|
This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “Some Things Are Universal” Down in the Dirt v208 (6/23)  Order the paperback book: 
|
|
| |
Purpose
John Farquhar Young
“Just passing,” Amy, a friend of Paul’s late wife Alice and a widow, breezily announces as she smiles at him from the doorstep.
Paul forces a smile aware that his plans for the rest of morning are starting to fragment.
“I thought I might just say hello,” she continues. “It’s been some time since I last saw you.”
“Not since the funeral,” Paul thinks, trying to interpret the twinkle in the woman’s large, sapphire blue eyes. “Genuine pleasure or predatory zeal?” he wonders.
He recalls his wife’s words, murmured with a sad smile. “Amy’s been looking for a replacement man for some time. She’ll come calling - sooner or later. I think that you find her quite attractive although I’m not sure why. Not really your type.”
“What makes you think that I would want my brain rewired by another woman?” he responded, trying to be severe. “Anyway, you’re right, she’s not my type.”
Occasional contact with Amy over many years has sculpted an unflattering impression of the woman in his mind. Intellect: sharp and swift, but narrow in its field of operation, and never deployed except in the pursuit of some well-defined goal. “So, what are your intentions now Amy?” he wonders, as he ushers her into the living room.
Nearly three decades of married life coupled with a persistent need to hold onto a remnant of her presence have assigned a well visited place for his wife in his brain’s circuitry. He often finds himself in mental conversation with her particularly in relation to subjects which, in life, she seemed to be more knowledgeable. He now imagines her laughing mischievously. “You know her intentions. Let’s see how well you cope with her.”
Amy hovers beside the large, black-stained wood carving now displayed in a central position on the sideboard. “Oh,” she says, voice raised, apparently surprised. “This is unusual.”
“Just finished it a few days ago. Do you like it?” Paul asks as much as finding something to say as to obtain her opinion.
His wife’s words again surface in his mind: “It’s ugly, very ugly. I wouldn’t have had it in the house...but she’s going to say, ‘It’s interesting’”.
“Interesting,” Amy says, after a long pause, looking puzzled, her head slightly inclined. “You say you made this yourself?”
“With my own two hands,” Paul replies, maintaining a fixed smile and at the same time raising and waving both hands in front of him. “Chip by chip, bit by bit. I like working in wood. I started it several months ago, just after the funeral in fact.”
She turns to scrutinise him. “So - a sort of therapy?”
“Sort of.” He hesitates. “Well perhaps - at least in part.”
“Adjusting to the loss of people close to you can be difficult.” Amy nods, briefly glances around the room then once again focuses on the carving. “I can see that the figure is a man.”
“It’s meant to depict Sisyphus in Hades. It’s an ancient Greek myth. Sisyphus annoyed the gods. He is pulled down into Hades and sentenced to push a boulder up a hill for all eternity.” He points at the large round feature in front of the figure’s shoulder. “That’s meant to be the boulder. Whenever Sisyphus gets close to the summit, the boulder rolls down the hill and Sisyphus must descend and start his rock-rolling all over again. It is perhaps the most intriguing punishment that the sophisticated ancient Greek imagination could devise - endless, repetitive utterly meaningless activity.”
“And you found that meaningful?” Amy exclaims. “You have found something meaningful in a tale about unending meaningless activity?”
“I did actually,” Paul replies, immediately counselling himself to make his response light and casual. “The myth prompts the question: ‘If life is absurd, what is the point of existence when it is so often filled with pain?’ The French philosopher Albert Camus thought that suicide was the key question for philosophy. He examined this issue in his book ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’.”
“Alice always said that you were a bit of a philosopher.”
He thinks he detects a hint of mockery in Amy’s voice. “I’m not a philosopher,” he responds brisky. “At least not in the modern sense of the word. Philosophical writing only provides me with some useful tools. But so does art, literature, psychology and scenes from nature.” He points at the engraving. “And doing work with my hands for that matter.”
“Tools for what?”
“Gaining perspective, I suppose.”
“Keep it vague,” he reminds himself.
Amy’s big eyes seem to expand. “Perspective!” she exclaims “I do wish you would tell me what you mean.”
“Be careful.” His wife’s imagined warning. “Her pretended interest for your ideas is the worm on the hook. You know how you like an audience.”
