The Passion According To Gh Quotes

The world's continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.

And I want to be held down. I don't know what to do with the horrifying freedom that can destroy me.

What I want is to live of that initial and primordial something that was what made some things reach the point of aspiring to be human.

The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices.

Holding someone's hand was always my idea of joy. Often before falling asleep - in that small struggle not to lose consciousness and enter the greater world - often, before having the courage to go toward the greatness of sleep, I pretend that someone is holding my hand and I go, go toward the enormous absence of form that is sleep. And when even then I can't find the courage, then I dream.

I' is merely one of the world's instantaneous spasms.

Reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought. . . . life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence.

I don't want beauty, I want identity.

In the world there exists no aesthetic plane, not even the aesthetic plane of goodness.

Perder-se é um achar-se perigoso.

Never again shall I understand anything I say. Since how could I speak without the word lying for me? How could I speak except timidly like this: life just is for me. Life just is for me, and I don't understand what I'm saying. And so I adore it.

I'm so frightened that I shall be able to accept the notion that I have lost myself only if I imagine that someone is holding my hand.

Real life is so secret that not even I, who am dying of it, have been given the password, I am dying without knowing of what.

A note exists between two notes of music, between two facts exists a fact, between two grains of sand no matter how close together there exists an interval of space, a sense that exists between senses — in the interstices of primordial matter is the line of mystery and fire that is the breathing of the world, and the continual breathing of the world is what we hear and call silence.

I, who called love my hope for love.

Reality is the raw material, language is the way I go in search of it - and the way I do not find it. But it is from searching and not finding that what I did not know was born, and which I instantly recognise. Language is my human effort. My destiny is to search and my destiny is to return empty-handed. But - I return with the unsayable. The unsayable can only be given to me through the failure of my language. Only when the construction fails, can I obtain what I could not achieve.

Depersonalization like the deposing of useless individuality— the loss of everything that can be lost, while still being. To take away from yourself little by little, with an effort so attentive that no pain is felt, to take away from yourself like one who gets free of her own skim, her own characteristics. Everything that characterizes me is just the way I am most easily viewed by others and end up being superficially recognizable to myself.

—————— I’m searching, I’m searching. I’m trying to understand. Trying to give what I’ve lived to somebody else and I don’t know to whom, but I don’t want to keep what I lived. I don’t know what to do with what I lived, I’m afraid of that profound disorder. I don’t trust what happened to me. Did something happen to me that I, because I didn’t know how to live it, lived as something else? That’s what I’d like to call disorganization, and I’d have the confidence to venture on, because I would know where to return afterward: to the previous organization. I’d rather call it disorganization because I don’t want to confirm myself in what I lived — in the confirmation of me I would lose the world as I had it, and I know I don’t have the fortitude for another.

Estou tão assustada que só poderei aceitar que me perdi se imaginar que alguém me está dando a mão.

Life was taking its vengeance on me, and that vengeance consisted merely in coming back, nothing more. Every case of madness involves something coming back. People who are possessed are not possessed by something that just comes but instead by something that comes back. Sometimes life comes back. If in me everything crumbled before that power, it is not because that power was itself necessarily an overwhelming one: it in fact had only to come, since it had already become too full-flowing a force to be controlled or contained - when it appeared it overran everything. And then, like after a flood, there floated a wardrobe, a person, a loose window, three suitcases. And that seemed like Hell to me, that destruction of layers and layers of human archaeology.

Dá-me a tua mão desconhecida, que a vida está me doendo, e não sei como falar – a realidade é delicada demais, só a realidade é delicada, minha irrealidade e minha imaginação são mais pesadas.

Would it be simplistic to think the moral problem with regards to others consists in behaving as one ought to, and the moral problem with regards to oneself is managing to feel what one ought to?

I shall never be able to understand it, but there must be someone who can. And I shall have to create that someone who can inside myself.

her short stories read like perfect songs.

Sou: o que vi.

...things are very delicate. People tread upon them with too many human feet, with too many sentiments. Only the delicacy of innocence or only the delicacy of the initiate senses its almost nonexistent taste. Before, I needed seasoning for everything, and in that way I skipped over the thing and tasted the taste of the seasoning.

Oh, don't pull your hand away from me, I've promised myself that maybe by the end of this impossible narrative I shall understand, oh maybe it will be on Hell's road that I shall be able to find what we need—but don't pull your hand away, even though I now know that the finding has to come on the road of what we are, if I can succeed in not sinking completely into what we are.

I am going to create what happened to me. Only because living isn't tellable. Living isn't livable. I shall have to create upon life. And without lying. Yes to creation, no to lying. Creation isn't imagination, it's running the huge risk of coming face to face with reality.

Oh, but to reach silence, what a huge effort of voice. My voice is the way I go seek reality; reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought, but I was and am fatefully impelled to have to know what thought thinks. Reality precedes the voice that seeks it, but like the earth precedes the tree, but like the world precedes the man, but like the sea precedes the view of the sea, life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence. - Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.

I am the cockroach, I am my leg, I am my hair, I am the section of brightest light on the wall plaster—I am every Hellish piece of myself—life is so pervasive in me that if they divide me in pieces like a lizard, the pieces will keep on shaking and writhing. I am the silence etched on a wall, and the most ancient butterfly flutters in and looks at me: just the same as always. From birth to death is what I call human in myself, and I shall never actually die. But this is not eternity, it is condemnation. How opulent this silence is. It is the accumulation of centuries. It is the silence of the cockroach looking. The world looks at itself in me. Everything looks at everything, everything experiences the other; in this desert things know things.

And my fear, too, was different now: not the fear of someone who is still about to go in but the so much greater fear of someone who has gone in.

Se não tivesse sido eu, eu não saberia, e tendo sido eu, eu soube.

Ouve, por eu ter mergulhado no abismo é que estou começando a amar o abismo de que sou feita.

I've always liked putting things in their places. I think it's my only true calling. By ordering things I create and understand at the same time ... Ordering is finding the best form.

Ah, meu amor, não tenhas medo da carência: ela é o nosso destino maior. O amor é tão mais fatal do que eu havia pensado, o amor é tão inerente quanto a própria carência, e nós somos garantidos por uma necessidade que se renovará continuamente. O amor já está, está sempre. Falta apenas o golpe da graça - que se chama paixão.

