Shaken, not stirred...

I don’t know how many souls I have.

I’ve changed at every moment.

I always feel like a stranger.

I’ve never seen or found myself.

From being so much, I have only soul.

A man who has soul has no calm.

A man who sees is just what he sees.

A man who feels is not who he is.

Attentive to what I am and see,

I become them and stop being I.

Each of my dreams and each desire

Belongs to whoever had it, not me.

I am my own landscape,

I watch myself journey -

Various, mobile, and alone.

Here where I am I can’t feel myself.

That’s why I read, as a stranger,

My being as if it were pages.

Not knowing what will come

And forgetting what has passed,

I note in the margin of my reading

What I thought I felt.

Rereading, I wonder: “Was that me?”

God knows, because he wrote it.

-Fernando Pessoa

Images © Dida 2009