I sit on the splintered bench where the trail drops close to the river’s edge, one boot untied, laces dark from morning grass.
The wood pricks through my jeans only when I swing my legs so I have to choose between comfort and carefree— the mosquito zigzagging around my wrist reminds me to slow down.
Below me, water folds over stone, slides around a half-sunken branch, catches for a second on something I cannot see, then keeps moving.
A world within a world within a world. Each with its own beginning, middle, and end.
I rest my elbows on my knees and watch cottonwood seeds land on the surface, play Russian roulette with the current and sometimes lose.
But sometimes they win.
There used to be an island here but now only swimming for fish and food for one crane whose beak was made for moments like this.
Across the bank, a sycamore leans like a dancer— if I tried that move I might hurt myself. But the sycamore— graceful, roots half exposed, holding a wall of mud through another season of rain.
What happens here at night? Does the dancer feel lonely?
I run my thumb along the groove someone carved into the bench years before I found it. There used to be a heart scribbled here. Was it time or circumstance that rubbed it away?
Where do all the lovers go who leave their hearts on benches in trees and in one another's hands?
The river keeps carrying branches, leaves, foam, the occasional flash of silver,
and twenty feet downstream a man in a fishing boat has a pole for an arm, a hat for eyes, and a dream I cannot see—
I stay on the splintered bench swinging my legs watching the sunlight
feeling the shade.
—Iris Lennox literary pen name of Jill Szoo Wilson
In many stories, we see a man overcoming great odds by wrestling with the weaknesses anchored inside himself, rather than those he must fight in the world around him.
The age-old story of Man vs. Self.
One of the most memorable tragic heroes in Greek mythology is Sisyphus, the prince whose moral foibles Zeus punishes by dooming him to roll a boulder up a hill eternally, the rock rolling back down each time he manages to muscle it to the top.
The first time I heard this story, I was in seventh grade. We read it aloud in English class through timid and cracking voices. I should have known then that I had a serious bent toward the philosophical. The story captured both my imagination and my emotions to such an extent that I immediately felt what I can now identify as empathy for the main character. I wanted to reach beyond the centuries to help Sisyphus.
Because I couldn’t do that, I settled on trying to prove the story wrong.
This was my way of rectifying the deeds of Zeus and the fate of Sisyphus himself. It was also my way of closing the dissonance I felt as I considered the unfairness of the story. How had we, as a human race, allowed this man’s torment to survive in our books, our minds, our cultural imagination for so long?
Clearly, it was up to me to change the narrative.
Once the bell rang for lunch, I donned my invisible cape and set out on a dangerous adventure. Knowing we weren’t allowed on the soccer field unless we were in PE, I slipped past the lunchroom proctor, ducked under the railings, and made my way down the hill that led to the edge of the field. At the far end, the incline rose steeply enough to pass, in my mind, for a mountainside.
My school was called Foothills Junior High. The name was not decorative. It sat at the base of a mountain in Los Angeles. I knew this was the place to right the wrongs set forth by the Greek gods.
I looked for a rock. I never found one large enough to make the journey feel worthy, but I did find a kickball. Orange, round, just large enough to wedge between my shoulder and neck as I climbed on my hands and knees, pushing it upward with a kind of theatrical conviction that, in retrospect, revealed itself early.
I made it to the top.
My hands were filled with pebbles, my knees ground into denim and dirt. I stood there for a moment, the kickball in my grip, scanning the field beneath the dry California sun. A victory, unmistakable.
And then, unlike Sisyphus, I made a decision.
I would not let the rock roll back down. I would carry it.
Halfway down the hill, I lost my footing.
It happened quickly. Instinct took over. The ball slipped free. I watched it fall.
Disaster.
I tried again.
Three times I made it to the top. Not once did I make it all the way down.
Up the hill. Down the hill. Up again. Down again.
The past returned as the present, and I heard the bell ring for science class.
Maria Popova writes of Sisyphus:
He may be a tragic hero, but he is first and foremost a hero, precisely for this unrelenting faith in the possibility of accomplishing the impossible. His optimistic tenacity renders him the epitome of the creative spirit.
Jack White, in his song Over and Over and Over, gives the story another life:
The Sisyphean dreamer My fibula and femur Hold the weight of the world (Over and over)
The rock ‘n’ roller, the young and older Rolling back to the stroller (Over and over)
One story, carried through different forms, returning again and again.
And then, from Ecclesiastes:
All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full. To the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.
A repetition that feels, at times, unbearable.
Life returns us to the same questions, the same efforts, and the same inclines. We strain, we lose our footing, we begin again. Something in us resists the cycle. Something else learns how to thrive within it.
There is a kind of dignity in that.
Not in escaping the hill, but in meeting it.
Not once, but again.
And again.
So I think of that hillside near the soccer field.
Of the orange ball slipping from my hands.
Of the certainty I had that I could change the ending.
Iris Lennox 