Well I nearly forgot that today is Independence Day in the US. It’s been raining cats and dogs the past three days, and Mondays are just so crappy that it was pretty easy to forget. This year was particularly laden with things not red, white and blue related, but then again my body is in Japan and my heart has floated off somewhere unknowable as well.
When I was a child July 4th meant sailing and fireworks on the Cape, Grandma asking innumerable times whether I’d like some fruit, seeing my cousins and feeling happy. The simplicity of childhood is an addicting attraction – we have no responsibilities, we know no injustice or prejudice, we know no heartbreak. Like many things in life, we only appreciate it when it’s gone. When I was in high school July 4th meant lighting fire crackers and bottle rockets and driving out to Walden pond after midnight for skinny dipping. It was the end of school and the freedom of summer had begun. When I came home from Japan as a student I watched the NYC fireworks display with my family from the 29th floor of the Empire State Building – truly a bizarre transition after three months in the maze of Tokyo.
As I’ve gotten older July 4 has become a bit more serious. We take time on this day to reflect on the history of the United States and it’s vastly varying history, from prosecuted Europeans just trying to escape tyranny, to the conquering and mass murder of the native Americans, to the throwing off of colonial shackles in 1776 and unification after the Civil War. We look at this history and realize how young the US still is, how many freedoms have only been achieved within the last 50 years, even ten years. And hopefully, we realize that we are still in fits and starts, we are still many years away from actual achievement, and that the rest of the world needs our help as a leader and a model, which we are still far from being. Today I read articles about the “Democratic Republic of Congo” and its many, many woes, the G-8 meetings and Bush’s War of the Worlds, the border problems in Southern California and the US epidemic of obesity. It’s not a pretty picture, any of it. So don’t flip a burger without realizing what you’re eating, don’t shoot off any roman candles without remembering that people are dying in war every second, don’t slug that Cuervo without knowing that injustices are being done in your name and with your money and without your consent. Think about where we are now, two-hundred and twenty-nine years later, and if things are really worth celebrating. I propose a moment of silence instead.
In other news, I am working on editing probably my final series of photographs from this year. After much sweat, blood, headaches and lack of sleep I was able to produce 10 matted black and white prints for a display of JET art in Kobe. While the show turned out to be more of a glorified “show and tell” than any kind of serious exhibit, I was happy that I got something artistically related done. Three people have been visiting from the US and have promptly gotten themselves in lots of trouble – one got arrested on a shoplifting charge (hair gel from a convenience store) and will probably spend the rest of his life in a Japanese jail (“it is very bad thing he did”) and the other two lost their rented bicycles and have been living on ramen for two weeks.
I still do not know what the next six months hold but some things have become clearer of late. I’ll be returning to the US on August 14th, after a week or so of traveling somewhere- right now it’s looking like Bali. Nothing like a sunny solo adventure to clear the cobwebs of your soul. If you want any amazing or cute Japanese things, now would be the time to start asking.
