perfection
Perfection is something sterile and hermitically sealed. Something cloistered and spaceless . Something closed off and unwelcoming.
If you achieve perfection, you’re finished. There’s nothing else to be done. Nothing else you can do. It's a butterfly pinned to a board. Stilled and lifeless. The flit and flutter that you sought to capture is the very thing that's missing.
"We aren’t here to make things perfect”, Jennifer Hecht says. “We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people". We're here to make beautiful messes. We're here to make mistakes exquisitely. We're here to bask in the refractions of all our fractures. To fail boldly. To embrace serendipity. To take every malformed misalignment, and trace the shape of redemption.
Every flaw is an open doorway. An invitation. An extended hand. A vacant seat at a banquet in honor of the missing pieces that make us imperfectly complete.
**special thanks to
for the conversation that inspired this writing.P.S. - ICAD Day 33-36 - as usual all the collages are available for purchase here.
I like your take on Perfection being rather sterile and closed off.
The past few years, I've taken the approach of perfect being a verb. I am perfecting a process that can never be achieved. Sort of like a journey with no final destination. Perfection to me has become a process rather than a final end state if that makes sense.
The challenge though is keeping that in mind and not losing sight that there is no arrival date or place.
What an honor, Duane! Our exchange came at such a meaningful hour for me, and your extension of it just adds import and even more resonance.
Appreciate you, appreciate our collaborations in this space…