Fireworks

Tonight, the Asbury Park boardwalk is packed with people clamoring for an unobstructed view of the fireworks. The beach has been cleared and closed since three this afternoon. Folding chairs, three or four rows deep, huddle the railing, and the line for ice cream at Eddie Confetti’s snakes its way past the Splash Park and lemonade stand. Don’t get lost in the crowd. This is America. This is the 4^th of July. What the heck am I doing here?

Shall I tell you that this is the New Jersey I love? It is. Though allegiance tied to the accident of geography troubles me. Terrible things are done in the name of patriotism. Yet here I am. I find some comfort in the multi-hued throng in this town that struggles with its diversity. There is a place for me that I can’t seem to find in more homogenous spaces. The Asbury Park boardwalk feels real. I am drawn to these odd, liminal spaces. I understand why this place is Springsteen’s muse. Feels real to him, too, messy and real. Though lately I find myself struggling with the notion of what is real. Were my parents real? Did they exist? Am I the only one who thinks these things?

We don’t remain on the boardwalk. I began writing as if I am by myself, but I’m not, just in my head. This is a family adventure. To separate from the crowd a bit, we walk towards one of the bridges on Wesley Lake. We will have a clearer view and the sound of the explosions will be less deafening.

It is almost dark. The fireworks begin as we walk along the path. We stop to watch from our location. The explosions are mesmerizing. Arcs and stars of brightly colored lights shoot up then tumble down, popping and sizzling. Like a child, I am easy beguiled by shiny things. Bread and circuses, Juvenal famously said. Entertain me. Distract me.

It’s nice to feel for one glittery moment that the world is a safe place, that people are kind when they are not. We pretend to forget that fireworks are a proxy for bombs, and that bombs continue to fall in Gaza and the Ukraine. Humankind has not improved in my lifetime as I naïvely believed as a child. Distrust seems to be hard wired. I find some no small irony that in my youth it was the left who chose to desecrate the flag and now it is the right. It’s only a flag, a piece of cloth, not much of a metaphor. Perhaps if we spent less energy on our cliquishness and more on our humanity. Ooh, I have shifted the pronoun again. Who is this we? Why am I distancing myself from my own conversation?

This independence is a slippery thing. Why celebrate it? Togetherness is more challenging. I like to be by myself. I suppose I am not the only one. It’s no surprise that the biting, accusatory lyrics to Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. go unnoticed. No one wants to be made uncomfortable. Accountability is not fun.

So, I watch fireworks, go to parades, eat hotdogs and live in hope. I try, unsuccessfully, not to think about the things I can’t control. Hope is not much. As the great American poet, Emily Dickinson said, it’s the thing with feathers, like the American bald eagle, a scavenger, not yet extinct.