Perfect Flaws
Across swamps and deserts I came to the white city. I marched up to the sixth ring of the citadel, alive with crafting. For days I wandered the many workshops.
Each artist bent over their work with steady hands. They smiled and relaxed if they could make it to their final stroke or touch without a flaw. Then, with a sigh their shoulders would relax for the first time. Lines would melt down to the crest of their new grins as they made one last slash. This mark would mare the perfect craft, honoring the citadel's religion of a singular perfect being--they held only God was perfect.
For each artist I saw make it to the happy sigh, two dozen would shriek as they defaced their work early. Then the tension from finger joints on up would triple. They rarely were able to complete the work without another mistake. Nothing made it out of the front of workshop with anything but one flaw.
Then I came to her workshop. The preeminent sculpture in the citadel, which is to say the world. No tension. She hummed as she worked. She smiled at two children in the corner playing with three coins. It struck me for the first time I had not seen a child since entering the sixth ring.
I looked closely at the work she hammered. A woman's face, with a tight concave of an attractive cheek drawing my heart even as the marble eyes flared with anger. The nose however held a bitter bite, clearly a bad stroke from a broad chisel.
I watched her work for hours. I came back the next day. And everyday for weeks.
As she drew near to completing the statues' flowing robe, I said, "Day after day you pound out perfection while you glide about with no more pressure than the children playing at your feet."
She looked up from her work for a moment and blew her bangs back. A flash of a grin at the children and then her eyes and hammer fell back to the dress.
I said, "You are proof that not only God can do perfect work."
She stood and let the hammer hang to her side. "I begin each work admitting my flawed nature." She put a hand through her hair-- leaving white, marble-dust streaks. "Only then can God's perfection flow through me."