Posts Tagged ‘Mt. Zion Cemetery’
for silver
“Newtown Creek for the Vulgarly Curious” is a fully annotated 68 page, full-color journey from the mouth of Newtown Creek at the East River all the way back to the heart of darkness at English Kills, with photos and text by Mitch Waxman.
Check out the preview of the book at lulu.com, which is handling printing and order fulfillment, by clicking here.
Every book sold contributes directly to the material support and continuance of this, your Newtown Pentacle.
History of the Necronomicon by H. P. Lovecraft
Notes:
- Don’t miss the Hunter’s Point Avenue Bridge Centennial tomorrow, on December 11th, a free event. For more on the HPA Bridge Centennial, click here.
- Also, please consider purchasing a copy of the first Newtown Pentacle book: “Newtown Creek for the Vulgarly Curious” – a fully annotated 68 page, full-color journey from the mouth of Newtown Creek at the East River all the way back to the heart of darkness at English Kills, with photos and text by Mitch Waxman.
Woodside Botanica – photo by Mitch Waxman
History of the Necronomicon
by H. P. Lovecraft
Written 1927. Published 1938.
Original title Al Azif — azif being the word used by Arabs to designate that nocturnal sound (made by insects) suppos’d to be the howling of daemons.
Composed by Abdul Alhazred, a mad poet of Sanaá, in Yemen, who is said to have flourished during the period of the Ommiade caliphs, circa 700 A.D. He visited the ruins of Babylon and the subterranean secrets of Memphis and spent ten years alone in the great southern desert of Arabia — the Roba el Khaliyeh or “Empty Space” of the ancients — and “Dahna” or “Crimson” desert of the modern Arabs, which is held to be inhabited by protective evil spirits and monsters of death. Of this desert many strange and unbelievable marvels are told by those who pretend to have penetrated it. In his last years Alhazred dwelt in Damascus, where the Necronomicon (Al Azif) was written, and of his final death or disappearance (738 A.D.) many terrible and conflicting things are told.
He is said by Ebn Khallikan (12th cent. biographer) to have been seized by an invisible monster in broad daylight and devoured horribly before a large number of fright-frozen witnesses. Of his madness many things are told. He claimed to have seen fabulous Irem, or City of Pillars, and to have found beneath the ruins of a certain nameless desert town the shocking annals and secrets of a race older than mankind. He was only an indifferent Moslem, worshipping unknown entities whom he called Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu.
Vanderbilt Study – photo by Mitch Waxman
In A.D. 950 the Azif, which had gained a considerable tho’ surreptitious circulation amongst the philosophers of the age, was secretly translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople under the title Necronomicon. For a century it impelled certain experimenters to terrible attempts, when it was suppressed and burnt by the patriarch Michael. After this it is only heard of furtively, but (1228) Olaus Wormius made a Latin translation later in the Middle Ages, and the Latin text was printed twice — once in the fifteenth century in black-letter (evidently in Germany) and once in the seventeenth (prob. Spanish) — both editions being without identifying marks, and located as to time and place by internal typographical evidence only.
Altar at Mt. Zion cemetery fenceline – photo by Mitch Waxman
The work both Latin and Greek was banned by Pope Gregory IX in 1232, shortly after its Latin translation, which called attention to it. The Arabic original was lost as early as Wormius’ time, as indicated by his prefatory note; and no sight of the Greek copy — which was printed in Italy between 1500 and 1550 — has been reported since the burning of a certain Salem man’s library in 1692.
An English translation made by Dr. Dee was never printed, and exists only in fragments recovered from the original manuscript. Of the Latin texts now existing one (15th cent.) is known to be in the British Museum under lock and key, while another (17th cent.) is in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. A seventeenth-century edition is in the Widener Library at Harvard, and in the library of Miskatonic University at Arkham. Also in the library of the University of Buenos Aires.
Numerous other copies probably exist in secret, and a fifteenth-century one is persistently rumoured to form part of the collection of a celebrated American millionaire. A still vaguer rumour credits the preservation of a sixteenth-century Greek text in the Salem family of Pickman; but if it was so preserved, it vanished with the artist R. U. Pickman, who disappeared early in 1926. The book is rigidly suppressed by the authorities of most countries, and by all branches of organised ecclesiasticism. Reading leads to terrible consequences. It was from rumours of this book (of which relatively few of the general public know) that Robert W. Chambers is said to have derived the idea of his early novel The King in Yellow.
confines of our kingdom
“Newtown Creek for the Vulgarly Curious” is a fully annotated 68 page, full-color journey from the mouth of Newtown Creek at the East River all the way back to the heart of darkness at English Kills, with photos and text by Mitch Waxman.
