There’s an aesthetics to wasting time. For those who cultivate sensations there’s an unwritten handbook on inertia, with recipes for all the forms of lucidity. To develop the right strategy for fighting against the notion of social mores, against the impulses of our instincts and against the solicitations of sentiment requires a study that not every aesthete is prepared to undertake. A rigorous aetiology of our scruples should be followed by an ironic diagnosis of our concessions to normality. We must also learn how to ward off life’s intrusions; a ..... caution is necessary to make us impervious to outside opinions, and a velvety indifference to insulate our soul against the invisible blows of coexisting with others.