Call Me Sisyphus

"There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn." So said Albert Camus, the French philosopher who imagined a happy Sisyphus, that much-cited star of Greek mythology whose eternal punishment for a life full of evil deeds was to roll a huge boulder up a hill and have it roll back down, then do it again the next day. Forever. But King Sisyphus, knowing he was supposed to be bummed out by this meaningless task, instead approached it with a light heart, doing it the best he could each time and giving birth to the popular expression, Είναι ό, τι είναι.*

At least our rocks were already up there....

And so, as I watch the snow covering our backyard deck where my husband and I spent last Saturday laboriously chipping away at chunks of accumulated ice, rescuing porch furniture from kudzu-like snowdrifts, raking the roof and clearing the ice dam and threatening foot-long icicles from the gutters, and freeing the hot tub from the two feet of snow atop it--all of this for perhaps the third time this winter-- I shall not despair, but rather mock and jeer the Weather Gods as they dump upon us anew the white fluffy stuff. After all, it's winter. It's Maine. Είναι ό, τι είναι.

* It is what it is.