Check out the preview of the book at lulu.com, which is handling printing and order fulfillment, by clicking here.
Every book sold contributes directly to the material support and continuance of this, your Newtown Pentacle.
restless lichens
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A sharp eyed reader and fellow haunter of the tombs tipped me on to this, something I never noticed on 58th street, a sidewalk deprived viaduct that runs between two cemeteries- New Calvary and Mt. Zion.
Mount Zion Cemetery encompasses an area of 78 acres. This cemetery is located in Maspeth, Queens near the Manhattan Border. When this cemetery was first established the surrounding area was considered to be rural. There was an ongoing need for burial spaces to accommodate the explosion of the immigrant population in not only Queens, but also the nearby neighborhoods of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Mount Zion Cemetery has more than 210,000 burials on its 78 acres making it one of the more interesting burial grounds.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Nitre dripping, the walls of Zion are composed of conventional mortar and stone for much of their length, protecting its centuries of interments with a stout but rusty fence.
from wikipedia
Masonry is the building of structures from individual units laid in and bound together by mortar; the term masonry can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are brick, stone such as marble, granite, travertine, limestone; concrete block, glass block, and tile. Masonry is generally a highly durable form of construction. However, the materials used, the quality of the mortar and workmanship, and the pattern in which the units are assembled can strongly affect the durability of the overall masonry construction.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As one nears Laurel Hill Blvd. and the stature of the masonry wall shrinks back to a human scale, a curious heterogeneousness in its composition is noticed. Suddenly granite and “finishing marble” is noticed.
from wikipedia
Sculpture
White marble was prized for its use in sculptures since classical times. This preference has to do with the softness and relative isotropy and homogeneity, and a relative resistance to shattering. Also, the low index of refraction of calcite allows light to penetrate several millimeters into the stone before being scattered out, resulting in the characteristic “waxy” look which gives “life” to marble sculptures of the human body.
Construction marble
Construction marble is a stone which is composed of calcite, dolomite or serpentine which is capable of taking a polish. More generally in construction, specifically the dimension stone trade, the term “marble” is used for any crystalline calcitic rock (and some non-calcitic rocks) useful as building stone. For example, Tennessee marble is really a dense granular fossiliferous gray to pink to maroon Ordovician limestone that geologists call the Holston Formation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Proceeding up the block, certain familiar shapes become recognizable in the wall, and a cold dread is realized. Tombstones. They used tombstones to make this part of the wall.
from wikipedia
The stele (plural stelae), as they are called in an archaeological context, is one of the oldest forms of funerary art. Originally, a tombstone was the stone lid of a stone coffin, or the coffin itself, and a gravestone was the stone slab that was laid over a grave. Now all three terms are also used for markers placed at the head of the grave. Originally graves in the 1700s also contained footstones to demarcate the foot end of the grave. Footstones were rarely carved with more than the deceased’s initials and year of death, and many cemeteries and churchyards have removed them to make cutting the grass easier. Note however that in many UK cemeteries the principal, and indeed only, marker is placed at the foot of the grave.
Graves and any related memorials are a focus for mourning and remembrance. The names of relatives are often added to a gravestone over the years, so that one marker may chronicle the passing of an entire family spread over decades. Since gravestones and a plot in a cemetery or churchyard cost money, they are also a symbol of wealth or prominence in a community. Some gravestones were even commissioned and erected to their own memory by people who were still living, as a testament to their wealth and status. In a Christian context, the very wealthy often erected elaborate memorials within churches rather than having simply external gravestones.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Section markers and footpath monuments are used, as well as grave markers whose screed faces inward. Oh what treasures may be entrusted to the grave’s holding that only some future archaeologist will know?
from sciencedaily.com
“Until now we have relied on evidence from medieval rubbish – including food remains, pottery and other finds – to build up a picture of medieval life in the city. This group of burials represents the first opportunity to examine the medieval population itself, in terms of life expectancy, stature and health.
“Evidence of some communal burials and high infant mortality also indicate evidence of infection and disease.
“The skeletons are very well preserved – some were in coffins and others weren’t and were placed in shrouds. We were expecting there to be some 300 skeletons- but the scale of this discovery is stunning.”
The site dates from between the 12th century and the mid 1500s and is part of the medieval church of St Peter’s – one of two parish churches in the city which disappeared in the late medieval period.
