To Utopia or Not To Utopia? #WEP December Challenge

'Perfect Is Imperfect Is Perfect' — a tribute to imperfection, by Guilie Castillo
Created in Photoshop, December 2016

Utopia. To me, the word conjures visions of Huxley's Brave New World, Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Orwell's 1984. Manic, soma-induced smiles of what passes for happiness (because everyone has forgotten what happiness—that overwhelming, inimitable joy that rises like milk boiling over and fades just as fast—feels like. Thought control. Do's and Don'ts. A shiny happy surface, and under it a roiling swamp of cruelty, of intolerance... The prehistoric, scaly skin of human nature's underbelly.

Maybe I'm a product of my age; in my imagination, utopia decomposes into dystopia rather instantaneously. Perfect is imperfect. And imperfect is perfect. So, if I had to envision a 'perfect' world, it would have to be a place where there is no perfect. Where imperfection is not only tolerated but celebrated. Where differences, and diversity of all kinds, are the only rule. A world without xenophobia, and a society of tolerance, where no life is worth more than another, and all life is sacred.

Is that possible? Current events would seem to prove it's not. But then there's Neil Young...

Do you see people being led by the righteous hand,
Taking care of everyone like they're on a piece of land.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
Do you see people's lives being lost on the sacred land,
and the battle over water being fought for the baby's hand.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
When the women of the world are free to stand up for themselves,
and the promises made stop gathering dust on the shelf.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
Well I hear you out there when you say what you have to say.
I know how you feel 'cus that's what made me this way.
When heaven on earth is improved by the hand of man,
and people everywhere get together and join their hands.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
Show me.
Neil Young - Show Me Lyrics | MetroLyrics 

Spectacular Settings! (#WEP)

Hosted by wonder-women Denise Covey and Yolanda Renee, the WEP (Write - Edit - Publish) Spectacular Settings hop is all about the power of place -- and the part it plays (can/should play) in writing.

Got a spectacular setting from a favorite book? Join the hop (it runs from the 19th to the 26th) and share! (More info here.)

The setting I'm sharing here is not from fiction but from poetry. And not just any poet, either. If you've followed this blog for a while, you might know I'm a huge fan of T.S. Eliot. A couple of months ago a long-time friend -- one of those people from the past that sometimes pop up into the present, usually bearing extraordinary gifts -- got together a small group of poetry enthusiasts for a reading circle on Skype (we're scattered all over, geographically), and the first piece we read was Eliot's Four Quartets. 

It's a piece I know well, maybe more than well -- it was none other than this old friend who introduced me to Eliot some 20 years ago, and the Eliot collection I own is one he gave to me back then... twenty years almost to the day we began reading. Several bits from Four Quartets have, in these two decades, gained special significance. For instance,