Breaking the Silence by Sara Wright

 I believe that The Fourth of July is the most despicable cultural celebration Americans engage in. This year I met the weekend head on. On July 1^st I publicly posted the following words knowing that locally, at least, there would be fallout:

Before the colonizers took over this land from Indigenous Peoples no one considered being “independent” because the People knew there was no such thing… Like it or not we all belong to the earth and are dependent upon this planet for our survival.

 What we really celebrate on the 4^th of July is the Colonizers’ takeover of what was once a pristine continent ripe with lush forests, plants, wildlife, and peaceful people who had relationships with all their non-human relatives. These Native people also understood they belonged to the powers of each place they called ‘home’.

 We are supposed to celebrate the Colonists’ brutality, their unspeakably cruel and deadly dominance over the original inhabitants and their non- human relatives, and the Colonists futile attempt to split away from ‘the mother country’?

 We are supposed to honor the justification of Wars, Violence, Misogyny, Rape, Racism, and Genocide.?

‘Bombs bursting in Air?’

Not me.

When I went to the dump the garbage men insisted that I couldn’t deposit my cardboard box in the bin because it was ‘dirty’. What? My cardboard had sand on it! I ignored them. Absurdity.

As I said, Fallout.

It rained and rained.

Nature was nurturing the trees, wild creatures, and plants, not people with party plans. 

 And I was given the gift of a Firefly Visitation:

 I stood at the window around 10 PM, gazing down the path under a hazy waning moon, listening to water rushing over stones in a sparkling trout filled brook. I breathed into an emerald glow worm who was conversing – a cool light nestled in uncut wild grasses. Diminutive golden lights danced through the air, blinking, sparkling – precious jewels of light. Overhead, Thunders rumbled; more rain. Night fog cloaked me in wet cottony gauze. Spellbound, my feet were spiraling down, Earthing, beneath my cellar floor. I touched the chair involuntarily. Here at the window. Rooted to the Spirits of Place. Gratitude. Astonishment. Over and over. The Earth rose up around me, my Mother, Lover, Brother, Friend.

Belonging.

I was not alone.

I wept.

“The Forest is full of Light(s) but it is only in the Darkness that Light begins to Shine”.

Is that when the words floated through my awareness? Dimly, I thought I must not forget before the phrase vanished into the Light, the Night.

 Afterwards I mused in bed – It had been years since the Lightening Bugs of my childhood graced these forest edges with such a Magical Story. Beginning less than four weeks ago the blessed rains kept coming. The fireflies started to dance one by one, conversing with me through the bedroom window. Inviting  further conversation and offering unaccustomed joy. Every single night. Not a multitude like the thousands of fireflies that welcomed me to this land so long ago. But some.

 Every light was a gift.

Why the naturalist queried – why now?

 Drought. Our planet is heating up.

That, and of course, the fact that we have lost 40 percent of our beneficial insects, including a steep decline in our beloved bioluminescent bugs.

 Yet even now, Grace intervenes. The trees have enough water, the earth is soaking, the plants are seeding up, and fireflies have come to call.

Postscript:

 When I was a child, I loved the Fourth of July. Of course, neither my brother, nor I understood then what sinister implications lay behind this particular holiday. What I remember best is that the night began with the two us catching lightening bugs, putting them in jars with grasses and punctured lids so they could join the party.

My dad was an immigrant arriving from Italy when he was twelve years old. Perhaps being a ‘foreigner’ had something to do with his love for this celebration? What I do know is that he loved floral firework displays and every year after he lit the sparklers for his children we ran around the pre-revolutionary farm, waving them madly. Afterwards there were tiny firecrackers that popped and glow worms that once lit snaked around in spirals until they fizzled out. More sparklers. Now the whole family held them against the night sky. The finale was the sky show that lasted about half an hour. My father, always conscientious, kept a bucket of water in the middle of the field just in case sparks flew. First, my dad lit Roman candles that shot up to the sky and then fell rapidly with my dad running after them to make certain they were out. But it was the sky flowers I loved the most. When the floral display began fantastic rainbow colors lit up the night. I always remember feeling sad when the fireworks were over. Oddly, I don’t remember any noise at all except the whishing of the rockets and the tiny firecrackers that popped. The last thing we did was to release our fireflies back into a still sweetly scented field before going to bed.

I try to put this old-fashioned summer celebration together with the violence that is endemic to fourth of July as it is currently celebrated (at most human and non-human beings’ expense) and I can’t. What I see is that violence, bombs, and shrieking fireworks are lame excuses for the lens of patriarchal dominance to show its ugly distorted face again.

We are still at war – and nature is losing her ground, but only for now.

I had a vision a few years ago of a perfect earth, the size of a large marble that I could hold in my hand. It was still covered in plastic. Plastic? I removed the offensive covering and looked down at an ark – An ark? The whole earth was luminescent green. There were animals and plants and birds everywhere I looked, and I was overjoyed watching the animals bathing in the green. Only gradually, as if waking from a dream, did I realize there were no human beings anywhere.

“The Forest is full of Light(s) but it is only in the Darkness that Light begins to Shine”.