhenge“.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In Long Island City, the industrial zones are typically low lying in character, with few buildings exceeding 4 stories. Extreme reticence has been exhibited by property owners, when approached with requests of photographic access to their roofs or grounds. Insurance liability is the usual reply.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The ultimate viewing platform, of course, would be from the Citibank Megalith. Like Odin on his hildskalf, one might observe the entire world from up there, seeing the in the perspective of that thing in its summit which cannot possibly exist and does not think or breathe, yet hungers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From up there, the entire soup bowl of New York Harbor is available for viewing. The megalith is visible from many faraway points in the harbor, and if you can see it- it can see you. On a clear day, the thing in its summit (were it to exist) can see the Narrows and Long Island Sound and Jamaica Bay and the Hudson.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Terrestrial and aquatic vantages have been my only succor in recent months, but an urge to look down from above is upon me, and scry the ancient patterns of life which invisibly govern the present City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Probably why I’m dreaming of flying…
the dark moor
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lucid and unwholesome, witness this sky flung perspective of the backbone of New York City- vantaged from several hundred feet above the Newtown Creek and it’s little known tributary- Whale Creek, and high atop the digester eggs of the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Gaze in wonder at the majesty of western Queens.
Additionally, click here to see this view reversed, and witness the parallel horizon of infinite Brooklyn.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Thomas D. Witte tugboat maneuvering a barge into position at the SimsMetal dock, and the rusty crossing in the background is the non functioning swing bridge which spans the larger Queens side tributary of Newtown Creek called Dutch Kills.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the LIRR moving along the ancient rail tracks which have blessed the industries and cursed the residents of this area since the early 19th century. The general area that the locomotive track is passing through, employed to this very day by petrochemical interests, is the former Queens location of Standard Oil at Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the distance, from left is Lindenthal’s magnificent Queensboro, the Big Allis power plant, the omnipresent Sapphire megalith, the high flying Long Island Expressway, and a substantial portion of the vast industrial quarters of Long Island City which I call “The Empty Corridor“.
The Newtown Pentacle 