# Chapter 9: Birthday Fireworks The sun began to set and a few of Chris's friends started saying their goodbyes. My grandmother and I were walking back toward the party on the porch. "Has anyone heard from Anthony?" Grandma asked aloud. "Nah, this is bullshit. I don't know where he could be," Chris responded, shaking his head side to side as his cheeks reddened from frustration and wine. Emily rested her head on Brian's shoulder while he nursed a beer. Suddenly a steady gleam of light shined toward the porch and you could hear the sound of wheels crushing the gravel. We all immediately knew Anthony was finally arriving. The white van turned awkwardly into the parking lot beside the porch and came to a stop. The headlights turned off and we all waited for Anthony to emerge with the cake. --- ## Anthony Arrives Anthony popped out the driver's side and opened the side door. A fifteen-year-old boy popped out, then another, and another. Anthony's brother, Tim, was last to come out. They opened the back door and started unloading boxes of fireworks. "Hey Ant, you got the cake?" Chris shouted, unable to see the big colorful boxes. "Yeah, I got it." Anthony took a wide brown box from the back of the van and hustled toward the porch with it. He smiled brightly, looking around at all of us. "How you guys doing? What's up Brian, Grandma, Mikey." He came around giving us all hugs with his usual charm, despite the fact we were all slightly disgruntled having to wait so long for the birthday boy. Chris opened the box and found a mash of cake and frosting with crumbled napkins inside. "What the fuck happened to the cake?" he shouted. "Oh, Tim and his friends started to eat it. They didn't have any forks so they just used their hands." Anthony himself had smudges of blue on his fingertips. "Come on!" Chris's voice grew even louder. "You have got to be kidding me. This cake was $120! You fucking idiots!" Anthony started to giggle, finding the whole situation absurd. The rest of us sat in stunned silence. --- ## The Fireworks Begin *Crack! Boom!* Sparkles sprouted from the night sky and a glitter of light rained down. Then another streak whistled into the sky. *Crack! Bam!* The firework exploded in mid-air, illuminating the night sky. For a moment, everyone was captivated by the unexpected bursts of rainbows. Cat meows and dog barks followed from a distance. The chickens and hens scurried about within their fences, and Chris's dog, Blue, who was on the porch with us, barked viciously toward the empty sky, startling my grandmother. "Oh Chris, Chris, get Blue—he's going crazy!" She shrieked, waving her arms in the air. The whole scene turned into mad chaos, while I stood transfixed in the corner of the porch watching Anthony laugh as he tried to calm our grandmother down. "Easy, Grandma." He patted her on the back. "They better stop lighting those fireworks or all the animals are going to get anxious. It's not good for the horses. The horses are going to get scared and restless. Chris, you better tell them to stop it," Grandma pleaded. --- ## The Offer "Ant, what's going on?" I asked him. "Just having a little celebration, you know. Tim wanted to get some fireworks for my birthday. I wasn't going to say no." I could smell vapors of alcohol on his mouth. "Come on Mike, have a drink with me. Relax, let's have a little fun. Don't you like to have fun?" he asked, perplexed by my hesitancy. "No thanks, I'm good," I told him. > [!reflection] On Chaos and Reality > Chaos was familiar in my family. I mean, chaos is a familiar facet of life, isn't it? Each moment never follows a perfect plan, winding up all neat like a pretty picture of fruit sitting on the kitchen table. Life, and the people in it, are spontaneous swerving phenomenas that go about crushing our pretty expectations. > > It's nice to imagine a world that follows the kind of blueprint we have etched out in our minds. It would be splendid if all persons adhered to our unique standard for society. It would be even more wonderful if gratitude and respect were a commonplace attitude amongst the masses. However, utopia isn't the nature of reality, but rather an idealistic pursuit. Reality runs along a precipice of sanity and madness. The experiment of civilization has warped and wounded many individuals as our primitive nature clashes with our technological virtues. It is the nature of the universe to create conflict. It is through the strife and joys of human relationships that we grow wise in both our heart and our mind. --- ## My New Sobriety Since I started meditating, I hadn't had a drink. Intoxication just seemed like a way of distracting myself from life in the present moment. I couldn't vividly feel the workings of the universe conspiring all around me with blurred vision and disoriented consciousness. At the time Anthony asked me to have a drink, I was feeling very 'turned on' to spiritual forces. For the first time in my life, I felt awake to some higher existence that I was deathly curious of exploring further. > [!important] A Different Path > I wasn't going to drink till a stupor like the countless other nights of my past, where my purpose was to see how reckless I could get because it made me feel free from my ordinary, mundane consciousness. It was an unexpected pleasure to deny Anthony's invitation. He looked at me with a strange look of confusion on his face. I wasn't fitting into his perception of who I was. Not wanting to drink with him was like a glitch in his system of reality. "You sure. Don't you like having fun?" He asked me again. "I'm having fun, Ant. I feel great." I looked up toward the open night sky and took a big breath into my lungs and then exhaled vehemently. A smile stretched across my face. Anthony looked at me. "Alright, I dig it, do you. But if you decide you want one, let me know." He turned and walked off the porch to join Tim and his friends lighting fireworks. --- ## The Exodus My grandparents fled to their car to begin their drive home. The rest of Chris's friends left too, and Brian, Emily, and myself sat by the pool in a relaxed state of mind—taking in the wild energy of that summer night. One horse started galloping in a circle inside the perimeter of the fence while another firework whistled into the air and burst into a waterfall of American red, white, and blue. Simultaneously, little firecrackers were shooting off on the floor, making a riot of noise. Chris had given up and gone into the house with his girlfriend Jaime. Anthony and his small gang had complete rule over the farm. It was hard to tell how long the fever would last. "I think you and Anthony are going to get a lot out of that meditation retreat," Emily said with a chuckle. I smirked back at her. --- ## Detached Observation The three of us sat in silence and awe as the tumult of the farm danced around us. We felt beyond it all, and in that detached way we appreciated every nuance of the unbridled madness of the universe. > [!insight] Confusion and Surrender > In the midst of chaos, on the brink of ten days of silence, I grew even more confused about my relationship with Anthony. The future stared at me without any form to make sense of it, yet its penetrating gaze would not look away. > > All I could do was surrender to the mystery of what was to come. --- *Next: [[Ch 10 - First Night in Berkeley]]