Rainy Day #39851

This morning started out as one of those mornings that contained those exact, precise, perfectly equilibrated elements which, set into motion by a meticulous unattributable impetus, creates quintessential melancholy.

Quintessential melancholy is not caused by anything. No particularly sad or depressing event immediately precedes it or is directly related to it. Instead, it materializes, it descends, when those heretofore piecemeal elements suddenly, inexplicably converge.

I finally arose, a little more cloudy-headed than usual after a restless night of dreams I couldn't remember. I overheard my host mother murmur "Il pleut" to the little boy she watches during the day. It's raining. I got my umbrella. Locked the door behind me as I stepped outside. As I rounded the corner, I realized I had forgotten my gloves. It wasn't raining in the true sense of raining, but misting so intensely than an umbrella was necessary. I held my umbrella with one cold red hand and put the other into my pocket. Wet, gray realities were my thoughts all the way to class.

Maybe a hot chocolate would help lift my rain-dampened spirits. The little coffee machine in the cafeteria where we always go to get 40 cent cups of coffee and hot chocolate during breaks would be something of a familiar friend, I thought. Wrong. It turned against me. It ate a whole euro without rendering the hot chocolate or returning the money. Ordinarily, I would have shrugged it off as time and chance. Today, I wanted to cry.

Later, I ran into the sexy Libyan during a break between classes. Whereas I usually feel flattered or amused while talking to him, this time I felt sad. Suddenly struck by a sense of futility, of impossibility.

Things did begin to look up. And the moment I realized I felt better was when I took a bite out of the croque-baguette I bought for lunch. The bread was toasty. The ham and cheese filling warm and creamy. I had a cream-filled pastry in another bag, and the street vendor added a tiny little cookie for good measure.

The sky was still gray, it was still cold, but it had stopped raining. And one day before I leave, it will be warmer, and the sun will be out.