Posts Tagged ‘New York City’
Bandits Roost, 2010
– photo by Jacob Riis (or one of his associates) found in the public domain at wikipedia, of Bandits Roost- 59 1/2 Mulberry Street, 1888
This is one of those iconic images from the dawn of the photographic era, the sort upon which entire scholastic careers and political memes are based. It purports to show a group of street toughs at the Mulberry Bend, which Riis described as the very heart of the manifest evil that was Five Points. The part of the Lower East Side described in the 1980’s as “Alphabet City” was similarly described as hell on earth by politicians and journalists, but it was actually an ok place- which makes me wonder…
For the purposes of this post though, it is one of those truly rare historical captures that lists a street address, so I headed down to Mulberry and Bayard Streets to see if I could find the spot… however… Riis and his allies in the municipality oversaw the obliteration of Five Points and its wonders, and there is no 59 1/2 Mulberry street in modernity (entire streets were demapped, or had their names changed- the actual Mulberry Bend is now Columbus Park), so I was forced to get a little “batman” on this one…
from nycgovparks.org
Columbus Park was named in 1911 after Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), the Italian explorer credited with discovering America, or at least with awakening Europe to the opportunities there. Bounded by Baxter (formerly Orange), Worth (formerly Anthony), Bayard, and Mulberry Streets, the site has alternatively been named Mulberry Bend Park, Five Points Park, and Paradise Park. Columbus Park is situated in the heart of one of the oldest residential areas in Manhattan, adjacent to the infamous “Five Points” and “The Bend”.
Until 1808 the site for the park was a swampy area near the Collect Pond (now Foley Square) and hosted a set of tanneries. In 1808 the pond was filled and became Pearl Street. When the filling began to sink, a foul odor emerged which depressed the living conditions of that neighborhood. As a consequence, the area became host to one of the world’s most notorious tenements, known for its wretched living conditions and rampant crime, earning such names as “murderer’s alley” and “den of thieves.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The east side of Mulberry Street still exists, and as evidenced above- this is 62 Mulberry- a modern day parking lot.
also from nycgovparks.org
Mulberry Bend Park was planned in the 1880’s by Calvert Vaux, co-designer of Central Park. Vaux saw this park as an opportunity to bring new life and order into the depressed neighborhood. Riis remarked of Vaux’s newly designed park that it is “little less than a revolution” to see the slum housing replaced by trees and grass and flowers, and its dark hovels infused with light and sunshine and air. The park opened in the summer of 1897, with bench-lined curved walkways and an expansive, open grassy area.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just next door- this is 60 Mulberry-
from focpny.org
We have a growing “RAT” problem at Columbus Park and the surrounding neighborhood. The Health Dept. has been doing “RAT” Indexing (research) and hear is what they are saying…
“Columbus Park after years remains a challenging situation………..
- There is an extraordinary amount of food trash left in baskets each day and night;
- abundance of litter within the park that does not get collected on a regular basis;
- many restaurants along Mulberry Street place out their trash each night and the rats have easy access;
- and the park is located over very old subterranean lines of sewer, and even old streams. These subsurface areas no doubt serve as partial replenishes for rat control achieved at surface level. Many of the restaurants on Mulberry have failed for having rats on their premises; and thus there is likely a back and forth swapping of the rats from Columbus Park to Mulberry Street basements.
- Baiting alone will NOT get this done. In fact, long term, it exacerbates it.
- There also appears to be a hawk which is using the park for easy pickings of the rats; and so the Parks Dept will need to weigh in on “the risk to the hawk” if any large scale baiting is done. They will need to make the call.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just next door- this is 58 Mulberry- so, spinning on my heels at that point equidistant between 58 and 60 Mulberry…
Coincidentally, 58 Mulberry has a back house, according to the NYCDOB, and is an “old law” tenement. Check out this nytimes.com article from 1881 which describes Mayor Grace’s tour of the block and includes a description of #56 Mulberry as “a tenement house of the worst class”. And also- this one which discusses the mortality rate on this block in 1884.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is 56 Mulberry today, but I’m uncertain as to whether this is the original structure which Grace visited.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This entrance to Columbus Park must be 59 1/2 Mulberry Street, Bandits Roost.
from wikipedia
Old Law Tenements are tenements built in New York City after the Tenement House Act of 1879 and before the so-called “New Law” of 1901.