Mt Zion 6- Crystal Oblivion
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Awakening from the dead faint which had ended my ruminations on those oppressions suffered by both Jew and Roma in a war torn exemplar of peasant ignorance and malign oligarchy which is the European Peninsula, your humble narrator noticed the gloaming of late afternoon settling upon the centenarian graveyard and realized that one way or another- an escape must be hazarded from the oblivion of Mount Zion cemetery if I ever desired to return to the yellow brick lanes of Astoria.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The curious singsong chant of those odd children had stopped, and echoing along the tombstones was the sound of wholesome and cheerful laughing. From my vantage, I could discern that the first group of children were fleeing from a second, whose colorful clothing and raven hair marked them as the picturesque crowd I had spotted earlier on 53rd avenue. The flabby jowled, unblinking, scaly group of youths which had been tormenting me- and whose apparent leader was a girl carrying a curiously polydactyl cat whose aspect “I did not like”- were running off in the direction of that stygian cataract called the Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Regaining my composure, I realized that I had found the highest spot in Zion, and watched as the group of dark haired and festively adorned children jeered the fleeing “others”. I turned for a moment, looking south toward Brooklyn, along the gates of a Sanitation Dept. Garbage truck depot. This is a lonely spot, tragic and shunned.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Populated by graves of children, often stillborn, this is the highest point of elevation in Mt. Zion by my estimation. I resolved to make my way for the gates, and felt an eerie tiredness take over me. Cemeteries are uncomfortable places not because of the omnipresent reminders of mortality, but because they remind us that anonymity is the ultimate fate of nearly all of us.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All they were, and had done, and built- the ultimate meaning of themselves- led to centuried silence and the anonymity of the tomb. I’ve been asking myself, lately, why I’ve been so compelled to spend my time with them, instead of amongst the living. A lot of wise old jewish grandmothers are buried here, and my own would say that this recent pursuit is “no good for you, go see a movie instead”.
She also told me, when I told her I intended to follow a career in visual arts, that “all I wanted was to be a bum in the village with a needle in my arm”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Mission Statements – 1 – Breaking character
One of my quasi mystical opinions is that by telling a story, transmitting the lore of civilization from one generation to another, you keep the subject of the story alive- in a sense. We know the story of Beowulf, and Christ, and Churchill. In my ham handed and alliterative patois of pop cultural imagery and historical allusion, this notion of “telling the hero’s story” (with the “hero” being the working class) is part of my motivation behind these explorations. In a sense, I fancy myself as C-3PO telling the story of Luke and Leia to the Ewoks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Mission Statements – 2 – Horns and Dilemmas
A vast and shining monument to future archaeology is what I see the Cemetery Belt of western Queens and North Brooklyn as, awaiting the end of living memory and improved imaging technology. Vast dilemmas of conscience often plague me as I make the “selects” from the hundreds of shots I’ll gather at just one of the many locations explored at the Newtown Pentacle. That’s an identifiable face, or corporate trademark, or the ridiculous laws which require the owner of a skyscraper to approve the publication of an image of their structure. The graveyard stuff is touchy, and I attempt to only show graves of those who died well out of “living memory”, which is a flexible topic for me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Mission Statements – 3 – Contradictions and Logic
Problematic, because it’s self defined, my “living memory” concept is roughly this- if the stone is older than the second world war- I consider it fair game and part of the public record. Saying that, if you’ve seen a gravestone of a relative in one of my shots that you’d really rather not have public, contact me and it’s pulled (I’m not a dick)- just know that the shot was chosen for either its odd qualities or historical significance (like the O’Brien monument in Old Calvary), or because it’s a beautiful piece of sculpture that was chosen to illustrate the esthetic or political milieu of an era I’m trying to describe. Any editorial implications of the accompanying quoted references (from abc.com, in italics) or “humble narrator” copy should be discarded as the product of a sick, cowardly, and weary man who is “all ‘effed up”. No one will visit my grave, Lords and Ladies of Newtown, except to gloat and defecate.
I also never trespass, enter onto Railroad properties uninvited, or use transportation of any kind other than my feet when I’m out on one of my little missions. Kissing the right posterior and being “nice” offers tremendous access to these places, “legally”, and brings insight and opportunity. Why make trouble?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back to the post:
When I passed out of the ancient cemetery, through the western section’s gates, I saw that group of gaily dressed children who had chased off those menacingly mutant urchins that had caused me to faint three times as I hid in the shadows of this garden of obelisks.
One of the oddest moments of the day occurred when a waste hauler’s truck sped down Maurice Avenue at top speed, occluding my view of them for a few seconds, during which they disappeared. Puzzled, I scuttled back to the waiting arms of Astoria, and the entire way I thought I heard the creaking agony of wooden carriage wheels.
The Newtown Pentacle 