the white page stares at me as i write. i'm not sure what to say about this game, because i always end up forgetting all my process the moment i have to talk about it, but hey, i always manage to figure things out. one way or another.

the man, the myth, the legend

to be honest, i never had much affection for sisyphus as a character. "a guy who does a pointless work forever? what about it?". i heard it was to illustrate how ancient greeks saw physical labor -- as something that never ends and it was too hard and tiring (and that was why they preferred to do intellectual labor and leave it to the slaves and blah blah blah) -- but that wasn't interesting to me. at all.

the idea of doing things uselessly always haunted me for several reasons. i was a shy kid, not the brightest academically, and i felt that my art, the only thing i could "take pride" in, was 'useless' because it was entirely self-indulgent. i drew what i wanted to draw, without following an specific style or with a goal like art college or business. so sisyphus was more like the materialization of my own lack of worth than anything, and that was boring.

many years later i am one of the hosts for myth jam and had the idea of mashing the concept of sisyphus and the healing process. and here i was, back to this guy i never really liked to talk about a question that constantly bothers me: am i healing?

"am i really healing?..."

if you're even the slightlest aware of your mental health or your own toxic patterns and is actively trying to change it, you probably made this question to yourself: "am i getting better?...".

maybe it's just a me thing, but when things get bad, i ask myself if it will ever get better again. i know it will, but i wonder if i'll actually heal from the things in my past. if they will ever be easier to deal with. if i'll ever be able to live a "normal" life without worrying about 93048204820483 things i got from my early years. if i'll ever be able to overcome my own fears and insecurities. if things can ever go smoothly, without me having to stop and distance myself. will things get easier? even if just a little bit?

healing is not a linear thing. it comes and goes, just like sisyphus and his rock -- up, then down, then up, then down. it's incredibly hard to push it up, and it's incredibly easy how it rushes back to the bottom. i just experienced that thing some weeks ago, and what a timing. all those questions went back again -- "will i ever get better? will i ever be able to raise my head and live confidently?" -- and it's been a struggle to come back. push through. but it's the only way.

philosophical ramblings

changing the topic very randomly, when i was making the game, i was writing a short resume of camus' "the myth of sisyphus" to understand better what he meant with "one must imagine sisyphus happy" (i'll talk about this later on) and saw that one of the links in the wikipedia page of that essay linked to the movement of the theatre of absurd. that essay was camus' introduction to his philosophy of the absurd, and that movement came from that. and can you guess one of the plays of that movement? i'll just tell you straight: waiting for godot. which was the inspiration for waiting for eurydice, my o2a2 submission last year lmao. the way things go full cycle, insane.

now, back to the essay. was the game solely based on that thing? no. to be honest, i have this small ick from philosophers because most of them don't consider the practical side of things. i mean, fair. it's philosophy we're talking about. but no thoughts form in the human mind without the context of their lives, their culture, their family dynamics, their personality, their feelings. and to think a thought, an opinion, can be "neutral" and "applicable" by default is a terrible mistake. in the same way, i can't expect myself to write a character only understanding them with my mind. i have to understand them with my heart, too. to become them. every time i write, i pick a part of myself that relates to the character and mash it up. a writer lives a thousand lives, as they say.

so at the ending of the script, i had to ask myself why was sisyphus happy at the end of camus' essay. i didn't get it. i read the resume on the internet, i read the essay itself, but i couldn't understand. and i just had to know, because i didn't want to end my game with in a sour note. then, i wrote my own resume, and now i'm going to ramble a bit more about the text just for fun lmao:

[BEFORE ANYTHING, i'll just make it clear that this is MY interpretation of the text, based on what i wanted to tell with THIS particular game. if it doesn't match with whatever interpretation that is highly accepted i dont really care. peace.]

 bro writes:

 "I see that man [Sisyphus] going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock." (you can find it here)

like whaaaaaaaaaaa. "stronger than his rock? superior to his fate? he's just going back to suffer, you imbecile!!". i could compare it to the feeling of dread one has when they wake up on a monday of work. "all of this again..." (and he actually says something similar: "The workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd." and this was like..... the BEGINNING OF THE 2OTH CENTURY.)

let's continue.

