July 4, 2020I weaved in and out of the dotted divider line on a dark and narrow bike trail observing with squinting eyes the charged children running to and fro after the fun and the fireworks. A scaling violin concerto began through my headphones adding pleasure to the sidewinding and the peddling. Rough, knobby and twisted lumpy limbs on apathetic trees. Their shadows bobbing back and forth like washed-up prize fighters as I blurred by. Small rabbits hopped across the way dodging their demise. The fireworks erupted with stuttering roars across the night sky illuminating the multitudes that walked, stood, or sat on lawn chairs, riddling the passage with activity. They inched along and cared not that a quiet menace was moving fast enough to knock a tooth out. Mostly all drones on their phones. The small children, I liked the best- they were creatures enamored with the moment. The bunnies, a close second.
“Taxation without representation” might as well be rap lyrics and America’s Thirteen Colonies could have been a gang some Chicano jailbird started as a junior high student. Parliament- cigarette brand, right? Wrong. This day, a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. On July fourth in 1776, Continental Congress declared that the thirteen American colonies deemed themselves a new nation, The United States of America. Hence, no longer part the British Empire. Of course, who am I to say anything to these people, I thought. I’m just like you tonight. Out here, doing one of the things I like doing best: riding my bicycle at night while a sonata plays softly under an exploding moon.
On the way back home, I breezed through countless conversations on the path; I rode on the left.
“Did you see that one over there, mom?”
“Give me your hand, Rachel, I don’t want you to get lost. Mommy’s gotta take another drink of her rummy coke.”
“Whoa, man. Think what that would do to all the frogs in the gutter near your house.”
“You think anybody can see us out here? I brought two condoms like you told me to. Don’t forget to tell your mom you are spending the night at Mike’s house.”
“No, you’re doing it wrong. Inhale and fucking hold it! Hold it, you pussy. Jesus, give me that thing.”
“We’ll call the doctor tomorrow, Dear. For now let’s just enjoy this night with your son and his wife . They drove all this way. Look at those red, white and blues in the sky. Will you just look at that. Oh, my word.”
“Take a picture of me. C’mon, hurry up. Do it while the fireworks are going off behind me, bitch. Use the flash, though. I can’t even see where the hell I’m going out here, you guys.”
…
Freedom from the control, influence, support, and aid from others. What a great thing to celebrate. And yet, I have to pay the rent in the morning or I won’t have a place of my own in which to live. I need soap companies to keep making soap, the cute blonde girl to keep washing my laundry, the brunette to clean bathroom, my clients to honor our appointments, the police officer to simply write me a ticket without taking the baton to my bones, E.T. to phone home, Phil Collins to wear bicycle gloves during his drum solos, the news to not tell the entire truth, great writers to be unhinged, beautiful women to be attracted to rich men, couples to stare at cell phone screens on date night, politicians to promote pretty platitudes with red herring interludes,…
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