The 1879 law required that every inhabitable room have a window opening to plain air, a requirement that was met by including air shafts between adjacent buildings. Old Law Tenements are commonly called “dumbbell tenements” after the shape of the building footprint: the air shaft gives each tenement the narrow-waisted shape of a dumbbell, wide facing the street and backyard, narrowed in between to create the air corridor. They were built in great numbers to accommodate waves of immigrating Europeans from troubled nations. The side streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side are lined with dumbbell structures.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I ask myself, how would Riis have described this 21st century gathering of amiable asiatic card players at 59 1/2 Mulberry Street?
from wikisource.org, “How the other half lives, by Jacob Riis”
Abuse is the normal condition of “the Bend,” murder its everyday crop, with the tenants not always the criminals. In this block between Bayard, Park, Mulberry, and Baxter Streets, “the Bend” proper, the late Tenement House Commission counted 155 deaths of children in a specimen year (1882). Their per centage of the total mortality in the block was 68.28, while for the whole city the proportion was only 46.20. The infant mortality in any city or place as compared with the whole number of deaths is justly considered a good barometer of its general sanitary condition. Here, in this tenement, No. 59 1/2, next to Bandits’ Roost, fourteen persons died that year, and eleven of them were children; in No. 61 eleven, and eight of them not yet five years old. According to the records in the Bureau of Vital Statistics only thirty-nine people lived in No. 59 1/2 in the year 1888, nine of them little children. There were five baby funerals in that house the same year. Out of the alley itself, No. 59, nine dead were carried in 1888, five in baby coffins.
Mulberry Streets
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Note: The series of posts you’re about to see, over the next few days, are offered as a notebook- sort of a work in progress. When I get something wrong, please let me know, as this is a learning experience for your humble narrator.
The “Bloody Sixth” provides a certain context, in my mind, for why the vast numbers of people left Manhattan for points east and populated Brooklyn, Long Island City, and Newtown. In many ways, we live in the wreckage of their utopia… here in the Newtown Pentacle.
This is an image of a Mulberry Street Tenement from the
Harper’s Weekly of September 13, 1873, from the Library of Congress:
A familiar illustration, it’s linked to by many people, and is provided for context- although it is difficult to read the actual text- even in the larger version attained by clicking the image. It describes a visit to a Mulberry Street Tenement and it’s “back house” in the upper drawing, and an inspection of a fruit market set up along the sidewalk in the lower.
This is a short post, but likely interesting to long time readers and antiquarians…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Exiting from St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, I noticed a surprising relict of the ancient sixth ward. The bloody sixth, as it was called by sensationalist and muckraker alike, was famous for the smaller structures that landlords would erect in their back yards in order to maximize their real estate. So called “back houses” were once a common sight, but were the worst places to live- as they shared their living space with the outhouses and privy drains of the larger structure and the enormous population housed therein and most were in perpetual shadow.
from nytimes.com
The worst thing in New-York from a sanitary point of view is the rear tenement. It kills more people than war or famine in proportion to its opportunities. It is a sure lurking place for dirt, disease, and death.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
For some reason, the progressives of the 19th century were horrified by open air markets set up along the sidewalk. On modern day Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, one can observe similar merchant activity to that described by Jacob Riis and others- little shops set up in hallways and along the sidewalk, any hole in the wall- by an insular people loathe to let go of their customs and language.
Other Riis terminologies like “Tramp Burrows”, “Jewtown”, and “Heathen Temples” trample upon modern political corrrectness, however, and will most likely be trimmed from future discourse.
