Bastille Day Fireworks

We got a late start from our friends, and ended up having to watch the fireworks from a ridge in the 16th. It ended up being a rather unique experience, as the show at turns illuminated the avenues and darkened the roofline...

An interesting irony just occurred to me regarding the use of pyrotechnics. For the Chinese New Year, fireworks are believed variously to wake dragons for better crops, and to scare away malevolent spirits. The fireworks are used as tools themselves, as their noise and light directly meet immediate ends. In the west, however, the are enjoyed - as I'm sure they are in the East - on their face as fun, exciting distractions, but the second remove is not to the spiritual realm, but to the realm of political symbolism. In both France and the US, we fireworks celebrate revolutionary events while gesturing towards their violence. Each time I felt the dull thud of the artilleries, watched spark showers backlight the skyline, or tracked the shadows across facades as withering flares descended, it awakened a false memory of fear - bred by books and films - of the many times Paris, and other capitals, has quaked under neither the righteousness nor terror of its people, but beneath guns beyond the walls.
If assault with a firearm is one of the most cowardly personal affronts, surely bombardment is an act of cowardice between peoples, trumped only by siege.