And giving myself over with the confidence of belonging to the unknown. For I can pray only to what I do not know. And I can love only the unknown evidence of things and can add myself only to what I do not know. Only that is a real giving of oneself.

Se eu me confirmar e me considerar verdadeira, estarei perdida porque não saberei onde engastar meu novo modo de ser - se eu for adiante nas minhas visões fragmentárias, o mundo inteiro terá que se transformar para eu caber nele.

Life just is for me, and I don’t understand what I’m saying. And so I adore it. ——————

My old life was necessary to me because it was precisely its error that made me take up imagining a hope that, without the life that I led, I wouldn't have known.

I had reached nothingness, and the nothingness was live and moist.

Toda compreensão súbita é finalmente a revelação de uma aguda incompreensão. Todo momento de achar é um perder-se a si próprio.

I shall need to courage to do what I'm about to do: speak. And risk the enormous surprise I shall feel at the poverty of the spoken thing. As soon as it's out of my mouth, I'll have to add: that's not it, that's not it! But I cannot be afraid of being ridiculous, I always preferred less to more also out of fear of the ridiculous: because there's also the shattering of modesty. I'm putting off having to speak to myself. Out of fear? And because I don't have a word to say. I don't have a word to say. So why don't I shut up? But if I do not force out the word muteness will swallow me forever in waves.

I'm blinder than before. I did see, I really did. I was terrified by the raw truth of a world whose greatest horror is that it is so alive that for me to admit that I am as alive as it is - and my most hideous discovery is that I am as alive as it is - I shall have to raise my consciousness of life outside to so high a point that it would amount to a crime against my personal life.

when art is good it is because it touched upon the inexpressive, the worst art is expressive, that art which trangresses the piece of iron and the piece of glass, and the smile, and the scream.

But I’m afraid to begin composing in order to be understood by the imaginary someone, I’m afraid to start to “make” a meaning, with the same tame madness that till yesterday was my healthy way of fitting into a system. Will I need the courage to use an unprotected heart and keep talking to the nothing and the no one? as a child thinks about the nothing. And run the risk of being crushed by chance.

Eu tenho à medida que designo – e este é o esplendor de se ter uma linguagem . Mas eu tenho muito mais à medida que não consigo designar. A realidade é a matéria-prima, a linguagem é o modo como vou buscá-la – e como não acho. Mas é do buscar e não achar que nasce o que eu não conhecia, e que instantaneamente reconheço. A linguagem é o meu esforço humano. Por destino tenho que ir buscar e por destino volto com as mãos vazias. Mas – volto com o indizível . O indizível só me poderá ser dado através do fracasso de minha linguagem. Só quando falha a construção, é que obtenho o que ela não conseguiu.

Ignorance of the law of irreducibility was no excuse. I could no longer excuse myself with the claim that I didn't know the law -- for knowledge of self and of the world is the law that, even though unattainable, cannot be broken, and no one can excuse himself by saying that he doesn't know it. . . . The renewed originality of the sin is this: I have to carry out my unknowing, I shall be sinning originally against life.

I'm stalling. I know that everything I say is just to put it off-to put off the moment when I'll have to start talking, knowing that there is nothing more for me to say. I'm putting off my silence. Have I been putting off silence for my whole life? but now, in my disparagement of the word, perhaps I'll finally be able to start talking." (14)

E nunca antes eu me havia deixado levar, a menos que soubesse para o quê.

Now I understand what a trial is. Trial: it means that life is trying me. But trial: means that I too am trying. And trying can become an ever more insatiable thirst.

I'm going to start my exercise in courage, living isn't courage, knowing that you're living, that's courage.

Hoje me exige hoje mesmo.

O erro é um dos meus modos fatais de trabalho.

¿Qué soy? Soy: estar de pie ante un espanto. Soy: lo que he visto. No entiendo y temo entender, la materia del mundo me espanta, con sus planetas y sus cucarachas

Night is our latent state. And it is so moist that plants are born. In houses the lights go out in order to hear the crickets more clearly, and so the grasshoppers can walk atop the leaves almost without touching them, the leaves, the leaves, the leaves—in the night the soft anxiety is transmitted through the hollow of the air, the void is a means of transport.

Nostalgia is not for the God who is missing to us, it is a nostalgia for ourselves, for we do not sustain ourselves; we miss our impossible grandeur - my unreachable nowness is my paradise lost.

Real life is so secret that not even I, who am dying of it, have been given the password, I am dying without knowing of what. And the secret is such that only if the mission is finally carried out do I, all of a sudden, see that I was born entrusted with it - all of life is a secret mission.

Life, my love, is a great seduction in which all that exists seduces. That room that was deserted and for that reason primally alive. I had reached the nothing, and the nothing was living and moist.

Depersonalization as the great objectification of oneself. The greatest exteriorization one can reach. Whoever gets to oneself through depersonalization shall recognize the other in any disguise: the first step in relation to the other is finding inside oneself the man of all men. Every woman is the woman of all women, every man is the man of all men, and each of them could appear wherever man is judged. But only in immanence, because only a few reach the point of, in us, recognizing themselves. And then, by the simple presence of their existence, revealing ours.

I want the material of things. Humanity is drenched with humanization, as if that were necessary; and that false humanization trips up man and trips up his humanity. A thing exists that is fuller, deafer, deeper, less good, less bad, less pretty. Yet that thing too runs the risk, in our coarse hands, of becoming transformed into "purity", our hands that are coarse and full of words.

My life had been as continuous as death. Life is so continuous that we divide it into stages and call one of them death. I had always been in life, it mattered little that it was not I properly speaking, not that thing that I customarily call "I." I had always been in life.

The world had reclaimed its own reality, and, just like after a catastrophe, my culture had ended: I was merely a historical fact. Everything in me had been reclaimed by the beginning of time and by my own beginning. I had passed on to a first, primary plane, I was in the silence of the winds and in the age of tin and copper - at the first age of life.

Que não se acorde quem está todo ausente, quem está absorto está sentindo o pesos das coisas.

