Near to the Wild Heart

by Clarice Lispector

And always in the sliver of time that followed nothing happened if she kept waiting for what was going to happen, you see?

Even from a distance she possessed things.

Or, even when nothing hurt, if she stood in front of the clock watching it, whatever she wasn’t feeling was also greater than the minutes counted on the clock.

She felt a perfect animal inside her, full of contradictions, of selfishness and vitality.

From the quiet neighborhood, from the distant houses, no sounds reached her. And, free, not even she knew what she was thinking.

Goodness was lukewarm and light. It smelled of raw meat kept for too long. Without entirely rotting in spite of everything. It was freshened up from time to time, seasoned a little, enough to keep it a piece of lukewarm, quiet meat.

Maybe it was just a lack of life: she was living less than she could and imagined that her thirst required floods.

Don’t accuse myself. Seek the basis of selfishness: nothing that I am not can interest me, it is impossible to be any more than what you are (nevertheless I exceed myself even when I’m not delirious, I am more than myself almost normally); I have a body and everything that I do is a continuation of my beginning; if the Mayan civilization doesn’t interest me it is because I have nothing in me that can connect with its bas-reliefs; I accept everything that comes from me because I am unaware of the causes and I may be trampling something vital without knowing it; this is my greatest humility, she figured.

Why this romanticism: a bit of fever? But actually I do have one: eyes sparkling, this strength and this weakness, jumbled heartbeats.

the only truth is that I live. Sincerely, I live. Who am I?

It is curious that I can’t say who I am. That is to say, I know it all too well, but I can’t say it. More than anything, I’m afraid to say it, because the moment I try to speak not only do I fail to express what I feel but what I feel slowly becomes what I say.

I know everything is perfect, because it followed its fated path regarding itself from scale to scale. Nothing escapes the perfection of things, that’s how it is with everything.

Ah, pity is what I feel then. Pity is my way of loving. Of hating and communicating. It is what sustains me against the world, just as one person lives through desire, another through fear. Pity for things that happen without my knowledge.

I’m tired, acutely now! Let us cry together, quietly. For having suffered and continuing on so sweetly.

The day went on and left her behind, alone.

If I saw myself on earth from up in the stars I’d be alone from myself.

“Not that I thought about her constantly. A thought here and there, like a reminder note to think later. Later it would come and I never gave it too much consideration. It was just that slight, painless pang, an unpronounced ah!, a moment of vague meditation, then forgetting.