A Perfect World?

OK, here it goes.

I know that making a statement is rather a bold and foolish thing to do these days because we seem to not be able to make "statements" any longer as that means that we actually have something to say and feel that it might actually be right, God forbid. At the pool today, I heard someone in the locker room (after he took a gander at my plastic, Del Haize shopping bag ) say, in all seriousness, with no irony, "Now, of course, I don't want to make a statement, that's for sure."

So, deep breath. Count to three.

Here goes.

"A Perfect World," directed by Clint Eastwood in 1993 is Kevin Costner's best and most unsung role. There I said it. Hand me a tissue Tito...

Sandwiched in between the two major hits, "Unforgiven" and "The Bridges of Madison County," this odd tale got lost. In it, Costner is Robert "Butch" Haynes, a low-level criminal who takes a young boy hostage and drives across Texas, being pursued by Eastwood as the Sheriff, Red Garnett. During the course of the movie something odd happens--NOTHING, and that is what makes it so brilliant.

Costner pulls off a masterful role of not really doing anything, and I am dead serious about my praise in this. This is the crepuscular time of Costner's presence in movies being anything but doing anything but nothing.

Road trips are an American thing. Road trips across the West, that is. Getting in a car and driving from A to B is not a road trip. Going on vacation on a busy highway is not a road trip.

Driving across the vistas of the American West, where NOTHING happens is a road trip because it is a time to reflect, to meditate, to listen to Cat Stevens, buy horrible gas station coffee, stop at a Stuckey's, read the billboards for Flying C Ranch and Cline's Corners, look at the sky, play "I Spy" with your five-year old, but essentially doing no-thing.

The last time I was in Santa Fe, I went to a lecture on Liebniz at St. John's College on the outskirts of town. I had always had a passing interest in Liebniz, especially with his connection to the dispute over the invention of the Calculus against Sir Isaac Newton. However, it was through teaching Candide at the Antwerp International School that I had come to know about the concept of Liebniz's "Best of All Possible Worlds." Some years back, we went to see the opera, Candide, nearly on a lark of just happen to have had season tickets to the Austin Opera, but it was excellent. I was stunned that you could make an incredible boring book into such a great opera. And, despite the message, Voltaire's book is a snoozer.

I have tried to make a conversion in my vocabulary of "best of all possible worlds" from "perfect" because the latter seems to get me in quite a stew, while I actually mean the former. For me, they are the same. Per-fect, coming from the Latin, is to be be made through and through. Nearly identical is the concept of Sam-skrita, which means, made, or put together and was applied to the language because it was considered "perfect," which it is anything but. Sanskrit is a hybrid of Indo-European and Dravidian and has many irregularities, but is it less than perfect then?

Perfect does not mean without faults or flaws in my mind, but rather, like Liebniz, it is the best of all possible worlds. Ultimately, this will be the kicker in the Republic when Socrates is asked if he believes in the "perfect" city. (Answer to that question is coming soon to a blog near you).

Americans seem to get hung up on that word, perfect. I know that I have, and I have made it one of my demons to be exorcised, making Liebniz more and more my guide.

I do believe that life is but a calculus, leading ever closer to what we wish to accomplish, or become, but at each increment, each integrated integral becomes smaller and smaller, much like Cantor's dust between the cracks. Yet, at every stage, our integrity can become sharper, more focused, more perfect, with faults, flaws, and all.