"If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and the sorrow was in the beginning. When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy arises in man's heart: this is the rock's victory, this is the rock itself."

then i was like huh. i kinda get it. focusing too much on being happy makes you go insane when things go south. makes your negative feelings weight much more on your head.

then he goes:

"All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is a thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. [...] There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his efforts will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is, but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days."

like i think bro was kinda romantizing a little the suffering but anyway. the thing is. the fact that sisyphus goes back to his torment means that he doesn't avoid his suffering -- he embraces it as part of his journey. well, he doesn't have a choice in the myth, i know, but applying to the context of a healing journey, it is an effort worth of praise. in the game, he doesn't avoid the struggle of pushing over his own fears and insecurities and self-doubt. not because he's entitled to great things or because of a reward at his destination or a moral code he's forced upon, but simply because he wants to. it's the only thing he can do, and he does it.

"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."

i can say a lot about this last paragraph based on my personal experiences but i'll keep it short. when someone realizes they don't really have the obligation of having gods to follow or laws to obey, when they realize happiness isn't the "goal" of their life -- neither is suffering --, when they accept that they can act bad and toxic -- it's when they can consider themselves free. 

you are free. you don't have to do anything in particular. you have all your life to observe and to choose what you want to do. of course you have expectations over you -- but you can choose to either fulfill them or not. and the reason that drives you to do things must not be "because others want me to do it", but rather "because i want to". because you understand why you're doing things, or merely because you hope for something. when sisyphus watches the boulder rushing down and decides to get down the hill to push it back, he smiles. the fact that he chooses to do it fill his heart with that childish pride of being able to do whatever you want. he lost all hope in finding a meaning to his task. all the gods abandoned him. he himself can't see worth in who he is, so he chooses a path alone and embraces the consequences fully. he doesn't relay on anything anymore. no gods, no morals, not even his strength. he doesn't care, he just wants to do it, so he does. and that's why he's happy.

final thoughts + poem??

uh. i rambled a lot more than i expected. but anyway, i hope you enjoyed the game. thanks for reading. i'll go back to tod research for now, and i'll probably be less active because uni is back (did you notice... doing resumes and reading essays, i'm such an academy girl...). (if you don't know what "tod" is, it is my retelling of the 1001 arabian nights! you can find it here.) but anyway!! yeah!! this was cool.

and now i'll just throw a poem here because i really liked this one, even if it doesn't apply much to the game itself:

atlas and sisyphus 19.04.24

atlas carries the sky on his shoulders.

to the titans, tartarus,

but to atlas, the responsibility of care.

atlas carries the sky on his shoulders.

who would say

that caring for something

would weight as much

as carrying the sky

on your shoulders?

the sky isn't young.

it is not a child, it is not dependent

and yet

atlas carries the sky on his shoulders.

what a punishment.

atlas sees his comrades, the titans

suffering hell in tartarus,

but none of them

have to carry the sky,

the stars, the planets

the earth

on their shoulders.

no, they already abandoned it.

sisyphus watches him from afar.

distant from the titans, he stares

and laughs.

"you don't need to carry

all the sky on your shoulders"

he says.

atlas stares at him, and says:

"i do.

it is my punishment."

another round of laughter echoes

through tartarus.

"you don't need to."

sisyphus gives another push to the rock

colossal and heavy as it is.

"look, look at me."

and he pushes it.

and he pushes it some more.

it hardly budges, but that's

the nature of his work.

once again.

and again.

and again.

sigh.

and again.

and a little more.

the texture of the stone

scrapping his hands.

his wrists are tired.

and when it comes right next to the top,

a small slip-- foresaw by the gods--

the rock slaps sisyphus' fingers

and gravity pulls the large body to itself.

the rock falls, and rolls, and rolls,

and rolls so easily, so easily it is almost unfair.

atlas looks at the man's face,

deceiveful, stressed, frustrated,

and sees a bitter smile emerge from it.

"see? you stupid asshole"

he says

"just let it roll away."