Mere hamraaz, mere hamdam,

meri khamoshi ko awaaz na de,

main jo toot kar bhi sambhal gaya hoon,

mujhe phir se koi andaaz na de.

My confidant, my companion,

do not give a voice to my silence.

I have gathered myself with such difficulty;

do not undo me again with some tender gesture.

Main ne badi mushkil se seekha hai

ke dard ke saath bhi jeena kya hai,

har zakhm ko marham ki talab nahin,

har ashk ko peena bhi hota hai.

I have learnt, after great suffering,

what it means to live alongside pain.

Not every wound asks for a remedy,

not every tear needs to be swallowed.

Main ishq ke us maqam par hoon

jahan lautna mumkin nahin,

jahan yaad bhi ek azaab hai

aur bhool jaana mumkin nahin.

I have reached that place in love

from where there is no return,

where even remembrance is torment

and forgetting is no longer possible.

Tu mujhe zindagi ki dua na de,

meri jaan ko phir se hawa na de—

jo diya jal raha hai seene mein,

use apni mohabbat se bujha na de.

So do not pray for my life.

Do not breathe new air into my dying soul—

the little lamp still burning inside my chest,

do not extinguish it with your love.

Mere hamraaz, mere hamdam,

meri khamoshi ko awaaz na de.

My confidant, my companion,

do not give a voice to my silence.

Mere dil ki jo raakh bachi hai,

usi mein kuch roshni baqi hai,

yeh jo andhera mera apna hai,

isi mein meri bandagi baqi hai.

There is still some light

within the ashes of my heart;

there is still a little radiance

left within this darkness I call my own.

Tu chaaragar hai, magar yaad rakh,

har dard ka ilaaj dawa nahin,

kuch zakhm insan ko zinda rakhte hain,

har takleef sirf saza nahin.

You are a healer, perhaps,

but remember this:

not every pain is cured by medicine,

and not every suffering is a punishment.

Mujhe chhor de mere haal par,

mujhe apni rehmat ka bojh na de,

jo khud ko main ne sambhala hai

use apne sahare se tod na de.

Leave me to my own condition.

Do not burden me with your mercy.

What I have learnt to hold together myself,

do not break apart by offering me your support.

Teri meherbani bhi khaufnaak hai,

tera qurb bhi ek imtehaan hai,

kabhi kabhi ek qareeb aadmi

dooriyon se zyada nuqsaan hai.

Even your kindness frightens me.

Even your nearness is an examination.

Sometimes the person who stands closest to you

can wound you more deeply than distance ever could.

Main ne khud se sulah ki hai ab,

mujhe phir kisi jang mein na utaar,

main ne apne hi dil ko samjhaya hai,

mujhe phir se kisi ka intezaar na de.

I have made peace with myself now.

Do not summon me back into another war.

I have taught my heart to live without expectation;

do not make me wait for someone again.

Mere hamraaz, mere hamdam,

meri khamoshi ko awaaz na de.

My confidant, my companion,

do not give a voice to my silence.

Mera hausla kamzor nahin,

main aandhiyon se guzar sakta hoon,

main shehr-e-hijr mein tanha sahi,

magar apna raasta chun sakta hoon.

My courage is not weak.

I can walk through storms.

I may be alone in this city of exile,

but I can still choose my own road.

Mujhe gairon ki aag se darr nahin,

main ne sholon ko qareeb se dekha hai,

mujhe khauf hai un phoolon se

jin mein zehar ka rang chhupa ho.

I am not afraid of the fires of strangers.

I have seen flames from close enough to know them.

What frightens me are the flowers

that conceal their poison beneath their colour.

Mujhe khauf hai us khushboo se

jo saanson mein utar jaaye,

mujhe khauf hai us phool se

jo chhoo loon to ghar jala jaaye.

I fear the fragrance

that enters the lungs before you can resist it.

I fear the flower

that, once touched, can set an entire house ablaze.

Kyun ke dushman ka waar samajh aata hai,

dost ka lehja pehchanna mushkil hai,

talwaar se aadmi bach bhi jaaye,

magar apnon ki nazar se mushkil hai.

For the wound of an enemy is comprehensible;

the gaze of a friend is harder to decipher.

