The Fireworks Dervish

Fairy tale royalty, it was.  The daughters decided, not for the first time to prepare a meal for the adults.  There was a menu.  Orders to stay out of the kitchen.  Frantic running about, shouts of consternation about missing ingredients.  And, eventually, a lovely candlelit meal.   I’ve got a photo of the menu, which was adorable.

Earlier in the day, biking home from an event, I heard it before I saw it.  Every fifteen seconds or so a single, solitary firecracker would go off, somewhere behind the bushes in the park there, beside the main road. I assumed it was kids setting off a few firecrackers they had around.  Rather, there was an older man, with no shirt on swinging what looked like a large brick of fireworks at the end of a stick.  He was essentially dancing with the stick and the explosives, and somehow was controlling the cadence so that solitary explosions occurred intermittently.   As anyone who has lit a pack of firecrackers knows, they usually start a wild chain reaction.  It was almost as if he were cracking a whip as he spun. What was the meaning of this fireworks dervish twirl?

I have started Naomi Klein’s book “This Changes Everything.”  A friend has insisted I read her.  He was and she is, emphatic.  I’m reminded that everything I once read had this tone to it.   The world is binary, and you are either with us or against us.  She is convinced that global capitalism, will expedite the irrevocable destruction of the planet, it is probably already too late, but regardless, this is a call to action.  I’ll have to get further in.  If I accept her premise, that its essentially too late, then it isn’t clear to me that the shock the to system will engender an altruistic response, of strong, willful governments, shocked into something like “sustainable” trade.  Unfortunately we’ll probably have opportunistic governments, (and non government actors) taking advantage of the disruption to global norms.  Still, she is right to demand acknowledgement and demand some kind of accounting. 

I don’t know what got into me tonight.  I’m up late.  I’d usually be all crashed out by now.  New to-do’s keep popping up this evening, and I keep swatting them down.  My to-do list is actually getting near its end.  This is unnerving.   I’ll have to savor the minute when the last item is removed, before I fill it back up again.