Ultrapassar a dor é a pior crueldade

Como, pois, inaugurar agora em mim o pensamento? E talvez só o pensamento me salvasse, tenho medo da paixão.

When living comes to pass, one wonders: but was that it? And the answer is: that is not only it, that is exactly it.

Perhaps I now knew that I would never be equal to life myself, but that my life was equal to life. I would never reach my root, but my root did exist.

Nunca saberei entender mas há de haver quem entenda. E é em mim que tenho de criar esse alguém que entenderá.

I always liked to arrange things. I guess it’s my only real vocation. By putting things in order, I create and understand at the same time.

My expectations closed the world to me.

Como se explica que o meu maior medo seja exatamente o de ir vivendo o que for sendo?

I lost something that was essential to me, and that no longer is. I no longer need it, as if I’d lost a third leg that up till then made it impossible for me to walk but that turned me into a stable tripod. I lost that third leg. And I went back to being a person I never was. I went back to having something I never had: just two legs. I know I can only walk with two legs. But I feel the useless absence of that third leg and it scares me, it was the leg that made me something findable by myself, and without even having to look for myself.

Never, until then, had life happened to me by day. Never in sunlight. Only in my nights did the world slowly revolve. Only that, whatever happened in the dark of night itself, would also happen at the same time in my own entrails, and my dark wasn't differentiated from the dark outside, and in the morning, when I opened my eyes, the world was still a surface: the secret life of the night soon reduced in my mouth to the taste of a nightmare that disappears. but now life was happening by day. undeniable and to be seen. unless I averted my eyes. and I could still avert my eyes.

I remembered you, when I kissed your man face, slowly, slowly kissed it, and when the time came to kiss your eyes—I remembered that then I had tasted the salt in my mouth, and that the salt of tears in your eyes was my love for you. But, what bound me most of all in a fright of love, had been, in the depth of the depths of the salt, your saltless and innocent and childish substance: with my kiss your deepest insipid life was given to me, and kissing your face was the saltless and busy patient work of love, it was woman weaving a man, just as you had woven me, neutral crafting of life.

Mas é a mim que caberá impedir-me de dar nome à coisa. O nome é um acréscimo e impede o contato com a coisa. O nome da coisa é um intervalo para a coisa. A vontade do acréscimo é grande — porque a coisa nua é tão tediosa

My world today is raw, it is a world of great vital difficulty. Because, more than a star, today I want the thick and black root of the stars, I want the source that always seems dirty, and is dirty, and that is always incomprehensible. It is with pain that I bid farewell even to the beauty of a child - I want the adult who is more primitive and ugly and drier and more difficult, and who became a child-seed that cannot be broken between the teeth.

...E nós sabemos Deus. E o que precisamos Dele, extraímos. (Não sei o que chamo de Deus, mas assim pode ser chamado.) Se só sabemos muito pouco de Deus, é porque precisamos pouco: só temos Dele o que fatalmente nos basta, só temos de Deus o que cabe em nós. (A nostalgia não é do Deus que nos falta, é a nostalgia de nós mesmos que não somos bastante; sentimos falta de nossa grandeza impossível - minha atualidade inalcançável é o meu paraíso perdido.)

The last time I came down from the enchanted saddle, my human sadness was so great that I swore never to again. The ride, however, continues on in me. I converse, I clean the house, I smile, but I know that the ride is within me.

I am the priestess of a secret that I no longer know. And I serve out of blissful ignorance. I found out something I was unable to understand, my lips became sealed, and I retained only the incomprehensible fragments of a ritual.

It isn't for us that cows' milk comes forth, but we drink it. Flowers weren't made for us to look at or for us to smell, and we look at them and smell them. The Milky Way doesn't exist for us to know if its existence, but we know.

This book is like any other book. But I would be happy if it were only read by people whose souls are already formed. Those who know that the approach, of whatever it may be, happens gradually and painstakingly — even passing through the opposite of what it approaches. They who, only they, will slowly come to understand that this book takes nothing from no one. To me, for example, the character G. H. gave bit by bit a difficult joy; but it is called joy. C.

And He not only allows but needs to be used, used is a way of being understood. (In all religions God demands to be loved.) For us to have, all we need is to need. To need is always the supreme moment. Just as the most daring happiness between a man and a woman comes when needing becomes so great that it is felt in agony and wonder: without you I will be unable to live. Love's revelation is a revelation of lacking—blessed be the poor of spirit for the sundering realm of life is theirs.

se eu gritasse acordaria milhares de seres gritantes que iniciariam pelos telhados um coro de gritos e horror. Se eu gritasse desencadearia a existência - a existência de quê? a existência do mundo. Com reverência eu temia a existência do mundo para mim.

An eye looked over my life. I probably called that eye sometimes "truth", sometimes morality, sometimes human law, sometimes "God", sometimes "myself". For the most part I lived inside a mirror. Two minutes after I was born I had already lost my beginnings.

Ne olduğumu bilmediğimden, "olmamak" gerçeğe en yakın olduğum yerdi: en azından madalyonun öteki yüzü kontrolümde: en azından "-mamak"a sahiptim, tersime sahiptim. O zaman benim için neyin iyi olduğunu bilmiyordum; benim için kötü olana da böylece ısınmış oldum.

Até então eu nunca fora dona de meus poderes - poderes que eu não entendia nem queria entender, mas a vida em mim os havia retido para que um dia enfim desabrochasse essa matéria desconhecida e feliz e inconsciente que era finalmente: eu! eu, o que quer que seja.

Mas tenho medo do que é novo e tenho medo de viver o que não entendo quero sempre ter a garantia de pelo menos estar pensando que entendo, não sei me entregar à desorientação. Como é que se explica que o meu maior medo seja exatamente em relação: a ser? e no entanto não há outro caminho. Como se explica que o meu maior medo seja exatamente o de ir vivendo o que for sendo? como é que se explica que eu não tolere ver, só porque a vida não é o que eu pensava e sim outra como se antes eu tivesse sabido o que era! Por que é que ver é uma tal desorganização?