A man may survive a sword,

but surviving the wound of his own people is another matter.

Is liye mere hamdam,

agar mere liye kuch karna hai,

to mujhe azaad rehne de.

So, my companion,

if there is anything you wish to do for me,

then let me remain free.

Mere zakhm ko naam na de,

meri tanhaai ko gunaah na de,

mere guzre hue kal ko

aaj ka faisla na de.

Do not give my wounds a name.

Do not turn my solitude into a sin.

Do not allow my yesterday

to pass judgement upon my today.

Main jo hoon, mujhe rehne de.

Let me remain what I am.

Meri aankhon mein jo nami hai,

use kamzori samajh kar mita na de,

main ne in ashkon se raaste dekhe hain,

inhein khushk hone ki dua na de.

The dampness in my eyes

is not weakness; do not wipe it away.

I have seen roads through these tears;

do not pray that they should dry.

Meri raat ko raat rehne de,

har subah zaroori toh nahin,

kuch andhere bhi muqaddas hote hain,

har roshni zaroori toh nahin.

Let my night remain a night.

Not every night requires a morning.

Some darknesses are sacred too;

not every light is necessary.

Aur agar kabhi mehfil mein

jaam uthein, saaqi pukara jaaye,

agar koi mera naam le

aur mere liye jaam bhar aaye—

And if, one day, in some gathering,

the glasses are raised

and the cupbearer is summoned,

and someone remembers my name

and fills a glass for me—

toh mera haath dhoondhna mat.

do not look for my hand.

Kisi aur ko de dena.

Give it to someone else.

Kisi aur ko kehna

ke woh is jaam ko honton tak le jaaye,

kyun ke main ne ab seekh liya hai

ke har nasha mohabbat nahin hota,

aur har mehfil apni nahin hoti.

Tell someone else

to raise that glass to their lips,

for I have learnt by now

that not every intoxication is love,

and not every gathering belongs to us.

Main apni tanhaai ka saaqi hoon,

main apni raat ka paimana hoon,

jo kuch tha, woh pee chuka hoon—

ab jo baqi hai,

woh mera khud se waada hai.

I am the cupbearer of my own solitude.

I am the vessel of my own night.

Whatever there was, I have already drunk—

and what remains

is the promise I have made to myself.

Mere hamraaz, mere hamdam,

mujhe phir koi khwaab na de.

My confidant, my companion,

do not give me another dream.

Main ne khwaabon ke shehr mein

bohat ghar jalte dekhe hain.

I have seen too many houses burn

in the cities built from dreams.

Ab mujhe haqeeqat mein rehne de—

chahe woh kitni hi be-reham kyun na ho.

Let me live in reality now—

however merciless it may be.

Bas itna kar:

Just do this:

jab main chup hoon,

meri khamoshi ko samajh lena.

when I am silent,

understand my silence.

Jab main door hoon,

mujhe pukarna mat.

When I am distant,

do not call me back.

Aur agar kabhi meri aankhon mein

phir se mohabbat ki roshni dekh lo,

And if, one day,

you see the light of love

returning to my eyes,

toh Khuda ke liye—

then, for God’s sake—

us roshni ko apna samajhne ki

jaldbazi na kar.

do not be too quick

to believe that the light belongs to you.

Kuch chiragh

sirf is liye jalte hain

ke aadmi apna raasta dekh sake—

Some lamps burn

only so that a man

may see his own way home—

har chiragh

kisi ke ghar ka nahin hota.

not every lamp

was lit for someone else’s house.

Backstage simulated organised catastrophe – Hair lacquer meandered across overheated air like invisible graffiti. Aftershave collided with fresh espresso. Curling irons hissed. Mist drifted from pressing stations in spectral ribbons since dissolving under relentless spotlights. Hangers clattered. Stylists barked instructions with the urgency of battlefield generals. Somewhere, somebody swore because a sleeve had collected foundation. Elsewhere, some poor sod discovered spray tan upon ivory silk and briefly reconsidered their very existence.

Kai studied his fleshly reflection in an enormous mirror bordered by theatrical bulbs. A midnight blazer hugged the contours of his torso with mathematical precision.

He pouted. “Mate...”

Elliot scanned a peek amid tightening bootlaces. “What?”

