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Michael considered fate at 18:34   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment

I'm sitting in an internet cafe watching the spring sun slowly set over the tops of the st. laurent roofs, trying to get work done, trying to be productive and like all of humanity (not being entirely perfect) I am doing okay. I'm having occasional break-throughs, sometimes ticking off a task on the to-do list, but mostly staring listlessly out the window, wondering, imperfectly.

The awning across the street is set at an angle, seemingly intentional, well-placed almost so much so that if you were not sitting still, staring imperfectly at it, you may never notice the flaw. Nevertheless, it's there. From one end to the other - a span of roughly thirty feet - the front edge drops by as much a foot or more. Otherwise clean, sharply-black, and impressive looking it hangs, outwardly proud, inwardly ashamed, at all of it's imperfectness.

In front of me, for the moment, is a Porche 911. Early 90's model most likely, and shiny in the angled light of 6:40pm. It's no doubt been through the car wash or lovingly hand-soaped and sprayed. But close inspection reveals a crack in the windshield. Even I, operating with far less than 20/20, from over twenty feet away can see this flaw. Washed and waxed as it is, rolling so smoothly inch by inch towards the red-light, it is not exactly as it once was. It is broken, worn, perhaps even weary.

Nevermind the people, the many millions of meak, sheepishly embarrased mistakes. Nevermind all of the really human blemishes, the tattered bum sitting atop his backpack with his baseball cap upturned, outwardly asking. Forget about the click-clack of the high heels on concrete, the sound of a soul-less body moving through the crowd crying obessly on the inside, too skinny on the outside. Don't mind these, the broken, because truly they are all of us. Flawed, banged-up, battered, bedraggled, brain-dead, bastardly and beaten, obsessive, compulsive, over zealous and self-obsessed, we are an imperfection.