Gee Your Owl Smells Terrific

As you know (ha ha! sure you do) I don't "blog" anymore. But I remain psychically compelled to "blog" every time I read a book with an owl in it, because I keep a big, long list of every book I read with an owl in it. So I was reading a Clarice Lispector book called AGUA VIVA, and what sentence should I run across but "It would never occur to me to have an owl, though I have painted them in caves"? And I thought, gee, that sounds familiar. (Parenthetically, the title of this "post" derives from the fact that I was originally going to call it "Gee Your Owl Seems Familiar," which reminded me of a shampoo of my youth called "Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific.") So I searched the "blog" and sure enough, I found ANOTHER Clarice Lispector book in which she claims "it would never occur to me to keep an owl" (note the subtle variation in the verb, which may be nothing more than a matter of translation). I wondered... did she have the same thought twice? If so, despite her protestations, it seems that very often it occurred to her to keep an owl, or at least that the possibility of having or keeping an owl was not out of the range of her imagination. In fact, one could argue that it ALWAYS occurred to her to have an owl or to keep an owl, to such an extent that she eventually had to make a decisive decision against it. Now, was AGUA VIVA simply quoted in the other book, or perhaps the other way around? Did one contain fragments of the other? Well! As you know (sure you do!) we bought a house not long ago and I threw the books onto the shelves in a willy-nilly order, as quickly as I could get them out of the boxes. And I don't feel like nosing around until I find the other book, just for the sake of comparing the two passages and drawing the sort of the ignorant conclusion that is my specialty. In parting, I will note that a wet washcloth was accidentally deposited on top of AGUA VIVA, and, as it is a thin book, it has been water-damaged through and through. Ironically? (Because of the title!) And it still hasn't dried out! Life is a constant adventure.