the joy of sisyphus
Even before it happened, I knew last week was going to be special for unspooling. I had it all mapped out… and then absolutely nothing went according to plan.
Classic.
But you know what?
Somehow, it still turned out alright.
You see, I was readying to expand the scope of unspooling last week—and I will (more on that in a minute)—but then life got in the way and, quite simply, I needed to buy myself more time. So I wrote a piece that has become the most viewed post in the short history of unspooling, fulfilling the prophecy by accident.
Life, right?
She keeps you on your toes, that wily old girl.
It was a weird and special week—a “win” worth celebrating, if you don’t find that too aggrandizing—and I want to thank you, dear reader, for making it so. It takes a village.
I also owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to several of my exemplary peers who shared my work—
, of The Writer’s Path; Marc Typo, of ; and, , of Verbihund Café. They are tremendous writers, all. I consider myself lucky to have connected with them and I encourage you to do yourself a favour and check out their phenomenal work.It means everything to me that unspooling is resonating with more people and I hope we’re just beginning to scratch the surface!
i know i can
In last week’s post, riding the emotional high of so much unexpected praise and attention, I was foolhardy enough to tease the new hotness coming down the pike.
And yet, lo and behold, a week has passed and… crickets. My prognostication, it seems, was a bit premature. Or was it wishful thinking?
I genuinely don’t know—please send help!
be what i wanna be
Jokes aside, the new hotness still needs a bit more time.
Life hasn’t slowed to accommodate for my ambition. If anything, it’s magnified and intensified the maelstrom. And while I find that rather rude, what else can I do but push the boulder back up the hill, for the millionth trillionth time?
I’m merely a typist taking dictation from the Source and I don’t expect her to reveal her plans to me. I’m just going to keep showing up until the job is done.
I will get you this piece I’m excited about. I’m a writer; telling stories is my purpose. I’ll get it done. I will.
Just as soon as I get this boulder to the summit of this hill…
Oh great, just great! Now, would you look at that? I take my eyes off the damn thing for just a second—for one measly second!—and there it goes, plummeting all… the… way.. back… down…
if i work hard at it
Look, I won’t lie to you. The delay feels like a kind of setback. When you can see the finish line but can’t quite reach it, it can feel that way. But I don’t think that’s the right framing; this “delay” is no such thing, it’s just the process working itself out. You can’t rush, orchestrate, or otherwise fanagle the Source. You have to let her come to you. You have to learn to make room for her.
I’m a writer; I’m used to this I’m learning to get used to this.
In another life, as a journalism student, I once wrote an “observational feature” that I was awfully proud of. Our assignment was to select a location with considerable foot traffic, post up, and write about whatever came to mind as we observed our surroundings.
Ten marks each would be awarded for “mechanics” and “creativity.”
So one frigid afternoon, I drove my beat-up little sand-coloured Corolla to the outskirts of town and spent a couple of hours watching and writing at the local airport.
“The building itself is surprisingly small; minute, even, at least as far as airports are concerned, anyway. Absent, is the roar of the crowd; the stressed-out parents wrangling herds of rowdy children; the scream of jet engines straining against locked brakes. In so many ways, it’s the perfect reflection of the decidedly mid-sized cities it services. You don’t even have to pay to park you car.”
The descriptions were fine but the first draft didn’t feel right. I wanted it to reflect its author in some meaningful way, to forge a connection to something more significant.
So I resolved to write about what I observed; human beings performing a modern miracle, the fulfillment of an age-old impossibility. I wrote about the magic of flight. I wrote about our limitations as a species and how we seem destined to transcend them, again and again. I wrote about how unpredictable the arc of history is and why we ought to have equal respect and disdain for our current abilities, never deigning to settle. I wrote about our beautiful, idoitic determination to go on in the face of the absurd.
I knew I had nothing to worry about on the mechanical front—even though I don’t actually have a conscious grasp on the mechanics of the English language and have been winging it this whole time (yes, seriously)—and I was resolved not to be outdone in creativity.
I remember thinking the feature particularly clever and anxiously awaiting what was sure to be a stellar grade.
From what I can decipher of the handwriting, my instructor was, decidedly, not a fan: “A good attempt at sounding poetic, Cody, but the reader isn’t much interested in the philosophic lecturing and moralizing you’ve done here.”
Okay. Ouch.
(Mechanics: 9)
(Creativity: 6)!!!
i’ll be where i wanna be
I’ve spent the vast majority of my time as a writer groping blindly, struggling to find my way. For awhile now—okay, until about a month ago—the thought has continually crossed my mind that I must be mistaken, that I must be blind, truly blind, and have to stop trying to see. It ain’t gonna happen.
Time to learn Braille or something, I’d figure.
But the urge to see never left. And so, in total darkness, I groped on.
Then, like lightning, I caught an actual glimpse of the hill I’d tread and retread countless times before. I’d seen it—I’d really, honest to God, seen it with my own two eyes! And not just the hill and the boulder, but the truth, that evasive truth, which seized me with a disturbing, almost perverse, clarity.
I was never blind. I had been too afraid to open my damn eyes.
hold your head up little man, you’re a king
Sometimes we look for the right thing in all the wrong places.
Sometimes we get discouraged, convinced “the right thing” isn’t so right, after all. We abandon our search and, in so doing, lose the most crucial aspects of ourselves.
But if we persist, and what we’re searching for is truly “the right thing,” we’ll eventually stumble on the right place. Or, maybe it comes to us, when the Source deems us ready. I don’t know. Either way, I believe we know it—even if just on a subsconscious level—when we see it.
It’s a matter of having eyes to see. That’s how we answer the call.
It’s okay to be afraid; you can still navigate with one eye shut. Keep looking!
Stay persistent and confident despite the setbacks you suffer along the path.
Whatever your hill and boulder is, whatever Sisyphean task lies before you, choose to undertake it with a smile.
Your task is absurd, true—but you’re absurdly blessed to have it. Embrace it.
“We must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
- Albert Camus
As you feel the surface of that well-worn rock kiss your calloused hands, as you press your shoulders into its firm, unyielding mass, as you relax your jaw and begin the long ascent anew, choose to discover the beauty, joy, and freedom your calling demands of you.
The myth of Sisyphus is often presented as a tragic tale but we should not mistake the implication. Tragic doesn’t mean defeatist. For, as Nietzsche once wrote, “true tragedy” compels us to recognize, “that life is at the bottom of things, despite all the changes of appearances, indestructibly powerful and pleasurable.”1
I’m not advocating for hubris, of course. You may recall the story of Icarus; he of the waxen wings, who flew too close to the sun. In India, it was Jatayu whose pride cost him. In China, when someone fails to properly estimate their abilities, they are likened to Kua Fu, the giant who tried to catch the sun. False confidence is folly and we must take great pains to avoid it.
But, see, the thing that we forget about Icarus, is that he also could have flown too low. The result would have been just as disatrous. His father, Daedalus, warned as much; advising that flying too low would cause Icarus’ wings to become sodden with moisture, dragging him to earth below.
We’ve forgotten that flying too low might be even more dangerous than flying too high; it provides the illusion of safety.
So come on, grab your wings.
Let’s fly together.
Gosh, now would you look at that, dear reader, here I’ve gone and lectured and moralized all over the place.
Clean up; Aisle Three.
Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufmann, The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, New York (Vintage: 1967), 59.
I agree with Marc! We are here and eagerly await the next snippets of what rolls around in that talented brain of yours!!
Keep writing Cody. The people will come; the people are here.