home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to

July 4: petard
[another of those words that I always think should mean something other than it actually does...]

My favorite parts of the show were the lower ones with the noisy petard.

 

    I watched the local fireworks display in air conditioned comfort from a ridiculous vantage point: cross-legged on my bed, looking through my bedroom window, out over the neighboring buildings (exactly the same height as mine), in the direction of the local pool (from which most people are viewing) and the river (from which they're shot off). It wasn't all that exciting, so I multi-tasked, continuing an earlier text conversation with The Mumbler and folding laundry in between explosions.
    The whole event made me realize something that I've meant to write about for a while. It is so different to experience fireworks shows down here in the flat, as compared to where I grew up! In this case, different means dead dull.
     My favorite part of fireworks is the noise. The deep booming that you don't only hear with your ears, but feel in the pit of your stomach. The high-pitched screeching ones that streak way up, and then fall in a burst of pops. The sizzling crackle of the ones that look like flaming, dancing tinsel. Don't mistake me: I also enjoy the colors, the visual spectacle, and particularly the reflected color on the unconsciously expressive faces of those watching. The way we all turn into kids again, if only for a few moments, on days like this. But for me, it's the helpless clench of excited terror that runs through when I feel the noise, as well as hear it—and when feeling it and hearing it do not happen simultaneously.
    That is what's missing down here. Oh, there is a little delay. All the good works are designed to do some of it, now. But where I come from, there's no way for it not to happen, and on every single crack! The booms echo from bluff to bluff and back again, and the sounds crisscross each other until they've created a thrilling cacophony that's unforgettable.
     And, for me, a vital part of the fireworks experience. The ones down here, with just one 'boom' apiece?
     Boring!

[the title quotation is by John Ed Pearce]