Sky painting

From my perch on the 36th floor, the Fourth of July fireworks (one day early) seems a work of art, not some much a brilliant dazzlement of the eyes or percussion of the chest as it was for my son down by the water, but a succession of set pieces consisting of bursts into being, expansions to brilliant climax, and decayings away. The whole mise-en-scene was lurid. The river and the barges were framed by buildings left and right. Reflecting the succession of skies above it, the boat-speckled skin of the water shone blue or red or dense green.

Even by myself looking out the window, some formations prompted me to 'oooh' in appreciation. Huge balls, cascades, disks and saturns, stars in rings, pulsations and twinklings, swarms, arrays, fountains, interlocking, interpenetrating, expressed in pixilations of retina-piercing light. It struck me, as I watched this pyrotechnic pointillism, that this one-off work of art shared by tens of thousands of people in real time was being asserted in the presence of several Others.

Running on the Esplanade yesterday morning, I had been blocked by barriers with bright-vested policemen enforcing no admission. In front of the Hatch Shell,  teams of men in black with dogs were searching the grounds, serious-looking people were in consultation with each other. Outside, leaning on a fence waiting was an army of men in orange t-shirts waiting the signal to go in and finish setting up. A laager of black official SUVs was behind draped chain-link fences. A queue of people in lawn chairs chatted and consulted their phones as they waited to be let in.

They might have been saying to as if to themselves: You, terrorist, disrespecter of our solemnities, where would you secrete your bombs so as to cause maximum disruption and damage to the tens of thousands due to be here this evening? Are you like the Marathon bombers or even more devious? Where or how would you for whom the Fourth of July is not a celebration but a provocation prepare your baskets not of food and drink but of explosives and shrapnel?

But the Other who did appear was the squall line of thunderstorms marched in from Worcester which prompted the cancellation of the 1812 Overture and the early start of the fireworks.  As we painted our mandalas on the black background of the night sky, spikes of gold lightning began to be driven into earth west of us and the sky was sometimes suddenly washed clean of darkness. Something primal was approaching, and the fireworks began to seem less than our shout of exaltation impressive to the universe, and more like the intricate patterns of jewels and filigree on the tunics and gowns of aristocratic Elizabethans admired by other courtiers.

Still, you, would-be wounders, if you were at all, who wished to rebuke our celebration, and you, storm Arthur, who needed no permission to show off the careless, immense power of the atmosphere, were presented last night with our sky self-portrait, not nihilistic, not prodigious, but intricately wrought, cunningly constructed, and intense, if temporary,