`Bart Wilcox
Sisyphus
2024, Oil on canvas, 20″ x 20″

One must imagine Sisyphus happy
said Camus, whose rock was smaller but real.
Really, it’s just a sentence for humankind. Here’s your rock. Get with it. It’s not a rock; it’s a reason.
I imagine Sisyphus happy If he is allowed to pick out his own rock, engaged, at least. He looks it over as he would look at a horse.
After a hundred years of rolling, he has learned every foothold, every turn of the boulder to ease its progress up the hill. He knows exactly how long he can pause before a harpy comes to strike at the back of his legs.
After a thousand years, he has worn a path in the granite of the mountain, his stone dutifully lying in the groove.
Ten thousand years, he and the stone have exchanged flesh and dust, so that it is a perfect sphere seeming to move on its own, inches above the surface of the mountain, a motion so fluid and consistent, the gods give it to the world of humans and call it Time.
I imagine Sisyphus not happy, something far better.
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