The Newtown Pentacle

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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