1 rich Libsyn https://www.libsyn.com 90 600 Using his hometown as the main image of the poem, Pessoa here touches on the feeling of nostalgia which arises out of insomnia: &quot;I want to imagine anything, &amp;amp; something else always comes up&quot;. In our modern vocabulary, we might say that he suffers from anxiety, but, what does this really mean? Might this not just be a way to bury a profound act of consciousness under the sod of a clinic definition? The speaker wants to go to sleep, but can't because there is always another image, another sound, another thought to be contemplated; another feeling, another memory, another sensation to be perceived. Insomnia, in this sense, points toward a heightened state of awareness, a continual peeling off of the self from itself (i.e. Sartre's being-for-itself) which aims with all its might at sleep, here a symbol for a kind of being that simply &quot;is&quot; or that &quot;is and is nothing else&quot;. The Smelting Process Podcast http://www.jwmulligan.wordpress.com <iframe title="Libsyn Player" style="border: none" src="//html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/667319/height/90/theme/custom/thumbnail/yes/direction/forward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/88AA3C/" height="90" width="600" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen></iframe> https://assets.libsyn.com/secure/item/667319