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Nostalgia, sparks, and rural spaces
Jul. 5th, 2004 03:44 pm7/3, 9pm
Entry 1—Just out of Syracuse, on our way to Rochester…
It’s just about firework time, and I’m missing them a great deal. I have less of [Bad username or site: ”fairoriana” @ livejournal.com]’s love for the light-them-yourself kind, and more of a passionate love for the huge outdoor variety.
So much of fireworks is linked with being out of town. I can barely remember the halfassed display that Boston puts on at its Esplanade hoopla. Big woop. The city already makes so much light that you miss the deep, deep darkness that fireworks deserve, and Keith Lockhart and his Pops keep ftweeing away.
No, it’s the fireworks in the small town that tears at me. Home, of course, and the wooden grandstands, and Grammy Ronald, I think, waiting with me for the sun to go down. So many years of those, and throwing temper tantrums when it stormed.
Also Peterborough, NH, and the Conval School display. All the mosquitoes, and lying on blankets.
And most close, most recent, most dear perhaps, Oneonta, NY. DaMan came out to Cooperstown for the holiday weekend, and we went down to watch the fireworks and laugh. We braved crowds, picked a likely target, and hugged the whole way through it.
I don’t know what about them affects me so. I ooh and ahh, stripped of irony or selfconsciousness. The sheer glory of the bursts of sparks has me transported. When a year goes by that I don’t see fireworks, I feel gypped. Or worse—as if I’ve let a precious thing break or leave.
So now I find myself watching the sky as we travel through upstate New York, (when I’m not typing, that is), waiting for a burst of gold or blue.
Mile-wide sea urchins. Stars spinning and whistling. Bright flares that are nothing but BANG! Big long draping ones, where the sparks droop so far you worry about the trees. Ones that split into three or four or five separate explosions.
We are often horribly cruel to each other, and terrible to the earth itself; and then we manage to make stars,
Somewhere, I’m still five years old and staring at the sky.
Entry 1—Just out of Syracuse, on our way to Rochester…
It’s just about firework time, and I’m missing them a great deal. I have less of [Bad username or site: ”fairoriana” @ livejournal.com]’s love for the light-them-yourself kind, and more of a passionate love for the huge outdoor variety.
So much of fireworks is linked with being out of town. I can barely remember the halfassed display that Boston puts on at its Esplanade hoopla. Big woop. The city already makes so much light that you miss the deep, deep darkness that fireworks deserve, and Keith Lockhart and his Pops keep ftweeing away.
No, it’s the fireworks in the small town that tears at me. Home, of course, and the wooden grandstands, and Grammy Ronald, I think, waiting with me for the sun to go down. So many years of those, and throwing temper tantrums when it stormed.
Also Peterborough, NH, and the Conval School display. All the mosquitoes, and lying on blankets.
And most close, most recent, most dear perhaps, Oneonta, NY. DaMan came out to Cooperstown for the holiday weekend, and we went down to watch the fireworks and laugh. We braved crowds, picked a likely target, and hugged the whole way through it.
I don’t know what about them affects me so. I ooh and ahh, stripped of irony or selfconsciousness. The sheer glory of the bursts of sparks has me transported. When a year goes by that I don’t see fireworks, I feel gypped. Or worse—as if I’ve let a precious thing break or leave.
So now I find myself watching the sky as we travel through upstate New York, (when I’m not typing, that is), waiting for a burst of gold or blue.
Mile-wide sea urchins. Stars spinning and whistling. Bright flares that are nothing but BANG! Big long draping ones, where the sparks droop so far you worry about the trees. Ones that split into three or four or five separate explosions.
We are often horribly cruel to each other, and terrible to the earth itself; and then we manage to make stars,
Somewhere, I’m still five years old and staring at the sky.