Moving about the sixth ward in 2010, one might happen across a Chinese grocer offering alien vegetables of unknown specie, who barely hides her umbrage when the Gwai Lo tourists ask “What’s that?”. Many sidewalk vendors were noticed to have displayed signs that say “photos $2”.
from wikipedia
Gwai Lo (鬼佬) literally means “ghost man” (the word “ghost” refers to the paler complexions of stereotypical Caucasians). The term is sometimes translated into English as foreign devil. The term arose when the first group of Europeans appeared in China as they were associated with barbarians . For several thousand years, Chinese people had the image of its borders continuously breached by “uncivilized tribes” given to mayhem and destruction. The term was popularised during the Opium Wars in response to the Unequal Treaties. In Southern parts of China, the term gwai lo was used. In Northern parts of China, the term (Western) ocean ghost ((西)洋鬼子 (Xi) Yangguizi) was used, Europe being West of China.
Also of interest, this is a digitally retouched and colored image found in the Public Domain over at Wikimedia Commons, representing Mulberry Street in 1900:
My belief – if the signage displayed in the above photo is accurate and 88 Mulberry Street means the same thing now as it did 110 years ago- is that this is the corner of Mulberry and Bayard Streets, looking uptown from below Canal Street with Five Points behind the camera. Obviously, the photographer had someone watching his back.
from wikipedia
The street was named after the mulberry trees that once lined Mulberry Bend, the slight bend in Mulberry Street. “Mulberry Bend is a narrow bend in Mulberry Street, a tortuous ravine of tall tenement-houses… so full of people that the throngs going and coming spread off the sidewalk nearly to the middle of the street… The crowds are in the street because much of the sidewalk and all of the gutter is taken up with vendors’ stands”.” For the urban reformer Jacob Riis, Mulberry Bend epitomized the worst of the city’s slums.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My 2010 shot looks downtown toward Five Points from the far end of the scene above, at Mulberry and Grand Streets in modern Little Italy’s “main street” restaurant row, and at the infamous “Mulberry Bend”.
from wikipedia
Much of the neighborhood has been absorbed and engulfed by Chinatown, as immigrants from China moved to the area. What was once Little Italy has essentially shrunk into a single street which serves as a tourist area and maintains few Italian residents. The northern reaches of Little Italy, near Houston Street, ceased to be recognizably Italian, and eventually became the neighborhood known today as NoLIta, an abbreviation for North of Little Italy. Today, the section of Mulberry Street between Broome and Canal Streets, is all that is left of the old Italian neighborhood. The street is lined with some two-dozen Italian restaurants popular with tourists, and seemingly very few locals. Unlike Chinatown, which continues to expand in all directions with newer Chinese immigrants, little remains of the original Little Italy.
The house of Dagger John
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When you first enter the place, your pupils are narrowed, as the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself stares down upon you. This is hallowed ground, one of the places where the modern nation cast off its caul. You are in Manhattan, but the builders of this place called the island New York, and this is their Cathedral.
In 1815 New York City was Manhattan only, and it only extended from the Battery to fourteenth street, by 1865 paved and graded roads went as far as Forty Second Street.
On June, 8th, 1809- the cornerstone of this building was laid down, and it was dedicated on April 14, 1815.
from wikipedia
In the 19th century, the city was transformed by immigration and development. A visionary development proposal, the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, expanded the city street grid to encompass all of Manhattan, and the 1819 opening of the Erie Canal connected the Atlantic port to the vast agricultural markets of the North American interior. Local politics fell under the domination of Tammany Hall, a political machine supported by Irish immigrants. Public-minded members of the old merchant aristocracy lobbied for the establishment of Central Park, which became the first landscaped park in an American city in 1857. A significant free-black population also existed in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Slaves had been held in New York through 1827, but during the 1830s New York became a center of interracial abolitionist activism in the North. New York’s black population was over 16,000 in 1840. The Great Irish Famine brought a large influx of Irish immigrants, and by 1860, one in four New Yorkers – over 200,000 – had been born in Ireland.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The king of France himself commissioned stained glass windows to adorn this structure, but those artifacts ended up at Fordham university, which is just as well because they would have been consumed in the 1866 fire that gutted the place.
Hellfire, however, was no impediment to Dagger John’s flock which feared it not.
During the 1830’s and 40’s, large tracts of Manhattan building stock were converted from domestic to industrial usage, and the flood of arriving immigrants- largely from Catholic Germany and Ireland, and overwhelmingly single young men, crowded into certain neighborhoods walking distance from the new factories.
