Sisyphus squared

Must we still imagine him happy?

Calvin gets existential

I suggested Woody Allen as a more accessible version of Camus, in class yesterday; but maybe Calvin's even better. Thanks for posting this, Derrick.

absurd

"If I didn’t have writing, I’d be running down the street hurling grenades in people’s faces."


Paul Fussell said that. I don't often feel that way myself, but it's exactly the state of mind I was in at 4:30 pm this afternoon when I finally was liberated from the suffocating "Sun Trust" room at the far end of my campus. 


The curriculum committee had deliberated in that room for over three hours before finally coming to my own modest "New Course" proposals and, for the first time all afternoon moving with dispatch, promptly informed me that my papers were not in order. A couple of details (projected enrollment numbers, full bibliographic entries for course materials) had been omitted. Hence, proposals to add my courses to the university catalog would be "tabled" 'til I got those i's dotted and t's crossed.


Never mind that the committee had no substantive objections whatsover, none, to my courses. Never mind that I could have fixed the omissions instantly, on the spot, simply by logging on and entering the solicited information. No, rules are rules, procedures are procedures, committees are committees. Bye. See you next year.

So, I'll come back in the fall and sacrifice another perfectly fine afternoon in the service of bureaucratic protocol. Sure, why not? I'll happily push that stone up the hill once more. Move over, Sisyphus. Absurdity loves company.


There, that feels better. Posting is such sweet therapy. Now I don't have to think about hurling any real grenades. After all, "one must imagine Sisyphus happy." Unless he had to deal with academic committees.

absurd

Transhumanism? "Live long enough to live forever" etc.? Camus would be amused, and-- I must imagine-- happy.

real generosity

The great Richard Powers' last novel, Generosity, prescinds from a familiar quote from Camus-- "real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present." Sounds very wise, but what it means in practice is an ongoing experiment and challenge. I don't think we can afford to ignore the future, but of course the present is the bird in hand we must attend to.

Then, Powers offers an epigraph from Kay Redfield Jamison:

Exuberance carries us places we would not otherwise go— across the savannah, to the moon, into the imagination — and if we ourselves are not so exuberant we will, caught up by the contagious joy of those who are, be inclined collectively to go yonder.

Exuberance, generosity, presence... to me they all point forward, but they're also all prime markers of the wilderness of childhood: a place, an imaginative space of play in which mere reality does not constrict the dreamscape. More on this to follow.