Rainy Days and Fridays

It's raining again. Oh no, it's raining again. Not that I'm unhappy about it. I know I am sturdily in the minority in this one, but damn, I love this weather. This June is probably going to go down as the rainiest on record, but for me it's been a delicious reprieve from the typical sun and heat. As a committed summer-hater, I think back with despair and disdain on the insufferable mornings spent sweating on the platform at Larchmont, already overheated at 8:30 in the morning. Or forced jaunts out to the beach, where my skin was subjected to lobster-ification no matter how high the SPF number on the sunscreen bottle. Yeah, I'm just not a summer person. Give me a walk in the rain, with the smell of wet grass rising and fat saturated blossoms bowed with raindrops, a hike through the green-grey mist of Manor Park where the chocolate-colored waves churn darkly toward the shoreline, and the Whitestone bridge disappears like the shadow of a cat into the fog, and I'm as happy as a yak. In spite of my Italianate/Sephardi blood, in spite of my love for sun-ripened summer fruit and the heavy coconut aroma of suntan oil, I find the summer sun itself way more destructive than delicious. This is definitely where my melancholy Scottish neshama comes out to play.

So it's five o'clock, three hours from the very first lay-led Shabbat services of the season, and I'm in the office alone (everyone else is either off or done for the day) digging on this new tune from the Plain White T's (1, 2, 3, 4), listening to the thunder and considering Michael Jackson's legacy. On Facebook today, I've seen everything from crude humor (which I won't repeat) to out and out mourning for the alleged King of Pop. I don't know how I feel about it. I remember getting Thriller (my own copy, as my sister's was sacrosanct) even though I think Off the Wall is a way better album, and at the time thinking really badly of Paul McCartney for recording Say Say Say and that eternal affront to the Beatles' legacy, The Girl is Mine. Love Me Do was one thing, but he should have known better. (Oooh, did I just make a pun?) I can see where the Jackson 5 made some damn good pop, but MJ's later behavior - especially silencing alleged molestation victims with huge amounts of cash - does put that legacy into a different league.

There is also something just so undignified about a WORLDWIDE, all caps, front page slide presentation, the failure to realize that this is life and death, kids, and instead let's quote the lawyers and doctors and police officers, all jockeying for the sound bites amidst this insanely personal outpouring of grief for a person that no one knew in person, like when Princess Diana died and everyone went a little batshit. When John Lennon was murdered, when George Harrison died two months after the towers fell, I understood it, maybe because I love the Beatles so intensely and I took their deaths to heart in a way that I'm not doing today. I was ten when Lennon died, and I remember feeling like a zombie, absolutely shocked and horrified at what occurred that December night. But there was something so fragile and vulnerable and yet bold and invincible as the silence of the vigil that was held for him in Central Park that Sunday. Twenty nine years later I'm not sure we know how to grieve as a human community anymore, thanks to the twenty four hour news cycle and the intense need for attention and spotlight so many people seem to have. Which is ironic, as Jackson's music at its peak really did touch so many people, much as the Beatles did at theirs. But I remember the communal aspect of mourning for Lennon, and that is what struck me as being the most absent factor in the mourning for Michael Jackson. Hard to say how each man's individual legacy (or manner of death) accounts for that difference.

So, back to the rain. There's some pretty nasty thunder going on right now, which I can hear even in my windowless office. Even with the celebrity madness this week it's been a good one; on Monday we held the last of my company's events for the spring, at which I got to hang out with one of my best friends. On Thursday I had the chance to reconnect with an old friend from grad school, and talk literary theory (which I hadn't had the opportunity to do in years). This morning I woke up with the first RA flare I've had in months, but even that seems to be a bit milder than usual - and I'm knocking wood that it doesn't worsen. I even made a Rain Songs mix CD to celebrate this amazing weather, which my mom says makes me even weirder than she suspected. I can't help it. First, there are just so many good rain songs (Here Comes the Rain Again, Kentucky Rain, Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, The Rain King - the list goes on). And second, it's an abundance, a gift from the heavens (to be fair, I don't call the tsunami or Katrina a gift - just to clarify). But this rain is wonderful, refreshing and delicious and we'd be whining if we were in a drought. So what if we had a couple of extra weeks of mashiv ha-ruach u'morid hagashem - and maybe a little more morid hatal than we felt like getting. I, for one, am carrying an umbrella, and counting my blessings.