There are two very different ideas of perfection: one is reality with the imperfection hewn away; the other is holistic. The former is utterly inconsistent with the idea of love, because love of self, vocation, the world, etc. is the love of a flawed creature. The latter is a more accurate and beautiful figure. It is ascending, attaining, not etherealized, refined, and perfected, but a coarse and sensual truth called hunger and thirst.

Without freedom there is no love, no ingenuity, no creation. With unfettered volition even the stars are dimmed by the shine of cities, by their inhabitants and their power, by what humanity can achieve when creative destruction is at play. Yet it transcends arrogance, as the market imbues an accurate sense of what it is; from the very first bricks laid, it is limited by reality and practicality. Words ring in the bones of the place and the people: my mark will endure.

More simply, it is a sensation: running at night, the arid cold prickling your throat and cheeks as you laugh and watch the stark constellations reel above you, waiting to be reached and named.