I don’t like holidays. I despise holidays. When one comes around I turn down all invites tersely and make sure that everyone knows I have other, more important plans. I sequester myself in my house with enough food to survive until the wicked thing has passed.
This last holiday has been the worst in my history as a human being. July 4th is usually a holiday I can navigate without any disturbance. People usually pack up their cars and head to the mall to watch the fireworks so that I am left in the ghost town that is my neck of the woods. Only, as predicted by NPR, gas prices are such that everyone has been buying fireworks this season for their own holiday show. I suppose that my neighborhood bought the bulk of Atlanta’s fireworks because yesterday at dusk they set them all off right outside my front door. Besides the raucous screaming of fun by the pool that filtered into my solitude all day, the 30 minute fireworks show that evening was incredibly intrusive to my viewing of The Empire Strikes Back. I had to turn the TV up to deafening levels to barely cover the sound and close all the blinds that still let the color of the show seep in. It reminded me of warfare. How celebratory.
It’s not that I don’t like people. While I do think there is something unnatural about the human body that reminds me of monsters or aliens, I do like particular persons and always in small doses. No crowds. When I was a rebellious teenager, I loved to dive into the center of crowds and lose myself in the animal that is a mob of human beings. (Check out Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti, a great book about the morality a human being loses when caught up in the rapture of the crowd.) But one day I went to see a show and was in the center of a crowd that began to move and dance of its own accord. It felt like I was being rocked to sleep in a protective cocoon until I realized that I could lift my feet off the ground completely and be held in place by said crowd. I kicked and shoved my way out and won’t go near a crowd since. Only, the crowds that I can handle have gotten smaller and smaller until I can only entertain a small number of people before I begin to feel suffocated. I struggle with my individuality being muddled by the influence of others on a daily basis. I strive to rise above my baser impulses and ever evolve towards a civilized state of mind; watching grown adults hoot and holler over some lights in the sky seems to me the epitome of stupidity.
Tags: 4th of July, Atlanta, crowds, Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti, fireworks, gas prices, holidays, mob, NPR, suffocation, The Empire Strikes Back, warfare
