on the futility of clinging
swept up by the current, i cling to the banks,
and yet the more i resist, the more i drown.
i need to let go, so why won’t i loosen my grip?
but i just keep on going through changes
In just over a month, I’ll be moving to a new city about an hour and a half from where I’ve lived most of my life. There’s an exciting professional opportunity for k to explore there and commuting will be grating (plus, winter is coming). So, we’re moving. (To a smaller space for higher rent, Modernity being what it is.)
It’s a big change. (Forgive me, if this doesn’t seem like a big change to you. We’re all a prisoner to our own experience—for me, this is a big change!)
My initial reaction to the idea was resistance. My determination to fight was immediate and intense. I didn’t want to move. So, for a few days, I marshalled every argument I could think of, which was quite a few, in defense of our staying put. But as I watched the bottom fall out of each argument (often revealing the hollowness myself)—quite simply: there wasn’t a “right” or “wrong” answer—I saw my futile flailing for what it was: a desperate clinging to the familiar, rabid resistance of the unknown. I saw the root of my prior stubbornness and was ashamed. Which proved a powerful motivating factor. It was the spark that caused me to consciously drop my attachment to resistance and clinging for just a moment, an effort to clear my head.
And then a curious thing happened… I noticed that I felt substantially less clingy… I felt no further desire to resist. I had exhausted my opposition to the idea. Although my innate preferences hadn’t changed one iota, I had found acceptance.
It was a start.
Hallelujah.
you saw the forest, now come inside
(Be forewarned: the following contains minor spoilers for The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy).
I’m fascinated by a character from Cormac McCarthy’s first novel, The Orchard Keeper, by the name of Arthur Ownby. Ownby, who, as was McCarthy’s wont, is often referred to simply as “the old man,” is an elderly Tennessean mountain man who spends his days napping on his porch, reminiscing about the past, and subsisting on whatever the land provides.
Published in 1965, The Orchard Keeper is a nostalgia-tinted tale about modernity and change in a fierce, uncaring world—themes McCarthy explored brilliantly throughout his career. The narrative is set during the Prohibition era and even in that distant age, Ownby is already relic from bygone days, a creature from a mythic past, like the human embodiment of the eternal wilderness in which he thrives, which McCarthy describes with lyrical beauty:
In the relative cool of the tinder stands, possum grapes and muscadine flourish with a cynical fecundity, and the floor of the forest—littered with old mossbacked logs, peopled with toadstools strange and solemn among the ferns and creepers and leaning to show their delicate livercolored gills—has about it a primordial quality, some steamy carboniferous swamp where ancient saurians lurk in feigned sleep.
Excerpt from The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy, Vintage International (New York: 1965).
Ownby scratches out a hermetic existence on the slopes of Red Mountain, a forgotten place out of time. Ownby is fiercely independent, with only a hunting dog, about as ancient as himself, for company. But Ownby prefers a solitary existence, Red Mountain is the only world he’s ever known and there’s an Edenic comfort in his isolation from the perils of the broader world.
Of course, we know this state of affairs won’t last. It can’t last. Nothing lasts…
As the novel builds towards its climax, Ownby is to be brought in by the authorities, an allegorical confrontation between modernity and the mythic past. The first time the sheriff comes for him, Ownby greets the lawman with a grim stare and a cocked shotgun. The second time the sheriff comes (this time with backup in tow), Ownby uses the shotgun to ward off the posse in a violent shootout. The third time they come for him, with canisters of tear gas and even more men, they find Ownby missing, having abandoned his bullet-riddled mountain shack. Outfoxed, the lawmen vow to track the elusive octogenarian down.
Ownby is a master of resistance.
but when you poured out your heart i didn’t waste it
When change comes to my door, I tend to greet it like Arthur Ownby, armed with a stern gaze and a twelve-gauge.
Change ain’t no friend of mine. Like anyone, I resist it, if I can, even when it doesn’t serve me to do so… perhaps especially when it doesn’t serve me to do so.
But it makes sense, in a way, our futile resistance of the irresistible. It’s a perfectly natural reaction.
Psychologist, author, and meditation advocate Tara Brach has written about the discomfort that often attends change:
We are uncomfortable because everything in our life keeps changing—our inner moods, our bodies, our work, the people we love, the world we live in. We can’t hold on to anything—a beautiful sunset, a sweet taste, an intimate moment with a lover, our very existence as the body-mind we call self—because all things come and go. Lacking any permanent satisfaction, we continuously need another injection of fuel, stimulation, reassurance from loved ones, medicine, exercise, and meditation. We are continually driven to become something more, to experience something else.
Excerpt from Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of A Buddha by Tara Brach (Bantam Books: 2003)
I don’t know about you but that profoundly resonates with me.
