Near to the Wild Heart

by Clarice Lispector

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.

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;

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.

she was afraid of not being present in all of her thoughts.

Music was of the same category as thought, both vibrated in the same movement and kind. Of the same quality as a thought so intimate that when heard, it revealed itself. As a thought so intimate that when she heard someone repeat the slightest nuances of its sounds, Joana was surprised at how she had been invaded and scattered. She didn’t feel its harmony any more when it became popular—then it was no longer hers. Or even when she heard the piece several times, which destroyed the similarity: because her thoughts never repeated themselves, while music could be renewed exactly the same as itself—thoughts were only like music in their creation.

Human life is more complex: it boils down to the pursuit of pleasure, to fear of it, and above all to the dissatisfaction of the time in between. What I’m saying is a little simplistic, but it doesn’t matter for now. Do you understand? All yearning is pursuit of pleasure. All remorse, pity, benevolence, is fear of it. All despair and seeking alternative routes are dissatisfaction.

Never suffer because you are not something or because you are.

I can hardly believe that I have limits, that I am cut out and defined. I feel scattered in the air, thinking inside other beings, living in things beyond myself.

Analyze instant by instant, perceive the nucleus of each thing made of time or space. Own each moment, connect my awareness to them, like tiny filaments almost imperceptible but strong. Is this life? Even so it would give me the slip. Another way to capture it would be to live. But dreams are more complete than reality, which drowns me in the unconscious. What matters then: to live or to know you are living?—Very pure words, droplets of crystal.

Everything I possess is very deep within me. One day, after speaking at last, will I still have something to live on? Or will everything I say fall short of or beyond life?—I

And if she was just the life that coursed through her body without ceasing?

She slowly saddened with a sadness that was insufficient and thus doubly sad.

In truth she had always been two, the one that had a slight idea that she was and the one that actually was, profoundly. It was just that until then the two of them had worked together and couldn’t be told apart.

Because she had been born for the essential, to live or to die. And everything in between was suffering for her. Her existence was so complete and so connected to the truth that when it came time to give in and die she probably thought, if indeed she was in the habit of thinking: I never was.

If you rose to the point of understanding it, without going crazy in the meantime, it wouldn’t be possible to preserve the knowledge of it as knowledge but it would be turned into an attitude, an attitude of life, the only way to fully possess and express it.

He trusted that he could imagine in one life and exist in another, separate one. This other one really does go on, but its purification over the imagined works slowly and a lone man doesn’t find foolish thinking on one side and the peace of the true life on the other. One cannot think with impunity.”

Then she made up what she should say. Eyes closed, surrendered, she softly spoke words born in that instant, never before heard by anyone, still tender from their creation—fragile, new shoots. They were less than words, just loose, meaningless, warm syllables that flowed and merged, were fertilized and reborn in a single being only to break apart immediately afterwards, breathing, breathing

Everything I know I never learned and could never teach anyone.”