The Book of Disquiet

by Fernando Pessoa

At a certain point in my written cogitation, I no longer know where the centre of my attention lies – whether in the scattered sensations I attempt to describe like enigmatic tapestries, or in the words which absorb me as I try to describe the act of describing and which, absorbing me, distract me and cause me to see other things. Beset by lucid and free associations of ideas, images and words, I say what I imagine I’m feeling as much as what I’m really feeling, and I’m unable to distinguish between the suggestions of my soul and the fruits born of images that fell from my soul to the ground, nor do I know whether the sound of a discordant word or the rhythm of an incidental phrase might not be diverting me from the already hazy point, from the already stowed sensation, thereby absolving me from thinking and saying, like long voyages designed to distract us. And all of this, which even as I’m telling it should stir in me a sense of futility, failure and anguish, gives me only wings of gold.