Água Viva

by Clarice Lispector

I, who want the most primary thing because it’s the source of generation—I who long to drink water at the source of the spring—I who am all of this, must by fate and tragic destiny only know and taste the echoes of me, because I cannot capture the me itself.

The world has no visible order and all I have is the order of my breath. I let myself happen.

But I am kaleidoscopic: I’m fascinated by my sparkling mutations that I here kaleidoscopically record.

I live off a secret that glows in luminous rays that would darken me if I didn’t cover them with a heavy cloak of false certainties.

This is a way to have no lag between the instant and I: I act in the core of the instant.

When I destroy my notes on the instants, will I return to my nothing from which I extracted an everything?

And when I think life is strange that’s where life begins.