The Newtown Pentacle

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The weather has been atrocious, cold and wet, here in Pittsburgh.

Nevertheless, if your humble narrator stops moving he’ll stop moving permanently, so the pre-corpse was wrapped up in layers of insulation and the camera batteries charged up. Whoopity boop, and I’m outside.

Pictured is the view from midway up the steep hill that I live at the bottom of, which – come to think of it – is a great metaphor for my entire experience of life. One starts everyday at ‘zero,’ and then try to work my way back up. Whatever it was that I had achieved the day before is always forgotten about by those around me, so thusly I start the next day as a reborn and quite ignorant man child that needs to prove his worth by deed and intention.

As I’m writing this post, it’s still December. New Years is still a few days out at this interval. A short break was taken for the winter holidays, which ate up a bunch of my ‘lead time’ on these posts, something that I’ve been boasting about. I’ll catch back up.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This is Pittsburgh’s Dormont, where HQ is found. There are no ‘mean streets here’ as all the roads are avenues. Seriously, that’s a ‘thing.’

It had been fiendishly cold for a bit, then it snowed abominably. The day these shots were captured offered atmospherics that were chilly, but tolerable. There would be an opportunity for socializing with the humans later in the day, but at this interval I needed to take a short walk and stretch out the chords and rubber bands in the roadway interface. Everything was ‘clicky’ and popping.

Too much sitting, and shoving calorie rich things into the mouth, happens during the holidays – yo. I feel like a goose that’s been farm fattened up for foie gras.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I think the scene above revolved around a house fire. I smelled wood smoke, at least.

Luckily for the people affected, the Dormont fire dept. is literally a block away from that far corner. If this was Astoria, I would have felt compelled to ‘yenta’ my way in and find out the story, but here in Dormont? Not so much. I keep to myself these days, and avoid as much contact with the humans as possible. Fractious creatures, the infestation, and given to fits of passion.

The last few years have seen me becoming less and less involved with others, and far more numb emotionally. I seem to have lost the ability to care overly about strangers. A lot of this has to do with the current state of national politics, incidentally, wherein the current dominars emphasize and celebrate cruel selfishness and group affiliations at the expense of the weak and vulnerable, whom they describe in derogatory ways. It darkens my mood to see the humans behaving so brutally towards each other, over meaningless political word salads.

Judge not lest ye be judged, or something.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This is one of Dormont’s ‘way’ streets, which are alleys.

It seems that a century or so ago, when Dormont was being developed, this ‘no streets’ thing was a part of the ‘sell’ which the Real Estate Industrial Complex of the time used to lure people into moving all the way out into the ‘country.’ No ‘mean streets’ or ‘dark alleys’ for your kids to get involved with the ‘wrong sort’ in, out here as opposed to over there. Dormont is about 5 miles out from downtown Pittsburgh, as a note.

Me? I met up with Our Lady of the Pentacle and a few friends for holiday drinks and ribald conversation. Fun. That was at the end of this short walk. Maybe three miles in total, just a ‘stretch my legs’ sort of thing.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The Mobile Oppression Platform, a Toyota, requires warranty dictated service visits at our local ‘stealership.’ They change out the juices and ichors, attach a computer that talks to the car and figures out if anything’s wrong which needs to be dealt with, rotate the tires – all that. Basically three hours of sitting around for me, starting at 8:30 in the morning.

A not insignificant amount of snow had appeared the night before, and the universal viewpoint on this weather event seemed to be that the city of Pittsburgh had ‘shit the bed,’ regarding roadway maintenance and snow management. It was quite slippery out.

The MOP was pronounced as continuing in fine fettle by the mechanics.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Just a couple of days later, it started snowing again. This photo was shot through the windshield of the MOP, while sitting at a red light, hence the tint of the photo. I don’t even remember where I was when this was captured. Usually when I’m in the car by myself, the camera and bag are sitting on the passenger seat, and at the ready.

Back tomorrow with something different – at this – your Newtown Pentacle.

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“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.