Memento mori

The chariot moves through the roaring crowd. The laurel itches. The crowd smells of sweat and belief. Behind me, a slave- his only task today: to lean close and whisper what no one wants to hear. "Remember - you will die." Not cruel. Not a threat. A gift. The only honest sentence in the whole parade.


The crowd sees the conqueror. The slave sees the man. Which one of them is right? Both. Neither. It depends on how long you look.


Memento mori- remember the end. Not to be broken- to be freed. The man who knows he dies is the only man who truly lives. Hold the skull behind the laurel. Hold the dark behind the gold. Memento mori -remember: everything you are is borrowed, growing old.



Alexander wept when there were no more worlds. Augustus died with a actor's final line. I hope to die mid-sentence in my journal, still trying to understand what it means to be kind. Not a god. Not a monument. Not a lesson. Just a man who tried to see the thing as it was -without the gold leaf, without the marble version, without the story that the story always adds.



Memento mori -remember the end. Not to be broken-to be freed. The man who knows he dies is the only man who truly lives.