This Universe I Am for Myself

    Nostalgia! I even feel it for people and things that were nothing to me, because time's fleeing is for me an anguish, and life's mystery is a torture. Faces I habitually see on my habitual streets - if I stop seeing them I become sad. And they were nothing to me, except perhaps the symbol of all of life.

   The nondescript old man, with dirty gaiters who often crossed my path at nine-thirty in the morning . . . The crippled seller of lottery tickets who would pester me in vain . . . The round and ruddy old man smoking a cigar at the door of the tobacco shop . . . The pale tobacco shop owner . . . What has happened to them all, who because I regularly saw them were a part of my life? Tomorrow I woo will vanish from  Rua da Prata, the Rua dos Douradoes, the Rua dos Fanqueiros. Tomorrow I too - I this soul that feels and thinks, this universe I am for myself - yes, tomorrow I too will be the one who no longer walks these streets, whom others will vaguely evoke with a 'What's become of him?' And everything I've done, everything I've felt and everything I've lived will amount merely to one less passer-by on the everyday streets of some city or other.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 481

These are the last two paragraphs of The Book of Disquiet, or at least Richard Zenith's interpretation of what constitutes the core of The Book of Disquiet. As I discussed previously, I'm trying to finish my paper for the upcoming conference in Lisbon, so I've been spending a lot of time in writing by and about Fernando Pessoa. Considering where I am in my career - and life - it's not surprising that this passage would jump out at me so meaningfully; I mean, The Book of Disquiet - and "this universe I am for myself" - both have to end. I'm sure that this feeling is what made it so relatively easy to decide to head over to Ramallah for Mahmoud's wedding. I remember when I left Georgia Perimeter College (it's hard to believe I taught there for nine years) the provost, who was very nice, told me that I'd be missed and if I wanted to come back I'd be welcomed with open arms. Obviously, it's not true (even if it was a sweet thing to say), not simply because full-time positions require a national search, but also because no one is so important that they won't be forgotten in a year or less. One of the reasons why I want to walk away from Champlain without any fuss, essentially disappearing like a ghost, is because I don't want to go through the hypocrisy of pretending that anyone will actually miss me - or even remember that I taught there in no time at all.