Sing Out, Sisyphus!

No words of making: no juice for them, last night or this morning.  Bad case of the Sisyphus about now, thought my brains, and felt my bones.  And lo, much self-pity cheered me on from the sidelines.

And then I had a vision of the old hellion at his long task - a simple one, that yet I'd never met before.  I'd be interested to hear reports of it from elsewhere.

The most obvious interpretation of a guy who must be constantly pushing a rock up to the top of a hill only for it to roll all the way down again is, of course, an image of the pain and futility of mortal life.  But who'd be a futilitarian?

Then there is Camus's notion of Sisyphus as absurdist hero: "The struggle itself... is enough to fill a man's heart.  One must imagine Sisyphus happy."  That is better - but I have no heart to be an absurdist, either.

What I saw: Sisyphus reaching the peak, leaping goat-like aboard the boulder, and madly dancing and whooping on top of it all down that murderous and exhiliarating descent - until it finally comes to rest, and there are only the lifeless dances of Hades until he gets the rock of the world up the mountain again.  So he does that just as soon as ever he can.  And one day his foot will slip, and then he will be nothing more than strawberry jam for Persephone's supper crumpets - but not this time!

The point of Sisyphean labours is neither nothing nor the labours alone.  It is to dance on top of the world, for all of the swift and giddy way down.