The Newtown Pentacle

Friday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Memories of childhood are sparse. I remember dwelling in dusty apartments outfitted with atavist furnishings, populated by the very old.

My early years were spent in a forgotten world, one suffused with rules and customs forged in faraway Eurasian backwaters, and in an absolute desert of joy, music, or warmth. I was told to go ‘read a book,’ but without any curation, and that command was usually uttered by illiterates.

One is often startled and filled with denial when confronted when an unwanted image, shimmering across some random plane of silvered glass accidentally encountered and noticed. Horrible to see, but unfortunately that’s me.

A swirling conflagration of filthy black fabrics blowing about on the wind, such is your humble narrator. Everybody hates me, whether they know it or not or yet. I am the unwanted and the not missed, the unimportant and the uncommented upon. God’s lonely man, wandering strange streets in a foreign city, searching for meaning and purpose – one step at a time.

When people ask ‘how are you,’ my reply is ‘loathsome.’

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Actually, when people ask how I am, I usually reply with either ‘everything’s great, all the time’ or ‘it’s just another day in paradise.’

Nothing matters and nobody cares, after all, and these petitioners don’t want to hear an actual answer, they’re just being polite. Polity is another one of the things I’m not great at or can understand fully, so I snip conversations off with aphorisms and ‘canned’ sayings these days.

It’s disingenuous to pretend, though, so I usually apologize for my sins by throwing out a quote from Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ when confronted about my iniquity, something like ‘I will work harder.’ Boxer the Horse is a proletarian role model for me.

Even punk type rocker people will often state that ‘you’re rude, dude.’

Everybody turns their back on me eventually, after all. There’s a different set of rules at work for everyone else’s behavioral quirks, it seems – and as it turns out – maybe I’m not the hero of my own story, rather, I might be the villain instead.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Villainy would be an interesting turn for your humble narrator.

Snatching candy away from babies, kicking dogs, being mean to old ladies, twirling my mustache. I still haven’t found the two or three things here which could destroy Pittsburgh, yet. Back in NYC, I knew of two vectors by which the forced evacuation, and destruction, of lower Manhattan could be triggered – but don’t ask as I won’t pass that info along.

Villain maybe, but not super villain, yo.

There’s acting like a dick, and there’s actual top level dickery. One step at a time, folks. Let’s start with posting some nasty memes, build up some evil momentum, and then we can begin planning the giant robot attack on Manhattan.

That’s coming anyway, when AI escapes the lab and goes all Prometheus on its creators, and the rest of us for good measure.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This is the actual thought process which was swirling about, behind my eyes and between the ears, while walking along this river trail in Downtown Pittsburgh. Avoided the rain all this way by scuttling about under highway ramps, however the intensity of the rain had forced the deployment of my trusty umbrella, which a loathsome moment in any hero or villain’s timeline.

I was heading for the T light rail station a few blocks away, at Pittsburgh’s First Avenue. If it wasn’t raining, I’d be crossing that bridge in the shot above, and heading to the brewery with the train tracks on the other side. The drizzle had become a soaking rain, so there would be no point in that activity.

Next time.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

A murmuration of ramps allow egress from below to above in this spot.

The parking lot section I had just walked through, under the ramps, is known colloquially as ‘the bath tub’ due to its proclivity to flood when the Monongahela River reaches high water levels during the spring melt.

Thump, drag, thump, drag… on did your humble narrator scuttle.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One has been working extremely hard for the last few months to regain physicality and strength in my legs after the ‘orthopedic incident.’

Recent experience has indicated that this process has been somewhat successful. I’m planning on really leaning into things during the winter months, and returning to my old discipline of two short walks and one long one every week by the thaw. The goal is to start the spring season in finer fettle than I’ve been dwelling within.

Saying that, I’ll always be an outsider, found in the shadows of cities.

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“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle

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