moving the frig - sisyphusian task

Sisyphus - A cruel king of Corinth condemned forever to roll a huge stone up a hill in Hades only to have it roll down again on nearing the top. The American Heritage Dictionary


we're redoing the kitchen floor in response to all the potential buyers who can't see through to the possibility of redoing their own floor. so today josiah and i were unhooking the water line into the frig and we just COULDN'T get the bolt to turn and when we thought we were, it was just turning below too.

And suddenly with a flash of clarity i realized that we were not operating under the simple limits a particular bolt gone bad. this was the entelechy of our universe.

i knew when we went ahead with the water-bearing-refrigerator-door that we were inviting the anger of the pantheon, but suddenly i realized that my mythic existence had already come full circle.

"Sisyphus had it easy compared to us," I mourned, "at least he could see that the rock was about to roll back down again."

"Can you give me a hand down here?" Josiah interrupts...

"We don't even know if we're pushing the rock up or watching it roll back down. We're not even cognizant of our futility. The universe has gotten so small, that no tool, no fire, no deus ex machina could ever rescue us now. We just fiddle a little bit to the left and right."

In moments like these, I want to write science fiction, but then i remember that that means i'd have to *read* and *watch* science fiction, so i decide, enh...

...i'll blog about my futility....

may the tedium of the quotidian swallow you blissfully whole and unaware, rendering your world full of....

~peace

a very significant tenet of my overall life philosophy.

one of my brothers is being hunted in a good'ol salem-style witch hunt.

one of the hunters sneaked onto his blog and tried to use my brother's humour as proof that daniel is, indeed, a witch.

(i only wish he would have come to me first, as i have much more interesting proof -- for instance the one evening at our family cottage when daniel levitated while humming latin phrases so ancient, that even my father, who was high school latin king at Soo High Blue Devils (ahem, see?) - Go Devils!, couldn't translate it. once daniel started spinning on the ceiling he got sent straight to bed.)

so anyway. Daniel is forced, on his blog, to say some straightup stuff to any other potential witch hunters, and he writes:

You may find what you are looking for, but it won't be a satisfying as you think it will.

i love this. the idea that work done out of vengeance and revenge and malevolence of any kind -- yields nothing but more of the same.

it seems like the yang principle to the yin i promised in my title.

it's in a little prayer that i read in playwriting -- ascribed to Ray Bradbury --

Remind us to know that the more we create out of love of an idea, the better our work, our lives, our influence, becomes.

Tammie, my friend who i work with, gave a talk three(?) four(?) years ago where she said this more pointedly about the work that we're (hopefully? mostly?) up to in our academic department...(i can't quote -- but i'll summarize)

Work done out of love brings us joy, makes us whole, gives us meaning, gives us LIFE. That's the kind of work we try to do here (in the theater). Not work done out of fear. That kind of work just brings DEATH.

So much of the work of the world is done out of fear....

(BTW ~ thanks to my friend Clifford for passing the Bradbury prayer on to me (read whole thing in the comments). His film finds its first big audience tomorrow morning & is a great example of work done out of love...)

political problems

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if we don't make decisions together, what, ultimately will we share?

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if we don't make decisions on our own, how, ultimately will we grow?

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if we don't make decisions, who, ultimately will decide?

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if we decide, who, ultimately will not?

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