Just yesterday, I spent ten hours looking over old writings of mine, but not with the joy, nostalgia, or pleasant remembrance one might expect. No, as I read on and on, each moment grew more horrible than the last. Each line seemed, more than the previous, riddled with glaring, laughable errors. Eventually, my best-loved verses appeared vile to me, monstrous, hideous abortions, twisted and half-living mockeries, corpses that could not be buried. In a panic, I searched through everything, looking for something that made sense, one poem that held up, one line that retained something of its original beauty, but there was no peace for me. The published materials were painful, because they had been seen and were, to a certain extent, unalterable. The unpublished materials were, if possible, worse. They were unworthy, and no one would ever print them. During these times, I imagine the horror of anorexia, standing before a mirror and knowing an unspeakable terror in the soul at the thought of an ineffable and insurmountable inadequacy. Before the night was out, I went on rampages, threw my books of poetry across the room, cried, kicked stacks of papers and magazines that held my work. I was nothing. I had always been nothing. I would always be nothing. My wife begged me to go to bed, to get a fresh perspective in the morning, but I could not. I stayed up far into the night, bleary-eyed, tearing through the words I had once loved, no longer able to make two of them go together in a way that pleased me. At last, my vision failing, I collapsed in bed, and was covered almost at once by a sickening, brown-out wash of unconsciousness, a final and unforgiving death of esteem. After the nightmare of the evening before, sometime early this morning, I had a dream. In the dream, I was standing in a spotless and pure room. Its floor, ceiling, and walls were all a brilliant white. It was marvelous, I thought, unmarred, whole, perfect. At some point, I became aware of my own body and how out of place I was. Then I looked down and saw my hand was bleeding. As I watched, the blood ran more and more profusely, out of control, and it suddenly occurred to me that I was going to stain the white and ruin the perfection that had so impressed me. I tried to staunch the flow of red, but could not. I tried to catch the run-off with my unwounded hand, but I could see that it was not going to be enough. At last, inevitably, a splash of my life fell and tarnished perfection. At first, I was mortified, twisted with guilt and self-accusation. As I slowly focused my eyes and looked upon the blood-splash, I saw something curious, almost lovely in it, a very human sort of chaos. When I looked more closely, I could see that it was not chaotic at all. In fact, the splash of blood formed a very certain symbol, a bit of Chinese calligraphy, perhaps. It held a message. Before I could figure out what it said, though, other symbols joined it, wild, beautiful, harsh, ugly. One followed the other, visual blessings, curses, whisperings, shouting, blood-splash after blood-splash. These figures, these Asian characters, formed right before my eyes a narrative, chronicle, and lifetime. They ran out on the white floor, not defiling it. No, rather enlivening it and the perfection that existed before. Strangely, this portion of the dream was very similar to a scene in a story I wrote three years ago called "The Art Of Survival" about a woman who ended her life, because she could not be perfect. I suddenly understood exactly what I had written in that story, why I had written it, and for whom I had written it. I cannot make sense of the rest of the dream. There was an eagle in it somewhere, and Walt Whitman, but when I rose, I was able to go back to the towering stacks of work I had cursed the night before. Once again I was able to look on it all with something akin to love. I was able to see it as something that belonged to me, that came from me, that was me. What do I say to myself, to us, the perfectionists, so we can continue to live? I shall do my best. 1) If you did not accomplish what you intended yesterday, or even all the yesterdays before, do not despair, though the world seems ended. Simply resolve to do it today. Then go forth, and set to it. If, for whatever reason, you are unable to render the results you wish once more on this day, then so be it. Do not huddle shiftless in a comer. Fail gloriously, with flare and fanfare, throwing all your best effort into it. 2) Remember always that a bad rehearsal ensures a brilliant performance. Realize that all of the days gone by are but rehearsal for the rest of your life. 3) Arab rug makers purposefully put a flaw in each of their rugs to show that only God is perfect. Look at all of your mistakes and imperfections in this manner, as praises to God. 4) Remember that perfection is static, monotonous. Imperfection is dynamic, interesting, the stuff of happy accidents and the Felix culpa. The whole of human history, with all its fascinating variations, was born because of Eve's "sin." God created us, no doubt, out of boredom, knowing that perfection must have imperfection to have meaning. 5) At times, my mistakes have been blessings. Once, while writing a poem, I misspelled a word so that "wind" no longer caressed the sailor's face as he came into port, but a "wing." Many said it was the best image in the poem. Furthermore, Francis Bacon said that a woman could not be beautiful unless she had some "interesting flaw." The work of the French writer Flaubert has been called "perfect," yet it is mind numbing. What of models used up at thirty, except to say they look like painted mannequins, plastic and lifeless? Indeed! Flaubert me no Flauberts, and Crawford me no Crawfords. Give me the stumbling, exalting prose of Wolfe. Give me stretch marks. Give me scars. Let me embrace this marvelously imperfect world. Let me love all its imperfect beings. Let me love even myself, one of the world's great failures. For Lauren, gloriously imperfect. |
Being a perfectionist, I fail constantly. When I allow myself a moment or two of self-satisfaction, soon afterward, I always find a fatal flaw in what I have done, and I am certain that all is lost because of it.