My Dearest Brother
On the matter of the exhibition—what a triumph of the soul laid bare!
To create anything truly worth the name of art is to undertake a perilous voyage inward. It is to stand at attention before one’s own conscience, which, like a silent and incorruptible sentinel, measures each gesture, each expression, by the standard of truth and integrity. Artistic creation, if it is to have any worth, must emerge from the crucible of personal trial—must arise, as it were, from having traversed the dark wood where no path is certain, and where no companion may follow. The further one ventures along this inward path, the lonelier and more singular the experience becomes—until, at last, what is formed is not merely a work, but a testament: an utterance that is necessary, irrepressible, and as near to final as our mortal means will allow.
And yet, how much of our joy is found not in the present moment—for the present is ever fleeting, vanishing even as we grasp for it—but in the recollection of what has been, or in the anticipation of what might yet be. Memory is not merely the storehouse of knowledge; it is the soil in which meaning grows. What we call pleasure is so often the warmth of what was, or the gentle hope of what is to come. The mind turns backward and forward, like a man surveying distant lands from a narrow ridge, and from that vantage it shapes both delight and sorrow. Thus, our happiness depends not upon the moment itself, but upon how we reckon the journey behind and the road ahead.
And I must tell you—every frame, every fleeting image, I loved. It was not merely seen, but felt, as if each bore witness to something holy and unrepeatable.
The Stay!
In a strange and quiet way, the experience was a kind of awakening—an opening of the shutters, so to speak, to a world I had not yet truly seen. Until now, life had passed before my eyes like scenery glimpsed from the window of a moving train: acknowledged, perhaps, but never truly known. But now—why, I cannot say—things no longer rest merely on the surface of my perception. They press inward, as though the soul itself has grown more permeable, more exposed to meaning than before.
It is as though I have discovered within myself a chamber long kept hidden—a place deep and still, which until now I had neither entered nor suspected. And everything I see, hear, or feel now makes its way into that secret place. What becomes of it there I cannot yet tell; but I know it is no longer lost. It goes inward, as if the soul has begun to gather its own language, slowly and in silence.
And perhaps that is what it means to learn to see—not merely to look upon the world, but to let it touch the innermost self, and there begin its quiet work.
On Departure!
We are, it seems, ever the observers—spectators of our own lives—gazing outward upon the world, yet never quite rooted within it. Something—or Someone—has turned us about in such a way that, in all we do, there remains the unmistakable air of farewell. Even in our joy, there clings that strange ache of parting, as though we are always looking back over our shoulder, always departing from the thing just now beloved.
It is like the man who, having climbed the final ridge, turns for one last lingering gaze upon the valley he has called home. He pauses—not merely to look, but to feel the full weight of what he is leaving behind. So it is with us. We live, yes—but as those whose living is woven through with the quiet sorrow of departure. We dwell among things beautiful and dear, yet our hearts are ever loosening their grip, even as we hold fast.
And so it was with me. To leave you—each of you—was no small wound. It tore, not with noise or violence, but with that deeper pain that belongs only to love. It was excruciating, yes—but only because the joy had been so deep, and the fellowship so true.
Subi Samuel!
As I stood upon those great stone steps at the Taj, facing the vast and measureless ocean, the wind came upon me with such relentless force that it seemed to pass through flesh and sinew, straight to the bone. There was in it a kind of ancient voice—restless, ungovernable, full of memory. And there, with the roar of the waters before me and the gale pressing against my brow, I felt, not merely the chill of the air, but the chill of something deeper. My thoughts, ever inclined to wander down hidden corridors, led me to a quiet revelation: that my long-held dread of the sea was, in truth, but the veil for another and greater fear—that of death itself.
It came to me, not with terror, but with a kind of solemn clarity: that death is no stranger to life, but its constant and hidden companion. It is stitched into the very fabric of our days—not only in the grand farewells, but in the little surrenders, the unnoticed endings, the slow relinquishing of youth, of illusions, of all we cannot keep. We pretend otherwise, of course. We live as if death were a punctuation yet to be written, rather than the faint watermark beneath every word. But perhaps the true art of living is to learn, little by little, how to die—to give things up with grace, and to meet the inevitable not with panic, but with peace.
And then—I turned, and saw you.
You, my brother. In that moment, as suddenly as the wind shifts, my restless spirit quieted. My heart, so lately adrift, came to anchorage. For in your presence there was something unshakable—a strength that did not clamour but simply was. You stood there like a sentinel at the edge of the world, and in you I beheld a love that mirrors the sea itself: vast, unsearchable, and without end. And I knew—yes, knew—that I need not fear death, nor the ocean, nor any shadow that may rise. For so long as I walk beside you, I am not alone. Your love, like the sea at its best, is deep, and good, and without measure.
With love that does not waver.
Your younger brother
F