This building was designed by Joseph Francois Mangin, and beneath the place is a labyrinth of mortuary vaults.
from nyc.gov
In the 17th century, the Dutch City Hall was in the old City Tavern on Pearl Street. A new City Hall was built in 1700 at Wall and Nassau Streets. It was renamed Federal Hall when New York became the first capital of the United States. The 1833-1842 Federal Hall National Memorial is now on this site. The Common Council talked about a new City hall as early as 1776 but the Revolutionary War intervened. A site was chosen, the old Common at the northern limits of the City, now City Hall Park.
In 1802, a competition was held for the new City Hall and twenty-six proposals were submitted. First prize of $350 was awarded to John McComb, Jr. and Joseph Francois Mangin. John McComb’s father repaired the old City Hall in 1784. John McComb, Jr. was a New Yorker while Joseph Mangin was trained in his native France. McComb designed the landmark Hamilton Grange on Convent Avenue, Castel Clinton in Battery Park and the James Watson House on State Street. Joseph Mangin was City Surveyor in 1795 and published an official City map with Casimir Goerck in 1803.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When anti catholic “nativist” mobs from the nearby “Lower East Side” river fronts approached the place in 1842, they found that Dagger John had great walls erected about his church after similar riots in 1835, and that those walls and the surrounding streets were manned by the hated Irish.
By the late 1840’s, the word tenement had become a familiar term to refer to the crowded warrens in New York, and an official City census by the Council on Hygiene reported some 500,000 people living in just over 15,000 buildings.
In 1866, a conflagration consumed the place, and it was rebuilt in 1868.
from wikipedia
Anti-Catholic animus in the United States reached a peak in the nineteenth century when the Protestant population became alarmed by the influx of Catholic immigrants. Some American Protestants, having an increased interest in prophecies regarding the end of time, claimed that the Catholic Church was the Whore of Babylon in the Book of Revelation. The resulting “nativist” movement, which achieved prominence in the 1840s, was whipped into a frenzy of anti-Catholicism that led to mob violence, the burning of Catholic property, and the killing of Catholics. This violence was fed by claims that Catholics were destroying the culture of the United States. The nativist movement found expression in a national political movement called the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s, which (unsuccessfully) ran former president Millard Fillmore as its presidential candidate in 1856.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
They thrust rifles through and over the walls, brandished pistols and brickbats, and in the end- the Irish Squad of Dagger John called the Hibernians battled the riot away from this place. Honored even today for their courage, these Hibernians showed the so called “English” that in America, things would be different for their people.
The political map of the time was drawn around this district, whose death rate was six times that of the rest of the city, and where the principal form of garbage collection were a population of roaming hogs.
Incidentally, this is where the baptism scene from the Godfather film was filmed.
from aoh.com
Anti-Catholic bigotry, cloaked in the guise of American patriotism, emerged in a nativist prejudice against immigrants –– especially the Irish, who began arriving in large numbers. A period of extreme intolerance was launched in the early 1800s that began with social segregation, resulted in discrimination in hiring, and reached its climax in the formation of nativist gangs such as the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, the True Blue Americans and others bent on violence against the Irish Catholic immigrant population. These gangs would coalesce in 1854 into the American Party or ‘Know Nothings’.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When you’ve been inside for a minute or two, your eyes adjust to its permanent twilight interior, and reflect on what it must have been like in the 1870’s and 80’s to enter this space after having experienced the surrounding neighborhood, described by Charles Dickens as “leprous houses where dogs would howl to lie”.
The “ward”, which translates into a modern political term roughly as “district”, was once the worst slum on earth according to contemporaries- who actually did factor Calcutta, Shanghai, and London (from personal experience, mind you) into their opinion.
