The Collapse CXXXVI: Independence Day +1

04 July 20XX+1

My Dear Lucilius:

Independence Day is upon us.

You might remember the last Independence Day I wrote of last year: it was almost a community event of sorts (likely I saw Pompeia Paulina there, although I do not remember her), with song and a potluck. Quite the social event, for our very small town.

A great deal has happened between that July 4th and this one.

There was no formal notice of any gathering; the only sign that something was up was some raising the U.S. Flag and Gasden Flags on the same pole outside of the post office that has become our community center. People started to drift in as the day went on, bringing chairs and water.

Unlike last year, there was no potluck or band. And unlike last year, every one was heavily armed.

I would likely not have gone but for Pompeia Paulina’s insistence that I go. I have seen more than I desire of groups of people of late and do not hold the best memories of them. But she insisted, noting that if I did not get out, likely Young Xerxes would not come.

As you can imagine, I went.

People moved back and forth in the small groups, greeting one another with nods and handshakes but with muted conversations. It is as if a pall had fallen over the entire group of us, a shroud borne of the world we now live in and especially the recent challenges we had faced.

I passed a nodding greeting to two or three that I recognized as those that had also gone “Over The Mountain”. Young Xerxes was more himself than he had been of late, almost gregarious in his greetings of people he knew – and, it seemed, he knew a lot of people (which I had always suspected).

Looking at the faces in the crowd, the contrast between last year and this was stark. There were not thin and drawn faces of privation such as I had seen in pictures of civil wars and mass starvation. What I did see were the faces of people that had already started to manage their way of life as if things were going to continue to get worse, not better. People who realized – even myself, recently – that what was being faced was not something that was either going to resolve itself or get better. How the world was, we really did not know. But what our world looked like, we knew all too well.

It was at that moment that someone tremulously started sting The Star Spangled Banner.

It was reedy and a bit thin, but the singer at least had the courage of their convictions to belt out the first line. There was a moment of pause then two or three voices joined in, the entire chorus becoming stronger as the song continued on. By the time the bombs were bursting in mid air, we were all singing at the top of our lungs.

As we finished out the song with a round of applause, it was if some dam had broken or the shroud had been lifted. People began speaking in louder tones, almost normally. Some folks scuttled off and soon enough, another three piece band was performing songs which were as peppy as they were foreign to me, with words that I could only half understand as I whirled Pompeia Paulina through the crowd.

The band must have played for two or three hours until they and the crowd were exhausted. Like it or not, even on Independence Day, there was still work to be done.

It struck me that evening – and I said as much to Pompeia Paulina – that in some ways, this was really a sort of First Independence Day for us. Certainly, we all shared some things, as the Star Spangled Banner rendition demonstrated. And yet, this was the first time we celebrated a day that we were truly Independent – mostly not of our own choosing of course, and with definite hardship and uncertainty.

If this is Independence, Luculius – being responsible not just in some ways but in all ways for one’s self, facing the future with a certain fear and yet a certain sense that one’s fate is truly for one’s making – one can understand how such a concept could become the stuff of legends.

How remarkable – and I confess, exciting – that even at my age, there is still something to look forward to.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca