The Book of Disquiet, text 170

Blackpio

I found myself in the world one day, I don't know when, and until then, from birth I presume, I had lived without feeling. If I asked where I was, everyone deceived me, everyone contradicted everyone else. If I asked them to tell me what to do, everyone lied and told me something different. If I became lost and stopped along the road, everyone was shocked that I didn't just continue on to wherever the road led (though no one knew where that was), or simply did not retrace my steps - I, who did not even know whence I came, having only woken up at the crossroads. I realized that I was on a stage and did not know the words that everyone else picked up instantly even though they did not know them either. I saw that though I was dressed as a page they had given me no queen to wait on and blamed me for that. I saw that I had in my hands a message to deliver and when I told them my paper was blank, they laughed at me. I still don't know if they laughed because all such pieces of paper are blank or because all messages are only hypothetical.

More from Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet.