“You have to play the cards you’re dealt…”¹

How many times have you heard a variation on that theme?
Sages throughout history extolled the virtues of making do with what you have.

I’ve written before of my propensity for bricolage, the act of creating from a disparate array of resources. I learned about the concept in college. Punks in the 70s and 80s would reappropriate mundane tools like safety pins, etc and turn them into articles of expression. Chains and dog collars became accessories. Safety pins lined leather jackets and hung from earlobes.

In short, bricolage exemplifies making do with what you have. Anyone who has repurposed a household item is a bricoleur.² My wife learned to use old milk bottles as incubators for plants in her garden.

When I was a kid, and I outgrew my Fisher-Price castle, I would turn it on its side and make it into a spaceship for my action figures. Its rooms and chambers, doors and windows took on exciting new configurations, new meaning.

Artists are bricoleurs when they invent creative ways of using materials. Bottle cap mosaics, sculptures made from discarded trash… found object art. Da Vinci, looking at imperfections in an old wall, would be inspired to paint a detailed fresco.

I once heard of a Japanese artist who would drink rice wine, dip his long hair in ink, splatter it on paper, and create from the patterns.

“You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em…”

A bricoleur may play the cards they are dealt. They may not always win. In fact, they will often lose.
But every now and then, they’ll construct the Wonders of the World by recombining a mediocre hand… build the Hanging Gardens of Babylon even when they’re not playing with a full deck.

That’s what I pride myself on.
I’m getting better at playing the cards I’m dealt.
It’s not that I resign myself to a bad hand.
I am tenacious, a pitbull when I want something. I will work tirelessly to swap out the cards, trade up when I can, negotiate, implore, bluff, plead… but once the stage is set, once all avenues have been exhausted, I get to the creative work of bricolage.

“There is so much stubborn hope in a human heart.”

Which has me contemplating the Myth of Sisyphus, the damned king sentenced to an eternity of pushing a boulder up a lonely hill in Hades, only to reach the top and find himself back at the bottom.
For eternity.
(The Greek Gods were vicious in their punishments.)
Camus blew everyone’s mind when he introduced the absurd concept that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Happy? Pushing a giant boulder up a hill for eternity? Balderdash.

But he builds a parallel to the recursive mundanity of human existence.
We push our metaphorical boulders up symbolic hills for a lifetime, only to perish at the end of it all.

There seems to be no meaning to any of it.

But Camus invites us to consider that when one’s existence is limited to a certain scope, that existence becomes life, and life, as the saying goes, is what you make it. He describes in intimate detail how Sisyphus lovingly caresses the structured stone, memorizes the grains and striations, and in that moment of victory atop the hill, creates his meaning.

But what he glosses over is the daring creativity that led to the wily King’s downfall.

He played every card at his disposal to cheat death. He tried to swap out his cards. He caught the attention of the pit boss in the afterlife casino by cheating at the big game with Thanatos. He betrayed Zeus. The Gods don’t like hubris.
And he almost got away with it until they dragged him back to Hades.
Then, when every card was played, and only then, did he get down to playing his ultimate hand.

Sisyphus the King, Sisyphus the bricoleur.

Gods, rulers, fate, and circumstances seem to render us powerless.
Yet, we have agency in this. Camus shows us that even in the most limiting circumstances, we can still perform bricolage through our perception of those circumstances.

It is the purest rebellion against Gods, rulers, fate, and circumstances to assume control of your perception, to fan out an off-suit dead-man’s hand and turn it into a castle wherein the only royal flush is in his majesty’s toilet.

…

I used to pull the hamper over to the toilet to read Richard Scarry or play with my coloring books. On my throne, flushing royally, making meaning atop a bin of dirty clothes.

One must imagine little Strohmeister happy…

1. “Play” is quite ambiguous, isn’t it? I mean, there are many ways one could play cards.
   I loved making structures out of cards. Some kids would put the cards in the spokes of their bicycles to make a noise.
   Others were fooled into a round of 52 pickup. ↩︎
2. How many life hacks can you fit on the end of a safety pin? ↩︎