I Am No One

Fernando Pessoa

Today I suddenly experienced an absurd but quite valid sensation. I realized, in an intimate lightning flash, that I am no one. No one, absolutely no one. (p. 19)

I don’t know why I never heard of Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) until now, but here I am reading Book of Disquiet. It’s part journal, part fragments, part fiction. It’s as if he was a blogger back in the early 1900s, a proto-blogger.

I’ve been a bit obsessed with journals lately. I also got Susan Sontag’s Reborn: Journals & Notebooks, 1947-1963 and can’t wait to delve deep into that. I guess this is slightly more high brow than using the Wayback Machine to read a former escort’s blog.