la piedra

I woke to the sound of foghorns this morning.  Sometimes I think I have a stone on my heart.  I can feel it there, pressing.   Should I try to push it off?  Or maybe try to figure out what it needs. There's a story in one of Hijo's books about a donkey who, in possession of some magic, panics and turns himself into a rock.  Maybe it is something bewitched I feel there in my chest.  Out my window the low white clouds hover over the water, enfolding everything below.  The ferries sound off and press forward through the mist.

Comments

[Elizabeth]

How can I help to move that stone? You heart should be light, unemcumbered. Is there anything I can do?

[GJP]

From Camus' "Myth of Sisyphus":
"It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! ... That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.

If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? The workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn."