Monday Afternoon Wake Up Call

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To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarate, and the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning it into a slumber. The other arts make no such retreat - some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself. This isn't the case with literature. Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, and a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings in a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.

- Fernando Pessoa
The Book of Disquiet

This week, Pessoa & I were reunited. I have read this book. I have memorized certain passages. I have bought during good times and sold it during my bouts of poverty. I have left it on trains. I've brought it to airports and greyhound stations. I've waterlogged several copies. I have loved and hated this book at various stages and at varying intervals. Welcome home, you rascal.