Posts Tagged ‘queens’
relentless thing
Heh. You may think I don’t know what you’re thinking, but you don’t know that I know what you’ve been told to think and by whom. Heh.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The south side of Williamsburg, where many bad things have occurred, was where a humble narrator recently found himself scuttling along when a series of very bad ideas began to infiltrate his thoughts. Perhaps it was brought on by the stares and pointing fingers offered by the crowds of Hasidic women and children, or their stifled gasps of horror and revulsion as one passed by. Perhaps it was merely remembrance of days gone by, and an iteration of North Brooklyn which only one such as myself seems to remember and acknowledge or admit.
from murderpedia.org
Known as the Williamsburg Strangler, Vincent Johnson, pleaded guilty to strangling five women and will serve life in prison without parole. Johnson’s 10-month killing spree began in August, 1999. The 31-year-old homeless crack addict admitted to the murders a week before prosecutors were to decide on whether or not to seek the death penalty.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An uncomfortable sense that if one were to merely look through the cracked glass of a warehouse’s ground floor window, or notice what is going on beyond the aperture of an open doorway at some centuried factory building, a tidal wave of bad intentions and evil inclination would carry the observer into a world of unending and quite metaphysical horror. Intuition hints that evil is slumbering just beneath the surface, existing as some kind of psychic or spectral latency, and given enough time… It is simply best to focus on the pavement in this section of Brooklyn, and stray not from it, for there are things buried hereabouts that should remain unknown. Who can say what malevolent forces are combated, nightly, by Satmar Kabbalists or Palo worshipping Padrinos, hereabouts?
from wikipedia
Self-consciousness was characterized as an aversive psychological state. According to this model, people experiencing self-consciousness will be highly motivated to reduce it, trying to make sense of what they are experiencing. These attempts promote hyper vigilance and rumination in a circular relationship: more hyper vigilance generates more rumination, whereupon more rumination generates more hyper vigilance. Hyper vigilance can be thought of as a way to appraise threatening social information, but in contrast to adaptive vigilance, hyper vigilance will produce elevated levels of arousal, fear, anxiety, and threat perception.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Haven’t you ever wondered why, when they are constructing domiciles for their sect, the Hasidim in Williamsburg construct fortresses? They don’t do this in Monroe, or Borough Park or Midwood, which are other population centers in Brooklyn for the ultra orthodox. The senile and simple amongst them will tell you that Dibbuks rise from the Wallabout and East River when darkness falls, seeking to consume whosoever might be on the very streets which I was walking. Who can guess, all there is, that might be stalking the streets of the Boswijck Strand at night?
from wikipedia
Somatoparaphrenia is a type of monothematic delusion where one denies ownership of a limb or an entire side of one’s body. Even if provided with undeniable proof that the limb belongs to and is attached to their own body, the patient produces elaborate confabulations about whose limb it really is, or how the limb ended up on their body. In some cases, delusions become so elaborate that a limb may be treated and cared for as if it were a separate being.[
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dropped despairingly
Wandering, always wandering, with no place to go. Stay paranoid, I say.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The steady staccato of foot falls is all that one can really count on, a shuffling rhythm accompanied by the tinkling of that busted glass which garnishes the sidewalks. It’s all terribly depressing, of course, utterly pedantic, and definitively pedestrian – but hey – that’s me. Recent travels carried me off to the halcyon center of “Astoria Astoria” nearby the Triborough Bridge, which I haven’t wandered around in several weeks.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Luckily, things are still the same around these parts, with the disturbingly heterogenous stock of buildings that typifies the area still present. These days, if you blink in Western Queens, entire neighborhoods might disappear overnight. It is rumored that dark cloaked figures swarm into the area from Manhattan after dusk to select targets. The Hellenes who inhabit this neighborhood hang charms, which use a blue eye motif, in their windows hoping to ward off these creatures. These predators are referred to as the “nýchta mágissa” or the “strigoi idiokti̱sías” by certain drunken octogenarians which one might encounter at disreputable or shunned tavernas which are found at less travelled neighborhood cross roads. It is claimed that these so called Strigoi want to buy your house for “development” and that they will produce foreign currencies and specie with which to do it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It is a good idea to carry amulets and charms when perambulating along. One can easily be drawn away from the esoteric realities of this section which adjoins the forbidden northern coast of Queens and the fabled Hells Gate by the grandeur of mundanity. Case in point, an industrial wrecker clad in the scarlet color of human blood, towing a disabled bus off of mighty Triborough. Anything to keep you from noticing the truth… Who can say, all there is, that might be lurking about in the fuligin of night, beneath the buzzing of the sodium lamps?
