Sisyphus in Pieces
I’ve thought a lot about Sisyphus.
I’ve wondered what leverage the gods might use to make him push a rock up a hill for eternity, when he’s already dead and doesn’t seem to care about the living. I’ve wondered about goal-directedness and exercises in futility, about the power of attitude and when it might break down. I’ve tried to imagine Sisyphus happy.
But I’ve also wondered about the impact of time, monotony, and emptiness. How long can internal resources last in a vacuum?
These mosaic scenes comprise a thought experiment around those questions. At heart they’re about the ways chronic stressors differ from acute ones, informed by my own long experience with chronic illness and depletion. They’re also about fear, and what constitutes futility. They’re not written or presented in any particular order. The crux is this hypothetical question:
What if Sisyphus’s rock began to erode?