He says: no.

Don't take it the wrong way, he's not a fool although many take him for one. And I am utterly convinced that even this works in his favor: it's way easier to weave uninformed opinions in the face of diminished expectations. Arrogance masquerading as humility, in action.

He just says no, and that's it!

It seems to me, I tell you, that he has some kind of a plan. He doesn't just deny, he does it with that conviction we usually observe in gods and in dogma, you know? Dead eyed, 'just because I can' conviction. And if you ask him why, he shuts up. He just says no, and that's it. Followed by a silence that diminishes even further any third party expectations; and it goes on, feeding on its inertia.

No, according to him, does not need an argument in of its own, it just contradicts yes. The essence of it, he says, is that we only have to prove that what we believe in; no requires no proof, we don't even have to believe! Factual proof is required only when we say yes and therefore, as the principle of opposites governs, no is what it is in itself and only by itself, without any other needs. 'No, because' is an insult to his intelligence! He finds this non-dualism tremendously funny! He must have planned it all along, don't you think?

The other day he told me that no, that it wasn't planned at all: he is too lazy to be a nihilist.

And as such, he devotes himself to saying no.

From time to time.

Man rejoices in small frozen images; in an ungrateful effort, doomed from the outset, to defy Time itself, he wishes to remain still forever. He doesn't want the future, he just wants to stick to the ephemerality of that perfect Moment, when the whole universe seems to conspire for a perfect composition. Finally!

Out of tantrum and by force, refusing to accept that all has become past. Strips himself of all ambition, because Time brings no more than sorrow and longing for that Moment, now gone. Melancholy that afflicts him with anticipation.

And so the Man stops; he too becomes a small frozen image. Delighted, he shall dedicate his whole existence to none but himself, absorbed in that Moment; and in such, he extinguishes himself, in that Moment.

But Time always comes. Cursed and crooked, without scruples or solidarity. And consumes the Man; it consumes the Moment. In the end, Man and Moment can no longer be distinguished, slaughtered and made into an amalgam, they become one. A shapeless, discolored mass, eternally crushed by Time, without mercy. It is the price to pay. A price Man will pay in pleasure and pride.

And then, he dies with a smile.

But only once in a while.