Modern day Sisyphus

Friday, 2:48 pm

By Kate

Nov

10

2006

Today is a windy day. It’s not an ideal day to rake up leaves. They’re blowing all over the place.

Nevertheless, there was a man by the bank whose job it was to blow the leaves away from the building and rake them into a barrel.

I watched him for a while. He worked methodically, blowing the leaves into the parking lot. He was careful to make sure there wasn’t a leaf left behind. And, as soon as he’d take another step forward to blow more leaves away from the side of the building, the wind came along behind and blew the displaced leaves right smack up against the bank again.

When the man reached the end of the building, he turned around and repeated the whole process.

When I came out of the bank, he was walking back along the building from the opposite direction again, still trying to get those leaves away from the side of the building.

Unless someone intervenes, I suppose that he is probably still there futilely blowing leaves away from the side of the bank.

The thing is, though, he looked as if he was enjoying himself thoroughly. He didn’t appear to be concerned about what happened behind him. He was intent on what was in front of him and he was doing a darned fine job with the task in front of him. And, eventually, what was behind him became what was in front of him again and...well...as I said, he’s probably still there doing a fine job of blowing away the leaves in front of him.