山

シーシュポス

稜線に転がる唐突な岩。それが何者かの仕業に見え、私はシーシュポスのことを思った。山の頂に巨岩を押し上げる業を神々から背負わされた人間の名だ。ようやく頂に上げられた岩は瞬く間、奈落の底に転がり落ちていく。彼は山を下り、再び岩を押し上げなければならない。永遠に続く無益な労働と不条理を象徴した話。
　徒労。それは私が最も恐れをなす言葉だ。こうして独り山頂で写真を撮る姿こそ、徒労そのもの。まるで立ち尽くしているようにも映るのではないか。途方もない懲罰の中で、シーシュポスは何を感じていたのか。太古の昔から明と暗が繰り返されてきた地上を前にして、私に残された自由がこの不条理を美しいと感じられる両眼だけなのだとすれば、シーシュポスもまたこれを知り尽くし受け止めていたのだと思えてならない。

"Sisyphus"

Rocks rolling suddenly over the ridges of mountains. It seemed like the work of an unseen hand, and I thought of Sisyphus, a human forced by the gods to roll an enormous boulder up a mountain. Just as he reached the top, the boulder would tumble back down into the depths of the abyss. Sisyphus had no choice but to descend the mountain and once again push the rock back up the mountain; a symbol of absurdity and fruitless labor doomed to continue into eternity.

　Futility. Nothing frightens me so much as that word. I think of myself, alone, taking pictures on mountain summits, and it seems the very image of futility. They come out as looking as though I had been standing stock-still, not climbing up and then back down again. As he suffered his outrageous punishment, what did Sisyphus feel? Gazing out over the earth before me, light and dark chasing one another as they had since the dawn of time, I wondered if the freedom left to me was simply the eyes that allowed me to see this absurdity as beautiful. And if that were true, I could not help but think that Sisyphus himself must have known that, and accepted it, too.