- Dá-me a tua mão, não me abandones, juro que também eu não queria: eu também vivia bem, eu era uma mulher de quem se pode dizer "vida e amores de G.H.". Não posso pôr em palavras qual era o sistema, mas eu vivia num sistema. Era como se eu me organizasse dentro do fato de ter dor de estômago porque, se eu não a tivesse mais, também perderia a maravilhosa esperança de me livrar um dia da dor de estômago: minha vida antiga me era necessária porque era exatamente o seu mal que me fazia usufruir da imaginação de uma esperança que, sem essa vida que eu levava, eu não conheceria.

We shall be inhuman - as humankind's greatest conquest. To be is to be beyond the human. To be a human being doesn't do it, to be human has been a constraint. The unknown awaits us, but I sense that that unknown is a totalization and will be the true humanization we long for. Am I speaking of death? no, of life.

Ainda que eu seja mais uma ninguém a vagar sem rosto pelas rodas de livros, pelas prateleiras, tenho a sensação de ser uma penetra. Tanta coisa escrita, tanta gente escrevendo. Por que eu escrevo? O que eu tenho a dizer que já não tenha sido dito de milhares de maneiras diferentes? A quem interessa o meu corpo de letras?

It’s not a story that leads the reader to philosophical thoughts. And it’s not a philosophical treatise that needs a story to convey them. Instead, it is a vivifying experience that leads a person to the most ambitious philosophical discoveries. An experience transformed into literary art, in which harmony and disorder are the price of the revelation. A

The room was the opposite of what I'd created in my home, the opposite of the soft beauty I'd made from my talent for arrangement, my talent for living, the opposite of my serene irony, of my sweet and absentminded irony: it was a violation of my quotation marks, the quotation marks that made me a citation of myself. The room was the portrait of an empty stomach.

Perdi alguma coisa que me era essencial, e que já não me é mais. Não me é necessária, assim como se eu tivesse perdido uma terceira perna que até entorno me impossibilitava de andar mas que fazia de mim um tripé estável. Essa terceira perna eu perdi. E voltei a ser uma pessoa que nunca fui. Voltei a ter o que nunca tive: apenas as duas pernas. Sei que momento com duas pernas é que posso caminhar. Mas a ausência inútil da terceira perna me faz falta e me assusta, era ela que fazia de mim uma coisa encontrável por mim mesma, e sem sequer precisar me procurar. Estou desorganizada porque perdi o que não precisava? (…) É difícil perder-se. É tão difícil que provavelmente arrumarei depressa um modo de me achar, mesmo que achar-me seja de novo a mentira de que vivo. Até agora achar-me era já ter uma ideia de pessoa e nela me engastar: nessa pessoa organizada eu me encarnava, e nem mesmo sentia o grande esfoço de construção que era viver. (…) Mas e agora? estarei mais livre? (…) Se tiver coragem, eu me deixarei continuar perdida. Mas tenho medo do que é novo e tenho medo de viver o que não entendo - quero sempre ter a garantia de pelo menos estar pensando que entendo, não sei me entregar à desorientação (…) Talvez desilusão seja o medo de não pertencer mais a um sistema. No entanto se deveria dizer assim: ela está muito feliz porque finalmente foi desiludido. O que eu era antes não era bom. Mas era desse não-bom que eu havia organizado o melhor - a esperança.

O mundo independia de mim - esta era a confiança a que eu tinha chegado: o mundo independia de mim, e não estou entendendo o que estou dizendo, nunca! nunca mais compreenderei o que eu disser. Pois como poderia eu dizer sem que a palavra mentisse por mim? como poderei dizer senão timidamente assim: a vida se me é. A vida se me é, e eu não entendo o que digo. E então adoro.

Everything could be fiercely summed up in never emitting a first scream—a first scream unleashes all the others, the first scream at birth unleashes a life, if I screamed I would awaken thousands of screaming beings who would loose upon the rooftops a chorus of screams and horror. If I screamed I would unleash the existence—the the existence of what? the existence of the world.

I, neutral cockroach body, I with a life that at last is not eluding me because I finally see it outside of myself -- I am the cockroach, I am my leg, I am my hair, I am the section of brightest light on the wall plaster -- I am every Hellish piece of myself -- life is so pervasive in me that if they divide me in pieces like a lizard, the pieces will keep on shaking and writhing.

And solitude is not needing. Not needing leaves a person alone, all alone. Oh, needing doesn't isolate a person, things need things: it's enough to see a chick walking to see that its destiny will be what lack will make of it, its destiny is to join, like drops of mercury cling to other drops of mercury, even though, like all drops of mercury, it has a complete and rounded existence in itself.

And I shall not wander “from thought to thought,” but from mood to mood. We shall be inhuman — as the loftiest conquest of man. Being is being beyond human. Being man does not work, being man has been a constraint. The unknown awaits us, but I feel that this unknown is a totalization and will be the true humanization for which we longed. Am I speaking of death? no, of life. It is not a state of happiness, it is a state of contact.

I was being carried off by the demonic. For the inexpressive is diabolic. A person who isn’t committed to hope lives the demonic. A person who has the courage to cast off feelings discovers the ample life of an extremely busy silence, the same that exists in the cockroach, the same in the stars, the same in the self — the demonic precedes the human. And the person who sees that presentness burns as if seeing the God. Prehuman divine life is of a presentness that burns.

But this is not eternity, it is condemnation. How opulent this silence is. It is the accumulation of centuries. It is the silence of a cockroach looking. The world looks at itself in me. Everything looks at everything, everything experiences the other; in this desert things know things. Things know things as much as this… this something that I shall call pardon, if I wish to save myself within the human plan. It is pardon in itself. Pardon is one of the attributes of living matter.

It is not for us that the cow’s milk flows, but we drink it. The flower was not made for us to look at it or for us to smell its fragrance, and we look at it and smell it. The Milky Way does not exist for us to know of its existence, but we know of it. And we know God. And what we need from Him, we elicit. (I don’t know what I am calling God, but thus he may be called.) If we only know very little of God, that is because we need little: we only have of Him whatever is inevitably enough for us, we only have of God whatever fits inside us.

Acum o să-ți povestesc cum am intrat în inexpresivul care a fost întotdeauna căutarea mea oarbă și secretă. Cum am intrat între ceea ce există între numărul unu și numărul doi, cum am văzut linia de mister și foc, care e o linie ascunsă. Între două note muzicale există o notă, între două fapte există un fapt, între două fire de nisip, oricât de apropiate ar fi unul de celălalt, există un interval în spațiu, există un simț care se află între simț; în interstițiile materiei principale se află linia de mister și foc care este respirația lumii, și respirația continuă a lumii este ceea ce auzim și denumim tăcere.