I imagine that I resist change for the same reason I fuss over my overflowing to-be-read pile: because it gives me a false sense of control over the chaos of my constantly unfolding life.
Nothing ever stays still and, on a deeply-rooted level, that can be incredibly uncomfortable.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice.”
- Heraclitus
Of course, changes aren’t created equal.
When your local pub stops serving Coke and your server asks, “Is Pepsi, okay?”, you reply, “Sure, no problem.” Pepsi might not be your preference but it’s a minuscule change in the grand scheme of things. No biggie. A minor inconvenience as you navigate the rest of your day.
But accepting that you need to cut processed sugar out of your diet entirely… now that’s a heavier lift. The burden shifts from a limited inconvience today, a challenge in this present moment, to an ongoing struggle. This is your life now and you either accept that or deal with the consequences. Which might be dire.
I won’t try and pass this off as an original observation but it’s true: the bigger the change, the more likely we are to cling and resist it.
Which is tragically counterproductive. Because the consequence of resisting Pepsi at the pub is virtually nonexistent (unless you rely on soda for hydration, in which case, we’ve got a far bigger problem to talk about). Indeed, we can simply order something else to our liking, even if we might have preferred Coke, and be reasonably happy with the tradeoff. Even if we decide not to order a drink, our resistance has cost us little besides a moment of frustration and, perhaps, a parched throat. But the consequence of resisting other changes can be quite severe. And yet it is exactly these kinds of changes that we are most inclined to resist!
isn’t it strange how a life can be changed
Upon his escape, Ownby evades the law for days. His possessions packed onto a sledge, his aged hunting dog, Scout, at his side, he traverses the rugged mountain landscape with an ease belying his advanced age. Like a frog in a pond, a pig in shit, the mountain is Ownby’s Eden, a paradise to which he clings, the only world he’s ever known.
Morning found them on the south slope of Chilhowee Mountain, the dog buckled down on top of the sledge now and the old man pulling them tree by tree up the steep and final rise. From his high place on the slope he could see the first strawcoloured light sourceless beyond the earth’s curve, the horizon warped in a glaucous haze. An hour later and they had gained the crest of the mountain and stood in a field of broom sedge bright as wheat, treeless but for a broken chestnut the color of stone.
The sun was up by then and the old man rested, leaning against the tree. After a while he fell asleep, the sledge’s painter still wrapped in his blistered hand. The dog stretched out in the sun too, wrinkling his ragged hide at the flies. Far below them shades of cloud moved up the valley floor like water flowing, darkened the quilted purlieus, moved on, the brushed land gone green and umber once again. The clouds broke against the mountain, coral-edged and bent to the blue curve of the sky. A butterfly struggled, down through shells of light, down to the gold and seagreen tree tips…
The old man came awake late in the afternoon and ate some cold cornbread, sharing it with the hound. He did not eat much and the cornbread was enough. Then he started down the mountain, trucking behind him his sorry chattel, picking a course through the small trees and laurel jungles. Some time after midnight he came out on a road and turned south along it, crossed a wooden bridge, a purling clearwater stream, climbed with the road into the mountains again, the sledge drifting easily behind him and the hound plodding.
Excerpt from The Orchard Keeper, 189-90.
Having come this far, does it surprise you to learn, when the law finally catches up to him, that Ownby relents without further resistance? Though he can’t fully comprehend what his surrender means, he relents. Ownby goes quietly.
As it turns out, Ownby is also a master of acceptance.
He’s no fool. He knows he can’t evade the mighty United States Government when it has set its mind to capturing him.
So he lets go.
The Fall from Grace.
He’ll never return to Eden again.
Rather than clinging (and drowning), Ownby chooses acceptance, come what way.
i watch the ripples change their size
I’ve come to accept that we’re moving away from the only world I’ve ever known. I can’t say I’m excited about it (maybe that will come with time) but I’m cautiously optimistic about this new chapter. This is my life now. And I’m okay with that. Really, I am. I’ll have k and the cats and my books; the most precious things in my life are moving with me. What more could a guy ask for?
I have nothing to worry about. I’ll be fine. But reaching this place of acceptance was a process. It sure beats the alternative, though. I’d be ten metres under the water right now if I was still clinging to resistance. I’d be drowning with every fresh lungful of the river. Instead, I write this missive as I float gently down the stream—merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily—the warm sun on my face, cool water kissing my fingertips. Who knows where I’ll end up but that’s okay, maybe it’s time to start trusting the river. Even if I have no idea, it seems to know where it’s heading.
When change comes to your door, be wiser than I was, hell, be wiser even than Ownby, who didn’t fight as long as I did but who resisted nonetheless: don’t cling, just let go.