“I mean perspective on life, a way of looking at things, of looking at myself, of organising experience.” He watches Amy mulling over his answer. Change the subject! “Would you like a coffee?” he hears himself saying.
“Idiot! You wanted to get rid of her. OF COURSE, she would LOVE to have a coffee!” His wife’s voice has assumed a sharp sarcastic edge.
“That would be lovely,” Amy replies, smiling broadly.
Paul notices her white even teeth. “Rather a nice smile,” he finds himself thinking.
An awkward silence descends after they seat themselves on either side of a large coffee table. His eyes stray momentarily to the hem of her skirt neatly arranged an inch or so below her knees.
Amy nods. “Ironic in a way,” she eventually says.
Paul is again uncomfortably aware of Amy’s sapphire blue eyes, wide, unblinking and dominating his field of vision. He drags his attention to her long pale fingers now wrapped around the red coffee mug.
“Ironic? What do you mean?”
“Well,” she starts. “You found meaning in the story about a man who ONLY found meaning within himself, so to speak. Here I am and I have been trying to find meaning in the world... ‘the great-out-there’, if you know what I mean.” She pauses, a sad expression on her face then continues hurriedly. “I have lots of friends. I bought a nice apartment in Spain, I have lots of things to do, but everything seems superficial, that’s my problem...” Her voice trails away.
Unsure what to say next he signals with an open-handed gesture that he wants Amy to take the next step in the conversation.
“But often I feel as though I am busy just for the sake of it, that I am often searching around for time-fillers.” Then she laughs softly. “You say that the story appealed to you, helped you? I don’t see how.”
“I do wish that you would not gaze at me with these eyes of yours,” Paul mutters inwardly and shifts his attention to the contents of his coffee mug. He struggles with himself for a moment. “After Alice died,” he begins hesitantly, “I found myself in a very dark place and I knew I had to deal with the sense of pointlessness which overwhelmed me. So, I searched for patterns, for metaphors, symbols and analogies, for different ways of structuring the way I looked at things. I recalled Albert Camus’s book. As a way of anchoring my thinking I started to work on that wood carving and, as I chipped away, I gradually developed the story. I imagined the gods becoming so infuriated by Sisyphus’ apparent contentment that in disgust they expelled him from Hades. I asked myself, ‘How would the expelled Sisyphus – the Sisyphus risen out of Hades – see our world?’”
“I imagine that he would have an aversion to rocks.” She laughs, opening her blue eyes very, very wide.
“Why do you find these eyes so disturbing?” he wonders as he sets aside the brief flash of irritation prompted by the superficiality of her response. He draws a breath, “How does his experience in Hades influence Sisyphus’s way of looking at our world? In my version, Sisyphus in Hades found a source of personal meaning and significance in the only place he can - within himself. But not in the operation of his intellect. Reason, he discovered, cannot deal with the absurdity of his existence. Now having emerged into our reality Sisyphus asks us to look at our lives from an angle which allows us to regard our day-to-day existence and our experience as the medium or the material for our creative efforts. For good or evil we find the meaning of our lives in our creativity.” He pauses and shrugs. “That’s it in a nutshell. The significance of the message for our lives has its roots in our sense of creative purpose.”
Some forty minutes later he watches Amy strolling down the garden path leading to her car parked by the pavement. A gentle breeze catches and lifts her auburn hair. ?“An elegant figure,” he thinks, “but fragile too”. In her hand she holds a copy of Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus which she was keen to borrow.
“You’re nibbling at the bait,” he imagines his wife’s warning whispered in his ear. “Be careful not to swallow the hook.”
Six months later: Paul stands at a departure gate of the local airport waiting to board a flight to the south of Spain where Amy will meet him to take him to her apartment. He has bought some new trousers. The old ones are a bit tight.
“I want to experiment with flavours,” Amy declared during her second visit. “I am a very good cook,” she continued. “I need someone to cook for - to try out my dishes. It’s all got to do with my search for inner meaning, my creative purpose in life.”
As he takes his seat in the plane and adjusts his safety belt he imagines his wife sighing, shaking her head then laughing. You’ve swallowed the hook. Now you’re being reeled in.
He imagines Sisyphus sitting on his rock. He is also amused.
