Which is why it looks better in a frame, behind a velvet rope on the wall of a museum than on the human animal. It is both the goal to which we aspire and the end result that is capable of leaving us unfulfilled.
Perfection is cold and clinical, every angle precise, every edge razor sharp and according to plan.
In the world of the perspiring arts, we don't like plans, and we don't much like our heroes to be dancing to music only they can hear on Mount Olympus. We like them scarred and bloodied, bruised and bowed, yet somehow going on. We like them with smashed noses, wrenched knees, twisted ankles and more daunting problems to confront than a one-legged pygmy in a hurdles race. And so it came to pass, on a weekend when the familiar names once more did what they always seem to do, that Tiger Woods and the Houston Comets became at once both a little less perfect and a lot more divine. It was not the victories that mattered nearly so much as the way that they won.