Vegas: Summertime Fireworks

 What could possibly be a more American way to celebrate our independence and the creation of our nation-state than to get irresponsibly intoxicated and set off explosives in the street? Often there's a ceremonial barbeque involved as well, where slabs of pork, beef or tubular meat-forms are seared and slathered for consumption, though this particular Fourth's festivities were devoid of such sustenance and socializing around carcasses. It was a rather impromptu thing, at least from my perspective, as I kind of crashed the housemate's party while Antho was at work. While there's no shortage of places from whence you can purchase boom-booms in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and configurations, we hadn't gone out and done so due to limited funds. These things, they happen. I wasn't particularly upset about this lack of combustive arsenal, partly due to the fact I'm not exactly 100% comfortable with the combination of booze and explosives in residential areas. I mean, Japan does fireworks, and they do them big and beautiful, so it's not exactly like celebrating with fire flowers is an entirely new phenomenon...  but those shows were generally situated around rivers or water, even in the case of Tokyo Disney's firework shows...

Anyway, when I was able to get over my trepidation at having things exploding several feet away from my vehicle (full of combustible gasoline and such), I was able to capture some pretty fun photos of the fire-flowers in blossom. I know, they're technically called fireworks in English, but I find the Japanese term of "hanabi", or fire-flowers, far more poetic and in-tune with the ephemeral beauty of the bursts. As brilliant and stunning as they are, they only light up the sky for these brief blasts of intense beauty. I'm not familiar with the chemistry involved behind achieving the different colors, or the different shapes, though I know the shape of the tubes themselves can provide some degree of variation in the bursts. That's one of the cool things about life, though, I suppose... you don't have to completely understand the mechanics behind something to appreciate it's beauty. Sometime's it's best to just stop and take it in for what it is before it's gone.

Thanks for drinking in the nostalgia with me!

Until next time~

💘

XOXO,

NAU