Kai pinched the lapel between thumb and forefinger as though handling contaminated evidence. “This fucking thing costs more than my first motor.”

“So?”

“So?” Kai scoffed. “Ten grand for stitched fabric. Humanity’s genuinely lost its marbles,” he sighed, “fashion’s the biggest scam ever invented, eh.”

Elliot snorted. “You’ve completely missed the joke, mate.”

“What joke?”

“The label.”

Kai blinked. “What about it?”

“It matters about as much as scented bin bags.”

“Absolute piss-take.”

“What d’you mean?”

“The jacket’s got sod all to do with it.” He straightened his hood. “If you are in shape, Primark starts looking like Savile Row.”

A makeup artist wandered past carrying brushes like medieval weaponry.

Kai folded both arms. “Explain yourself, Professor Catwalk.”

Elliot stood, dusted undetectable lint from immaculate shoulders, then inclined his chin at a bloke in the area. “See him?”

“The lad wearing the plain white cotton tee?”

“Yup.”

“He looks expensive.”

“He spent twenty quid.”

Kai grimaced. “...Bugger off.”

“Nope.”

“But...”

“Meanwhile, Mr Designer Waistcoat over there,” Elliot whispered, subtly indicating to a model buried under logos, “resembles somebody whose accountant accidentally dressed him.”

Kai watched photographers gravitate instinctively to the fellow wearing nothing remarkable whatsoever.

“...Bollocks.”

“They’re chasing confidence.”

“Seriously,” Kai said, “some fella spends ten grand trying to pose rich…” Eliott shook his head. “…while another spends six months eating chicken, broccoli, and saying no to doughnuts,” Kai interrupted, “…then walks in wearing a plain white T-shirt and everyone reckons he’s inherited a fucking castle.” Elliot shrugged. “That’s because the real indulgence isn’t stitched into the fabric, wanker. It’s carved into the bloody frame underneath.” Kai’s eyes lit up. “So getting fit…” He ceased articulating and wore his perfume. “…is the fit,” Elliot finished whilst he zipped his trousers.

Silence lingered. Steam veiled the haze, bluntly blurring individual luxury emblems before vanishing entirely. Funny thing, mirrors. They erased branding. Purely posture remained.

Kai watched his own stance unconsciously straighten. “Holy hell.”

Elliot beamed. “Exactly.”

“So everybody keeps chucking fortunes at wardrobes...”

Elliot breathed. “...instead of sorting whatever’s neath.”

Kai giggled. “That’s terribly tragic.”

“Nah,” mouthed Elliot playfully. 

“No?” exclaimed Kai. 

“Just abso-bloody-lutely efficient marketing.”

Nearby, an assistant wheeled another rail overflowing with parka shimmering within the wash of white luminousness like armour belonging to fabulously wealthy peacocks. 

Kai reached for one sleeve. “Incredible craftsmanship for all that.”

“Oh, absolutely.”

Elliot gently stopped him. “But tailoring rescues textile.”

Kai tilted his head. “Discipline rescues people.”

Those words settled somewhere unexpectedly deep.

Outside, bass thundered through runway speakers, each vibration rolling underfoot like distant artillery.

Kai exhaled slowly. “You ever notice something weird?”

“Eternally.”

“Nobody buys coats because they are cold.”

“No?”

“They’re hoping aura comes free inside the pockets.”

Elliot burst into laughter loud enough for three stylists to glare simultaneously. “Bottle doesn’t blooming turn up wrapped in tissue paper.”

Kai smirked. “Where’s it hiding then?”

Elliot pushed one sleeve to his elbow. “There.”

Kai raised one of his eyebrows. “My forearm?”

“Nah, knucklehead. The gym.”

“Ludicrous, innit?” 

“What?”

“Lads keep shopping for swagger,” Kai simpered, “and confidence is usually in the gym pretending to hate squats.”

A pause ensued. Longer this time. Not awkward. Comfortable. Around them, frantic hands adjusted ruffs, polished shoes, tugged cuffs, fixed collars, retied knots, reapplied powder, reshaped tresses. Countless frantic gestures chased perfection measured only by passing an ovation. Yet beneath every pricey garment stood thousands of forgotten repetitions. Early alarms. Skipped desserts. Heavy barbells. Sore muscles. Unrecognised decisions. Zero clapped for those. Everybody admired the results.

