There are days when you don't want to get out of bed, out of the house, out of your nest. You feel that getting out means making a superhuman effort and there are days when you have neither spirit nor strength, so you stay. Surely you check your cell phone, the TV programs, or simply take the book you left on your bedside table and open the book where you left off.

That's what happened to me these days: I didn't want to leave the room and I stayed reading a book of stories by the Venezuelan writer José Balza. José Balza is one of the best contemporary Venezuelan storytellers. He has won the National Literature Prize and other literary prizes. Although he writes essays, it is as a narrator of novels and short stories where he has stood out the most. Of all the stories I read that day, I reflected on one. The story is called Líneas.

Líneas (Lines) is a short story about a girl's discovery in her father's library. Although it is a very simple story, I think there is a depth to its message. Let's try to get into this story.

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It all begins when the father has hurried back to the apartment and Morelita, the daughter, stops playing to go after him:

The man leaned over Morelita and she abandoned her bears and followed him to the library. The girl saw him leave the briefcase and the folders on the low tables; he said something to her as he put the jacket on the desk chair, just loosened the tie and went to the bathroom.

In this part of the story, the narrator describes the moment in which the father arrives, the actions that he carries out when he arrives and, especially, makes us pay attention to the aspect of the girl that is so important for this story.

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Already inside the library and alone:

Morelita put away the dark briefcase; for a three-year-old girl it was already a sign of dignity: she smiled at herself and looked at the door.

We discovered that the girl is three years old, that although there are very few of them, they are enough for her to have a certain ease in walking and doing some things. Morelita leaves the father's briefcase aside for a reason. We sense that she has already been scolded or told not to play with him; moreover, when the narrator tells us that the girl looks at the door, we perceive that there is a certain fear that the parents will come in and discover her by checking:

Then he saw the folders; he opened the first one and found inside it pieces of magazines and photographs, identical to the ones he has seen: in the album, in dad's books, even in the receipt screen.

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The girl details things she has interacted with before, images, magazines, so there is no surprise in her. There is no discovery. However, within all those common and familiar things, Morelita discovers something that leaves her paralyzed:

This time it wasn't the completely white leaves that Mom gives her to fill with colors, nor photos of animals or dolls. Sweetly, attentively, the girl sat down on the carpet. She had in her hands the only novelty of the living room and of the day.

Inside the father's objects and papers, the girl finds something that makes her stay silent, be still; something that awakens her curiosity and amazement. It is not the white leaves she usually uses to make drawings, nor the images with which she usually plays and listens to stories:

Half an hour later, when Mom and Dad were coming for lunch, they laughed when they saw the tranquillity of their little daughter... Nobody discovered in Morelita's hands a sheet of paper, common, unused, different from all the others for her: a white sheet with slight blue and parallel stripes.

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This beautiful ending is the one that leaves us looking inward. On the one hand, we see the life of adults summarized in the behavior of parents: half an hour to get home, half an hour to eat, half an hour to get back to work. The adult man is a being without truce and without time; a machine that works perfectly according to certain interests and in some moments. On the other hand, children are beings that have not yet been contaminated by society. The child's gaze is one of the most beautiful of all.

When we see Morelita surprised by a simple striped leaf, we understand that as adults we have lost the ingenuity of that look, the capacity to marvel, to rejoice in small things, to be surprised. The innocence of a child is a vitality and an inexhaustible force.

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There is an Isaac Newton quote that says:

"I have been a little boy who, playing on the beach, found from time to time a thinner pebble or a prettier shell than normal. The ocean of truth stretched out, unexplored, before me."

The child with every discovery he makes, however tiny, is happy. He feels that there is an interesting and unexplored world to discover. All of us were children, although unfortunately we no longer remember it. It would be worth it to see the world as they do it, perhaps then we would not wake up some days with much fear to live.

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See you soon. Remember to vote for @adsactly as a witness and join our server in discord. Until a next smile. ;)

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE

José Balza (2004). La mujer de espaldas y otros relatos. Monte Ávila Editors: Venezuela.

Written by: @nancybriti

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