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On the physics of Sisyphus
Jul. 21st, 2011 05:17 pmRolling a boulder up a mountain? Is just laughing in the face of entropy. Small wonder if entropy laughs back.
Still. King S keeps going, his endless weary way, and so do we.
This morning I wrote a dedication, a biography and a blurb before breakfast, so I did; and sent them to my beloved Nicky, for the PS edition of Rotten Row:
Rotten Row is the worst place we’ve made.
Humankind can travel to the stars - but only if you’re sure of yourself. Content to be flung as a datastream through space, flitting from male to female, dark to fair, tall to short to broad, one random discard body to the next. Those who go are the Upshot, rare individuals subject to their own rigid laws.
And then there’s Rotten Row.
Outcast from the Upshot community, in breach of all codes, in Rotten Row people design their own bodies and sell them on for re-use after. Outlandish bodies: furred and feathered, winged and hooved and worse.
duLaine is an artist, but all art is about identity; where one blurs into the other beyond physical limits and legal restraint, what is art worth and how can anyone be certain who they are?
duLaine travels to Rotten Row in search of answers, and finds himself snared by passions, plots and betrayals beyond his worst imaginings, far beyond his ability to control.
There. How's that? Would that make you want to buy the novella? We may still be open to suggestion...
Then I went to the Lit & Phil, and spent all day boulder-rolling a set of proofs and a set of signing sheets, with nothing to keep me sane bar the over-by-over cricket report on my laptop. (It's the 2000th Test Match ever! And the 100th between England and India! At Lord's! With Tendulkar hoping to score his 100th Test Match century! It could hardly be more perfect! And it rained...)
So six hours later I finished my proofs and my signing sheets, and headed for home. And took off my glasses to try on a cap in a department store on the way, and dropped them, and cracked a lens. Ho ho ho. Now I have entropy in the corner of my eye, like a little footnote reminder.
And now I have to write a piece-to-camera, as it were, for the PS newsletter: something about Rotten Row and SF and me, something meta and transformational.
Puff, puff. Heave, push, roll. The point of it is the thing itself, you know that: because it's there. Because they both are, the boulder and the mountain. It's not about getting to the top, it's all about the journey. It's not about the boulder, the boulder doesn't matter. It's all about me.
Still. King S keeps going, his endless weary way, and so do we.
This morning I wrote a dedication, a biography and a blurb before breakfast, so I did; and sent them to my beloved Nicky, for the PS edition of Rotten Row:
Rotten Row is the worst place we’ve made.
Humankind can travel to the stars - but only if you’re sure of yourself. Content to be flung as a datastream through space, flitting from male to female, dark to fair, tall to short to broad, one random discard body to the next. Those who go are the Upshot, rare individuals subject to their own rigid laws.
And then there’s Rotten Row.
Outcast from the Upshot community, in breach of all codes, in Rotten Row people design their own bodies and sell them on for re-use after. Outlandish bodies: furred and feathered, winged and hooved and worse.
duLaine is an artist, but all art is about identity; where one blurs into the other beyond physical limits and legal restraint, what is art worth and how can anyone be certain who they are?
duLaine travels to Rotten Row in search of answers, and finds himself snared by passions, plots and betrayals beyond his worst imaginings, far beyond his ability to control.
There. How's that? Would that make you want to buy the novella? We may still be open to suggestion...
Then I went to the Lit & Phil, and spent all day boulder-rolling a set of proofs and a set of signing sheets, with nothing to keep me sane bar the over-by-over cricket report on my laptop. (It's the 2000th Test Match ever! And the 100th between England and India! At Lord's! With Tendulkar hoping to score his 100th Test Match century! It could hardly be more perfect! And it rained...)
So six hours later I finished my proofs and my signing sheets, and headed for home. And took off my glasses to try on a cap in a department store on the way, and dropped them, and cracked a lens. Ho ho ho. Now I have entropy in the corner of my eye, like a little footnote reminder.
And now I have to write a piece-to-camera, as it were, for the PS newsletter: something about Rotten Row and SF and me, something meta and transformational.
Puff, puff. Heave, push, roll. The point of it is the thing itself, you know that: because it's there. Because they both are, the boulder and the mountain. It's not about getting to the top, it's all about the journey. It's not about the boulder, the boulder doesn't matter. It's all about me.