“Yesterday, however, I lost my human assembly.

If I had the courage, I would let myself be lost.

But I am afraid of what is new, and I am afraid of living what I do not understand.

I always want to have the guarantee of at least thinking that I understand, I do not know how to give in to disorientation.”

Clarice Lispector

Last night, I went back to reading Clarice Lispector because I needed to be astonished by her again.

She is the queen of astonishment; the one who turns me inside out, dissolving my certainties and confirming my shudders in the face of life and my contradictions.

It has been nearly ten years since I read “The Passion According to G.H.,” and it feels just like that first time.

Lispector has ventured into a realm that few writers dare to explore:

“…How can it be explained that my greatest fear is precisely about being? and yet there is no other way.

…But I also don’t know what form to give to what happened to me. And without giving it a form, nothing exists to me.

… I can only comprehend what happens to me, but only what I comprehend does happen to me…”

She broke through the barriers that confine so many, casting a bold and humble gaze at her vulnerabilities while revealing the high price her conventionality paid for such freedom…

Some boundaries we cross change us completely, reshaping who we are at our core.

Before those moments, we were like rigid iron bars—predictable, with clear beginnings and endings.

I used

to

be

like

those

iron bars

but

crossing

that

threshold

melted

my

rigid

edges

away

I no longer

have

those

clear

boundaries

separating

me

from

my

core

And that’s precisely why I need to go back to Clarice from time to time.

She was there too. In fact, she was the one who pointed me the way and said through her books:

Dive

in

It

will

be

frighteningly

bewildering

and

worth

it!