This evening they set off fireworks over the Hudson river – something that is done here every year on this day to celebrate our nation’s independence. Watching the fireworks this evening over the river, I had a flashback to several years ago, when our nation was first in the thick of newly declared war in Iraq. I remembered that there was a period of time when seeing the fireworks made me uneasy. It’s one thing to show a symbolic display of firepower when you are sure what it all signifies. It’s quite another thing to see America represented through marshal symbolism when your nation is in the midst of a war that seems misbegotten.
I noticed this evening that this feeling of uneasiness had gone. I no longer think of our ship of state as being on a path to perpetual war, but rather as sincerely trying to work toward peaceful resolution of various conflicts around the world.
And now, suddently, fireworks have become beautiful again!
Actually – the fireworks have been on the East River in recent years, I think because of 9/11. (That would fit in well with the theme of your post, at any rate). They moved it back this year to celebrate the 400th Anniversary of Hudson’s discovery of the river and the Isle of the Mannahattas. I wasn’t around, but the pictures I’ve seen were fantastic (as were the fireworks local to me, @ Asbury Park, Long Branch, and Loch Arbour.
Aha, thanks. I hadn’t thought of the shifting locale. On a subconscious level I may have been responding to the fireworks return to its original location in a simpler, less fearful time.