Back to Perfection

Back to Perfection

I generally don’t aspire to perfection. I learned a long time ago that zero-default systems are too expensive to afford and that perfection is simply too difficult to attain. Every business and activity defines its tolerance levels with enough leeway to allow things to be almost perfect, but never quite totally perfect, and that’s just fine. I have always liked the movie The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe. In that movie, Cruise plays a disenchanted Civil War veteran who has seen too much and cares too little as a consequence. In an early battle between modern Japan, as supported by mercenaries led by Cruise, and the traditionalist Samurai forces led by Watanabe in the form of Katsumoto, one of the country’s great Samurai, Cruise, who gets wounded, is taken prisoner and goes back to the mountain village where Katsumoto reigns and trains. Katsumoto and Cruise spend the winter learning about one another and their cultures, which are dramatically different and difficult to comprehend for each other. In trying to understand the highly enlightened Samurai, Cruise is told that Katsumoto is looking for the perfect cherry blossom. The meaning of that is that the search for perfection in something like natural beauty is the highest form of ambition for mankind. It is the Samurai version of total self-actualization to be able to find and perhaps paint the perfect cherry blossom. It is especially poignant since this delicate beauty stands in such stark contrast to the hatch brutality of war that surrounds the Samurai existence. It makes Katsumoto a very sympathetic character and makes the U.S. Army officer played by Cruise seem crass and base. Naturally, that sets up the opportunity for the narrative arc to take Cruise to a higher plane and seek and achieve redemption, which is the whole point of the movie.

In many ways, this movie is perfect in that it contrasts the two sides of life we all face every day in our own ways. There is the modern progressive side of life that pushes us forward and drives prosperity in a materialistic sense. That is not all crassness, since human advancement does overcome man’s basic needs and does elevate him further and further away from the animals. But the other side of the equation is the traditional and more spiritual side of life. It may seem harsh at ground level, but has elements of enlightenment that transcend the mundane and materialism of life in favor the higher order sensitivities that man is capable of achieving. I can think of very few themes that are more timeless than that and the setting of pre-industrial Japan with its delicate art, music and culture, is a great venue to highlight this conflict and resolution. If any of us were to met Katsumoto on the rutted streets of Kyoto, he would likely scare us with his expression of sternness and stoicism. But if we took off our muddy shoes and talked softly into the rice paper screened confines of his tatami-matted home, we would find a man garbed in silk brocade contemplating the finer things in life.

The famous line at the end of the movie takes place on the gruesome battlefield where the Samurai have been but to ribbons by the savagery of a new Gatling Gun imported from the west and used by fledgling soldiers of modern Japan to eradicate the forces of tradition that impede the progress of the Japanese state that wants to move forward in step with the western world. Both Katsumoto and Cruise are gunned down as the perform one last mounted Samurai charge with swords held high. They have been felled together on the muddy field of battle and lie only feet apart. In his dying moment, the great Katsumoto notices a nearby cherry tree that is in seasonal bloom. He seems the wind rustle the branches and the cherry blossoms fall gently from the tree. It is then that he recognizes that the search for beauty in the perfection of a cherry blossom is a false prophet. He declares with certainty with his dying breath that they are all perfect, meaning that there is beauty in all of the cherry blossoms, one not more than any other. It is a great comment about diversity and an even greater comment about perspective. I read it to mean that we miss far too much of the beauty of life seeking perfection and that life itself is the essence of perfection. Diversity and acceptance is perhaps where we most often find perfection, not in the perfect shape or coloring of one single thing or being.

I am back where I have not been for some time, sitting on my sofa on a Saturday morning. Betty is asleep on the floor (she seems to be having a Boo-Radley morning and is not really on her game). Kim is in the kitchen watching a Turner Classic Movie of her choosing, which is her preferred weekend activity while she is doing some minor task or other. I have taken my BMW R-Nine-T motorcycle down to the shop for a spring tune-up and have set up Handy Brad and Omar to task cleaning first the patio palapa shade and next the deck palapa shade. I can hear the power washer going strong and can almost feel the dirt and mold being cleansed from the fabric. It will be nice to have fresh, clean palapas to lounge under as the springtime sun gets stronger by the day. This spot on the sofa is my favorite spot in the house. I feel that I can command the world from this spot. To the east out the large floor-to-ceiling windows is a veritable jungle of diverse succulents that range from aloes to yuccas to palo verdes, aeoniums, agaves and lily rushes. The blue sky as a backdrop is pale and cloudless as the sun has already passed through it and sits higher in the sky at the moment.

To the west I look out the equally big floor-to-ceiling windows out to the deck that is still in shade as the sun inches its way on its path towards its final daily resting place out in the Pacific Ocean. The air is crisp and clear and the Dalmatian hillsides with their speckling of boulders and dark green grass roll in several layers between here and the water, ten or so miles away. The ocean itself is quite visible for about 40 more miles to the horizon and is a darker blue than the sky, but not as dark as it sometimes appears. To the northwest over my shoulder at the snow-capped San Gabriel and San Jacinto mountains that majestically remind me that we have had a month of atmospheric rivers dumping moisture up and down the state. Just to be clear, those mountains are 80 and 50 miles respectively distant as the crow flies and yet they can be seen with all of their creviced hillsides with deep white snow covering them from base to top. They rival the Pacific for grandeur from this location and are always a welcome sight in all seasons, but none more than this with the distinction and contrast of being snow-covered while we bask in the relative warmth of the midday sun.

I think I could sit here all day and revel in the perfection of this scene on all sides of me. I’ve gone for my morning walk. I’ve done some routine chores and set others in motion. The rain from all those atmospheric rivers is become Ong a distant memory by the moment and I feel somehow that I am back to perfection on this hilltop. I understand that perfection is an asymptote just like the horizon to the west, but that does not concern me. I know that perfection really lies in the diversity and wonder of life in its totality. But none of that stops me from rejoicing in the moment in my feeling of being back to perfection.