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henceforward have
Anniversaries, antichrists, and apocalypse.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Something about the centennial mark of the “fin de siécle” made one think about Mt. Zion cemetery, which is pictured in today’s post. The term refers to the end of the 19th century in its literal interpretation, but broader usage of “fin de siécle” is meant to imply the sense of doom which the late 19th century’s artists and academics expressed. They knew it was coming, the end of the age, an apocalypse.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s interpretation and intuition being offered everywhere online today about the century marker for the First World War’s official start. There’s the version of the story which talks about all the war dead, the one where the United States became “America!!!” because of the conflict, and the chestnut about the decline of the European peninsula from its former status as the center of colonial supremacy. The antichrist appeared in Russia, and he raised a godless rogue state from the ashes of the Tsarist form of government.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Personally, I’ve always ascribed to the concept of the “Second Thirty Years War” when describing the state of world affairs between 1914 and 1945, but that period is less “fin de siécle” and more “birth pangs of the modern era,” from our perspective. We know how the story comes out.
The First World War was actually a war of industrial bases when you think about it. Vast international death machines require long logistical supply lines, or so I am told, many of which stretched all the back to my beloved Newtown Creek oddly enough. Given my particular love of the industrial sectors of LIC and Greenpoint surrounding the waterway, which were at their height during WW1, I try to only think of cemeteries when considering the conflict. Keeps me even, and helps hint at why Granpa Alex didn’t ever want to talk about the war.
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record scroll
One does not complain, it is “Kvetching,” which is a whole other thing.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Several comments received both here, at your Newtown Pentacle, and in the real world “meatspace” have opined that your humble narrator spends too much time complaining about this or that. My obviate ranting about the singularly horrible Time Warner Cable, the inebriate legions who pollute the sidewalks of Astoria with their besotted carcasses, or the ludicrous amount of environmental noise offered freely by the neighbors – it would seem – have struck an odd chord and lent an incorrect impression to my narrative.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
First off – I grew up Jewish, and “kvetching” is as much a part of my culture as is coffee and cake – so respect the hell out of my vibrant diversity or I’ll slap a hate crime sticker on you. Secondly, one of the things that I’ve observed about the Borough of Queens over the years is the stoicism which the citizenry hereabouts displays in the face of the daily avalanches of those improprieties which they suffer. Nothing changes unless you speak about it aloud, and “just get used to it” is the precursor to a commonly quoted parable about a frog in a pot of water on a stove who doesn’t realize he’s being boiled alive because the temperature of the water is being raised in a slow and subtle fashion.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Kvetching is a running sarcastic commentary on existential woes, a general call out to others commenting on the sisyphean suffering which existentialist goyem like Albert Camus or Franz Kafka made their careers out of. Kvetching is an attempt at voicing an unease with the status quo, in the hopes of discovering other unfortunates who share in the misery. Kvetching is an attempt to stimulate a conversation about that which is wrong, one which the powers and potentates of this world might take notice of and attempt to ameliorate. Kvetching is your right, as an American, it’s called “speech.” Complaining is something else entirely.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
This weekend-
Sunday, August 3rd, Kill Van Kull Walking Tour
With Brooklyn Brainery, click here for tickets and more info.
dwell along
Ah, to retreat into the comforting ignorance of a new Dark Age…
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The human infestation has got me down today, lords and ladies. Foibles, faults, and the mysteries of the utterly ‘effed up cloud my perceptions, and a humble narrator is ready to wash his hands of this fetid excuse for a life. Unfortunately, existence is a giant shit sandwich from which we all must, in fact, take a bite. It’s probably all my fault anyway, it usually is, so perhaps it would be best if I just avoid any further interaction.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A prevailing and ongoing critique of my personality and habits as offered by loved ones and strangers alike is why I am largely nocturnal, existing in twilit grottos and forgotten places, and why I frequent the abandoned and irredeemable edges of civilization. If it wasn’t for Our Lady of the Pentacle and my little dog Zuzu, I’d likely become an urban legend that grade school children mention in hushed whispers around camp fires. “Did you know that there’s a hermit with a camera living in that abandoned coal mine?” would be what summer campers asked each other. My golden arm, indeed.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Human interaction is something which I’ve never seemed to master, despite my studied and best efforts. Perhaps I should seek out the services of mental health professionals and secure a supply of some numbing agent, retreat into an Aldous Huxley-esque SOMA haze, and just enjoy my days lost in a narcotic bliss. This is what most do, why not me too? Perhaps I should just retreat into the ignominious shadows, a penniless mendicant doomed to wander the concrete devastations of the Megalopolis. Bah. If you see me today, it would be wise to avoid all contact.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
There are two Newtown Creek walking tours coming up.
Saturday, July 26th, The Insalubrious Valley of the Newtown Creek
With Atlas Obscura, lunch included, click here for tickets and more info.
Sunday, July 27th, Glittering Realms
With Brooklyn Brainery, lunch included, click here for tickets and more info.
