So there is an old saying that goes "it was quiet enough you could hear a pin drop." I've always thought it was one of those sayings old people from a different generation than my GenX mind would say, but I think I get it. Tonight, for the first time in the 13 months I've been in California, I think I heard a pin drop. Eery silence. I had to go out to throw the trash (an art that has lost it's excitement for me. Oh, do I miss the days of throwing it in the garage back home..anyway..) and as I was walking down the stairs from our condo (we live on the second floor) I noticed it. Nothing. No rushing of the little pond right by the end of the stairs. No obnoxiously loud tvs coming from any of our neighbors. No downstairs neighbors outside smoking, clinking of their Bud Lights hitting their deck table. Not even the California sounds I have grown used to (a siren off in the distance or a helicopter making its rounds spotlight trying to shake out a criminal). Nothing.
It brought my head back to so many nights in my front porch, outside my car on Canal back home in Windsor. I miss the eery quiet of a winter/early spring night. Tonight, I savored it as I walked back up the stairs, because that brief 5 minute trash jaunt made me feel home.
COINCIDENTLY, as I finished typing this thought, a helicopter flew overhead. Silence is golden and short-lived I guess.
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