This is the Bloody Sixth Ward, just north of the “Mulberry Bend” and “Five Points”.
from urbanography.com
The district was known as the Sixth Ward bounded, south, by Reade Street; west, by West Street; north by Canal Street; east by Broadway. The Five Points so named in the 1830’s from the convergence of the intersection of five streets: Mulberry, Anthony (now Worth St.), Cross (now Park), Orange (now Baxter), and Little Water Street (no longer exists). This neighborhood was built over the Collect Pond and its adjacent swampland north of City Hall and the Courthouse, between Broadway and the Bowery.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lords and ladies of the Newtown Pentacle, welcome to the progenitor and founder of Calvary Cemetery, the stage of Dagger John Hughes and the birthplace of modern New York. This is St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, we’re in Manhattan for a change, and we’ve come here to figure out where the other half lived.
from oldcathedral.org
Her sidewalls rise to a height of 75 feet, and the inner vault is 85 feet high. The church is over 120 feet long and 80 feet wide. Near the west wall stands the huge marble altar surrounded by an ornately carved, gold leaf reredos.
At the opposite end of the church in the choir loft is a historic organ, an Erben 3-41, in its original condition. The organ was built by Henry Erben in 1852, and is one of less than a dozen such great instruments surviving in New York City. The organ is still used in liturgies today.
shivering gargoyles
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Gilman, Gilman, Gilman.
That note, attached to governmental correspondence, was signed Gilman. Impossible, unbelievable, and beyond sane reasoning… Gilman. As your humble narrator scuttled along in miserable mood, that certain day, I became convinced that my name was being called from some unknown point beyond the bulkheaded fence lines adorning that sewer fed ribbon of urban lore called the Newtown Creek.
I first heard the voice, while deep in denial at the Pulaski Bridge, a whispered gutteral which seemed like an isolated phenomena.
from wikipedia
Tutti Acceptance typically contains the concept of approval, it is important to note that in the psychospiritual use of the term infers non-judgmental Acceptance is contrasted with resistance, but that term has strong political and psychoanalytic connotations not applicable in many contexts. By groups and by individuals, acceptance can be of various events and conditions in the world; individuals may also accept elements of their own thoughts, feelings, and personal histories. For example, psychotherapeutic treatment of a person with depression or anxiety could involve fostering acceptance either for whatever personal circumstances may give rise to those feelings or for the feelings themselves. (Psychotherapy could also involve lessening an individual’s acceptance of various situations.)
Notions of acceptance are prominent in many faiths and meditation practices. For example, Buddhism’s first noble truth, “All life is suffering”, invites people to accept that suffering is a natural part of life. The term “Kabbalah” means literally acceptance.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Isolating myself in a guilty agony, hiding behind dark sunglasses and a long iPhone playlist which had finally wound- inevitably- to the darker side of Patti Smith, I skirted the Creek and made for the River of Sound.
Overwhelmed by its inevitability of oligarchy, I noticed that the auditory hallucination that my name was being called from the water had abided, and the decision to make haste for the safety of almond eyed Astoria was wise, back to the loving arms of Our Lady of the Pentacle and the unquestioning devotion of my little dog Pazuzu.
from wikipedia
Karma is the belief held by some major religions that a person’s actions cause certain effects in the current life and/or in future life, positively or negatively.
For example, if a person always does good deeds then it is believed that he or she will be “rewarded” for his or her behavior with fortunate events such as avoiding fatal accident or winning the lottery. If he or she always commits antagonistic behaviors, then it is believed that he will be punished with unfortunate events.
According to Buddhism, inequality amongst living beings is due not only to heredity, environment, “nature and nurture”, but also to Karma. In other words, it is the result of our own past actions and our own present doings. We ourselves are responsible for our own happiness and misery. We create our own Heaven. We create our own Hell. We are the architects of our own fate.
Perplexed by the seemingly inexplicable, apparent disparity that existed among humanity, a young truth-seeker approached the Buddha and questioned him regarding this intricate problem of inequality:
“What is the cause, what is the reason, O Lord,” questioned he, “that we find amongst mankind the short-lived and long-lived, the healthy and the diseased, the ugly and beautiful, those lacking influence and the powerful, the poor and the rich, the low-born and the high-born, and the ignorant and the wise?”
The Buddha’s reply was:
“All living beings have actions (Karma) as their own, their inheritance, their congenital cause, their kinsman, their refuge. It is Karma that differentiates beings into low and high states.”
