What if it’s less like sorting lentils and grains, and more like Sisyphus pushing the same rock up the same hill every day?

The measure of contentment wouldn’t be the rock, then. It would be in the strengthened muscles and lungs and heart, the clarified mind. The gratitude that cleanup isn’t even necessary when the stint is finished — the rock returns itself to its place on its own, ready to help again another day.

I hadn’t taken the story in this direction before. It’s a new path now and my mind rushes to fill it with the mode that’s always quickest to go first: absurd personification. The rock has feelings. One time Sisyphus pushed something else up the mountain and the rock was distraught and Sisyphus never did that again to his faithful co-worker… but no. This is ridiculous. This never happened. The terms of sentence stated specifically that it had to be *this rock*, didn’t they?

Maybe it’s too intrusive to track my persistence through my own incremental improvements. Maybe it’s a mercy to myself to externalize this process by visualizing tiny but growing mounds of neatly sorted lentils and grains, after all.

I have so many things I’m eager to do, yearning to do, and they all take more time than I have. I’ll have to sort them again. Eventually they will get done. I will have to find a way to make peace and make patience.

So, it is back to the temple of Venus, not because she orders it this time but because I found that the ritual brought me comfort.

wheat | barley | millet | poppy seed | chickpeas | lentils | beans

Today is, once again, the Day of Wheat.