One beloved summer ritual I've had for years was taking my various summer guests on the picturesque walk up the hill, through the woods and cow pastures, to go buy a cheese wheel at the small farm on the plateau. But in early June I went by myself and learnt that there would be no cheese this summer; the farm owners just had a baby. Cheesemaking is only part of their activity and as they're understandably very busy now, they've decided to pause this part of the operation for the time being.
I've been re-reading Camus to cope with this. "You continue making the gestures commanded by existence for many reasons, the first of which is habit.” Yes. I've gone on this walk up the hill many times since, because the body remembers the pattern even as the world rescinds its offerings. I climb the hill because I used to. I climb it because unanswered prayer is still prayer. Some part of me knows I shouldn't treat a wheel of cheese like it's the divine Logos withdrawn from the material plane, but I find meaning in continuing the ritual in full awareness of its futility. "The absurd man takes no refuge in the illusions of hope; but he is not resigned. He continues."
“Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent." Same. This is where my absurd condition crystallises. I trudge back down the hill, cheeseless, not deluded, not desperate, but conscious. Then I go up again.
"Nostalgia is stronger here than knowledge. Reason is an instrument of thought and not thought itself. Above all, a man’s thought is his nostalgia." Reason tells me they've had a baby. Nostalgia whispers that the cheese remains. It's not a belief, just the memory of hope in a world emptied of its promise.
“There is so much stubborn hope in a human heart.” I still hope they might start making cheese again in September.
In the meantime, I have tried to convert my summer guests—friends and relatives—to the belief that the rite is sacred because it outlasts meaning; they reacted with varying degrees of metaphysical commitment. When I said we should now walk to the cheese farm not in expectation of cheese, but in lucid confrontation with its absence, my aunt pointed out that there are other farms; a friend accused me of weaponising philosophy against reasonable decision-making again. I understand that you can't convince everyone. You can only climb your hill, and carry your truth. I tried to explain it better to other guests, to say that we do not resign ourselves, or naively hope; we walk past hope then choose to keep walking, not toward meaning but through its ruins. Cousin: "What if I actually want to buy cheese?" Then you are not ready. But you will be. Until then, I will climb for both of us.
Then my best friend brought me a cheese (the "same" cheese) that she'd bought from another farm on her way to my place. It was really nice of her, even though it violated the covenant of absence. We ate some of it, had a sunny picnic in the pasture, and I quietly observed her as she began to perceive the problem. She could taste it. This cheese was philosophically inert. It lived outside the myth, content just to be edible. It was here, it was good, and incapable of signifying.
She told me that her first reaction upon learning about my existential cheese pilgrimage was to think I needed a puzzle feeder, but now she was beginning to see my point—she said this in the weary tone of someone who realises that the bit has, regrettably, achieved structural coherence and now demands to be treated as a belief system. She said, "I'm starting to regret having brought that cheese." That's because you committed an act of metaphysical substitution. "That’s exactly what I thought you’d say." 😔 I just mean you tried to replace the sign with the thing itself. "I brought cheese to a picnic." And it's good cheese! With bad ontology. It's just pure referent. The human spirit craves a cheese that can gesture beyond itself; or else it can't feed anything but hunger.
She admitted that I had a point. Well, to be exact she said this sentence shouldn't exist, but she accepted that she now lived in a world where it is, somehow, true, and she was ready to contemplate its implications. Which meant going up the hill. To the cheeseless farm. "So—you don't want cheese anymore?" No, I want it. That's what makes it absurd.
“The absurd man catches sight of a transparent and limited universe in which nothing is possible but everything is given (except cheese) and beyond which all is collapse and nothingness. He can then decide to accept such a universe and draw from it his strength, his refusal to hope, and the unyielding evidence of a life without consolation.”
She walked up the hill with me, interested in the unyielding evidence of a life without consolation. She was trying to understand. We talked about how Camus said that the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. Friend: "The idol is the baby?" Right; that makes sense. And the parents are the priests. "That's ridiculous but coherent. The cheese is the lamb. Sacrificed to absorb disruption." Exactly. The cheese was the most innocent being in this scenario, the most marginal and voiceless. It had to die. Its makers chose procreation over fermentation (which some would argue produces more lasting cultures.) "So we're sure there won't be cheese at the end of our walk?" Quite certain. "And we're climbing anyway." I saw it—her thoughtful nod. A crack in her worldview where cheese must be the answer rather than the question. She had touched the rind of the absurd.
We reached the farm, but didn't knock at the door. We stood outside near the cheese cellar like Vladimir and Estragon. The cows looked at us peaceably. The wind smelled like fresh hay. The wildflowers buzzed faintly with truth.
"The absurd is born of this confrontation between human need and the unreasonable silence of the world."
Friend: "So we're... visiting the absence of cheese. Of meaning." Yes! "And we accept it?" We don’t just accept it. We follow the contours of meaninglessness until they resemble a path.
"It is during that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn."
