Prompt 212. How to Be Perfect

A short and sweet note from me & a poem by Ron Padgett

Hi friend,

I restarted chemo this week, and it’s been a rough go, though I’ve been fortunate to have sweet Nurse River by my side at each infusion, double-checking that everything goes as it should. All week, I wondered what I’d write in the newsletter and where I’d find the energy for it. Then I remembered that aphorism by the writer and speaker Byron Katie: “When I argue with reality, I lose.” So I’m making peace with reality, and meeting myself where I am, which means keeping this one short and sweet.

Today, with the poet Ron Padgett’s permission, I’m sharing an excerpt of his poem “How to Be Perfect.” (You’ll also find a link to the entire thing, if you’d like to read it.) As a person who tends toward perfectionism, I really love this piece—how it’s so playfully absurd, and how it reminds us of our limits and the undeniably human impulse to deny them. I hope it makes you laugh and also makes you think, and until next week, I’m—

Sending love,
Suleika

Some Items of Note—

• On Sunday, October 23, from 1-2pm, we’ll be meeting at the Hatch, our virtual creative hour for paid subscribers. You can learn more here!

• In the Isolation Journals Chat, our new community space, we’re continuing a new weekly ritual: a collective gratitude list of small joys. The chat is currently in beta testing and only available on mobile devices with iOS operating systems, though it should be available on Android and the web soon. You can get more info and join the conversation here!

Paul Cézanne, Apples and Oranges (c. 1899)

Prompt 212. From “How to Be Perfect” by Ron Padgett

Everything is perfect, dear friend. —Kerouac

Get some sleep.

Don’t give advice.

Take care of your teeth and gums.

Don’t be afraid of anything beyond your control. Don’t be afraid, for instance, that the building will collapse as you sleep, or that someone you love will suddenly drop dead.

Eat an orange every morning.

Be friendly. It will help make you happy.

Raise your pulse rate to 120 beats per minute for 20 straight minutes four or five times a week doing anything you enjoy.

Hope for everything. Expect nothing.

Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room before you save the world. Then save the world.

Know that the desire to be perfect is probably the veiled expression of another desire—to be loved, perhaps, or not to die.

Make eye contact with a tree.

Be skeptical about all opinions, but try to see some value in each of them.

Dress in a way that pleases both you and those around you.

Do not speak quickly.

Learn something every day. (Dzien dobre!)

Be nice to people before they have a chance to behave badly.

Don’t stay angry about anything for more than a week, but don’t forget what made you angry. Hold your anger out at arm’s length and look at it, as if it were a glass ball. Then add it to your glass ball collection.

Be loyal.

Wear comfortable shoes.

Design your activities so that they show a pleasing balance and variety.

Be kind to old people, even when they are obnoxious. When you become old, be kind to young people. Do not throw your cane at them when they call you Grandpa. They are your grandchildren!

Live with an animal.

Do not spend too much time with large groups of people.

If you need help, ask for it.

Read the full poem here.

Your prompt for the week:

In Ron Padgett’s “How to Be Perfect,” the speaker unspools a list of adages, ranging from straightforward to hilariously absurd, that wrestles with the notion that we can control the uncontrollable.

Make your own list of “how to be perfect.” Include things you’ve done—or seen others do—to guard against the unpredictability of life. Allow space for everything: for whimsy, for absurdity, for fear and hope and joy, and especially for imperfection.

If you’d like, you can post your response in the comments below, in our Facebook group, or on Instagram by tagging @theisolationjournals.

Today’s Contributor

Ron Padgett grew up in Tulsa and has lived mostly in New York City since 1960. Among his many honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters poetry award, the Shelley Memorial Award, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Padgett’s How Long was Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry and his Collected Poems won the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America and the Los Angeles Times prize for the best poetry book of 2013. You can purchase his books, including How to Be Perfect: An Illustrated Guide and his forthcoming collection, Dot, at Coffee House Press.

For more paid subscriber benefits, see—

• Marriage Vows & the Myth of a Good Catch, an installment of Dear Susu where I answer the question: “Is it selfish to ask someone to marry you if you’re ‘broken’?”

• On Shaking the Sleeping Self, an interview with the bestselling author Jedidiah Jenkins on how being perfect is not what saves us

• Writing Your Way Home, a video replay of our Studio Visit with Nadia Owusu, where we talked about journaling as creative source material, writing your way through trauma, and memoir as a radical act of reclaiming the self