chrysanthemum
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things perfect, things cracked
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Three stray thoughts:

  • Knight's thoughts on perfection last week reminded me of some poems I'd read recently on the theme, including Michael Salcman's Cutting Apples [a third down the page): what you do with any tool gives it its value...


  • While searching for an e-mail related to a report I'd kept not getting to, I came across Jen Louden's How perfection sneaks in and messes with you.

  • While catching up on some filing (aka not quite getting to that report -- which I did just finish writing, hah!), I found a June 2007 column by Martha Beck in O Magazine. Re-skimming it, I can't say I'm really on board with most of it, but there are two passages that do speak to me:


    Author Melody Beattie took up skydiving and was scared senseless. Another diver told her, "When you get to the door and jump, say 'Woo-hoo! You can't have a bad time if you do."

    This phrase works as well when you're falling emotionally as when you're falling physically. When fear hits, when you want to grasp or hide, shout "Woo-hoo!" instead. While there is never - not ever - a sure foundation beneath our feet, the willingness to celebrate what we really feel can turn falling into flying. You don't need an airplane to practice woo-hoo skills. For instance: I'm writing these words at 2:15 in the morning because writing, like other intimate pursuits, often occurs at night. As I type each word, I come to care about how it will be read - about you, there, reading it. Caring is scaring. It makes me want to stop right now, or spend years composing something flawlessly literate. Unfortunately, my deadline was yesterday, and Shakespeare I ain't, so . . . woo-hoo!

    * * *


    A Jewish friend told me this story: A man asks his rabbi, "Why does God write the law on our hearts? Why not in our hearts? It's the inside of my heart that needs God." The rabbi answered, "God never forces anything into a human heart. He writes the word on our hearts so that when our hearts break, God falls in."








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