This morning I trudge to the office in a drizzly cool rain, luxuriating in the knowledge that the only thing standing between me and a four-day weekend is 8 hours of technical documentation publishing. Uncommon weekday morning adrenalin surges through my body as Jane’s Addiction “Three Days” buzzs through my earphones. (I have made a concerted effort to acclimate my ears to new music, but nothing gets me going like the classics.)
I don’t mind intermittent foul weather. A gray sky can comfort the same as a blue one. Rain on my face can sooth the same as sunshine. If I minded the drizzle, the grayness, the cool wind at the height of springtime, then I’d have long lost my resolve to live in Boston and fled to the southern West Coast. Yes, I don’t mind going through life under an umbrella. But sometimes the gusty wind forces a choice: Should I struggle to maintain my umbrella’s protection? Or should I walk unencumbered, exposed to ferally flung pelts of rain? I bought my current umbrella at CVS under rain duress one day several years ago. Its brand name is “Raines.” This morning, I keep Raines folded.
I arrive at my office building with trickles of water seeping from my hairline. I savor the warmth of the empty lobby as I wait for the elevator. On my iPod Shuffle, “Three Days” careens to its climax: Perry Farrell sings “All now with wings” for the last time, and then, one of the greatest minutes of Rock and Roll ever, with the crescendo of frenzied guitar riffs, the bass and drums crude and resolute, and Perry screaming “Go! Rock! Get set, gohhhh” as the tension that has been building in the 10-minute epic explodes into sublime noise—
The elevator opens, and I’m mutually gaping at eight middle-aged men in casual button-down shirts of varying shades of blue and tan, who must have gotten on the ground floor because the arrow is pointing up, who it occurs to me are in the office for customer training. They forge a small space for me near the doors. I grasp for my tiny iPod deep in the crevice of my pocket, to turn it off, to stop the insane volume that I know is audible to this group of men, and finally my thumb presses the iPod’s round button and “Three Days” is silenced as I step onto the elevator and jab at my floor’s button. “Good morning,” I say cheerfully, and several “Good mornings” lurk in the elevator as the elevator doors close.
