On the fourth I was seeing everything as writing, or text coming across the pages of my eyes: the fireworks, yes, but also the planes landing over Prospect park, and the trangular planes of the dome in Dumbo. I’m working the day backwards from the firworks payoff to yesterday. We framed the fireworks with the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges. They’d put up a geodesic dome in Dumbo with fans and misters and music thumping and djs and bands… oh my. So we took the view with Major Tom and crew.
This Patton scale flag was liberated by Major Tom in his miscreant New Jersey youth. He saw it out on some distant island off the Jersey Shore, flying for some sort of Corporate Event. It rankled his lefty heart and he swam out and lowered it. Now he got it into his mind that he should fold it in its proper triangle and then never let it touch the water. That would desecrate it. He was betting that if the cops stopped him, they would admire his patriotism and let him off easy. So he swam the mile or so back to shore with the flag held aloft in one hand like Liberty’s torch. It never touched the water, but he also never saw a cop, so? It is a hell of a flag and now a Fourth of July tradition… along with beer that may or may not have inspired that distant flag caper.
Everything was spelled out, even Major Tom’s finger. “Stop,” said the signs and then the kites and planes fluttered as I read of far off Japan on Leaves of Grass which is now 150 years old. The only thing I forgot to do yesterday was to listen to Louis Armstrong, but Happy B. Day Pops, happy birthday to us all.
It seems like so long ago that I walked over these bridges and imagined a Buckminster Fuller dome over Manahttan to bounce off any encroaching airplanes. That little idea turned into Arc Along the Watchtower and now I was back to those stomping grounds to find a we small dome that rang and echoed with the booming base of beats and explosions. Little texts to read boom boom boom.
