I have never lived in the Kingdom of Domestic Perfection, but I’ve caught glimpses of it. Peering through its gleaming gates, I’ve seen its highways and well-lit interiors. Perhaps you already live there and know all about it. Then I don’t need to tell you that the skies are a consistent blue and it almost never rains. Except when rain is forecast.

In the Kingdom, people are strong and industrious. Even in the car or at a desk, they are as healthy and vital as oxen at the plough. If intelligence is the steady application of the mental forces toward a tangible goal, they are highly intelligent.

In Perfection, the stream of consciousness is no longer a stream. It’s more like the regulated flow from an engineered dam. And, people are grateful for that. No child is born without a reason. No life is continued without a reason. No love is given and no love received without a reason.

Everyone is perfectly equal, as in 1 + 1 = 2 and 15 = 15. The men and women differ only in anatomical respects. The women enjoy football and the men cook. They cook dinner with like aeronautical engineers preparing for a test flight.

The children are equal to adults in all essential ways, although it’s true they have physical inadequacies for a few short years. Before long, they make their own food and cure themselves when sick. They are content to sit quietly with an interactive device.

Old age is nice in Perfection. The grandparents die on their own when the time comes.

The very best thing about the Kingdom is its machine-like efficiency. The homes, large and roomy, are immaculate and frequently empty. The closets are full. The kitchen countertops are spotless and the beds are always made. The dogs sleep during the day.

Serious disputes are settled by the Kingdom’s chief institution, the House of Legal Perfection, where everything is decided according to the Rule of Maximum Individual Fulfillment (MIF), the kingdom’s guiding document. MIF is happiness. MIF is perfection.

The other main institutions are the House of Physical and Mental Perfection, for cures and prescriptions; the House of Educational Perfection, where children spend six days a week 11 months a year; and the Perfection Emporium, a vast complex of entertainment and shopping establishments that exceeds the imagination in its multi-faceted splendor.

To tell you the truth, that’s all I know of Perfection.  Follow that bridge at the bottom of the hill. Cross the railway bed and enter the valley. That’s where I live, the Kingdom of Domestic Absurdity.

Viewed from above, the streets show scattered steeples, smokestacks, spires, and various signs of architectural experimentation. Absurdity is profoundly vegetative and profoundly mineral. The people are quasi-agricultural – out of necessity and preference – and they are compulsive builders. Stones are their preferred medium. Stalks and pods, vines and limbs, creepers and primeval shrubbery – a maze of growth exists in every season. The welcome mat outside each door is muddy. Rakes and hoes are propped against the walls.

There is always someone at home in Absurdity. Rarely does a day pass without some disagreement, but there is no House of Legal Perfection and disputes end in forgiveness. Frugality is a way of life, both a communal art form and a rigorous discipline. The Absurd Casserole takes three hours and 45 minutes to make from start to finish. The men rarely cook it and most have no idea how to put it together.

There is no equality in Absurdity. In fact, the word is rarely employed in reference to people. The men are unequal to the women and the women are unequal to the men. The children, who outnumber adults by roughly three to one, are the most unequal of all.

No child is ever alone. Grandparents resign themselves to unpredictability, noise and visitors. The maiden aunts are besieged. In the whole kingdom, they are the most adored, their love reciprocated by those whom they spoil.

Tragically, there are few toys. Children play with rocks (a fact often repeated in Perfection). They visit the maiden aunts and jump off walls. They are forced to play for long and uninterrupted hours outside. Their games are frequently altered through improvisation and dispute.

There is no House of Educational Perfection, but there are small schools, including some which convene for only one day a year. The most important building in the Kingdom is the Chapel.

One of the salient features of Absurdity is the honor given to the act of reflection. In Absurdity, the tributaries and rivulets of thought are protected. They flow into the wide, bottomless gulf of treasured communal ideals.

Here, people try in vain to keep the mind forever running toward a fixed destination. The circuitous path across a meadow, a trail through the woods, the rocky descent down a steep ravine: these beckon and the mind follows. It yearns to wander. Memory holds a special place, possibly because death and illness are a constant or possibly because memories are often more true.

Here there is no Rule of Maximum Individual Fulfillment. But, there is  what the people of Perfection consider a savage and primitive notion of human love. Love is believed to have almost mechanical properties. It propels people through and beyond time. In Absurdity, to love another person –  or two or three or four people –  is often no more complicated than to accompany them through time.  Love means synchrony.

Every present action is believed to extend both into the distant past and the far-off future.

The home in Absurdity is a miniature republic, a metaphysical project, as well as the most practical and essential enterprise on earth.

No home is permitted the Right of Dissolution, a sacred principle in nearby Perfection. This right does not hold in Absurdity because each home is considered a repository of ancestral memory. In Absurdity, people are often rediscovering the old, as they say, while in Perfection there’s much talk of the “courage to be new.” Once I saw this crude homemade poem tacked to a bulletin board at The Thinkery, and I think it is characteristic of Absurdity:

My thoughts embark in the silent sound.
They hoist their sails to go round and round.
They trawl by day,
Cast lines at night,
Baiting and awaiting
What they’ve already found.

Wisdom is abundant and free in this world. But, it’s rarely just given. It holds its hand out as you’re precariously dangling from the ledge.

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