He then explained the cause of such differences in accordance with the law of cause and effect.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Slipping and stumbling, my denial and self imposed hermitage blossomed into anger and rage, surely- the note signed by Gilman was nothing of the sort. The same agencies which have directed their gaze upon me are attempting to rub my nose in their power and my inability to react.
from wikipedia
Environmental determinism, also known as climatic determinism or geographical determinism, is the view that the physical environment, rather than social conditions, determines culture. Those who believe this view say that humans are strictly defined by stimulus-response (environment-behavior) and cannot deviate.
The fundamental argument of the environmental determinists was that aspects of physical geography, particularly climate, influenced the psychological mind-set of individuals, which in turn defined the behaviour and culture of the society that those individuals formed. For example, tropical climates were said to cause laziness, relaxed attitudes and promiscuity, while the frequent variability in the weather of the middle latitudes led to more determined and driven work ethics. Because these environmental influences operate slowly on human biology, it was important to trace the migrations of groups to see what environmental conditions they had evolved under.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Attempting to bargain with this malicious universe called New York City, a foul harlot indeed, I wandered into the empty corridor in a tightly compressed state of mind. Encounters with security men, and other creatures of the street not mentioned in the posting, formed a silo of despair about me.
from wikipedia
“Forbidden fruit” is any object of desire whose appeal is a direct result of the knowledge that it cannot or should not be obtained or something that someone may want but is forbidden to have. The metaphorical phrase forbidden fruit refers to the Book of Genesis, where it is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil eaten by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. As a result of their decision to eat the fruit, Adam and Eve lost their innocence, became separated from God and were exiled from the garden where they were forced to adopt agriculture under less than desirable circumstances for a living.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Finally, as the vapor dulled sunbeams cast those queer shadows which form the tenebrous patterns distinctive of the Newtown Creek and its tributaries during the humid and hot months, your humble narrator was forced into acceptance of the notation- written in atavist hand on a scrap of brown kraft paper which smelled of salted cod- as genuine.
from wikipedia
The Qur’an doesn’t name this tree and it is always referred to as “the tree”. Muslims believe that when God created Adam and Eve, He told them that they could enjoy everything in the Garden but this tree, and so, Satan appeared to them and told them that the only reason God forbade them to eat from that tree is that they would become Angels or become immortals.
When they ate from this tree their nakedness appeared to them and they began to sew together, for their covering, leaves from the Garden. As a result of their sin, they were removed from heaven and placed on Earth to live and die. Consequently, they repented to God and asked for his forgiveness and were forgiven. It was decided that those who obey God and follow his path shall be rewarded with everlasting life in Heaven, and those who disobey God and stray away from his path shall be punished in Hell.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By the time I came to Dutch Kills, at the Hunter’s point avenue bridge, I had managed to subsume this fact when I noticed that the hallucination had returned. A gurgling echo, which could have easily been the sound of some unknown machine reverbing along the cement, or some far off car stereo, or some physical effect caused by playing the music on my headphones too loudly for too long.
And I noticed that the vegetation along the shoreline was stained with the colour, and it was swaying against the breeze.
from wikipedia
The Biblical description of the garden says :
Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.[…] The name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Tigris; it flows east of Assyria And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
There have been a number of claims as to the actual geographic location of the Garden of Eden, though many of these have little or no connection to the text of Genesis. Most put the Garden somewhere between Najaf and Kufa in the Middle East.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One thing I can tell you, lords and ladies of Newtown, is that the search for Gilman- rather than being retarded by this mysterious missive- will be redoubled. Whoever Gilman was, somebody in a high position does not want his story told. The note, written in old timey handwriting, is worrisome.
Gilman, who -and perhaps, what – were you?
from wikipedia
In many myths the chthonic serpent (sometimes a pair) lives in or is coiled around a Tree of Life situated in a divine garden. In the Genesis story of the Torah and Biblical Old Testament the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is situated in the Garden of Eden together with the tree of immortality. In Greek mythology Ladon coiled around the tree in the garden of the Hesperides protecting the entheogenic golden apples.
Similarly Níðhöggr (Nidhogg Nagar) the dragon of Norse mythology eats from the roots of the Yggdrasil, the World Tree.
