The Newtown Pentacle

Too much time on your hands isn’t a good thing, find something to do.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As a humble narrator’s beard has grown whiter and whiter over the years, there’s a few things one has gleaned from experience. My cohort of friends includes people of most ages, races, religions, and types – and with the younger members of this tribal group, I cannot help but share adages of the mistakes that I’ve made in the past and present, and ones which I plan to make in the future. The way I figure it, when you finally have life down to a science at some point, you get cancer or dementia and then become a science experiment. Between now, and then – when inevitability knocks on the door – you might as well stay busy, and keep on screwing up so that the reaper maintains his distance.

Additionally – you really, really need to be a better friend to yourself and get enough sleep. A doctor friend of mine once opined that it takes the liver and kidneys about seven hours to turn over your blood supply and clean out all the toxic juices that accumulate in it while you’re awake. Don’t know if she was just trying to scare me, but it’s been working out pretty good for me ever since.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One has often opined that he’d like to visit a hospital about once a year, get split open like a hog, and then get the works hosed down with a warm solution of detergents. You’d do this with your car’s engine, as a point, if you lived in a place with unpaved roads. The Docs use a fancy word for this – Lavage. Conventionally, this sort of invasive rinsing out is typically only done with cancer patients who have just undergone surgery, and instead of using a garden hose and water the Docs use chemotherapy compounds. The idea behind the chemo Lavage is to kill off any errant cells which they might have missed while chopping and slicing. I’m just interested in getting the skinvelope rinsed out.

Who can guess, all there is, that might be sticking to me on the inside?

– photo by Mitch Waxman

American hypochondriacism and fatalist thinking is fascinating to me. Every little pain must be related to, or be a revelation of, cancer. I’m guilty of it myself, and have sometimes found myself staring in the mirror at three in the morning with saucer sized eyes thinking “this is it, here we go.” Over the years, I’ve developed a minor but quite common orthopedic condition in my left foot, specifically in my big left toe, directly related to all the walking. An easily inflamed ligament leading from the foot to the toe knuckle flares up occasionally, causing minor discomfort. The condition is called “turf toe,” and it’s caused by pushing off into a step by putting my weight on that particular toe, inflaming a certain tendon or ligament. I convinced myself that I had developed foot cancer after a few google searches.

As a note, foot cancer is one of the most unlikely things you can contract. You actually have a better chance of getting hit by lightning, if you work outside.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The particular political moment that we are all living in really shouldn’t have taken anybody by surprise. Nazis, white power people… they’ve been here all along, lurking at the edges. Back in the ’80’s, there was a fellow named Tom Metzger who ran an outfit called “WAR,” which stood for “White Aryan Resistance.” WAR’s themology involved the recruitment of skinheads and rednecks, who were told to either let their hair grow out or to take a shave. Adherents were advanced money to secure college degrees and encouraged to join the workforces of both public and private entities and wait for their time to come. A lot of the kids of my generation who joined WAR are now at senior levels in the Police, Political, and Corporate worlds. That was Tom Metzger’s plan.

Erosion of trust in Government and other organs of cultural stability were accomplished through popular entertainment. The X-Files opined that “The Truth is out there,” painting the staid FBI and CIA as some sort of shadowy counter government secretly running the entire show and colluding with extraterrestrials. “Who killed Kennedy?” is a question that is more valuable than the answer ever could be. “The TV News guys are in on it, and the news is all fakery and cover stories.” Nothing is real, all is false, and in chaotic times the proletariat will always put its faith in strongmen who purport to represent the values and mores of generations past.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As I’ve advised my young friends, so too has wisdom been shared with those old enough to know better. A little mystery hanging about one’s shoulders is a good thing, but for those involved in public life an absence of information offered is an opportunity for blanks to be filled in erroneously. I can opine about battle and conflict, but suffice to say I don’t think you should ever telegraph what you’re going to do or say next, and instead recommend that you just make things start happening after a prior gentlemanly final warning. Raining blows down upon an enemy is a great way to balance your chi, after all. There’s nothing like grinding someone to dust and listening to the lamentations of their women.

I have never understood the male posturing that occurs before a physical conflict, as a note. “I’m gonna kick your skedooch, mothaflowah” and all that is redundant. Just stick your finger in the other guys eye or kick him in the crotch, pummel him until he’s tender or oozing, empty a garbage can or piss on him, and then get out of dodge before the cops show up… that’s the Brooklyn way. The sports guys call it “explosivity.” Movie fights and boxing matches see mutiple exchanges of blows, real fights last 2-4 minutes, tops. It’s always best to try and talk it out or walk away, as a note, but life ain’t about “should be,” it’s all “have to.”

– photo by Mitch Waxman

An oft repeated refrain invokes “not giving a fuck.” My advice to all is to give lots of fucks. It’s your life, take some agency over it. This is a real problem I’ve noticed with the generations coming up behind me. My politically conservative friends attribute this to “participation trophies,” which is something I don’t understand the obsession they have for. Politically liberal friends describe the generations coming up as “woke,” which is a term I don’t fully comprehend. Either way, the people I know in their early and late twenties and mid thirties are an extremely reticent group. They like to take political stands, decry the societal system that made them, and wallow or embrace their sorrows. None of them talk about superseding their limitations or conquering obstacles, rising above, or succeeding “in spite of.”

My take on these kids – they’re kids to me – is that these are the people who saw 911 playing out on TV when they were ten or eleven years old, and have come of age during what I have come to call “The Great Unraveling.”

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