Monthly Archives: June 2009

Warrior of Light – Issue no. 201 – The Magic Instant

We have to take risks. We can only truly understand the miracle of life when we let the unexpected manifest itself.

Every day — together with the sun — God gives us a moment in which it is possible to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day we try to pretend that we don’t realize that moment, that it doesn’t exist, that today is just the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if you pay attention, you can discover the magic instant. It may be hiding at the moment when we put the key in the door in the morning, in the silence right after dinner, in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us. This moment exists — a moment when all the strength of the stars passes through us and lets us work miracles.

Happiness is at times a blessing — but usually it’s a conquest. The magic instant helps us to change, drives us forward to seek our dreams. We shall suffer and go through quite a few difficult moments and face many a disappointment — but this is all transitory and inevitable, and eventually we shall feel proud of the marks left behind by the obstacles. In the future we will be able to look back with pride and faith.

Poor are those who are afraid of running risks. Because maybe they are never disappointed, never disillusioned, never suffer like those who have a dream to pursue. But when they look back — for we always look back — they will hear their heart saying: “What did you do with the miracles that God sowed for your days? What did you do with the talent that your Master entrusted to you? You buried it deep in a grave because you were afraid to lose it. So this is your inheritance: the certainty that you have wasted your life.”

Poor are those who hear these words. For then they will believe in miracles, but the magic instants of life will have already passed.

We must listen to the child that we once were, and who still lives within us. This child understands about magic instants. We can muffle his sobbing, but we can’t hush his voice.

If we aren’t reborn, if we don’t see life again with the innocence and enthusiasm of childhood, then there is no more sense to living.

There are many ways to commit suicide. Those who try to kill their body offend God’s law. Those who try to kill their soul also offend God’s law, although their crime is less visible to the eyes of man.

Let us be heedful of what the child within us has to say. Let’s not feel ashamed of it. Let’s not allow it to feel afraid, because it’s lonely and is scarcely ever heard.

Let’s allow the child within us to take the reins of our existence a little. This child says that one day is different from another.

Let’s make the child feel loved again. Let’s please this child — even if it means acting in a way that we’re not used to, even if it seems foolish in the eyes of others.

Remember that the wisdom of men is madness before God. If we listen to the child we bear in our soul, our eyes will shine once more. If we don’t lose contact with this child, we won’t lose contact with life.

Let’s live all the magic instants of 2009!

Love

There is always someone in the world waiting for someone else, whether in the middle of the desert or in the heart of some big city. And when these two people’s paths cross and their eyes meet, the whole of the past and the whole of the future lose all importance, and there only exists that moment and that incredible certainty that everything under the Sun was written by the very same Hand. The Hand that awakens Love and creates a sister soul for everyone who works, rests and seeks treasures under the Sun. Were it not for this, the dreams of the human race would make no sense.

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Warrior of Light – Issue no. 200 – Animal Promiscuity

Recently I read an interesting polemic article in the American newspaper New York Times (25/03/2008). Written by Natalie Angier, the text is based on the research of prominent biologists and psychologists concerning monogamy. The conclusion that they reach is impressive: conjugal infidelity is present throughout the animal kingdom.

And that’s not all: studies have shown that certain species “pay” for sex, while others reward their “lovers” with presents and affection. To complete the picture, jealousy and machismo are also to be found there: females are violently attacked if they copulate with another partner.

Of course we are not animals, but the similarities mentioned above are very revealing. Some of the more interesting parts of the article are worth transcribing.

1] Many species are raised from a very tender age to marry someone chosen by the family. They fly and play together, they sing and dance together. In other words, they are raised to impress the community with proof that they were born for one another.

2] Nevertheless, social monogamy is rarely accompanied by sexual monogamy. DNA tests carried out on monkeys, birds and wild animals, when their descendency is examined in the light of modern science, show that between 10% and 70% of the offspring was fathered by someone other than the resident male.

3] Professor David Barash of the University of Washington in Seattle states that: “in the infantile world, infancy. In the adult world, adultery”. For a long time, swans were believed to be a model of fidelity. Through such DNA tests, it has been concluded that not even swans are immune to temptation.