A stage manager stormed into the space. “Ninety seconds!”

Models immediately formed orderly chaos.

Kai straightened his jacket. “You reckon audiences actually believe they are staring at togs?”

Elliot chuckled. “Course.”

“They are rather wrong.”

“Massively.”

Kai smiled. “They’re watching persistence pretending to be fashion.”

Elliot opened the runway curtain. They exchanged a grin.

“Right then.”

“Let’s go convince all and sundry these clothes are the stars.”

“They are not, you twat.”

“No?”

“We are, you daft bastard.”

Blinding light flooded the dressing room like sunrise filtering via the basilica glass.

“Ready?”

Kai cracked his neck. “Always.”

Together they strode towards roaring applause. Half the crowd imagined couture had stolen all the attention. Neither garment would survive another season. Discipline would. 

Neither bothered correcting them.

By the age of thirty-eight, Theodore Bell had become a curator of catastrophes that had not yet occurred. He could ruin a Tuesday with a Thursday that existed only in imagination. Breakfast frequently tasted of next month’s anxieties. He rehearsed conversations no one intended to have, mourned friendships that remained perfectly intact, and apologised for offences he had not committed. His life possessed all the drama of a great Victorian novel, except that every chapter unfolded completely within his own skull. Then, one peculiar Wednesday, something extraordinary happened. Nothing. The train arrived precisely on time. Rain fell with impeccable English manners. The cashier smirked. A pigeon inspected a croissant with the solemnity of a bishop. The world, Theodore noticed, had neglected to participate in the tragedy he had so carefully prepared. He wandered into a second-hand bookshop solely because he had never before entered one without first consulting reviews. On a dusty shelf lay a notebook bound in green leather. Across its first page someone had written:

“Suppose your life is merely the first draft of a novel. Would your protagonist truly spend six consecutive chapters wondering whether he had sounded foolish at lunch?”

Theodore laughed aloud. Not because it was funny. Because it was embarrassingly accurate. He purchased the notebook for three pounds and seventeen pence. That evening he conducted a peculiar experiment. Whenever indecision appeared, he refused to ask, “What is the safest thing to do?” Instead he questioned, “What would make this chapter worth reading?” The difference was astonishing. Rather than eating another lonely microwave supper, the protagonist wandered into an Italian restaurant despite having no companion. He ordered dessert first. He spoke with the elderly waiter about olives, opera, and why elderly gentlemen always seemed to know the location of excellent wine. 

The chapter improved immediately.

The following morning, in lieu of declining an invitation to join colleagues for coffee because he feared awkward silence, the protagonist accepted. The silence lasted approximately four seconds. Then somebody confessed they had once confused a funeral procession for a parade and accidentally applauded. Everyone tittered until tears arrived. Apparently awkwardness, Theodore discovered, often possessed an unexpectedly generous sense of humour. 

Soon the experiment expanded.

The protagonist bought flowers without requiring an anniversary. He wore the ridiculous emerald waistcoat hiding for years in the wardrobe awaiting an occasion sufficiently important to justify velvet buttons. He walked home through the rain rather than beneath umbrellas simply to discern whether novels exaggerated the romance of becoming soaked. They did not. It was marvellous. People began remarking that Theodore looked different. “What changed?” they quizzed. He never knew quite how to answer. Nothing had changed except the narrator. The voice inside his head had retired from its post as prosecutor and accepted employment as storyteller. Instead of declaring, “This is dreadful.” It now whispered, “Well... this should make for an interesting paragraph.”

Failures became plot twists. Embarrassments transformed into dialogue. Unexpected delays evolved into opportunities for side characters. Even grief acquired gentleness. When Theodore’s beloved aunt passed away, he uncovered that stories do not become beautiful by avoiding sorrow. They become beautiful because sorrow teaches every joyful page how precious it truly was.

One autumn afternoon he returned to the same second-hand bookshop hoping to ascertain who had written the mysterious sentence. The owner frowned. “What notebook?”

“The green one.”

“We’ve never sold green notebooks.”

Theodore insisted.

