Imperfection means a lack and lack suggests expectation. The edge without a hem awaits a hand to finish it, but it has already been caressed by the person who cut it, but another who basted it, by yet another who only touched it with affection. Imperfection means mournful waiting, the kind of wait that never ends: like loves that, if they are real, always await their fulfilment, while hoping it never comes; always await something that will make them straight, quelling anxiety, so complete the yearning can be forgotten. If it happens the results are dramatic: the magic implodes. Imperfection, on the other hand, doesn't let you forget it. It's a slap in the face of our mentality, it triggers cognitive dissonance, making it a disturbing mood. But sometimes happily disturbing.
If there were no cognitive dissonance, if everything were to happen according to predictable rules, if that hem had been finished and we could finally forget about it, then there would be no reason to continue thinking. To learn to think in a new way. We tend to find imperfection tolerable, and this is precisely its strength: in the attempt to justify it, to close it, to bring it back into the realm of the well made, we are forced to invent new solutions. The new never comes from perfection. The new comes from holes, cuts, emptiness, from a lack that prevents the mind from finding rest. From something frayed that we learn to sew using only our eyes.

Imperfection by Angela Vettese.
Written for Antonio Marras - Ten Years After.

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Kalaurie