The day no one could die

 To celebrate my birthday, I spent an hour among the Ancient Greek vases at the San Antonio Museum of Art. I sometimes feel as if the collection were meant for me. When you write a story — or create a work or art — it’s hard to say who will enjoy it and who won’t. Personality has a decisive role in aesthetics, I’m afraid.

The museum has a wonderful collection of Ancient Greek art. I imagine that most people who see it trudge through the gallery, looking dutifully, hoping to absorb some culture. I look with joy.

All human beings come to some kind of understanding about the standing of mankind in relation to the cosmos. Einstein talked about it. All great thinkers do. We look at the enormous size of the cosmos and consider the near infinite number of things that make it up. We wonder where we stand in relation to it — where we fit in.

I admire the way the Greeks looked at this mystery. In some cultures, the stories handed down can’t be changed. Failing to dot an i or cross a t of the received text is a deadly offense.

But to the Greeks, the stories were a challenge for each new generation of artists. A god or hero who was a cad to Aeschylus might be a sympathetic figure to Euripides. Each artist interpreted the common stories differently. And so you have to pay attention.

All this made me think of Sisyphus, the Greek character who was, as my grandmother would say, a bit too smart for his britches. He got into all kinds of trouble, and the Judges of the Dead eventually sentenced him to rolling an enormous rock up a hill. The rock is so big it always rolls back down, and to this day poor Sisyphus is hard at it. Most of us know Sisyphus as the symbol of an endless task.

I like the lesser-known tale of the havoc Sisyphus created when he went to the Underworld. He met the god of death, Hades. But Sisyphus was such an engaging fellow that Hades fell for the old “show me how the handcuffs work” trick.

And so for a day we had a cosmos in which no one could die.

Hades couldn’t take anyone in. The Underworld was effectively out of business.

You’d think that would be a delightful state of affairs for us mortals. But it was a disaster. Men who’d been beheaded couldn’t die and were having to make their way around as best they could. It was awkward.

Of course, this really crimped the style of Ares, the god of war. He eventually went to the Underworld, got Hades out of the cuffs and restored order.

As I was looking at the pottery, I kept trying to imagine what that scene might have looked like to one of those wonderful artists who lived 2,500 years ago. Imagine it: the god of death, with that air of awful somberness, trying to explain to Ares how he’d come to be trussed up.

I'm still grinning, days after I left the museum.