The proprietor searched every shelf. Nothing. Not even an empty space. He left puzzled. Perhaps memory had embroidered reality. Perhaps someone had misplaced the evidence. Or perhaps stories occasionally slipped helpful sentences into people’s lives without troubling themselves over authorship.

Years later, Theodore grew old. His hair surrendered with admirable dignity. His knees negotiated every staircase like diplomats concluding difficult treaties. Wrinkles arrived carrying maps of countless simpers. One evening, his granddaughter climbed upon his lap holding a blank notebook. “Grandad,” she asked, “I’m frightened I’ll make mistakes.” He smiled the sort of smile only accumulated years can produce. “My dear,” he replied, “mistakes are merely scenes before the editor arrives.” She frowned. “But what if people laugh at me?”

“Then you’ve accidentally written a comedy.”

“And what if everything goes wrong?”

“Ah,” Theodore expressed, “that depends totally.”

“On what?”

“Whether you’re reading your life as a police report...” He paused. “...or as a story.”

She thought about this for several silent moments before opening the notebook. “What shall I write first?”

Theodore glanced through the window. Outside, autumn leaves were dancing with absolutely no concern for symmetry. A dog had become convinced that chasing its own tail constituted a noble profession. Two strangers were chuckling over something the wind immediately carried away. The entire earth felt gloriously unconcerned with acting sensible. He beamed. “Begin,” he said, “with someone who finally stopped trying to be perfect and became intriguing instead.”

For that, after all, is the curious secret no anxious mind ever wishes to believe. Life is rarely asking us to perform flawlessly. It is utterly waiting for us to become a character worth following to the next page.

CLOTHE AS IF CULTIVATION NEVERTHELESS EARNS THE EFFORT

The foremost aspect one observes about a truly refined bloke is not his tailoring but his insolence. The garment is hardly the notarised affidavit of a deeper rebellion. One may purchase tweed from Savile Row and per contra resemble a petrified assistant manager at a Midlands insurance firm. Savoir-faire, in its purest incarnation, is not fabric but audacity pressed into cloth.

I attended a funeral in Belgravia where the departed—a financier of outrageous wealth and even lewder appetites—emplaced in a walnut casket below an avalanche of pearly lilies that smelt somewhat of hospitals and old money. The mourners appeared draped in hackneyed charcoal melancholia, seeming like a congregation of crestfallen ravens.

And then came Sebastian.

He wore a cream double-breasted suit.

Cream. To a funeral.

A chiffon carnation the colour of fresh arterial blood bloomed from his lapel. His shoon shone with the cold menace of lustrous mahogany. Worthy women gaped albeit they might faint directly into their canapés.

“Christ,” whispered a viscountess, clutching her pearls as if they were rosary beads against Satan himself, “the fella looms positively immoral.”

Sebastian heard her and smiled slightly. “That,” he murmured, “is because morality is so frequently clad by cowards.”

And there it was.

The unalloyed soddy thesis.

Spiff up not because the universe deserves allure, but because it so repeatedly deserves none and receives it anyway. Civility itself is smidgen extra than barbarism sporting cufflinks. The cutting-edge world wishes everybody to match accountants queuing for tax audits—grey geniuses in grey trousers carrying grey opinions underneath supermarket sconces.

To dress sensationally is hence an act of war.

A brocade blazer asserts: I refuse your drab diminutive fucking surrender.

A silk scarf states: Your ugliness has not conquered me yet.

And shiny shoes? Ah. Burnished shoes are the final courtesy extended to a collapsing courteousness.

DIFFICULT TO EXPLAIN WITHOUT SOUNDING MAD

There are lads who spend their plenary presence pursuing to become palatable. They shave away every eccentricity until they are socially edible unimportant cubes of beige. They articulate in white-collar dialects. They titter precisely when expected. Their disposition duplicate airport carpeting.

Avoid these individuals with evangelical fervour.

The brightest brains I have everlastingly encountered rejoiced in a specific glorious deformity of temperament.

One Oxford mathematician I knew nixed to use umbrellas because he inferred rain was “merely weather attempting intimacy.” He would disembark drenched to black-tie repasts, water dripping from his cuffs, ordering Scotch with the serenity of a Byzantine emperor.

