from the book of disquiet
456
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It often happens that I don’t know myself, which is typical in those who know themselves. I look at myself in the various disguises that make me alive. Of all that changes, I possess whatever remains the same; of all that is accomplished, whatever amounts to nothing.
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I’ve become so entirely the fiction of myself that any natural feeling I may have is immediately transformed as soon as it’s born, into an imaginary feeling. Memories turn into dreams, dreams into my forgetting what I dreamed, and knowing myself into not thinking of myself.
I’ve so stripped myself of my own being that existence consists of dressing up. I’m only myself when disguised. And all around me expiring, unknown sunsets gild the landscapes I’ll never see.
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