Up on Hawthorn Hill:
Early Winter Musings

By Richard DeRosa

A light coating of snow now blankets our hillside, snow shovels at the ready. The new snow blower waits quietly for its first call to duty.

Life is now lived more inwardly, more reflectively. Books having piled up for some months now await their turn in line. Thoughts that have incubated for some time seem riper for reflection, perhaps a temporary resolution of what have been conflicting possibilities. Few would disagree that each of us has much to think about these days. There is the media’s penchant for over-covering stories and seeming willing and eager to give us things to worry about, even fear.

And then there are the exigencies of our daily lives to contend with. Finding a balance between the personal and the collective has become a somewhat disarming chore. But tensions have always characterized the relationship between individual and state.

On my mind quite a bit these past several months has been a sort of ostrich-like wish to wallow in the sands of indifference. I could be very happy dithering around up here on the hill with little concern for the world beyond. It has, of late, seemed a little too easy to disengage, to expunge myself of any feelings of guilt with respect to the discouraging state of incivility roiling about.

There are days when I find routine maintenance chores around here far more compelling than giving any thought to the various inanities flooding the news day in and day out. I am not much of a cook, never have been, although I am quite capable of forestalling starvation, however inelegantly. But I have started to really enjoy salad-making. Not sure where that came from, but it has become a near nightly activity. Something I can get my hands into. Something I can control that offers an infinite variety of possibilities. Pleasantly un-partisan, no need for negotiation, the end product all of my own making.

There is also something very soothing about immersing oneself in mundane tasks. Perhaps there is no such thing. Perhaps what we consider mundane actually contributes more of substance to our intellectual lives than we are aware of. There is the challenge of coming up with a salad mixture that is a bit different, that allows for some pleasing creativity.

I have wondered if things might be a different down there in that hell pit we call Congress if members were forced, as part of their job, to not only spend time with someone from the other party, but actually had to, for instance, clean a few hallways together once a week or so.

Everything that happens down there is aimed at distancing people from one another. The whole system rests on its ability to widen ideological chasms, not bridge them. Perhaps a weekly salad-making workshop might help. Nothing else seems to work. The most preposterous notions sometimes make the most sense.

Writing and reading time aside, I find immeasurable contentment in doing things that on the surface seem both routine and devoid of what some might consider intellectually stimulating.

Ironically, it is while doing seemingly mindless things that I find myself most mindful. For instance, while cleaning out the woodshed the other day in order to make room for our lawn tractor, I found myself retracing the trajectories of what have been my basic political assumptions. It dawned on me that in some respects, positions I have staked over the years are not as tenable anymore. In fact, my views on some things are now diametrically opposed to long-held notions that have seemed immutable over time. Even some of the best-intentioned ideas about how things should be suffer from erosion over time.

It takes some serious salad-making and snow shoveling and compost pile moving to open one’s mind to the possibility of change.

I remember sitting in the barn last summer tying up bundles of onions to hang up to dry. I use the same twine every summer, and untying last year’s knots so as to reuse the twine gives me an ineffable pleasure.

These are the moments when my more serious notions about what I believe seem to gel. I am most honest with myself when doing unthinking things. What I now know is this: I am neither a Conservative nor a Liberal. Rather, I value what is best about a liberal democracy as well as those principles of conservatism that have always wanted the best for all.

We need to come up with better solutions to common problems. Sort of like making a salad.
Try different combinations to see what works best. Sometimes the strangest combos taste really great.

Sort of like my friendship with Gabby.