Rainy Days in Berkeley
Pit, pat. Pit, pat. Splish, splosh. Pit, pat.
Steps just a touch heavier than usual, the tiniest bit more splash than a feeble California drizzle should entail. Perhaps a lack of sleep from the night before. Not surprised; type A personalities, always hard at work, always trying to hide it, but it’s the little things that give it away. Or is it…ah yes, the subtle weight of disappointment, that extra bit of satisfaction you get when you sink into the puddle hard — in some sick, twisted way, wanting nothing more than to fuck shit up, wrecking your small share of havoc on the earth’s order. You see, it’s the little pains that hurt the most, and it’s the little outbursts that will get you through the day.
The Campanile carillon rings dispassionately with the cold tones of a nameless Baroque fugue. As you walk deeper north, the Department of English robs the tower from your sight, so that the music of the bells reaches your ears only by reflection from the surrounding halls. And so on one hand the sounds of millennia past echo like the stately passage of Time; and in counterpoint the raindrops pitter-patter like the inconsequential noise of our day-to-day woes and quibbles.
“I will never forget those Rainy Days in Berkeley,” his voice echoes. But it’s not clear if your high school teacher is actually talking about the understated beauty of a lonely gray campus, or just a cheap way to help remember a calculus formula. The ‘D’ certainly stands for ‘derivative’, but beyond that, nothing can be recalled.
Plop.
When it hits your cheek, there’s something sinister about the way it feels. Not a slap in the face, but a little flick. You don’t want to see how raindrops are made; it’s worse than Chicken McNuggets. They displace the water off to the sides of the plastic mold for a second to make way for the filling. Then they cut up life’s troubles into minuscule pieces and one by one, infuse each into a droplet.
Ultimately the way to go about it is to look down and arch your umbrella a few degrees ahead. It is quite clear that this helps, but you have never taken the time to draw vectors on a whiteboard and work out the proof. Walk past a hundred pairs of legs with umbrellas for heads…but sometimes you’re curious, you know? A peek can’t do any harm. Aha! Someone else did too. You see in her eyes the same curiosity as your own, but also a dash of fear, and just like that, they turn right back to the ground. And isn’t that all life is, but a parade of umbrellas wading through the torrent, so tough to see ahead but when you try all you get is fear and rejection and a little flick on the cheek.
