Perfectio nihil est

I’m not perfect. Nothing or nobody is. Not even God, if one exists.

A perfect God would create a perfect world. And everyone would just sit back and complain about there being nothing to complain about. Or maybe, everyone would just be too perfect to complain.

Either way, I have no need for a perfect world, for a perfect world would, by definition and induction, be devoid of me.

Not that I have great need for the world that enlists me as a constituent, either. While I do happen to be in it, it is either by accident or by particularly crude design. If it is by design, someone needs to take the blueprints and give the designer a potent whack on the back of the head. Or maybe the designer has no head, leading to the entire conundrum in the first place.

If it is by accident, then, as accidents go, it is probably a mild one, that will have no major consequence in the long run. I am a small bump in a vast expanse of terrain, there are many bumps and craters larger and smaller than me. In the absence of a designer, such a terrain might still be called smooth; if a designer is present, the proper response would be “What sort of idiot thinks this surface can, by any stretch of the imagination, be called a highway?!!?”

The world isn’t a perfect place. And I’m certainly not a perfect person. I have no problem with either of those facts. The slight issue I have lies in my imperfections and the world’s not being a bit more aligned with each others’. There might be more than just a hint of greed and egocentrism in that previous statement, but those are just facets of my imperfect personality. The world will have to live with my imperfections, just as long as I have to live with its.

I understand that all of this is going nowhere. But it is just a bunch of words written by an imperfect resident of an imperfect world, possibly created by an imperfect God. And while one might think that the whole thing has gone in a perfect circle, the stark reality is that nothing is perfect—not even circles.

A touch of mystery

Whenever I decide to write, I always ask myself if I want to express myself in the uninhibited form of fiction, or in the deliberate and methodical, yet equally beautiful non-fictional format. The second question I ask myself is whether I want to write of things that can be considered concrete, or whether I would prefer to dwell in the realm of the abstract. Usually, I end up blurring the lines, either out of intent, or out of wanderlust, or just as often, out of sheer desperation.
This evening, I sat down to scribble an outline to a rather interesting mystery novel (or at least one that felt interesting when I started). Like most other similar projects I have attempted in recent years, it got me going on a tangent, leading me to wonder about the basic constituents of a good mystery. After several (insert arbitrary unit of time)s, I came to the conclusion that three things were necessary for a tale to be a good mystery.
The first and most important part, definitely, has to be an understanding of the intended audience. Unless the tale is tailored to match the attentiveness, the intellect and the interest of the reader, it can fall flat, either by going over the reader's head (and possibly his/her outstretched hand) or by metaphorically rolling so slowly that it fails to reach the position of the waiting reader.
The second important thing is the narrative. It has to mostly flow at a pace that is comfortable to the reader; however, to maintain the air of intrigue, it occasionally has to weave about and change course suddenly. The reader has to sometimes be forced to make sudden jumps into places he or she is unfamiliar with, possibly a train of thought that leads to wondering what sound a sapient rooster would wake up to. These narrative jumps have to be properly placed, so that they do not make an endless jumble of the storyline, nor do they create a prolonged stream of inactivity - perhaps like a battle of attrition between two snails over who gets to eat the first leaf in a garden a thousand miles away, when they eventually get there.
And with that thought I leave you to contemplate the mysteries of your own choosing: whether they be of the nature of life, reality and the universe or of the wonders of your missing socks... Perhaps I will write in this space again, perhaps you will choose to read what gets written. If so, until we meet again, keep wondering...