Under yet another Tree (the Bodhi tree of Enlightenment), the Buddha sat in ecstatic meditation. When a storm arose, the mighty serpent king Mucalinda rose up from his place beneath the earth and enveloped the Buddha in seven coils for seven days, not to break his ecstatic state.
vapor dulled sunbeams
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My feet were dragging long trails in the powdered automotive glass, cutting long arcs through and across that empty corridor. Tenuous layers of atmospheric humidity, carrying those omnipresent and miasmic vapors of the mephitic Newtown Creek (as evidenced by that certain odor, not unlike that of an aquarium which houses terrapins, which defines the area) far beyond their normal geographic influence.
Dense clouds of aerosol moisture were risible, occluding the horizon, in the same manner as that note affixed to that official correspondence which was received here at Newtown Pentacle HQ similarly made my mental landscape and outlook on the future seem like a bleak and never ending limbo.
from nydailynews.com
The 54,000-square-foot, two-story building directly across from FreshDirect had been occupied by the same owner, F & R Holding Co., since 1952. It was bought by KJDS Realty Inc.
F & R Holding ran an envelope business from the site at 23-23 Borden Ave. until the 1980s, when one of the partners retired, said Peter Moreo of Greiner-Maltz, who represented the seller.
The painted “Diplomat Envelope” sign remains on the front of the 200-foot-wide building. Since the 1980s, the building had been rented out to a number of tenants, and then last year the decision was made to sell, Moreo said.
“It has potential because of its location,” he said. “It is about six blocks away from the [Long Island City] redevelopment area, and would have sold for double if it had been on other side of Vernon Blvd.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An elaborate farce and failure to all who’ve ever had the misfortune of knowing me, your humble narrator is nearly always in a dark place, isolated and both fleeing from and reaching for a desolating state of loneliness and distemper.
Jealous and quick to anger, slightly sociopathic, and somewhat strange- I’ve always preferred means of expression which propagate distance and physical anonymity from intended audiences. Plagued by persistent sadness, with sleep an unreliable and uneven haven, even the thrills of debauched revelry hold no power to elevate my mood. Intoxicants and entertainments can no longer help.
Hopelessness persists, a die is cast, the future unbearable.
from wikipedia
Major depression significantly affects a person’s family and personal relationships, work or school life, sleeping and eating habits, and general health. Its impact on functioning and well-being has been equated to that of chronic medical conditions such as diabetes.
A person having a major depressive episode usually exhibits a very low mood, which pervades all aspects of life, and an inability to experience pleasure in activities that formerly were enjoyed. Depressed people may be preoccupied with, or ruminate over, thoughts and feelings of worthlessness, inappropriate guilt or regret, helplessness, hopelessness, and self-hatred.In severe cases, depressed people may have symptoms of psychosis. These symptoms include delusions or, less commonly, hallucinations, usually of an unpleasant nature.Other symptoms of depression include poor concentration and memory (especially in those with melancholic or psychotic features),withdrawal from social situations and activities, reduced sex drive, and thoughts of death or suicide.
Insomnia is common among the depressed. In the typical pattern, a person wakes very early and is unable to get back to sleep,but insomnia can also include difficulty falling asleep.Insomnia affects at least 80% of depressed people. Hypersomnia, or oversleeping, can also happen,affecting 15% of the depressed people.Some antidepressants may also cause insomnia due to their stimulating effect.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wringing my hands- a manifestation of a restless inability for stillness- like the exertions required to perform other small tasks, seem beyond my ability to initiate. Worthless and shamed, a resume of failures personal and public plays across the landscape of that sterile grotto between my ears- the suffering of a mendicant.
Often- when beset with the shrill headaches of guilt and those stress induced muscle spasms in my lower back, saline deprived tears will flow and cut patterns through that curious airborne particulate which collects on my sweat slaked skin.
Why did I ever open that letter and receive that malign note, the one written in pencil whose handwriting was evocative of an ancient time?
from wikipedia
Oneirophrenia is a hallucinatory, dream-like state caused by several conditions such as prolonged sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, or drugs (such as ibogaine). From the Greek words “ὄνειρος” (oneiros, “dream”) and “φρενός” (phrenos, “mind”). It has some of the characteristics of simple schizophrenia, such as a confusional state and clouding of consciousness, but without presenting the dissociation symptoms which are typical of this disorder.
