Today, as I was working in my home office, I shut off my music, my podcasts to keep me company, my background YouTube videos, and I opened my window.  I heard dogs barking in distant backyards; trucks unnecessarily accelerating and decelerating; the hum of an air conditioning unit.  I heard the wind lightly blowing through the trees, the breeze flowing around my house, playing in anticipation of an approaching storm.  The wind came through my half open window, bringing the smell of outside – grass, sage, sunlight, the high desert.  My blinds, half open to keep the sun from blinding me as I stared at my computer screen, swayed gently, as though a child sitting on a swing hung from a tree branch were pushing themselves back and forth with a toe that never leaves the ground.  Occasionally, every so often, it all disappeared into that imperceptible layer of sound that underlies life in developed areas, and I was left with the silence preceding the approaching cold front.  The wind calmed as the sky darkened, inhaling before the onslaught…and the clouds passed, not a storm at all, but an old, tired guard dog not bothering to get up as it rumbles.  The turbulence in its wake stirred up the cooled air, like mud disturbed at the bottom of a clear stream swirls in the current, and made the now empty swing knock against its tree as it flailed about.  Not a single sprinkle of rain abandoned the clouds as they passed.