An unassuming office building on the outskirts of Buckhead in Atlanta was my daytime home for many years. Every morning I would drive into the city and make my way to a little glass box that I sat in for 9 hours staring at computer screens. I would eat a lunch that usually consisted of a hardboiled egg and a can of beans. I would not eat this because I enjoy eggs and beans but because something about sitting down to this obscure meal in a public breakroom only furthered the often painful monotony that is office work. Also, I enjoy the reaction from disturbed onlookers.
Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing inherently terrible about working in an office. Sometimes it can be fun, especially when you are a connoisseur of awkward events as I am. But for the most part, every day is about the same as the one before, and the one that follows.
After a while, sometimes months, sometimes years if you sit quietly and observe you start to notice things and become aware of people’s routines. It’s 9:03 am, and there goes Fred to the bathroom. It’s Friday at 2:32 pm, time for Judy to start clipping her nails. It’s the last day of the month, here goes Tom complaining about his recurring late fee on his credit card.
One late morning, 11:27 am, April 30, 2014, to be exact, I came to discover a naturally recurring phenomenon. As I sat contemplating if I should crack open my hard-boiled egg to annoy one of my colleagues I started sweating profusely. It was not hot in the office. As I wiped my forehead with the sleeve of my shirt I started to squint. It became so bright in front of me I could not see my computer screen. I turned around to see what it was and was instantly blinded. I stood up to get a better look at what was shining through the window but the light was gone.
I wrote the time of the occurrence and the date down on a piece of paper and taped it to the wall of my cubicle and then promptly forgot about the whole thing. A year went by, and a week before April 30th, I found myself staring at that piece of paper. I spent an entire day not working, trying to figure out what this date meant. On May 1st, again, contemplating whether to crack open an egg, I felt a familiar warmth and instantly remembered. I turned around and I realized that the sun was bouncing off the reflection of a skyscraper in Lenox Square and through whatever genius or fluke of engineering, was concentrating a beam of light directly onto my cubicle.
For the next couple of years, around the end of April, I had my own little holiday. I kind of thought of it in the same way that I imagine the pagan worshippers at Stonehenge did when the light would come through one of the slits in the pillars to mark the solstice or whatever excuse they had to dance around with antlers. It was something to look forward to in an otherwise lackluster circumstance.
I have since moved on from that glass box to another one. I probably observed this phenomenon five times in all. I believe there will always be a certain mystery as to what Stonehenge’s purpose is or was. Who knows if one day the Sun and Moon will align with those pillars at the same time a constellation does and a spaceship comes shooting out of the ground. Who knows. All I know is I would be lying if I didn’t sometimes think what would happen if the Lenox Square Stonehenge light hit on a Friday that also happened to be the last day of the month at the same time I was cracking an egg, Judy started clipping her nails, and Tom was complaining about his constant late fees. Probably something more profound than eating beans for lunch just to get a reaction.