4] The only completely monogamous species is an amoeba – Diplozoon Paradoxum — which is found in organisms of certain fish. Barash explains: “male and female meet while still young, and their bodies literally merge as one. From then on, they are faithful until death do them part”. In this case, death coincides with that of the fish that shelters them.

5] The “oldest profession in the world”, as prostitution is known, is also present in the animal kingdom. It is common to find males that shower their females with presents: rodents, caterpillars and insects. But when the same male decides to have, shall we say, an extracurricular affair, the lover receives better presents than the companion.

6] The law of competition also applies to the animal world: if supply is great, the price comes down. However, if there is a shortage of females, they become objects of desire that deserve the best and most sophisticated rewards.

Please understand that I have transcribed in this column the result of research conducted by scientists and psychologists specialized in studying animals. All of us can — and should — have our own opinion with respect to monogamy. We can all say that we are a highly evolved species, which is absolutely true. The only thing that we can’t do is to blame science for showing results that often contradict our way of thinking!
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Warrior of Light – Issue no. 198 – So What Do I Actually Do

Sometimes readers complain that I say very little about my private life in this column. I do talk a lot — mostly about my questionings in the imaginary world. They insist: “but what’s your life like?” Well, then, for a whole week I went out with a notebook and jotted down more or less what happens in seven days:

Sunday: 1] In silence, I drive the 540 kilometers from Paris to Geneva. Six hours and no important conclusion, no extraordinary revelation. Since I love my work, I swore never to think about it on Sundays, so I try to control myself.

2] Filling station: I see a very interesting collection of metal maquettes. I think about buying them all, but then I reckon that further ahead I will have excess baggage, and many of them could break on the journey. I will use the Internet to do that.

3] Bath. Nap. Dinner with a friend. She tells me that the man she is interested in just wants to make love, nothing else. I don’t know what to answer.

Monday: 1] the alarm clock goes off at 10:15, and – Plan B (those born under Virgo always have a Plan B) – the hotel telephone operator also calls the room. I am here as a member of the board of a prestigious foundation, and hesitate whether or not to wear the cowboy boots worked in red, white and black leather. I decide to put them on — certain things are tolerated in artists.

2] A quick breakfast with a friend who works in a bank. I ask what he thinks of the current crisis — and he gives a series of answers that he himself does not believe in. I show him today’s newspaper: a bankers’ conference to resolve the crisis. One of them declares that they do not really know the “financial products” they are selling. It’s great that I have my money in savings: Virgos do not run any risks in this area.

3] Lunch with the board of directors. I asked what they thought of the situation in Georgia. Nobody wanted to talk about that, but they did love my cowboy boots.

4] The meeting is very good, without any stress at all. I learn a lot. When it’s over, I place some documents on the roof of the car.

5] When I leave, all the documents fly into the middle of the street. I spend half an hour gathering everything, with cars honking their horns and cursing me. A member of the board passes by, stops further up the street and asks if I want any help. I say no, it is enough for one of us to risk his life for something so stupid.

6] Today I can telephone using the “free hands” system while I drive. I ask Mônica, my agent, to cancel Prague and Berlin (the more I travel, the less desire I have to travel). She says that we need to get together before the Frankfurt Book Fair to “get some details right”. Paris or Barcelona? Paris, she decides. I call Paula, my assistant, to ask why my blog had few comments yesterday — she explains that they changed the configuration, and have just approved a hundred comments.

7] I reach Paris at eleven o’clock at night. I expected to have a stack of things waiting for me, but there were only two packets of books to sign, and a couple of letters. But I traveled! I was in another country! I realize that I traveled a little over 24 hours.

8] Dinner. I leave the computer turned on to download “American History X”. I go to sleep about two in the morning, after reading some pages of “My year inside radical Islam”, by Daveed Gartstenstein-Ross. The book is excellent, but I can’t really get into it.

Tuesday: 1] Breakfast at 10 with coffee and milk, orange juice, bread with oil — always the same, even when I am in hotels, which is the biggest part of the year. Three Echinacea pills, a herb that is said to fortify the organism against the flu and has proved faithful to its reputation (even if there is no scientific basis for this).

2] Internet: read readers’ e-mails. Read work e-mails (my office filters the most relevant), read clippings, visit a site in Brazil and one in the United States for the news of the day. I see that it is all more or less the same business as always: permission (always given) to quote some extract of mine in books, invitations to conferences (always refused). Today I have an interview with a Finnish newspaper that is going to publish these columns. I spend an hour in front of the computer.

