The Newtown Pentacle

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I cannot help it, as despite all of my best efforts, I’m feeling an emotion.

This is the ultimate post of 2025, as in its the last one this year. This has been a year of absolute agony and pain for me, due to the recovery from a shattered left ankle, and I’m quite glad to be putting that behind me.

Every single day for the last year, I’ve played this song and sang along with it. I will survive this year, if it kills me.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One pushed onwards, as he does, since ‘what choice do you have otherwise’ applies. Forward, ever forward.

I’ve always been a believer in the idea that if an immovable object is actually meeting an irresistible force in your vicinity, the best thing for one to do would involve navigating around the conflict and sidestepping it. Lateral thought is what that’s called. Who wants to get involved with an esoteric conflict of absolutes and universal maximums? Not me, that’s none of my business, if force and object want to fight.

I’ve also grown quite fond of this cover song, during my interval as an invalid. If Elvis was still alive, I would hope he and Tom Jones would be doing covers of Simon and Garfunkel together. Cool, baby.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Speaking of cool, while walking in a shockingly discombobulated style towards the light rail stations, this excellent iteration of a bike rack was encountered. I think it’s a bike rack, at least. Definitely art.

The headphones came out during this section, as downtown is well populated, and there’s often large agglutinations of adolescents with mischief on their menu roaming about down here. They are seldom good natured. You’ve also got a sizable and edgy population of ‘street people’ who can be volatile or unpredictable.

As I always say: ‘You do you, boo, I’m just passing through.’ I’ll usually throw in a ‘be safe’ as my closer. The humans, even the debased ones, like that sort of thing.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Does this sort of scene call out to you, in the manner of a siren’s song, as it does to your humble narrator? Clawing intent, drawing you towards shuffling into those depths, and finding out what’s…

Actually, I’ve seen what goes on in these alleys, and it’s mostly intravenous drug use and public urination or defecation. The office buildings whose walls form the alleys use them for storing garbage bins. There’s signs everywhere admonishing against trespass and advising that rule breakers will find themselves under ‘video surveillance.’

I lived in NYC my entire life, until 3 years ago, and for every single day of it I was under video surveillance at one point or another. Just going to school as a kid, for instance, I’d be videoed half a dozen times between the front door and my desk. Security cameras are as numerous in NYC as rats. The question always was, and is, is anyone actually watching the camera feed?

The cops collect footage when there’s a crime, but that’s afterwards. In the glorious new world of AI, there will be a ‘somebody’ watching – everything – everywhere – as it happens and all at the same time. Predictive policing is on the horizon.

Hey… that’s my last dire warning about AI for 2025.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

As has been mentioned a few times recently, I’m chronologically isolated from the day that you’re reading this as I’m way ahead of schedule for once, and I’m writing this post on the first Saturday of December. It’s entirely possible that we’ve all been wiped out by the Venezuelan Space Force or something by now, but I’m betting that it’s just the usual horror of pedantry and politics that are annoying us at the moment. Hell, I’m also presuming that I’m not one of those 28 people (an annual average) who died by driving off the side of a cliff in the Greater Pittsburgh region.

Pictured above is the ‘Gateway’ T Light Rail Station, which is where would be where I’d be leaving the street behind and heading back to HQ in Dormont. I remembered one of my ‘old habits’ and spun around on my heel to capture an inverse view.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

There we are.

Also, I spun on my heel! I managed to spin on my left heel!

It would seem that I have indeed survived this last very challenging year, and at least as far as the first Saturday in December goes, it still hasn’t killed me.

Back next year – with something different – at your Newtown Pentacle.

“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle

Buy a book!

“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.