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

It was ever futile to have been happy or unhappy. And even to have loved. No happiness or unhappiness had been so intense that it could have transformed the elements of her matter, giving her a unique path — as one's true path ought to be.

Happiness was effacing her, effacing her... She now wanted to know herself again, even with sorrow. But she became increasingly submerged. Tomorrow she put it off, tomorrow I shall confront myself. But the new day skimmed over her surface, light as a summer evening, barely unsettling her nerves.

From afar, disquiet was reawakening. At night, between the sheets, the slightest movement or unexpected thought awakened her to herself. Mildly surprised, she opened her eyes wide, perceived her own body plunged into reassuring contentment. She wasn't suffering, but where was she?

She gradually became accustomed to her new state, she became accustomed to breathing, to living. Little by little, she started becoming older in herself, she opened her eyes and once more she was a statue, no longer plastic, yet defined.

And her union with the earth was so deep and her certainty so firm — about what? what? that she could now lie without surrendering.

Her face was vague and ill-defined, floating among all the other opaque and confident faces, as if it were not yet able to find support in any expression. Her whole body and soul lost their boundaries, they merged and fused into a single chaos, gentle and amorphous, relaxed and with uncertain movements, like matter that was simply alive. It was perfect renewal, creation.

The only truth became that tenderness into which she had sunk.

Miraculously she was alive, relieved of all memories. Her entire past had evaporated. And even the present was one of mists, sweet, fresh mists, separating her from solid reality, preventing her from touching it. Were she to pray, were she to think, it would be to give thanks for having a body made for love.

It seemed to her that she formed part of the real world and that she had mysteriously distanced herself from other human beings. Notwithstanding that during this period she was able to extend her hand to them with a fraternity whose vital source could be felt. They spoke to her of their own sorrows and she, although she might not hear, think or speak, wore a kind expression — shining and mysterious

She would no longer be able to deny... what? — she asked herself in suspense. The luminous centre of things, the affirmation dormant beneath everything, the harmony that existed beneath what she did not understand.