Saturday, January 21, 2012

The sound of New Ulm

Tonight I sat outside for half and hour and listened to New Ulm.
First a special thank you to my brother in law Bob and my parents because without them buying me warm stuff for Christmas I wouldn't have sat outside that long.  It was definitely cold and windy.
Tonight, for some reason, I decided I just wanted to sit and listen to the world go by for a bit.  I tossed on all my winter gear and sat out on my front step and just listened.  It was just something I decided I wanted to do.
First, there is a lot of noise out there.  I don't mean the earth, I mean city noise.  I heard trains and cars and I heard them a lot.
But then for just a few minutes I was able to sit back and really hear the wind and the snow.
It was really nice.
We would get big gusts and little gusts and you could hear the snow as it fell from the trees and onto the sidewalk and onto me.
I didn't hear anything special and I didn't come away with some earth shattering euphoric moment but at the same time it was really nice to just sit and let the world come to me for a bit.
I think that sometimes I am so busy or I make myself so busy that I don't sit and really just listen enough.
I always seem to do something to entertain myself but I don't always find it entertaining.  It is like I am out there trying to make life come to me or value in life come to me even when I do things like play video games or read books or watch tv.
But tonight it was different.  I don't know how to describe it in words; perhaps it that is because it can't be described in words.
It was nice to just sit back and listen for a while though and know that the world is going on around you and you don't have to be moving or making noise yourself.  You can sit and listen to the world make noise around you and both be a part of it and an observer of it at the same time.
I will have to do that more often.