Fireworks Tour of Greater Toledo

[fflo]

Actually I witnessed colorful controlled explosions throughout northern Ohio and southern Michigan, but it was around Toledo that I saw so very many, from sunset until full dark, when I was passing through orange barrels just as Sylvania climaxed, shuddering; the highway itself lit up in rosy reds and mellow blues.

There's something grand about the non-utilitarian nature of these traditional explosions. I understand the connection to military matters, but these funny blowings up are mainly, I prefer to think, to make a pretty show in the sky. They've gotten much groovier during my lifetime, too. It was fun and odd and kinda wistful to drive along and spot so many signs of shooting-off places, with the implied audiences thereabouts. I know it's not the first time I've been driving somewhere on the 4th & found myself witnessing pyrotechnics, but there were so many this time.

The former president of my little college, a chemistry guy, had made his reputation for work on two things: fireworks and napalm. I try to bear this connection in mind, but I do like the lights. Especially the darker colors, and the disc-like halos of discrete dots, and the wispy tinsel ones, and the squiggling off white zippers that seem to rise up after the big main bloom. When I bought my selection of explosives this year, I had to work to avoid war-themed items, but I managed.


Home now. Found major cat pee situation to deal with, but got that pretty much taken care of and have unpacked CPAP and shall soon fall into bed.

Had answering machine messages that made me (a) smile and (b) cringe. Also discovered voicemail from my brother from the other day. He seems very far away. Will have to e- and/or call him soon.

Earlier spent almost an hour sitting 12 cars back from a tractor-trailer toppling that brought a Med-Evac helicopter to land on I-70 and had a line of many of us strangers chatting speculatively next to the median strip wildflowers, in an oddly intimate mutual contemplation of life-and-death hanging in the balance right in front of us, and yet none of us bothering to introduce ourselves even in the most rudimentary ways, as we all knew we'd be back to our tin can anonymity as soon as they finally started letting one lane by. I do wonder if that driver made it; they had to cut him out of the cab. The rumor was that his son was in there with him & was fine. Thinking of it now I keep seeing my orange Chucks stepping across the rumble strip gaps on the shoulder, and the square jaw and crisply angled cap brim of that big guy from Rhode Island I was hanging with for a while, while his kid slumped in the passenger seat of their big black pickup.

It's weird to be home. It's weird, too, to realize that the longer, leisurely trip that would allow me to check in with all the folks in the East I'd like to spend time with is a longer trip than I think I want to take these days.

Ch. Humph is in the window in front of me, and cool air comes in in waves. Ch. Chet is in the other room somewhere. In the morning I shall go see what's what in the yard & then maybe visit the grocer's.

I feel rather very on my own, and in my own skin. Free agent. Was it Ray Carver or Max Apple who did that book of short stories?

What we talk about when we talk about x ... now THAt was a (title) concept.

Zzzzzzzzz zzzzz

Comments

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

As a historian of rockery, I think I've learned enough to say that fireworks are fireworks, weapons are weapons, and have no more or less to do with each other than your car has to do with a tank rumbling across the Iraqi desert.

The chemistry and design of fireworks is frankly quaint and antique in the world of military ordnance. Tippoo Saultaun blew past the world of fireworks at the battle of Seringapatam in 1792 when he fired the first metal rockets against the British, and Nobel left the crude-but-pretty low-explosive black powder of fireworks behind when he mixed nitrocellulose and nitroglycerine to make High Explosives.

So enjoy your fireworks free of guilt. They are nothing more than transitory sky art.

"transitory sky art" -- nice

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Right on! And thanks for that.

Reading over this entry this evening (the next day), I'm reminded of how often I make myself bend over backwards for it to be okay for me to enjoy something. Are there hedonism classes offered at WCC? Or through county rec?

Carver, of course.

[sprig5.livejournal.com]

And another great title of his is "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?"
I browsed his work when everyone was talking about him when I was an undergraduate, but haven't read it since then. Maybe I will. You're in Ann Arbor. Have you ever read anything by Charles Baxter?

Re: Carver, of course.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I read what I think was his first novel. It weren't bad! I recall it referencing a secret way into the closed Big House (stadium) that two characters use in order to have sex on the field. Not my first choice of rutting location, I must say. (!) Oh, wait---I bought his first novel after reading that one, which was his first hit, I think. He doesn't live here any more but came back for a reading not long after we arrived. But we/I didn't go.