One more acquaintance—a painter flourishing in a mould-infested townhouse in Chelsea—kept a taxidermy fox at the dining table and referred to it exclusively as “the Minister.”

“Minister disagrees with your position on Wagner,” he would announce gravely before slurping claret.

Folks called him insane.

But insanity is often uniquely intelligence refusing to don itself in municipal bureaucracy.

The prominent animus alarms fraternity because cadre subsists athwart replication. The weird chap introduces treacherous variables. He reminds others that personality need not follow a manky PowerPoint presentation.

Stay strange.

Remain difficult to classify.

Permit population the discomfort of uncertainty.

For there is nothing further gruesome than witnessing a human being become comprehensible. The moment society altogether understands you, it has begun embalming you. Anecdote is the first layer of dirt thrown upon the coffin.

A woman once questioned me at a dinner party, “Why must you always say such unusual stuff?”

I surveyed around the console at thirty identical faces mooting property values with the passion of sedated cattle.

“Because,” I replied, “if I ranted like the rest of you, I should have to hang myself from the chandelier before dessert.”

CREATE SOMETHING CAPABLE OF LACERATING THE SOUL

Art is the last remarkable refuge for those who are unable to fully tolerate reality without adding gunpowder to it.

The artist is not a decorator of permanence but its saboteur.

I was conversant with a sculptor in Edinburgh who cohabited in catastrophic poverty. The sort of poverty possessing actual acoustics. One could hear the hunger in the floorboards. He rose at dawn with sacerdotal devotion and attacked marmoreal with hammer and chisel as if trying to liberate numen from stone.

“What if nobody recollects your work?” I asked him.

He lit a cigarette with hands coated in silvery dust.

“My dear boy,” he exclaimed, exhaling smoke toward the cracked ceiling, “most mortals aren’t remembered nowadays.”

Outside, sleet beat up the skylight like creditors.

Indoors, near the jaundiced lightbulb and the smell of wet plaster, stood a half-finished sculpture of a maiden screaming into eternity. It was grotesque. Splendidly grotesque. Her face looked like legacy discovering its own reflection and recoiling.

And swiftly I understood a mite dreadful.

Most crowds consume art the way cows consume grass—passively, mechanically, with all the ethereal urgency of damp laundry. But genuine art should bash a bit. It should pass down psychic bumps. One ought not emerge from a novel ordinarily intact. If a painting does not alter your veins and arteries, it is decoration for hotels.

Make art even if it bankrupts you.

Make art even if societies laugh.

Especially if societies laugh.

Because laughter is generally the earliest panicked noise emitted by mediocrity when confronted with transcendence.

The cosmos does not warrant additional content.

Good, God, no.

It hitherto drowns nether podcasts hosted by imbeciles and motivational literature written by grinning corporate necromancers.

What it clamours is hazardous handsomeness.

What it necessitates is someone inclined to carve obscenity into marble and call it orison.

BEQUEATH THE BASTARDS WONDERING WHAT THE HELL YOU MEANT

One of the numerous unheeded pleasures in life is bewilderment as performance art.

Not cruelty, mind you.

Style.

The English aristocracy understood this instinctively. Half their conversational method consisted of communicating as though everyone else had arrived midway during a dream.

One day I showed up at a country-house gathering in Sussex where a geriatric duke spent an entire evening insisting—in perfect seriousness—that swans were covertly governing Luxembourg.

None challenged him.

Not because they believed him, but because aristocratic etiquette requisites one never interrupt a lordly absurdity whilst it is mating.

By midnight, guests were debating waterfowl geopolitics barring a roaring inferno despite consuming Stilton with near-theological intensity.

And I thought: Yes. This is civilisation.

Confusion ruptures the monotony of expectation. Latest lifespan has become unbearably legible. Algorithms predict desires before one has properly felt them. Any arsehole with a smartphone now imagines himself a psychologist. We abide concealed by an empire of explanation.

Therefore become unexplainable.

Orate theories which require interpretation.

Slip on a signet ring even if your family boasts no estate.

Quote obscure Romanian philosophers in pubs.

Answer simple queries with spine-chilling sincerity.

When someone quizzes, “How have you been?” do not reply “Fine.”

