It's not often that I get to sit and enjoy this smell. I'm normally already in class by this point, or I'm in church, or I'm doing homework for the upcoming week.
But this morning, I'm in my house with the doors and windows open, reading my Bible (for class, but we'll ignore that fact for right now), and listening to the music of nature. The birds have been out full force the last few days, and quite regularly I see cardinals that make me smile on my route around town. The sun is shining. There is a little breeze. This is all quite fantastic.
It is March. In America.
This feels like February in my old home. This could easily be a January or February morning sitting on the grass in front of my house playing scrabble with the neighbors when another neighbor comes by on a walk with her dogs. I hear different bird songs now. And none of them are the incessant rapping of a bird on my window. I kind of miss that bird.
More cars go by here than ever did at my old house. But if I pretend, the train whistle could be mistaken for honking horns on the street. I like to think that sometimes. If I changed the setting just a little, I might be able to forget all together that I moved back to this country.
But slowly my eyes open and I realize that power is on, my house is quite a bit larger, and it has carpet. I look around and things are a bit (ha!) more modern. I hear no honking of car horns, or tourists around town. Tourists do not come to this town. And sometimes, that just makes it a little depressing.
Anything exciting going on today? Not particularly. I will not hear noise from the street. I will not feel the earth shake when a boomer goes off. I will not schedule activities around power outages, or have a neighbor run over screaming "APPLES WERE CHEAP TODAY!" I will not light a fire this evening, nor will I venture out to walk around a quaint town that always has someone to stop in and talk to.
I make my own little town wherever I go, instead. I don't have shop owners to stop in and talk to (because who in their right mind owns a shop and then sits in it, apparently), but I have other people to bother. The distance between us is greater, but it's worth the effort. There is something lost in it, I think, in getting in and out of the car. Cars make everything feel so disconnected.
And that's interesting, because they are connecting bigger geographical areas.
But how much community is lost because we are no longer around home when we are doing our business? What does it say that it is cheaper for me to buy gas in a neighboring city so I will go there to get it rather than visit my neighbor? What does it say that some people will drive an hour to work with strangers because it pays better, at the loss of having friends close-by in times of need?
Just interesting thoughts as I sit here this morning, with my eyes wishing they were closed, remembering a simpler life in a country on the other side of the world.
But this morning, I'm in my house with the doors and windows open, reading my Bible (for class, but we'll ignore that fact for right now), and listening to the music of nature. The birds have been out full force the last few days, and quite regularly I see cardinals that make me smile on my route around town. The sun is shining. There is a little breeze. This is all quite fantastic.
It is March. In America.
This feels like February in my old home. This could easily be a January or February morning sitting on the grass in front of my house playing scrabble with the neighbors when another neighbor comes by on a walk with her dogs. I hear different bird songs now. And none of them are the incessant rapping of a bird on my window. I kind of miss that bird.
More cars go by here than ever did at my old house. But if I pretend, the train whistle could be mistaken for honking horns on the street. I like to think that sometimes. If I changed the setting just a little, I might be able to forget all together that I moved back to this country.
But slowly my eyes open and I realize that power is on, my house is quite a bit larger, and it has carpet. I look around and things are a bit (ha!) more modern. I hear no honking of car horns, or tourists around town. Tourists do not come to this town. And sometimes, that just makes it a little depressing.
Anything exciting going on today? Not particularly. I will not hear noise from the street. I will not feel the earth shake when a boomer goes off. I will not schedule activities around power outages, or have a neighbor run over screaming "APPLES WERE CHEAP TODAY!" I will not light a fire this evening, nor will I venture out to walk around a quaint town that always has someone to stop in and talk to.
I make my own little town wherever I go, instead. I don't have shop owners to stop in and talk to (because who in their right mind owns a shop and then sits in it, apparently), but I have other people to bother. The distance between us is greater, but it's worth the effort. There is something lost in it, I think, in getting in and out of the car. Cars make everything feel so disconnected.
And that's interesting, because they are connecting bigger geographical areas.
But how much community is lost because we are no longer around home when we are doing our business? What does it say that it is cheaper for me to buy gas in a neighboring city so I will go there to get it rather than visit my neighbor? What does it say that some people will drive an hour to work with strangers because it pays better, at the loss of having friends close-by in times of need?
Just interesting thoughts as I sit here this morning, with my eyes wishing they were closed, remembering a simpler life in a country on the other side of the world.
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