Pain relief

Before starting with Pessoa, I read Martin Page's How I Became Stupid, being delighted by its beginning and getting more and more disappointed during its progress. (Despite his English sounding name, Page is French.) The book is about a young intellectual man doing a boring office job and suffering from existential angst. He tries to find a way out of the latter by studying options like alcoholism and suicide with the help of "experts." To not spoil the book too much, I only reveal that he decides to drop these options and after certain turns finds himself working in investing, the lucrative side effects of which seem to bury his sensitivity. 

Pessoa's book starts in a similar way. There is a man working in an office and suffering from deep existential angst. But he has no way out of it nor does he even look for it. Instead, he verbalizes his emotions in depths like no other. It lacks all the entertaining elements that Page's book has and just takes you deeper and deeper.

Yesterday, when the street cat I have been feeding for two years was missing for the second day and the world order was crumbling more and more, the pain and worry inside me reached an unbearable level. (I had already had a profound bad premonition about this year before it started, and it was only day 4.)

In the evening, I opened Pessoa but had to put it away after reading two pages and turn to port.

I sometimes watch investment videos although do not invest, only to get some hints on where the world is going. I have noticed that the investment reality is amoral and the only thing that matters is how anything affects the stock market. There is an uncanny feel of everything being under control; this and that tragedy only slightly raises or lowers the stock curves and it all is a game you are playing.

 

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