This post is not actually from July 3rd, but for technical reasons (…), I was not able to post it yesterday. =)

This is from a writing I did when I was 18 about going to the fireworks on America’s Birthday — July 4th. I can’t vouch for the quality of my teenage writing, but in the spirit of the holiday, here it is all the same:

Hope you like:

Skipping to the Good Parts: sitting against an electransformer in fresh green grass, rather Freshness manifest as green grass, the latent familiarity of 4th of july flash-boom-wow-ness came back (…). Sentimentality never gets old.

A wee-one was half a block away starring the show for her family outloud:

“I dedicate this one to . . mybestfriend KATY!!ooh,thats.<chromatic-flash>WowyBOOM…OOOH!
“I dedicate th-<BOOM>-Idedicatethisone, to Mom&Dad!!..Happy Birthday!” <swirlyflash,boom(crackles)>..”It feels like its coming At me!!”

I secretly admired Youth-Happening a half-block behind me until my what-am-I-getting-out-of-this spun the twister-spindial of my mind & somehow, against all the oddsmaker’s best reckonings, came out (moderately) cogent: each flashboom as a burst of pure, abstract Independence; a new nation emerging, a bolt of thought striking out to new territory, a willful ignorance of Authority so as to Author one’s own story. & Each image of color-sparkles as the radicals’ Outcome, as history’s snapshot-memento, (…).

The flashbooms were awesomely beautiful in no cheap sense of the words; the memory is of course only a fraction of the experience itself.., but I can never shake the feeling that all my memories are these reconstructable holographic fractals, different facets of which are summoned quasi-consciously, with the commandibility of a mysterious & primitive control-panel (…)

…which reminds me: Whatcha Eatin Under There??

Thanks.

Happy Birthday America.
— Joe