stop making sense

A post for Fernando Pessoa and co., whose poetry never fails to sear me and turn me inside out with its staggering brilliance.

I'm sorry I don't respond
But it isn't, after all, my fault
That I don't correspond
To the other you loved in me.

Each of us is many persons.
To me I'm who I think I am,
But others see me differently
And are equally mistaken.

Don't dream me into someone else
But leave me alone, in peace!
If I don't want to find myself,
Should I want others to find me?

Fernando Pessoa-Himself
26 Aug 1930

Very recently, I must confess that many of the themes outlined in this poem have struck a personal chord with me. Let me tell you a story. Since time immemorial, I have been known to random affiliates, and even close friends, as 'the guy who is best summed up as looking really young'. More often than not, this goes hand in hand with being 'cute'. This sorry tagging continues to follow me, and indeed, seems to be really 'me' in some 'perception-is-all' corny existential way. Anyway, this judgment, which comes to represent my whole person, is by no measure new to me. But neither is the fact that I've always been extremely ambiguous towards it. I've always shuddered a little when best friends (with no cruel intentions), have called me "little buddy" or something like this. And even more recently, and doubtless more powerfully: it turns out that a Facebook photoalbum dedicated to someone else is also implicitly dedicated to me, by metonymically linking me in its title with 'little boys'. Two words come to mind: yes. Nice. My responses to these sorts of judgements have always been: fury, anger, shame; and then: indifference, and finally comic relief. When I come to my wiser self, I realize: what matter? The last time I saw my father, he was half a century old, and could pass for thirty five. Good for him, and I hope it'll be me! Rather that then something else. Plus, unforeseen perks to looking young--powers and persuasions even. So I sit on my rock, because I can't do anything else, and try to be content with the pros. Before some asshole, myself included, comes to kick me off of it again.