Thursday, July 05, 2007

From Yesterday, Generally: Y is the Fourth of July

From Last Night:

So hello again, and it’s good to be back.  (pause for uninterrupted loner cricket-chirping.) So anyway, the rest was much appreciated and we’re all nicely fed and waiting for it to be time to go to see fireworks, which I think Z only barely comprehends.  This should be fun, and in the meantime, I can share a little overdue chucklelove.  It’s been a good few weeks.

Actually, I’ve got a nice slew of essay ideas in my memo pad, and two essays written – but they both seem a little negative for the follow-up to that miserable bit I posted a few days ago to be a troublemaker… I’m looking now for something that’s more in line with classic hut-wise observational flimflam.  Yes, there’s a name for it, observational flimflam, and I guess I should have told you earlier but whatever.  I considered a rant about the intersection, or lack thereof, between founding national principles (and principals), and the Scooter Libby thing, but that’s likely to be heavyhanded and of passing relevance.  Instead I think I’ll just freehand a few lines about our walk in the park today and get back into the groove again with some sunny notions.  For an internet that has given me so much and really asked so little of me, it seems the very least that I could do.

One of the best things about the Fourth of July is that it is so tied to a date, rather than to a day.  Christmas is always Thursday, and so is Thanksgiving; but the Fourth of July is whatever day of the week that the fourth happens to fall on that year, so sometimes it’s a three-day weekend and sometimes, like today, it’s a Wednesday off.  Long weekends bring out tourists but on Wednesdays off everybody’s local.  On our walk through Golden Gate Park we saw lots of different kinds of locals co-habitating on the picnic grounds.  The park seemed full of promise and opportunity and enormous coolers bursting with sausage and burgers and a wide range of beverages.  The sun was warm; the ocean breeze was fresh and cooling; the overall scene was idyllic. 

The up-close scene revealed lots of color:

(at this point I had to leave – Z was reminding me it was time to see the fireworks.  It was so much fun to bundle him up and take him out to the end of the jetty.  He was tired but an absolute trouper so he was still ready to party at 9:15 when the first boat in the bay set off a few modest rockets.  They exploded into spheres of green or blue sparkles, or with short iridescent plumes of flame, and then faded quickly away.  We couldn’t hear them go off but we could see them a short distance away over the water.  Z became agitated.  He turned away from the display.  We tried to calm him down but then Sausalito started their display at 9:20 and that further incensed him mightily.  By the time SF started their dual display (off the pier and a barge in tandem), Z was sobbing and we were walking back to the car.  We tried to slow down and steal peeks but he was having none of it, demanding tearfully anytime he caught us that we pick up the pace.  It looks like it was probably a great display.  Maybe we’ll see more of it next year.  I think we will.  Z woke up this morning very refreshed and cheerful saying both that he liked and did not like fireworks.  That’s probably a good sign.  And now I’m back from a short work day and a bit of jury duty (I am excused, tyvm, like I will ever serve on a goddamn jury, justice FEARS me, pussy justice) and I can finish whatever this is.  Observational flan?  Flip-flops?  I retract the above but continue as follows: )

At one of the first picnic areas, a number of loud, enthusiastic high-school age kids was getting ready to welcome a big group, shouting and playing loud music and goofing on each other with energy and enthusiasm and shrieking.  They were dressed nicely, all well-groomed, but they were loud as all hell.  Next to them a tired-looking quartet, a dude and three women in their 20s, looked with hung-over disdain from their adjacent reserved picnic area, holding down the fort till someone arrived with the food.  They had no food, nothing but some speakers for an ipod, on which they played some kind of emo pop, sort of quietly.  They sat on their table and listened to their quiet music and glared at their neighbors, silently silencing them in their minds with extreme prejudice.  The loud kids were oblivious, which made it all the more amusing. 

A Korean family had set up for a family grilling party.  Next to their table they had laid out light but sturdy folding chairs, in a row of decreasing height.  The chairs looked comfortable but no one was at the chairs.  They stood by the table.  Their table was covered with a tablecloth, on which several food storage containers had been laid out.  The family stood in order of decreasing status and height, beginning naturally with the father (who stood with fierce pride in his jaw and a relaxed polo pullover paired with cuffed linen shorts for this important celebratory undertaking).  Next to him, his son, taller but slouching despite himself; then, his wife, and then two daughters, the first taller than the wife and the second shorter.  They were ranked up in front of the table, with the father standing next to his gleaming stainless steel portable grill, which shone brilliantly in the daylight.  The site’s cooking grill, key focus of activity at so many other picnics, moldered in disregard, rusted and damp and looking utterly spent.  The new grill was closed tight; a thin plume of smoke escaped from it.  The dad watched the smoke and the rest watched dad. 

At the far end of the meadow stood the final picnic area.  Two hipster types were stuffing drinks into icy coolers, or something like that… my first thought was, how nice, hipster picnic, cynicism can’t stop them from enjoying a Wednesday off, and I immediately chastised myself for the assumptions larding every part of that statement.  We kept walking down the path and just a few feet down was their table, one of those classic park bench type tables with a big generous wooden top and wooden benches secured on either side beneath it.  At this table stood a muscular young man with wavy hair and a tribal bracelet tattoo around his bicep and a staple gun, securing a white butcherpaper cover over the table.  He sort of glowed in the warming sunlight, chest thrown wide and jaw set with determination, popping his staple gun, repeatedly, thick arms flexing with desperate seriousness, dozens of staples, staples every inches or two it must have been, and still he kept going as we walked past, that staple gun popping with apathetic regularity, and all I could think was, damn that table is going to stay covered today.

And that is why is the fourth of july.  Happy yesterday, free world!  Happy today, too!