summer storm

My first downtown apartment was at the junction of several highways and railroad tracks and was the noisiest placed I'd lived. My dad bought me a white noise device with a setting for the sound of rain. I was living alone for the first time, with my mattress on the floor next to the window in an otherwise empty apartment. The device helped me ease into city noise and now I'm accustomed to it. I still use the rain sound, though, since it emulates my favorite weather, and sometimes I wonder if I'm "cheating". It may cheapen the real experience of a storm if I can just push a button to get the effect.

It is rainy this week, for the first time in several months, and after a heavy storm I no longer think the device could be counted as cheating. It is clearly inferior to the experience of a real storm: the smell which signals it; the full depth of thunder's frequencies resonating in the walls and your chest; the 'surround sound' of rain covering the roof and the trees and buildings nearby; the trees continuously waving in the wind. The experience of these things cannot be replicated by a speaker.

Noise from cars is usually the dominant component of city ambience. Every so often, someone happens to be missing a muffler and righteously floors it down 7th street, practically guaranteeing an interruption to anyone in the vicinity. In a real thunderstorm, this behavior takes on a different character, as though the driver is trying to challenge the volume of the storm itself. The overwhelming power of the storm defeats any human's noise.

One shouldn't compete with a storm or ignore one. They are too beautiful to be ignored. Some things demand one's attention no matter what; to me, a storm is one such rarity.