Fariha’s Reviews > Near to the Wild Heart > Status Update

It isn't nostalgia for I now enjoy my childhood more fully than I did as a child...
Yes, there were many happy things mingled in her blood.

— I wouldn't like to go back to being a child, not even for a second, Otávio had continued, distracted, no doubt thinking back to the days of his cousin Isabel and sweet Lídia. Not even for a second.
— Nor me, Joana had hastened to reply, not even for a second. I feel no nostalgia, do you understand? — And at that moment she declared in a loud, deliberate tone of amazement —

In her confusion, she was unwittingly truth itself, which probably gave her a greater capacity for life than knowledge of life.

...the tranquillity that came from that sprawling expanse of sea, from the sea's deep womb, from the cat lying rigid on the pavement. All is one, all is one... she had chanted. The confusion stemmed from the entwinement of the sea, the cat and the ox with Joana herself.

Also a mast without a flag, erect and mute, fixed into position on a summer's day — both the face and body blind. In order to have a vision, the thing did not have to be sad or happy or to manifest itself. It was enough to exist, preferably still and silent, in order to feel its mark.

And knowing, above all, that the earth beneath her feet was so deep and secret that there was no need to fear the invasion of understanding dissolving its mystery. This sensation had the hallmark of glory.

There were lots of pleasant sensations. To climb a mountain, to linger on the summit and, without looking round, to feel the presence of that conquered territory she had left behind, her uncle's farm way off in the distance. The wind catching her clothes, her hair. Her arms free, her heart closing and opening savagely, but her face bright and serene beneath the sun.

Even with her eyes shut, she could sense that on the beach the waves were being sucked in rapidly, so rapidly, by the sea, the waves, too, with lowered eyelids. Then they gently returned, to the palms of her open hands, her body completely relaxed.

She carried that exhaustion with her as she walked along that endless beach. She looked at her dark, slender feet like twigs gathered from the quiescent whiteness where they sank and lifted rhythmically, as if breathing. She walked and walked and there was nothing to be done: her father had died.

Her father had died just as the sea was deep. Suddenly she understood. She felt that her father had died just as one cannot see the bottom of the sea. She had not been defeated by her grief. She understood that her father had died. Nothing more. And her sadness was exhausting, heavy, without hatred.