Midnight Sophistry

It's a night for useless philosophizing, and I, the eternal sophist. When it comes to actual writing, important writing, or important aspects of my own existence, I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Perhaps this stems from my competitive nature. When I watch a movie like Ender's Game, I constantly find myself thinking: "I could beat him, let me play." What arrogance is this? Who am I? But even if I couldn't, my heart would try.
But I know my motivations, and my drive, and I know, too, that if that was my heart's desire, I may very well win it, against superior forces. Such is the power of conviction.  And now, sitting here contemplating pieces I've written and examining them, I find them pierced with errors like arrows, more wholly holey than a frayed web, and less useful.
What is perfect writing? I'm stuck in a platonic mindset where the mere existence of a story implies a perfect story.What is the perfect story? What is the perfect song? Are there an infinite number of perfect stories or perfect songs? Perfect paintings, perfect sculptures or vessels, the perfect art.
Then I think to myself, can there be more than one? Two sculptures, both perfectly done?  This is a mind-bending mental-yoga-preztal seen through a bent-mirror-prism-raindrop-stainglasswindow. Because, to my thinking, unless the sculptures are 100% equally perfect, how can they both be perfect? Is perfect like infinity? The numbers between 1-2 are infinite, mathematically. What about 1-3? Double infinite? No, just infinite. But it's double the infinite as between 1-2, right? Right? So can both paintings be perfect, but one be "double perfect"?
Even if that were true, what is the most perfect perfect? Can there be one? Or, like infinity, can you always add one more? You see? A sophists night.
But instead of getting wrapped up in all the cognitive gymnastics, I'm struck by this fierce competitive desire to acquire the most perfect perfect something, whatever it is. I'll never get there; that's beyond my ken. Yet, the intense craving stirs in my gut most mightily. How can I aim for less than perfection? It's like the quote by Les Brown, famous motivational speaker: "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."
Oh, let me hit the moon.

Kerberos

A cave of charred shadows and smoldering half-shapes writhing on the walls. Its lofty ceiling stretches beyond the heights of imagination and the darkness swallows it, and though the room is large, an overwhelming claustrophobic sensation passes through me in waves. The ground beneath my knees, where I kneel like he who scoops water in his hands, is a harsh, grey granite, unyielding and gravelly, biting into my legs wherever they meet. And though I would stand - oh, gods, I would do anything to stand - it is beyond my power.
Before me sits a monstrous creature, full of the monstrous hate of primal wolves, and the puissance of the gods. With three heads and imposing wolfish form, it blocks the exit, the bridge into hope, and snarls, growls, bares its teeth.

Dismal den of cerberus
Plaintive I beseech thee thus
Permit me pray to leave disgrace
To hopes past pains and fire's place

Ah, then riddle one must answer thee
To loose thee from Persephone
One snapped, one grins, one speaks plainly
Three the heads of Cerb'rus be

I accept, great and gracious one
Puzzle me quick and let's be done

Then cleared their throats now did the three
And spoke in chorus bass deeply

I journey only east to west
Always seeming to travel east
I come and go and without he
who flees when I at once arrive
You might never know to see me
Wherever my journeys take me
I'll always return full circle

....
Tiny houses you keep not clean
Without windows, rooms, kitchens, floors
No place for friends, family, pets
Only rest, without blankets, beds
......

Committing yourself to a schematic or verse inhibits change. Once you divert from the course you set in motion, the reader can feel jarred, like sleeping in the back of a pleasant car ride, and suddenly you are off-roading, and their lack of seatbelt jostles them all across the back seat. They are not going to be pleased. I'm leaving behind a slew of unfinished entries, and sometime I hope to return and finish them. I'm finding less time for full-scale blogging, and refuse to relinquish journaling time in lieu of online writings. Plus, life has been bipolar busy, and then not busy, and then busy again, in a roller coaster adventure that leaves me running around frantically, resting, then leaping into action once more.
It's a good life, but a hectic one, at times. I realize that sometimes my blogs experience their own little roller coasters of emotion. It's strange that sometimes when I'm happiest, I write sad blogs, and sometimes when I'm saddest, I write happy ones. I don't experience a great depth of sadness in much of my life. I tend to be relatively easy going, and simple peace and living and friends keep me joyful. I think sometimes that I understand sadness more fully on the outside, and happiness more completely when staring at it from the depths of the well. It is this external evaluation that permits me melancholy poetry in times of incredible joy, and a diligence to produce joyful poetry when the world turns upside-down and it seems everything leaves me behind, unnoticed. What a strange phenomenon, but it holds quite true in my writings, even in my more personal journal writings. I'm ever striving for joy, though I still wish to portray the entirety of emotional strata in my human experience. Sometimes, I can only do so when sitting on the other side of the valley. The grass isn't always greener on the other side, but sometimes you only notice it when you've moved past it.
Right now, I'm not moving anywhere. Kerberos is in my way, and my Daedelus wings will not save me now.