Respond: “Profoundly suspicious of mirrors and mildly haunted by pears.”

Then sip your drink.

Let them suffer.

The modern macrocosm worships clarity because clarity is marketable. Ambiguity, however, maintains grandeur. It creates illusion. And illusion is infinitely too nourishing than privy branding—that ghastly contemporary disease whereby multitudes reduce themselves into digestible frivolous pamphlets.

Confuse race not because you are lost, but because they are.

The crowd forever seeks signage.

The unheard-of pith becomes fog.

EXIT THIS SPHERE LIKE A FRAGMENTARY GHOST

In the end, the great cataclysm of nouvelle existence is not ephemerality.

It is insignificance.

Death itself is almost elegant. There is ceremony in it. Velveteen curtains. Black automobiles gliding through torrent. The funereal perfume of flowers. Whisky trembling in crystal glasses exactly as exhausted males discuss the deceased in assuaged tongues, as withal volume itself might disturb the nature of grief.

No—the true obscenity is to vanish having contributed marginally except receipts, passwords, and a tolerantly impressive collection of kitchen appliances.

Most kin dispense behind administrative debris.

A very small number confer ghosts.

I recall lingering in the library of a crumbling estate in Yorkshire owned by an impossibly ancient baron whose veins, I suspect, contained equal quantities of bollocks and Bordeaux. The room reeked of extinguished fireplaces, mildew, antiquated parchment, and a touch palely ecclesiastical—as if jettisoned prayers had seeped permanently into the wallpaper.

Portraits stared downward with hereditary disappointment.

Alfresco, the deluge battered the manor windows like an unpaid creditor.

The elderly man sat near the embers arrayed in a burgundy smoking jacket, his skeletal fingers wrapped around a chalice of cognac.

“You know what’s tragic?” he quizzed quickly.

His voice sounded like downy dragged across broken glass.

I said nothing.

“The futuristic obsession with longevity,” he chuckled mellifluously, “as though duration were accomplishment. A cabbage may also persist.”

The sparks cracked between us.

“Humans speak interminably of wellness of late. Hydration. Protein. Blasted consciousness. But no one begs the one question that matters.”

“And what question is that?” I enquired.

He focused into the flames for so long that I assumed maybe he had forgotten me completely.

Then:

“Who shall stand spiritually injured by your absence?”

Christ.

There it was again.

That unbearable little truth.

For the purpose of a season cannot solely be survival. Rats survive. Bureaucrats survive. Men with Bluetooth headsets survive just as deliberating quarterly projections beneath fluorescent lighting that makes them mimic refrigerated poultry.

To live magnificently means to leave a lesion.

A beautiful gash, perchance.

But a wound nonetheless.

Submit a sentence somebody is not able to forget.

A painting that unsettles a marriage.

A perfume on bedsheets after parting.

A piece of music that returns at three in the bally morning like a revenant demanding entrance to the quintessence.

Relinquish stories which grow distorted with retelling.

Become myth before becoming memory.

And for heaven’s sake, do not die comprehended.

The by and large understood gent is already half-corpse.

Remain contradictory.

Remain excessive.

Sanction yourself sumptuous stupidity and frightening tenderness. Wear velour at inappropriate hours. Fall obscenely in love with impossible people. Read books which rearrange your nervous system. Enunciate with alarming honesty at supper soirees. Cultivate comeliness in an age devoted to efficiency.

Because one day—and the speed of it is frankly terrifying—the chamber might empty.

The champagne flutes shall remain abandoned apart from lipstick stains and cigar ash.

Your coats will hold up dangling in wardrobes carrying the nebulous scent of winter and tobacco.

Your cachinnation will outlast barely as a neurological bruise inside other head’s recollections.

And somewhere, plausibly very dead at night, someone will suddenly reminisce the peculiar way you presently glanced at the moon, or quoted poetry half-drunk beside a staircase, or spoke with regard to loneliness as though evaluating an aged hunting companion.

They will pause.

They will feel sort of fracture softly within them.

And then they will continue living.

Which is, imaginably, the closest thing any of us ever come to immortality.

Or perhaps that too is wholly another exquisite scrap of bullshit we tell ourselves while the candles gutter low and the darkness waits patiently beyond the fenestra.