With the tide coming in and the fireworks reflecting off it, and even the billion little bacteria come to show their patriotism by glowing in an awful nice way, I remember thinking it was a pretty good 4th of July. Explosions were happening off the pier, from someone’s house, from zoomers lit right on the beach. Some narrated events on cell phones. Some attempted ecstatic epilepsy (or is it epileptic ecstasy?) with strobe wands bought for $4 apiece. I sat on a rock and wrote on a thick sketchbook on a page of doodles I didn’t like, and all the while the tide kept coming.
The fireworks crackled in stereo up and down the beach.
BOOM. BOOMBOOM.
You got your sparklers, your poppers, your whistlers, screamers, thumpers, swimmers (my favorite), smiley-faces, two-timers, and of course your duds, all in blue and red and green and white, purple even. That I’ve had before. You’ve had them before. But have you ever had the very waters of the ocean aglow for you on the fourth of July?