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Born on the 4th of July04 Jul 2001 Just came back from a 4th of July fireworks display and wanted to share some observations. It had all the usual hoop-la and paraphernalia: huge crowds, cheap food vendors, 3 stages of musical entertainment, an Uncle Sam on stilts, and it all culminated with a large fireworks display. Whoopee! Besides the pizza, the most interesting part of the whole experience was watching the people, and my reactions: Down town, around this event I observed within this one great seething mass of humanity: The dark tanned lady with leathery skin showing off her huge live python snake on the lawn; Young women in tight clothing, strutting and looking around, trying to look chic and fashionable, while avoiding meeting anyone's gaze. Young men walking around with a belligerent and vacant, crazed look. The older people, looking fragile and not in very good health. The handicapped, evoking mixed feelings of empathy & pity. The sometimes lonely, sometimes debauched looks of people trying to have fun. The rank odor of human feces permeating the humid heated air all around (were we down-wind of the porta-potties?). The three bands playing everything from Reggae, to Blues, to Crosby, Stills & Nash style: In one band, a gentleman was doing a great job playing a beautiful and expensive Martin acoustic guitar through a processor to make it sound like an electric. I was struck by the irony. In another band, the bass player's daughter was singing a blues number and trying to look hot and sultry. Instead she just looked hot and tired. Getting bitten by mosquitoes while sitting on the grass. This one old bag lady, camped out and asleep on a chair in our local Barnes & Noble bookstore with all her worldly possessions by her feet. Watching the evening fireworks display from the top level of the parking garage of City-Place in downtown West Palm Beach, FL, and seeing them light the sky around billionaire Donald Trump's high-rise emblazoned with the name: "Trump Tower". Sneaking out to beat the traffic while the majority of the crowd was still mesmerized by the dazzling display: "see the pretty colors go boom!" Having my car overheat on the drive back home. Mask upon mask upon fragile mask in a glittering juxtaposition of opposites. The faces, the eyes, the emotions, the sights, the smells, the sounds, the words, the songs, the thoughts - all so familiar. Am I just getting old? Yet the overriding feeling I had upon observing this masquerade was one of empathy, compassion, maybe even a tinge of sorrow. I had a sense of being together, of being one with my fellow man in the celebration of "Liberation" (which is what the 4th of July symbolizes), and yet at the same time I saw in the faces and conditions around me the appearances of "separation" and "bondage": The fear & joy. The wealth & poverty. The egotistical & the humble. The camaraderie & loneliness. The cute young bodies in tight clothes & the old bag ladies in loose clothes. The dazzling Tower of Power & the slums just across the tracks. The experience was in fact a meditation. To observe what's in front of me now, and not look away ... To then observe my own reactions, and not look away... A feeling of compassion then wells up in me, for "the other" (both individually and collectively) and for "myself". For I realize that we are all caught in the same trap of illusion, attachment, & suffering. In the midst of opposites one can find and sense Unity. But I think that first one must realize that they are what they see. We are not separate from either extreme of expression. I am the cute young girl trying to look chic. And I Cry. RL From "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens: ""Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask," said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit's robe, "but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment. "Oh, Man, look here! Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the Ghost. They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meager, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread. Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude. "Spirit, are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more. "They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end." "Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge. "Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?" The bell struck twelve. Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him." ______________ The Illusion is indeed strong, vast, separate and necessary. The Delusion seems equally strong and vast, not to mention piercingly painful. I remember many occasions of getting caught up in the experiences of those around me, often feeling that I recognize the sorrow/desperation more deeply than they do. My hope is that in the same Unity that can flail at me with all of the appearances of bondage, I am also affecting the whole of those around me with the centered Love and growing recognition that the refiner is at work bringing out the perfection of the One. God indeed marks the fall of the smallest sparrow. How could it be otherwise, when God is the sparrow? Troya ______________ > I am the cute young girl trying to look chic. I am the Nice post, RL. This was my experience, this evening, also. The boardwalk, here in Atlantic City, was shoulder-to-shoulder Humanity. I lost my individuality as I merged with the crowd, lost in observing, at ease, at one with the river of Life flowing along the boards. We all became children for an hour, or two. Noel ______________ Red Lion wrote: The 4th of July piece was very moving. > "Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge. Certainly our measure is taken as to how we treat our poor, unloved, homeless, imprisoned, hated, unwanted, and lepers. It is hard to look at the unwanted and not look away. It is hard to look at the contradiction between our beliefs and our reactions to those we hate. I was invited to a 4th of July barbeque with a bunch of rich people all of the same ethnic group (except myself). I had no cause to look away (except from the meat -- so I brought my own organic veggies and veggie burgers). It was more pleasant that way. The solution is obviously that we should all just be rich and harmonious and loved, that way we would not have to keep on looking away. The hard part is how this has to happen: to make people rich we have to give, to make people harmonious we have to be in harmony with those we hate, and to make people loved we have to love. M.Brenner
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