Dancing With Sisyphus

I had breakfast with Sisyphus yesterday morning. Ended up missing my lectures for the day. Haven't met him for many years. "What have you been up to?", I asked stupidly. He answered, "What else? Still rolling my rock up the mountains daily." It's always great to talk to Sisyphus. He's about the only one left who's still honest. He acknowledges... no, embraces the absurdity of life and even manage to find a little joy in it at times. Camus was wrong. Sisyphus was not tragically absurd. Beckett was right - there is great comedy in absurdity. Sisyphus tells me about how he's giving the middle finger to the gods who cursed him every time he rolls the rock up the mountains with glee and reckless abandonment. The rest of the folks around us are too stupid to laugh because they are too busy being serious about everything (cue in Sotong-Boy, Tomahawk Girl and the pastor who is soooooooo afraid of losing friends!).

I told Sisyphus that I just rediscovered the truth of eternal recurrence and that I'm having a great time reliving my adolescence. He smiled stupidly and started patting his rock like a kindly and benign parent. We started talking about old CDs from 1991. I took out "Two Rooms - Celebrating The Songs Of Elton John And Bernie Taupin". Played "Crocodile Rock" by the Beach Boys and Sisyphus started dancing. Anything with "rock" appears to turn him on immediately. Problem was, Sisyphus couldn't stop something the moment he started doing it. So after the 78th time replaying Crocodile Rock, I started feeling embarassed. At the same time, I was apprehensive about turning off the CD player. You don't offend someone with a huge rock in his arms. Also, have you seen the muscles on the guy? He's spent about 6,000 years rolling that stupid rock.

After that, Sisyphus and I had durians. I was surprised that he could describe the differences between D28 and D88 durians. Apparently, the old bloke really picked up a lot of knowledge over the years of rolling the rock up the mountains. He even told me about how he'd stop for a snack sometimes when the rock rolled down the mountains. The gods looked down and got impatient. He'd open up durians, snack on the tasty fruit and spit the seeds at the skies. But the gods couldn't do anything to him. After all, he continued in his labours with the rock immediately after the snack.

In the evening, Sisyphus and I had coffee together while I told him about my recent misadventures with Sotong-Boy and Tomahawk Girl. He appeared disinterested. I guess even hearing about the antics of such nincompoops was terribly boring to him. Imagine that - it's really quite difficult to imagine anything more boring than rolling a rock up the mountains for all eternity. Several minutes later he explained, "It's not that I'm not interested in them. I just think that they couldn't be bothered to be interested in themselves. Otherwise they will notice the absurdity of their own existence and probably go off to skin a cat or smoke a pipe instead." With that, Sisyphus took out a pipe and lighted it. A girl in the next table stood up and stretched her slim body. Sisyphus whistled like an old lecher. I dropped a quarter into the jukebox and selected Rod Steward's cover version of Elton John's "Your Song". Sisyphus walked over and asked the girl for a dance.

The last song for the evening was "Sloop John B" by the Beach Boys. Sisyphus boogied like it was 1969 all over again. With the end of the song, he declared, "I feel so broke up, I wanna go home..." He went back to his rock and mountain. I went back to my own absurd but endlessly fun existence.