Posts Tagged ‘New York City’
beckon eagerly
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whilst wandering along lost in a self critical soliloquy, as your humble narrator has more than just a few regrets and guilty interludes based around the amount of damage caused to those I care about due to my presence in their lives, this conveyance of the local gendarme caught my eye. It bears the familiar color way of the NYPD, however it is the property of the NYC Sheriff, a separate agency with a wholly different mission from the more numerous constables.
from nyc.gov
The Office of the City Sheriff, Law Enforcement Bureau (LEB) is a state and city charter mandated service of the Sheriff’s Office.
The sheriff is an officer of the court, and his primary purpose and function is to serve and execute the various legal processes and mandates issued not only by and for the several courts of the state and its subdivisions, but also for the legal community and the general public.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The vehicle got me thinking about how vision and memory actually work. My addled brain wanted to file the vehicle away under “cops” upon seeing the thing, due to the familiar pattern of blue and white. Like the adaptation to smell commented upon by employees of the DEP waste water system, wherein constant environmental stimuli renders one blind to odor, how much of our frenetic visual locale is filtered out by an overwhelmed visual cortex? If these NYPD ESU trucks said “USSR”, would you notice it?
from wikipedia
The New York City Police Department Emergency Service Unit is the Emergency Service Unit (ESU) for the New York City Police Department. A component of the Special Operations Division of the Patrol Services Bureau, the unit provides specialized support and advanced equipment to other NYPD units. For example, its Canine Unit helps with searches for perpetrators and missing persons. The Emergency Service Unit also functions as a Special Weapons and Tactical Unit (SWAT) and NYPD hostage negotiators assist and secure the safety of hostages. Members of “ESU” are cross trained in multiple disciplines for police and rescue work.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Often one ponders if this is the core thing which sets me apart from others, this allegiance to noticing literally everything. When entering a room, my head pivots about, and a careful inventory of my surroundings are made. I know where the fire exits are in any auditorium, catalog inconsistent details, and above all- instantly notice that which “does not belong”. More often than not, that out of place thing which does belong is myself, of course. Always must I remain an Outsider.
from wikipedia
Gestalt psychologists working primarily in the 1930s and 1940s raised many of the research questions that are studied by vision scientists today.
The Gestalt Laws of Organization have guided the study of how people perceive visual components as organized patterns or wholes, instead of many different parts. Gestalt is a German word that partially translates to “configuration or pattern” along with “whole or emergent structure.” According to this theory, there are six main factors that determine how the visual system automatically groups elements into patterns: Proximity, Similarity, Closure, Symmetry, Common Fate (i.e. common motion), and Continuity.
Project Firebox 55
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One is fairly sure that this particular sentinel of the realm has been presented before, but I just like the shot. This scarlet centurion exists at the periphery of the Degnon Terminal and Sunnyside Yards A on Skillman Avenue, in the glorious industrial zone of the City of Long Island.
grisly alliance
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Omens abound, here in the Newtown Pentacle, if only one is sensitive enough to notice their presence. It is not enough to merely cast off the callous of vision which develops during repetitions of the daily round, instead one must listen carefully to the suffering land of Queens which bears the terrible burdens of historical indignity and modern aspiration. Somewhere beneath the concrete devastations of industry and the vainglory of the urban planners exists a variegated and buried wetland.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Once- salt meadows blessed with endless acres of coastal grass swayed in the Newtown breeze beneath the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself here, nourishing and maintaining a vast ecosystem. Birds existed in numbers great enough to blot out the sky, and the shallow streams and ponds sustained a teeming population of fish and invertebrates. When the Dutch came, they saw naught but swamps, and their English successors applied the term “Waste Meadows” to the place. It wasn’t until the period between the American Civil war in the 1860’s and the early 20th century, via the practice of landfill, that the area was fully opened for exploitation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This unfortunate avian, observed alongside the Sunnyside yard, would be viewed by the dross masses as merely another casualty of the modern age. Your humble narrator, with his eyes dilated by the absence of sleep and the concurrent intoxication of caffeine, sees dire portent instead. Mesmerized Valdemar, whom Poe described, might be able to offer some compact meaning to such omens- but one as wholly inadequate as myself is unfortunately incapable of such interpretation.
otherwise unnavigable
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
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– photo by Mitch Waxman
At the top of a fifty three story sapphire dagger plunged into the neck of a Long Island dwells an impossible thing gazing down upon the human hive via a three lobed burning eye, except that such a thing cannot possibly exist and to suggest so is madness. How could an intelligence of malign intent exist in bodiless form, and be granted the rights and privileges of citizenship with few of the obligations concurrent with such status?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An ancient path, Jackson Avenue was once a trade route connecting the grist mills and farmlands further east with the docks and wharves to the west that allowed local merchants to trade with other cities along the East River. Over the years, it has seen mule paths give way to wagon, and street car, and eventually automotive traffic. Its purpose in modernity is unclear, a secondary truck route which allows passage from Queens Plaza to Hunters Point and the Pulaski Bridge, or a residential corridor destined for bistros and cultural institutions?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A recent surge of building activity in the area has forced your humble narrator to consider that a bit more time must be spent here in Long Island City this year, an area which had fallen off my radar a bit in the last year. Inattention had little to do with a lack of interest, instead my time was spent “working” the zones found along Newtown Creek in Maspeth and Bushwick, two other colonial era centers seldom mentioned by the “manhattancentric crowd.”
learnt tongue
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cruelly downtrodden, your humble narrator suffers from his own company. Often has one been told that he is best taken in limited dosages, but for me there is no escape, and I am forced to live with myself. Like a canine with too much zeal, accordingly, efforts are made to tire myself out on long walks in an effort to save the furniture from being chewed on. Recent endeavor carried me through Long Island City on a particular and brightly lit day.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cruelly erected by the scions of the Real Estate Industrial Complex, the glass and steel horrors which loom like Polyphemus over the ancient buildings of the neighborhood nevertheless act as reflectors and illuminate the shadowy warrens of a post industrial landscape. Refraction and specular effects throw arcs of cold light about which change by the minute.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Cruelly envisioned, the master plan for this part of the universe demands that these towers shall rise to challenge the clouds. Someday, perhaps only a decade away, the sky will be occluded by these oblique residential boxes of glass. When the shadow falls, and a permanent pall overlies the ancient streets of Western Queens, where will one bathe in the light of the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself? What succor will there be found in Long Island City save that of artisanal baked goods and from the purveyors of craft beers?
The Newtown Pentacle 