Matching Tracksuits

Day: July 24, 2006

The Myth of Sisyphus

Monday 24 July 2006

SisyphusCamus was wrong: Sisyphus had it easy.

There’s little heroism in doing something when you know there’s no hope of success. Later critics called Camus’ creation “existentialism.” It’s really either stubbornness or stupidity. Or boredom. Whatever it was that kept Sisyphus rolling that boulder back up the hill, he suffered no delusions that this time would be different than any other time he’d done it. He pushed the stone up without any hope of success. Not even Camus’ modern re-creation of Sisyphus, Dr. Bernard Rieux, had any hope of curing any of his patients in The Plague.

Sisyphus and Rieux have the luxury of hopelessness.

Climbing Vines

Monday 24 July 2006

We have a couple of plants that, in Little Shop of Horrors fashion, send out their long tentacles that wrap around just about anything.

The first plant is actually a pair, planted in an earthen pot out on our back patio. They’ve been climbing for some time, and one of the seed-like things (oh, I’m just too lazy to look up what it would be called) actually shot out two spouts.

We decided yesterday afternoon to rein them in a bit. Rather, like good parents, we tried not to force them to do anything they wouldn’t naturally do, and instead provided them with string to wrap themselves around. We guided them, in other words.

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In still other words, we finally put up a third line for it, untangled the two that were sharing a previously installed guide line (i.e., a bit of string), and viola!

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Oh, what parents we’re going to be!

Once everything was done, K decided the unruly plant in the computer/movie/guest room had to be tamed as well.

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This time, K decided she wanted to do it herself. Rather, I was busy working on something else and she knew it would probably be easier just to do it herself. Rather, I turned up my nose at the suggestion of banging more nails into our poor walls and so K did it herself.