“[…] At which point Sisyphus, weary of the burden imposed on him by a centralized, elitist pantheon of self-styled ‘Gods,’ changed his fate by finding a willing masochist to assume his unending task — spreading happiness on two fronts and signalling a victory for the free market over the tyranny of an artificial ‘fate’ henceforth shown to be illusory.”
— from “The Myth of Sisyphus”
****
previous
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the skeptic side
With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest.
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer,
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused, or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
[ From “An Essay on Man” by Alexander Pope ]
Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride
On that darkest day. Oh, forever may
He lie lightly, at last, on the last, crossed
Hill, under the grass, in love, and there grow
Young among the long flocks, and never lie lost
Or still all the numberless days of his death, though
Above all he longed for his mother’s breast
Which was rest and dust, and in the kind ground
The darkest justice of death, blind and unblessed.
Let him find no rest but be fathered and found,
I prayed in the crouching room, by his blind bed,
In the muted house, one minute before
Noon, and night, and light. The rivers of the dead
Veined his poor hand I held, and I saw
Through his unseeing eyes to the roots of the sea.
(An old tormented man three-quarters blind,
I am not too proud to cry that He and he
Will never never go out of my mind.
All his bones crying, and poor in all but pain,
Being innocent, he dreaded that he died
Hating his God, but what he was was plain:
An old kind man brave in his burning pride.
The sticks of the house were his; his books he owned.
Even as a baby he had never cried;
Nor did he now, save to his secret wound.
Out of his eyes I saw the last light glide.
Here among the light of the lording sky
An old blind man is with me where I go
Walking in the meadows of his son’s eye
On whom a world of ills came down like snow.
He cried as he died, fearing at last the spheres’
Last sound, the world going out without a breath:
Too proud to cry, too frail to check the tears,
And caught between two nights, blindness and death.
O deepest wound of all that he should die
On that darkest day. Oh, he could hide
The tears out of his eyes, too proud to cry.
— Dylan Thomas
So it’s dueling poems is it? Ok here you go:
The computer center is empty,
Silent except for the whine of the cooling fans.
I walk the rows of CPUs,
My skin prickling with magnetic flux.
I open a door, cold and hard.
And watch the lights dancing on the panels.
A machine without soul, men call it,
But its soul is the sweat of my comrades,
Within it lie the years of our lives,
Disappointment, friendship, sadness, joy,
The algorithmic exultations,
The long nights filled with thankless toil,
I hear the echoes of sighs and laughter,
And in the darkened offices,
The terminals shine like stars.
[ From “The Zen of Programming” by Geoffrey James ]
Why, yes, I am in the process of shuffeling about 10 trillion ones and zeros around between various machines in North America, to keep our customers’ terminals happy; funny isn’t it?
Only at Small Dead Animals, courtesy of our gracious hostess. Thanks Kate, I agree with Mark Steyn.
By the way, the original Camus quote that provided the impetus for this conversation is as follows:
“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
I hope that helps put my previous two posts into context.
What a coincidence, I have a cousin who lives in Ohio!
Dea Ex Machina
My Love, is like Mies van der Rohe’s ‘Machine for Living’, she
Divested of her underclothes, suggests Efficiency
Her supple shoulders call to mind- a set of bevelled gears
Her lower jaw has been aligned, to hinge behind her ears
Her hips, (sweet ball-and- socket joints), are padded to perfection
Each knee, with it’s patella, points in just the right direction
Her fingertips remind me of- a Digital Computer
My love, (she simply couldn’t be), a millimeter cuter.
-John Updike
Ode To Peckerwoods Martin
husker_met said…
Jinnderella:
Damn! Tell us how you really feel. I love it.
So the poor multilateral U.N. needs “scarier” troops. I suppose we should feel flattered, in a way.
But, as alluded to by W., I am reminded of what dear old dad told me when I purchased my first handgun, “Pistols are for killing, not for scaring.”
And so the problem that has eternally plagued the U.N.: They don’t understand that some people are too stupid or vicious to be scared easily, and much less so when U.S. troops have to abide by half-assed U.N.-approved rules of engagement. Staring someone down is nice when it works, but you’ve got to be prepared to throw your hardest punch when the time comes, and not stop until the fight is over.
We’ve been doing the heavy lifting for 55+ years for these peckerwoods. Isn’t it about time, in an oh-so-enlightened multilateral world, that someone else takes up some of the slack?
I wonder if they’d settle for the U.S. being like the other 2/3 of the U.N. and just donating to the cause some really scary trucks.
http://www.fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com
Moral:”Pistols are for killing, not for scaring.”
Anything that is, is also a bridge between what was and what could be,
and even what is unimaginable � our awareness of which virtually confirms the infinite. . .
.
.
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
(William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence”)