Enfim, enfim quebrara-se o meu invólucro, e sem limite eu era. Por não ser, eu era. Até o fim daquilo que eu não era, eu era. O que não sou eu, eu sou. Tudo estará em mim, se eu não for; pois “eu” é apenas um dos espasmos instantâneos do mundo. Minha vida não tem sentido apenas humano, é muito maior — é tão maior que, em relação ao humano, não tem sentido. Da organização geral que era maior que eu, eu só havia até então percebido os fragmentos. Mas agora, eu era muito menos que humana — e só realizaria o meu destino especificamente humano se me entregasse, como estava me entregando, ao que já não era eu, ao que já é inumano.

Estou procurando, estou procurando. Estou tentando entender. Tentando dar a alguém o que vivi e não sei a quem, mas não quero ficar com o que vivi. Não sei o que fazer do que vivi, tenho medo dessa desorganização profunda. Não confio no que me aconteceu. Aconteceu-me alguma coisa que eu, pelo fato de não a saber como viver, vivi uma outra? A isso quereria chamar desorganização, e teria a segurança de me aventurar, porque saberia depois para onde voltar: para a organização anterior. A isso prefiro chamar desorganização pois não quero me confirmar no que vivi - na confirmação de mim eu perderia o mundo como eu o tinha, e sei que não tenho capacidade para outro.

What comes out of the roach’s belly is not transcendable—ah, I don’t want to say that it’s the opposite of beauty, “opposite of beauty” doesn’t even make sense—what comes out of the roach is: “today,” blessed be the fruit of thy womb—I want the present without dressing it up with a future that redeems it, not even with a hope—until now what hope wanted in me was just to conjure away the present. But I want much more than that: I want to find the redemption in today, in right now, in the reality that is being, and not in the promise, I want to find joy in this instant—I want the God in whatever comes out of the roach’s belly—even if that, in my former human terms, means the worst, and, in human terms, the infernal.

Reality is the raw material, language is the way I go in search of it—and the way I do not find it. But it is from searching and not finding that what I did not know was born, and which I instantly recognize. Language is my human effort. My destiny is to search and my destiny is to return empty-handed. But—I return with the unsayable. The unsayable can only be given to me through the the failure of my language. Only when the construction fails, can I obtain what it could not achieve. And it is no use to try to take a shortcut and want to start, already knowing that the voice says little, starting straightaway with being depersonal. For the journey exists, and the journey is not simply a manner of going. We ourselves are the journey. In the matter of living, one can never arrive beforehand. The via crucis is not a detour, it is the only way, one cannot arrive except along it and with it. Persistence is our effort, giving up is the reward. One only reaches it having experienced the power of building, and, despite the taste of power, preferring to give up. Giving up must be a choice. Giving up is the most sacred choice of a life. Giving up is the true human instant. And this alone, is the very glory of my condition.

I was really in the room.

The most profound of murders: one that is a mode of relating, a way of one being existing the other being, a way of our seeing each other and being each other and having each other, a murder where there is neither victim nor executioner but instead a link of mutual ferocity. My primary struggle for life. "Lost in the Fiery Hell of a Canyon a Woman Struggles Desperately for Life.

Cuando el arte es bueno es porque tocó lo inexpresivo, el peor arte es el expresivo, aquel que transgrede el trozo de hierro y el trozo de cristal, y la sonrisa, y el grito.

— I remembered you, when I kissed your man face, slowly, slowly kissed it, and when the time came to kiss your eyes — I remembered that then I had tasted the salt in my mouth, and that the salt of tears in your eyes was my love for you. But, what bound me most of all in a fright of love, had been, in the depth of the depths of the salt, your saltless and innocent and childish substance: with my kiss your deepest insipid life was given to me, and kissing your face was the saltless and busy patient work of love, it was woman weaving a man, just as you had woven me, neutral crafting of life.

It was the loud monotony of an eternity that breathes. That terrified me. The world would only cease to terrify me if I became the world. If I were the world, I wouldn’t be afraid. If we are the world, we are moved by a delicate radar that guides.

What I used to be, was no good for me. But it was from that not-good that I organized the best thing of all: hope.

Each moment of finding is a getting lost.

For the present has no hope, and the present has no future: the future will be exactly once again present.

Meu erro, no entanto, devia ser o caminho de uma verdade: pois só quando erro é que saio do que conheço e do que entendo. Se a “verdade” fosse aquilo que posso entender – terminaria sendo apenas uma verdade pequena, do meu tamanho.

The world independed on me — that was the trust I had reached: the world independed on me, and I am not understanding whatever it is I’m saying, never! never again shall I understand anything I say.

— I know, it's bad to hold my hand. It's bad to be left without air in that collapsed mine where I brought you without mercy on you, but out of mercy on me. But I swear I'll get you out of here still alive — even though I'm not lying about what my eyes saw. I'll save you from this terror in which, for the time being, I need you. What mercy on you now, you whom I grabbed. You innocently gave me your hand, and because I was holding it I had the courage to submerge myself. But don't try to understand me, just keep me company. I know your hand would drop me, if it knew. How can I repay you? At least use me too, use me at least like a dark tunnel — and when you've crossed my darkness you'll find yourself on the other side with yourself. You might not find yourself with me, I don't know if I'll cross over, but with yourself. At least you're not alone, as I was yesterday, and yesterday I was only praying to get out of there alive.

Life, my love, is a great seduction in which all that exists seduces.

There I was open-mouthed and offended and withdrawn—faced with the dusty being looking back at me. Take what I saw: because what I was seeing with an embarrassment so painful and so frightened and so innocent, what I was seeing was life looking back at me.

One is the silence of the other. The killers who meet: the world is extremely reciprocal. The quivering of an entirely mute rattling in the rock; and we, who made it to today, are still quivering with it.

The vibration of the heat was like the vibration of a sung oratorio. Only my hearing part was feeling. Closed-mouth canticle, sound vibrating deaf like something imprisoned and contained, amen, amen. Canticle of thanksgiving for the murder of one being by another being.

