#such gentleness

[unsettlingconclusions]

It's always me having to adapt to your life, your world. What about you?

Clara e Helena | Vai na fé.

[soracities]

The search is no use. I am at the window and this is all that happens: I see the rain with benevolent eyes, and the rain sees me...We are both busy flowing.

Clarice Lispector, from “Such Gentleness”, Complete Stories (trans. Katarina Dodson)

[monstrousfire]

Ok ok so not only is Saf in love with Skye, but also it’s not “when Bitterblue dated him” or “before they broke up” but “back when they’d loved each other” and ahhhhhhh

[soracities]

It is raining and I am watching the rain....The rain falls not because it needs me, and I watch the rain not because I need it. But we are as united as rainwater is to rain. And I am not giving thanks for anything.... Not even thanking God or nature. The rain doesn’t give thanks for anything either. I am not a thing that gives thanks for being transformed into something else. I am a woman, I am a person, I am an awareness, I am a body looking out the window. As the rain isn’t grateful for not being a rock. It is rain. Perhaps that is what we could call being alive. No more than this, but this: alive. And just alive with a gentle joy.

Clarice Lispector, from “Such Gentleness”, Complete Stories (trans. Katarina Dodson)

[itseasyjusttolookaway]

I’ll go to the window then, it’s raining hard. Out of habit I’m searching the rain for something that at another time would have served as comfort for me. But I have no pain to be comforted. Ah, I know. I’m now searching the rain for a joy so great that it becomes acute, and which puts me in contact with an acuteness akin to the acuteness of pain. But the search is no use. I am at the window and this is all that happens: I see the rain with benevolent eyes, and the rain sees me in harmony with me. We are both busy flowing. How long will this state of mine last? I realize that, with this question, I am taking my pulse to feel where that painful throbbing from before will be. And I see that there is no throbbing of pain. Only this: it is raining and I am watching the rain. What simplicity. I never thought that the world and I would reach this point of wheat. The rain falls not because it needs me, and I watch the rain not because I need it. But we are asunited as rainwater is to rain. And I am not giving thanks for anything. If I, just after being born, hadn’t involuntarily and forcibly taken the path I did—and I would always have been what I truly am now: a peasant in a field where it is raining. Not even thanking God or nature. The rain doesn’t give thanks for anything either. I am not a thing that gives thanks for being transformed into something else. I am a woman, I am a person, I am an awareness, I am a body looking out the window. As the rain isn’t grateful for not being a rock. It is rain. Perhaps that is what we could call being alive. No more than this, but this: alive. And just alive with a gentle joy.

Clarice Lispector, Such Gentleness in The Complete Stories

[itseasyjusttolookaway]

So the dark hour, perhaps the darkest, in broad daylight, preceded that thing that I don’t even want to attempt to define. In broad daylight it was night, and that thing I still don’t want to define is a peaceful light inside me, and they call it joy, gentle joy. I am a bit disoriented as if a heart had been torn from me, and in its place were now the sudden absence, an almost palpable absence of what before was an organ bathed in the darkness of pain. I am not feeling a thing. But it’s the opposite of a torpor. It’s a lighter and more silent way of existing. But I am also uneasy. I was prepared to console my anguish and my pain. But how do I deal with this simple and peaceful joy. I’m just not used to not needing my own comfort. The word comfort occurred without my sensing it, and I didn’t notice, and when I went to seek it, it had already transformed into flesh and spirit, it now no longer existed as thought.

Clarice Lispector, Such Gentleness in The Complete Stories

[lifeinpoetry]

Perhaps that is what we could call being alive. No more than this, but this: alive. And just alive with a gentle joy.

Clarice Lispector, from “Such Gentleness,”The Complete Stories