I’ve always been an ironic dreamer, unfaithful to my inner promises. Like a complete outsider, a casual observer of whom I thought I was, I’ve always enjoyed watching my daydreams go down in defeat. I was never convinced of what I believed in. I filled my hands with sand, called it gold, and opened them up to let it slide through. Words were my only truth. When the right words were said, all was done; the rest was the sand that had always been.

If it weren’t for my continuous dreaming, my perpetual state of alienation, I could very well call myself a realist – someone, that is, for whom the outer world is an independent nation. But I prefer not to give myself a name, to be somewhat mysterious about what I am and to be impishly unpredictable even to myself.

I feel a certain duty to dream continuously since, not being more nor wanting to be more than a spectator of myself, I have to put on the best show I can. And so I fashion myself out of gold and silks, in imaginary rooms, on a false stage, with ancient scenery: a dream created to invisible music and the play of soft lights.

I cherish, like the memory of a special kiss, my childhood remembrance of a theatre with a bluish, moonlit setting that depicted the terrace of an impossible palace, surrounded by a huge park, likewise painted. I spent my soul living all of that as though it were real. The music that softly played on this occasion of my mental experience of life gave the stage setting a feverish reality. The setting was definitely bluish and moonlight, but I don’t remember who appeared on stage. The play I place today in that remembered scenery comes from the verses of Verlaine and Pessanha,* but this isn’t the play (which I’ve forgotten) that was performed on the actual stage and had nothing to do with that reality of blue music. It’s my own, fluid play, a grandiose moonlit masquerade, a silver and nocturnal blue interlude.

Then came life. That night they took me to The Gold Lion for dinner. I can still taste the steaks on the palate of my nostalgia – steaks (I know because I imagine) such as nowadays no one makes or I, at any rate, don’t eat. And it all gets mixed up – the childhood I live from afar, the tasty food at the restaurant, the moonlit setting, Verlaine future and I present – in a blurry diagonal, in a false gap between what I was and what I am.