---
title: Memento Mori
date: 2026-03-17
abstract: The power of vanitas through vanity, herein serving to emanate motivation and tranquility.
tags: [miscellany]
js: scripts/memento-mori.js
---

<figure class="poem-excerpt">
<blockquote>
<p>Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,<br>
So do our minutes hasten to their end;<br>
Each changing place with that which goes before,<br>
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.</p>
</blockquote>
<figcaption><a href="/poetry/sonnet-60.html">Sonnet 60</a> — William Shakespeare</figcaption>
</figure>

[Your writing here. This page is for you as much as anyone. A few paragraphs about time, about why you make things, about what this site and its slow accumulation mean. The grid below is the argument; this prose is the response to it.]

<div id="weeks-grid-wrapper"></div>


<div id="countdown-wrapper"></div>

---
## Applied Vanitas

![Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest heaven.](/images/canto31.jpg "Gustav Doré - Paradiso, Canto 31")

::: dropcap
Time passes regardless of our wishes, our intentions, our apprehensions. That is perhaps the most beautifully profound fact of our existence, and one that therefore I view with gratitude. 
:::

MANY ARTISTS AND THINKERS ALIKE HAVE, OVER CENTURIES, TRIED [TO]{.smallcaps} ENCAPSULATE THIS BEAUTIFUL PROFUNDITY. [*Vanitas*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanitas)^[Spanish Wikipedia has a far more detailed and preferable entry concerning *Vanitas*. For those who speak Spanish, [see here](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanitas)] I do not think that my words can do this subject terrible justice, so rather than trying to encapsulate the potent nature of the subject myself, I will only speak here about what it means to me, interspersing my remarks with art of various forms for us to appreciate.

### My Creative Works

::: {.score-fragment score-name="Bassoon Concerto, II (2025-2026)" score-caption="A solo bassoon excerpt from my 2025-2026 Bassoon Concerto."}
![](scores/bsn.svg)
:::