And now I was starting to let it touch me. In truth I had fought all my life against the profound desire to let myself be touched—and I had fought because I couldn't allow myself the death of what I called my goodness; the death of human goodness. But now I no longer wanted to fight it. There had to be a goodness so other that it wouldn't resemble goodness. I no longer wanted to fight.

The danger of meditating is accidentally beginning to think , and thinking is no longer meditating, thinking leads to an objective. The least dangerous thing, in meditating, is "seeing," which dispenses with thinking words.

I was finding out that the unclean animal of the Bible is forbidden because the unclean is the root—for there are created things that never decorated themselves, and preserved themselves exactly as they were the moment they were created, and only they continued to be the still wholly complete root. And because they are the root one cannot eat them, the fruit of good and evil—eating the living matter would banish me from a paradise of adornments, and leave me to wander forever with a shepherd's staff in the desert. Many were they who wandered with a staff in the desert.

The time to live, my love, was being so right now that I leaned my mouth on living matter.

It’s like having a coin and not knowing in which country it is legal tender.

And even though I'd gone into the room, I seemed to have gone into nothing. Even once inside it, I was still somehow outside. As if the room weren't deep enough to hold me and I had to leave pieces of myself in the hallway, in the worst rejection to which I'd ever fallen victim: I didn't fit.

- Dá-me a tua mão, não me abandones, juro que também eu não queria: eu também vivia bem, eu era uma mulher de quem se pode dizer "vida e amores de G.H.". Não posso pôr em palavras qual era o sistema, mas eu vivia num sistema. Era como seu eu me organizasse dentro do fato de ter dor de estômago porque, seu eu não a tivesse mais, também perderia a maravilhosa esperança de me livrar um dia da dor de estômago: minha vida antiga me era necessária porque era exatamente o seu mal que me fazia usufruir da imaginação de uma esperança que, sem essa vida que eu levava, eu não conheceria.

Sometimes—sometimes we ourselves manifest the inexpressive—one does that in art, in bodily love as well—to manifest the inexpressive is to create. In the end we are so happy!

or do I give a form to the nothing, and that would be my attempt to integrate within me my own disintegration?

Entonces se escuchan los grillos mojados. La luz del miligramo no altera la oscuridad. Pues la oscuridad no es iluminable, la oscuridad es un modo de ser: la oscuridad es el nudo vital de la oscuridad, y nunca se toca en el nudo vital de una cosa.

Will the man of the future understand us as we are today? He distractedly, with some distracted tenderness, will pet our head as we do with the dog that comes over to us and looks at us from within its darkness, with mute and afflicted eyes. He, the future man, would pet us, remotely understanding us, as I remotely would understand myself later, beneath the memory of the memory of the memory already lost of a time of pain, not knowing that our time of pain would pass just as a child is not a static child, it’s a growing being.

A verdade não faz sentido, a grandeza do mundo me encolhe. Aquilo que provavelmente pedi e finalmente tive, veio, no entanto me deixar carente como uma criança que anda sozinha pela terra. Tão carente que só o amor de todo o universo por mim poderia me consolar e me cumular, só um tal amor que a própria célula-ovo das coisas vibrasse com o que estou chamando de um amor. Daquilo a que na verdade apenas chamo mas sem saber-lhe o nome.

Estar vivo é uma grossa indiferença irradiante. Estar vivo é inatingível pela mais fina sensibilidade. Estar vivo é inumano - a meditação mais profunda é aquela tão vazia que um sorriso se exala como de uma matéria. E ainda mais delicada serei, e como estado mais permanente. Estou falando da morte? estou falando de depois da morte? Não sei. Sinto que “não humano” é uma grande realidade, e que isso não significa “desumano”, pelo contrário: o não humano é o centro irradiante de um amor neutro em ondas hertzianas.

E que seria a mesma em mim! se eu tivesse coragem de abandonar... de abandonar meus sentimentos? Se eu tivesse coragem de abandonar a esperança.

Não vou fazer nada por ti porque não sei mais o sentido de amor como antes eu pensava que sabia. Também do que eu pensava sobre amor, também disso estou me despedindo, já quase não sei mais o que é, já não me lembro. Talvez eu ache um outro nome, tão mais cruel a princípio, e tão mais ele-mesmo. Ou talvez não ache. Amor é quando não se dá nome à identidade das coisas?

Mas de mim depende eu vir livremente a ser o que fatalmente sou. Sou dona de minha fatalidade e, se eu decidir não cumpri-la, ficarei fora de minha natureza especificamente viva.

Porque o tédio é de uma felicidade primária demais! E é por isso que me é intolerável o paraíso. E eu não quero o paraíso, tenho saudade do inferno! Não estou à altura de ficar no paraíso porque o paraíso não tem gosto humano!

I was becoming aware of myself as one becomes aware of a taste: all of me tasted of steel and verdigris, I was all acid like metal on the tongue, like a crushed green plant, my whole taste rose to my mouth.

the miracle is the note between two notes of music, it is the number between number one and number two. To have it all you have to do is need it. Faith — is knowing you can go and eat the miracle. Hunger, that is what faith is in itself — and needing is my guarantee that to me it will always be given. Needing is my guide.

Between two musical notes there exists another note, between two facts there exists another fact, between two grains of sand, no matter how close together they are, there exists an interval of space, there exists a sensing between sensing—in the interstices of primordial matter there is the mysterious, fiery line that is the world’s breathing, and the world’s continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.

Ficarei perdida entre a mudez dos sinais? Ficarei, pois sei como sou: nunca soube ver sem logo precisar mais do que ver. Sei que me horrorizarei como uma pessoa que fosse cega e enfim abrisse os olhos e enxergasse - mas enxergasse o quê? um triângulo mudo e incompreensível. Poderia essa pessoa não se considerar mais cega só por estar vendo um triângulo incompreensível?

- Vê, meu amor, vê como por medo já estou organizando, vê como ainda não consigo mexer nesses elementos primários do laboratório sem logo querer organizar a esperança. (...) É uma metamorfose em que perco tudo o k tinha, e o que eu tinha era eu - só tenho o k sou. E agora o que sou? Sou: estar de pé diante de um susto. (...) Não entendo e tenho medo de entender, o material do mundo me assusta, com os seus planetas e baratas.