Persons affected by oneirophrenia have a feeling of dream-like unreality which, in its extreme form, may progress to delusions and hallucinations. Therefore, it is considered a schizophrenia-like acute form of psychosis which remits in about 60% of cases within a period of two years. It is estimated that 50% or more of schizophrenic patients present oneirophrenia at least once.
Oneirophrenic patients are resistant to insulin and when injected with glucose, these patients take 30 to 50% longer to return to normal glycemia. The meaning of this finding is not known, but it has been hypothesized that it may be due to an insulin antagonist present in the blood during psychosis.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An uninteresting and pedantic dissatisfaction- at all times boring and helpless- makes any perceptions of mine questionable.
Perhaps it would be better if I just stayed at home. Avoid knowledge of those flickering wonders found around this Newtown Creek, stay in the apartment where it is safe, and where it smells pleasant.
Absolute control of a cramped corner of the hive, leased by the month, with a comfortable and amusing reality provided to me and shaped by multinational media corporations.
A happy and comfort rich world, with cheap coffee and a cable modem.
from wikipedia
Neural circuitry involving the amygdala and hippocampus is thought to underlie anxiety.[9] When confronted with unpleasant and potentially harmful stimuli such as foul odors or tastes, PET-scans show increased bloodflow in the amygdala. In these studies, the participants also reported moderate anxiety. This might indicate that anxiety is a protective mechanism designed to prevent the organism from engaging in potentially harmful behaviors.
Research upon adolescents that were as infants highly apprehensive, vigilant, and fearful finds that their nucleus accumbens is more sensitive than that in other people when they selected to make an action that determined whether they received a reward. This suggests a link between circuits responsible for fear and also reward in anxious people. As researchers note “a sense of ‘responsibility,’ or self agency, in a context of uncertainty (probabilistic outcomes) drives the neural system underlying appetitive motivation (i.e., nucleus accumbens) more strongly in temperamentally inhibited than noninhibited adolescents.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Truly, who needs to know of these places, save the police and security men, and those uncommented workers who populate this human hive called the City of greater New York.
Those malign forces which infest the saturn halls of influence hereabouts seem to have noticed me, simply because I noticed them, and commented upon their presence. That hated letter was the merest extent of the power they wield, a hammering cudgel of patronage, a gimlet of raw force- and a message sent and received from the powers that are.
But that doesn’t account for the note. The note which caused me to titillate at and embrace the fish belly white teat of terror itself, and wander mindlessly about this Newtown Pentacle. That note, written in a greasy pencil line and atavist hand upon a no longer common sort of brown Kraft paper, and which conveyed a malign acceptance of certain realities…
from wikipedia
An existential crisis may result from:
- The sense of being alone and isolated in the world;
- A new-found grasp or appreciation of one’s mortality;
- Believing that one’s life has no purpose or external meaning;
- Awareness of one’s freedom and the consequences of accepting or rejecting that freedom;
- An extremely pleasurable or hurtful experience that leaves one seeking meaning;
An existential crisis is often provoked by a significant event in the person’s life — marriage, separation, major loss, the death of a loved one, a life-threatening experience, a new love partner, psycho-active drug use, adult children leaving home, reaching a personally-significant age (turning 30, turning 40, etc.), etc. Usually, it provokes the sufferer’s introspection about personal mortality, thus revealing the psychological repression of said awareness.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
…the note, and I must accept this at face value, was signed “Gilman“.
from wikipedia
Nigredo, or blackness, in alchemy means putrefaction or decomposition. The alchemists believed that as a first step in the pathway to the philosopher’s stone all alchemical ingredients had to be cleansed and cooked extensively to a uniform black matter. In psychology, Carl Jung (a student of alchemy) interpreted nigredo as a moment of maximum despair, that is a prerequisite to personal development. Further steps of the alchemical opus are albedo (whiteness), citrinitas (yellowness) and rubedo (redness).
