I’ve been thinking lately about old Sisyphus, the Corinthian king who was both lucky and cursed. Lucky because he cheated death, not once, but twice. The first time, Hades came to chain Sisyphus, but was instead tricked into being chained himself. The second time, Sisyphus tricked Persephone along the river Styx into letting him return to the world of the living. Tired of Sisyphus’s trickery over death, Hades finally had enough and punished Sisyphus by making him roll a boulder up hill every day. Before reaching the top, the boulder always slips and rolls all the way back down, causing Sisyphus to start over, ad infinitum.
Sometimes I feel like Sisyphus. Every day I wake up at the exact same time and do the exact same things. If I expected a different result every day, you could argue against my sanity. But most days I don’t expect a different result. I know the day is going to end pretty much the same way it began, every single day, day in and day out.
But there’s another side to Sisyphus’s punishment—that of the rolling boulder. Imagine how hard it must be getting that thing rolling at the start of each day. But then, once it’s going, it’s gotta be easier, right? Objects in motion… and all that. That first shove must be a monstrous strain, all that pushing and heaving. Then it starts to roll, and you can use the momentum to keep it going. I guess. I dunno. I’ve never actually rolled a boulder up a hill every day. Closest I’ve ever come is digging giant rocks out of my lawn. You dig down, clang it with a hand-jarring strike of your shovel, then spend the next half hour on your hands and knees prying that sumbitch out of the dirt. Sisyphus must’ve been one jacked dude though; I’ll give him that.
Then once he gets that thing to the top of the hill, it rolls all the way back down again all by itself. And Sisyphus is likely smacking his forehead and yelling, “Godsdammit, not again!” even though he knew all along it was coming because, you know, yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. But part of him must also be relieved. “Finally, another day over.” I mean, at least he didn’t have to push the thing back down the mountain too, right? At least it was all downhill from there.
So this writing thing…
Some days, sitting down at the keyboard and staring at my masterpiece-in-progress, I think to myself, Holy crap what a tremendous boulder. I find this especially true if more than two days have passed without doing any writing at all, because then the boulder is actually starting to sink into the ground. I don’t seem to be so good at spilling the ink on a daily habitual basis. Two, three, four, thirty days sometimes go by and nothing. Then I crack my knuckles and sit down and think, Okay, I’m ready as a I stare at the fifteen-ton chunk sitting on the ground in front of me. I lean forward, press my shoulder into the cold stone, and push like I’m pooping. It rocks forward, then falls back again into place. I push again. It moves a little more. I push harder, get my legs into it, and the thing starts to turn. Each push gets a little easier as the thing starts to roll. After a while, it takes less effort to keep it going.
Those are the times that make me wonder if I’m cut out to be a writer. I’ve been pushing this boulder eleven years now. I haven’t made it to the top. Each new story is like starting all over again from the bottom, pushing that thing up, getting it going, checking out the views and vistas from the summit of the mountain. I walk to the top. I walk to the bottom. Every day. Over and over. Ad infinitum.
Why do I do it? Unlike Sisyphus, I haven’t been cursed to do it every day for the rest of eternity. Zeus and Hades and Persephone aren’t making me. Do I enjoy it? Mostly I do, yeah. I enjoy the process. I enjoy coming up with words and stringing them together and forming sentences and paragraphs and ideas. I enjoy conjuring something out of nothing. Behold the spotless blank page. In the beginning there is nothing but the void and, lo and behold, I fill that void with the light of my creative powers. And I behold the words, and the words are (sometimes) good. So let it be written, so let it be done.
I opened this document, and the document was blank, and I filled the blankness with a thousand words that weren’t there before. I had no idea what to write, but the words just appeared from my head, like magic, and that’s pretty cool. Sometimes those words appear unbidden, like picking apples from a tree, like forbidden—or bidden—fruit. Other times there’s absolutely nothing in the ground. The ground is totally bare. Cracked parched desertscape. I have to haul in topsoil and build an irrigation ditch. I have to dig and pry out the rocks and get the spot ready. Then I have to plant the sapling and take care of it while it grows. Despite all my hard work, sometimes it doesn’t always produce fruit right away. I have to keep working and have patience and trust the process. Sometimes it doesn’t work out. Sometimes I bite into the apple and find half a worm. Sometimes I give one of my apples to somebody, and they stare at with a wrinkled nose. “I hate apples,” they tell me. “Don’t you have any peaches?”
So here I am, still going, still pushing that boulder. My shoulder is calloused but strong. My feet are sore but barnacle-hard. My back is tired but tanned from the sun. It’s down the hill at the end of every day, and right back up again the next. But those views from the top…magical.
