State of the Union

Albert Camus wrote in The Myth of Sisyphus,

“Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well.” Sophocles’ Oedipus, like Dostoevsky’s Kirilov, thus gives the recipe for the absurd victory. Ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism.’

‘One does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a manual of happiness. “What! By such narrow way--?” There is but one world, however. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness. “I conclude that all is well,” says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile sufferings. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.’

‘All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his effort will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is but one he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him, combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.’

‘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.’

Karl Jaspers wrote in Existenzphilosophie

'What matters is that our life is guided by something unconditional which can only spring from the decision. Decision makes Existenz real, forms life and changes it in inner action, which, through clarification, keeps us soaring upward.'

Allen Ginsberg wrote in A Supermarket in California

'Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?'


Sting said, the best thing to do when approached by a drunken individiual is to say

'My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun'

or at the very least recommends Shakespeare.


and Dante found himself alone in a dark wood. Frost contemplated the snowy woods...
and Reich sat alone in a box...Lennon went skywriting by word of mouth...


America, America, fight em there, fight em there, the yanks are coming, the yanks are coming...



what did you say Mr. Dylan? what does rhyme with orange?




do we really need another absurd hero?

and I said,

'pray for bogart dylan and the blues
its only one more day going by... '




'that's all folks'