The more we need, the more God exists.

Somos livres, e este é o inferno.

I become so scared when I realize that over a period of hours I lost my human constitution. I don't know if I'll have another one to replace the lost one with. I know that I'll need to take care not to surreptitiously use a new third leg that can grow back in me as easily as a weed, and then call that protective leg "a truth".

Maybe I have merely undergone a great, slow disintegration. And my struggle against that disintegration is just that: is just trying to give it a form. A form gives contours to chaos, gives a construct to amorphous substance… the vision of an infinite flesh is a madman's vision, but if I cut that flesh into pieces and spread those pieces over days and famines… then it will no longer be perdition and madness: it will be humanized life again.

Truth doesn't make sense, the hugeness of the world makes me shrink. What I probably asked for and finally found still ended up leaving me unprepared, like a child walking alone across the earth.

Have I somehow perhaps been in a hurry to experience everything I would have to experience as soon as possible, so that I would have extra time to… to live without facts? to live . Did I early on discharge all my sense duties - early and quickly experience pains and pleasures - to get free all the sooner of my lesser human destiny? to get free so that I could seek my tragedy.

Give me your anonymous hand, for life is giving me pain and I don't know how to go on talking - reality is too delicate, only reality is delicate, my unreality and my imagination are more substantial.

Eu, corpo neutro de barata, eu com uma vida que finalmente não me escapa pois enfim a vejo fora de mim - eu sou a barata, sou minha perna, sou meus cabelos, sou o trecho de luz mais branca no reboco da parede sou cada pedaço infernal de mim - a vida em mim é tão insistente que se me partirem, como a uma lagartixa, os pedaços continuarão estremecendo e se mexendo. Sou o silêncio gravado numa parede, e a borboleta mais antiga esvoaça e me defronta: a mesma de sempre. De nascer até morrer é o queeu me chamo de humana, e nunca propriamente morrerei.

Life was taking its vengeance on me, and that vengeance consisted merely in coming back, nothing more. Every case of madness involves something coming back.

Of my own death, yes, I was indeed aware, for death was the future and is imaginable, and I had always had time to imagine. But the instant, the very instant - the right now - that is unimaginable, between the right now and the I there is no space: it is just now, inside me.

The only destiny with which we are born is the destiny of ritual. I have been calling "mask" a lie, and it isn't: it is the essential mask of solemnity. We would have to put on ritual masks to love each other. Beetles are born with the mask with which they will fulfill themselves. Through original sin we have lost our mask.

But now that I knew that suffering had been my happiness, I asked myself if I wasn't fleeing toward a God because I couldn't bear my humanity.

I knew that cockroaches could go more than a month without food or water. And they could even survive on wood for food. And even after you step on them they come apart slowly and keep on walking all the while. Even when they freeze, after they thaw out they keep on going. For three hundred and fifty million years, they have reproduced with no change. When the world was practically naked, they walked slowly across it.

Sofremos por ter tão pouca fome, embora nossa pequena fome já dê para sentirmos uma profunda falta de prazer que teríamos se fôssemos de fome maior.

Pois a actualidade não tem esperança, e a actualidade não tem futuro: o futuro será exactamente de novo uma actualidade.

A ética da moral é mantê-la em segredo. A liberdade é um segredo.

Dat fiind că trebuie să salvez ziua de mâine, dat fiind că trebuie să am o formă fiindcă nu mă simt în putere să continui dezorganizată, dat fiind că în mod fatal va trebui să organizez monstruoasa carne infinită și s-o tai în bucăți potrivite cu dimensiunea gurii mele și cu capacitatea de a vedea a ochilor mei, dat fiind că voi sucomba în fața nevoii de formă ce provine din spaima mea de a rămâne fără limite, atunci cel puțin să am curajul de a lăsa ca această formă să se formeze singură ca o crustă ce se întărește de la sine, nebuloasa de foc care, răcindu-se, se transformă în pământ. Și să am marele curaj de a rezista tentației de a inventa o formă.

Y que, pobre de mí, no estaba a la altura sino de mi propia vida.

Soledad es tener sólo destino humano.

Soledad es tener sólo destino humano. Y soledad es no necesitar. No necesitar deja a un hombre muy solo, totalmente solo.

El amor ya está, siempre está. Falta sólo el golpe de gracia —que se llama pasión.

La vida en mí no tiene mi nombre.

El lenguaje es mi esfuerzo humano.

Cuanto menos soy más viva estoy, cuanto más pierdo mi nombre más me llaman.

Saber será tal vez el asesinato de mi alma humana.

Persistence is our effort, giving up is the reward.

Being alive is a coarse radiating indifference. Being alive is unattainable by the finest sensitivity. Being alive is inhuman — the deepest meditation is so empty that a smile exhales as from a matter. And even more delicate shall I be, and as a more permanent state. Am I speaking of death? am I speaking of after death? I don’t know. I feel that “not human” is a great reality, and that it does not mean “unhuman,” to the contrary: the not-human is the radiating center of a neutral love in Hertzian waves.

Ignorance of the law of irreducibility was no excuse. I could no longer excuse myself with the claim that I didn't know the law — for knowledge of self and of the world is the law that, even though unattainable, cannot be broken, and no one can excuse himself by saying that he doesn't know it. . . . the renewed originality of the sin is this: I have to carry out my own unknown law, and if I don't carry out my unknowing, I shall be sinning originally against life.

identity which is the first immanence

Hell's orgy is the apotheosis of the neutral. Black Sabbath joy is the joy of losing oneself in the atonal. What still frightened me was that even that very unpunishable horror would be benignly reabsorbed into the abyss of time, into the abyss of unending heights, into the profound abyss of God: absorbed into the core of an indifference. . . . an interested indifference, an attainable indifference. It was an extremely energetic indifference.

And all this is in this very instant, is in the now. But at the same time the present instant is completely removed because of the immense magnitude of God.

I am still corrupted by the condiment of the world.

The human condition is Christ's passion.

