Happy Hump Day!!!! Sorry for the delay in Stephen’s post, but better late than never! Hope everyone’s week is going well.
In a prior post I had occasion to mention the good fortune in the apartment I rented, or co-rented when I was in law school. Not the actual location or placement of that apartment was terribly great or convenient; it was all the way on the other side of town, and built into the side of the hillside necessitating the employment of a de-humidifier to keep my books from molding.
However, it had a small back porch, more of a stoop being about a four foot by six foot concrete patio with a roof from the balcony of the apartment above it. It was not the nature of the porch itself which held the allure, but its location next to a rather large sloping backyard which was mostly hillside, most of which I believe belonged to the house down at the bottom of the hill.
There were a few tries in that home’s backyard obscuring the house, the apartment being on the edge of the town it was almost rural, though technically suburban, but relatively private in the manner in which the hillside curved away from the apartment placing the adjacent properties out of the direct line of sight.
Why was this important?
Well, it quickly became my practice, of an afternoon and into the evening, to sit upon that patio to read the day’s assignments in my law books, practicing as my teachers had instructed of highlighting the pertinent parts of the cases I read with multi-coloured high-lighters to distinguish the issues, rules, reasoning, and holdings respectively.
Upon this sometimes tedious and othertimes interesting task, I would often have a coffee, some tea, or a beer, occasionally a cigar, and stare out over the fairly expansive view of nature contemplate the principles and logic of the legal decisions I had read.
The nature of law school is frequently to review some of the oldest cases which established important precedents upon which other cases would build and refine. There is a distinct tenor of case law which reflects the culture of the society in which it was writ, the sound of the words, the particular and peculiar vernacular, the nature of the subject matter and squabbles themselves.
When reading a cases from hundreds of years gone by which refers to the quality and clarity of gemstones as “of the finest water”, or defining the very nature of an assault by reasoning that the state would rather discourage people from going around England swinging axes at one another, that you realize that though they were speaking of abstract, universal, and immortal principles, they were also directing their words to their contemporaneous culture in terms that resonated with the language of the day.
Away from the bustle of town, o’erlooking the cultured lawn of the hillside, and the nearby hills covered in trees, I always felt that that scenery assisted me in understanding the culture which bred those thoughts which those ancient jurists had endeavored to pen in their decisions.
Viewing those trees it was easier to envision the quaint village where a man stumbled home to get more money for drink, returns down an old dirt road to the tavern only to find it close for the night, in his frustration taking the hand-axe at his belt just to pound on the door for them to open up, the publican’s wife roused by such noise throwing open the shutters of the window and sticking her head out to yell at the noisome lout, only to duck back in quickly as the sot clumsily swung the axe in her direction.
Sipping on my beer in such a pastoral setting, I could see both sides of the court’s dilemma in that traditional notion of “no harm, no foul” in that no one was hurt and no damage was done on the one hand, the drunkard likely being more of a threat to himself than to the innkeeper’s wife, yet on the other hand not wanting to announce a decision which could encourage such oafish behavior because the next drunkard might have better aim. Thus, the concept of the “assault” was borne, as opposed to, and distinguished from, a “battery”.
Other cases more contemporaneous with our own from the Victorian era to the “civil rights” era, were equally amenable to the contemplation of that back porch, as the sun slowly settled in the quiet of the evening. There is something about the relaxing nature of such surroundings which made it easier for me to view multiple side of an issue, yet remain emotionally unattached so as to still insist upon the adherence of an abstract principle.
It was a few years later, at a different college when I had thought to go back to a different graduate school to pursue an advanced degree in economics, that I really noticed the contrast of their methods of education to that quiet contemplation of that back porch. Everything and everyone insisting upon hustle, busywork, needless and frankly erroneous complications, and a frantic pace of effort.
But, for all of their insistence upon proving their cleverness, they occluded their wisdom. I was to a point where I saw their endless busywork as needless, their quasi-mathematical modeling of behavior as inherently flawed, their contrived explanations politically driven foolishness, but all of this hidden by constant activity which kept most of the other graduate students too busy to think or to question.
I missed my back porch, or rather the contemplative nature of addressing real principles rather than merely quickly trying to solve trivial, meaningless puzzles.
I was reminded of playing chess with a guy I met at the WVU chess club. The first game we played, he tried to play as fast as I was playing, as I don’t take the game too seriously so favor an unhealthy speed of chess. He lost. Later, we played again, this time he didn’t respond to my speed, but played at his own pace, taking what was for me a frustratingly long time between moves, which was more to his comfort zone. Needless to say, he won that game.
Many years passed by and I lived in other places, but it is only recently that I have been living in a place which I’ve come to notice has a large yard, with trees a bit distant, little traffic, hills in the distance covered in forest, quiet enough to hear the frogs in the distance in the evenings, which are all viewable from the porch. I have come to rediscover the lost art of porch sitting.
In the distance, I can hear families in their back yards cooking out, talking with friends, but can’t see them. I can smell the summer air, the grass which was mowed just days before, feel the warm evening breeze, watch the occasional car drive by.
This I recommend to anyone, to get away from the computer, to get away from the noise, the hype, the rush, even from time to time to get away from friends and family, to be alone, to relax, to think or even not to think as the inclination strikes. There are simple pleasures in life which are best enjoyed alone, a cup of tea, a cold beer, a good cigar, whatever pleasure is yours to enjoy, but alone.
The more urban your setting, the harder it is to sit on the porch and relax, contemplate, observe, and muse. One of the reason I tend to believe that liberalism is an urban disorder is the failure of the urban environment to accommodate this natural mental reset which comes from just spending a half hour, or several hours upon a quiet porch.
Conservatives often wonder just how liberals can stay angry constantly, triggered into perpetual outrage without becoming exhausted or burned out. I think their minds are just frazzled from the urban noise, the constant whirlwind of activity with which they surround themselves. They lack proper porches and the time to sit upon them.
We wonder aloud how so many people espouse and buy into elaborate, convoluted solutions to minuscule, marginal problems, or even fraudulent, fictitious problems, becoming heavily invested in a false narrative and proposing unworkable ideas which defy the very nature of human existence and experience.
They simply are spending all of their time trying to solve these problems, and figure a way out of the dilemmas that they never take the time to rest and to contemplate if these problems really exist or not. Such people will never ask the basic, primal question, “Is it a real problem?”
Here is the solution to the problem of harried people constantly angry, denying facts which contradict the problematic nature of whatever current issue oppresses them: they need a break. They need time to breath, to contemplate, to relax. They need to learn the ancient, lost art of sitting quietly, alone on a porch.
