Does the grip, the wring, bespeak above all excitement? Though what seems the theatre of it provokes suspicion, not inevitably. A certain libidinal investment in the moment perhaps but that doesn’t preclude sincere fears.

A misapprehension about the memento mori is that they are indifferent to or invested in what they do. It is to some of them rather a source of unending unhappiness, anxiety as great as if every step is further onto ice or some grubby great mirror, and the creaking their mnemonic movements occasion either that ground or their own bones under strain.