Perdi alguma coisa que me era essencial, e que já não me é mais. Não me é necessária, assim como se eu tivesse perdido uma terceira perna que até então me impossibilitava de andar mas que fazia de mim um tripé estável. Essa terceira perna eu perdi. E voltei a ser uma pessoa que nunca fui. Voltei a ter o que nunca tive: apenas as duas pernas. Sei que somente com duas pernas é que posso caminhar. Mas a ausência inútil da terceira me faz falta e me assusta, era ela que fazia de mim uma coisa encontrável por mim mesma, e sem sequer precisar me procurar.

Em mim um sentimento de grande espera havia crescido, e uma resignação surpreendida: é que nesta espera atenta eu reconhecia todas as minhas esperas anteriores, eu reconhecia a atenção de que também antes vivera, a atenção que nunca me abandona e que em última análise talvez seja a coisa mais colada à minha vida – quem sabe aquela atenção era a minha própria vida.

...o que parece falta de sentido – é o sentido. Todo momento de “falta de sentido” é exatamente a assustadora certeza de que ali há o sentido, e que não somente eu não alcanço, como não quero porque não tenho garantias.

Só agora sei que eu já tinha tudo, embora do modo contrário: eu me dedicava a cada detalhe do não. Detalhadamente não sendo, eu me provava que – que eu era.

Essa imagem de mim entre aspas me satisfazia, e não apenas superficialmente. Eu era a imagem do que eu não era, e essa imagem do não-ser me cumulava toda: um dos modos mais fortes é ser negativamente. Como eu não sabia o que era, então “não ser” era a minha maior aproximação da verdade, pelo menos eu tinha o lado avesso: eu pelo menos tinha o “não”, tinha o meu oposto. O meu bem eu não sabia qual era, então vivia com algum pré-fervor o que era o meu “mal”.

Para ter o que eu tinha eu nunca precisara nem de dor nem de talento. O que eu tinha não me era conquista, era dom.

Dar a mão a alguém sempre foi o que esperei da alegria. Muitas vezes antes de adormecer - nessa pequena luta por não perder a consciência ir para a grandeza do sono, finjo que alguém está me dando a mão e então vou, vou para a enorme ausência de forma que é o sono. E quando mesmo assim não tenho coragem, então eu sonho.

What did I know about whatever it was that others obviously saw in me? how would I know if I went around with my stomach pressed into the dust of the ground. Truth has no witness? being isn’t knowing? If a person doesn’t look and doesn’t see, does the truth exist anyway? The truth that doesn’t transmit itself even to those who can see. Is that the secret of being a person?

— Give me your hand. Because I no longer know what I’m saying. I think I made it all up, none of this existed! But if I made up what happened to me yesterday — who can guarantee that I didn’t also invent my entire life prior to yesterday?

And the hell is not the torture of pain! it is the torture of a joy. The neutral is inexplicable and alive, try to understand me: just as protoplasm and semen and protein are of a living neutral. And I was all new, like a novice. It was as if before I had had a palate addicted to salt and sugar, and a soul addicted to joys and pains — and had never felt the first taste. And now I was experiencing the taste of the nothing. I was rapidly becoming unaddicted, and the taste was new as the mother’s milk that only has taste for an infant’s mouth. With the landslide of my civilization and of my humanity — which was a suffering of great longing for me — with the loss of humanity, I was coming orgiastically to taste the identity of things.

It isn't for us that the cow's milk comes forth, but we drink it. Flowers weren't made for us to look at or for us to smell, and we look at them and smell them. The Milky Way doesn't exist for us to know its existence, but we know. And we know God. And what we need of Him, we get out of that. (I don't know what it is I am calling God, but it can be called that.) If we know but very little about God, it is because we need little; we have of Him only what is destined to sustain us, we have of God what fits in us. (Nostalgia is not for the God who is missing to us, it is a nostalgia for ourselves, for we do not sustain ourselves. We miss our impossible grandeur—my unreachable nowness is my paradise lost.)

Hope is a child not yet born, only promised, and that bruises.

I looked around the room where I’d imprisoned myself, and sought an exit, desperately trying to escape, and inside me I had already shrunk so much that my soul was against the wall — not even able to stop, no longer wanting to stop, fascinated by the certainty of the magnet that was drawing me, I shrank into myself up to the wall where I was implanted in the drawing of the woman. I had shrunk into the marrow of my bones, my last refuge. Where, on the wall, I was so naked that I had no shadow.

If my life is transformed into it-self, the thing I today call sensitivity will not exist — it will be called indifference. But I cannot yet grasp that way. It is as if hundreds of thousands of years from now we are finally no longer what we feel and think: we shall have something that more closely resembles a “mood” than an idea. We shall be the living matter revealing itself directly, ignorant of word, surpassing thought which is always grotesque.

Depersonalization as the dismissal of useless individuality — losing everything one can lose and, even so, being. Little by little stripping, with an effort so mindful that one does not feel the pain, stripping, like getting rid of one’s own skin, one’s characteristics. Everything that characterizes me is just the way that I am most easily visible to others and how I end up being superficially recognizable to myself. As there was the moment in which I saw that the roach is the roach of all roaches, so do I want to find in me the woman of all women.

The gradual deheroization of oneself is the true labor one works at beneath the apparent labor, life is a secret mission. So secret is the true life that not even to me, who am dying of it, can the password be entrusted, I die without knowing wherefrom. And the secret is such that, only if the mission manages to be accomplished shall I, in a flash, perceive that I was born in charge of it — every life is a secret mission.

From my own flaw I had created a future good.

Since the state of grace exists permanently: we are always saved. All the world is in a state of grace.

I had fallen into the temptation of seeing, the temptation of knowing and feeling.

Until now finding myself was already having an idea of a person and fitting myself into it: I’d incarnate myself into this organized person and didn’t even feel the great effort of construction that is living.

Creating isn't imagination, it's taking the great risk of grasping reality.

Se eu der o grito de alarme de estar viva, em mudez e dureza me arrastarão pois arrastam os que saem para fora do mundo possível, o ser excepcional é arrastado, o ser gritante.

Holding someone's hand was always my idea of joy.

My error, however, had to be the path of truth: for only when I err do I get away from what I know and what I understand. If ‘truth’ were what I can understand…it would end up being but a small truth, my-sized.