3] Walk non-stop for an hour — no matter where I am, I rarely miss doing this. Today I invite my assistant to join me; she has just come back from holidays in Brazil and is going to get married in October. We talk about the holidays.

4] Back to the computer. Update the blog, read an interview with the stupid actor David Thewlis, who says that his role in “Veronika decides to die” (which opens next year) was “just another two weeks of work”. This irritates me. I read the rest of the interview and see that he complains about everything he has done in his life. My irritation goes away.

5] Archery. Bath. Computer again. I ask them to check again that there is no problem with Sunday’s flight to Brazil. In principle there is none.

6] I forgot to write down where I had dinner. I watch “Welcome to Sarajevo”. I read the Herald Tribune from front to back. I pick up “My year inside radical Islam”, but don’t get beyond a few pages.

Wednesday: 1] The same as 1, 2 and 3 above, except that this time my walking companion is called Maarit, a reader whom I met in the social community Myspace. She is studying to be a nun. We talk a lot about the situation of the Catholic Church, and promise that we will keep in touch.

2] Mônica arrives. We talk from 3 in the afternoon until 2 o’clock the next morning, discussing the program for launching the new book, what I should say in Frankfurt, and where her birthday party will be held (she will be 40 in November). I suggest that she throws the party in her house in Barcelona, but she says that they have put up some scaffolding, so the view of the city is spoiled. I answer that at night all city views are alike — a bunch of lights flashing on and off. Even so, she is not convinced. She says that I must hold more interviews. We spend all this time locked inside the apartment, since Mônica simply hates to walk. Chris prepared dinner and has been asleep for some time already.

3] At 2:15 in the morning I say that I am tired, I want to sleep, but she seems as lively as if she had just woken up. And she is the one who today went through the torture chambers they call “airports”!

4] I manage to convince her to go to bed at 2:30 in the morning. We still have a whole lot of pending business to see to. No Herald Tribune today, no “My year inside radical Islam” either.

Thursday: 1] Breakfast with Mônica, my agent and friend, who spent less than a day in Paris and 10 hours talking to me (in the same place, for she hates walking, despite the beautiful autumn day). She goes off to Barcelona, and I go to the computer to check my e-mails, requests for authorization, invitations (all already duly filtered by the office). Reading the e-mails sent by my readers.

2] The idiotic part of the day is thanks to Frei Betto, a Brazilian religious man who up to a few minutes ago I considered my friend, but who is the author of a column published in a newspaper in the interior of the country, where he attacks me gratuitously — or rather, attacks everything that means “popular culture”. With the Internet, we know everything. I send an e-mail to him cutting off any bond of friendship. For the sake of precaution, I send copies to all the friends we have in common so as to be sure that it will reach him.

3] Juliette arrives to borrow a sound system I was given when I was in St. Moritz, in Switzerland. It’s for her husband’s surprise party (he’s turning 40 – everyone around me seems to be turning 40). The sound system looks like an electric toaster, but it really emits digital impulses, which allows the music to be heard with the same intensity and volume in a room filled with 200 people. I have never used it, but at least it is coming in handy for a friend.

4] Walk for an hour, as usual. Practice some archery, as usual. Write my weekly column (which you are reading right now).

5] Dinner with Chris in a Japanese restaurant. I ask for the same dish as always. I don’t know why, but whenever I go to a new restaurant and like what I eat, I end up ordering the same food the next time. Lack of imagination, I guess.

Friday: 1] Breakfast, computer, walk. Update the daily blog.

2] I take my newspaper and go for a walk in the Champ de Mars, near my apartment in Paris. I look at people getting ready for the winter: most of them are taking pictures of the Eiffel Tower or talking on the cell phone. I pass a museum (the Branly), see that there is no queue and decide to go in. An exhibit of the Indian art of several continents — I begin to imagine that there is something wrong with our civilization, for these tribes and people are capable of doing far more interesting and striking work than what we see today in the art world. But it does no good to complain or write about this — there are theses and more theses on contemporary “artistic concepts”, including a cow soaked in formol (sold for 30 million dollars) and two walls made of rusty iron (at a price of around 5 million dollars). I think that Frei Betto, in his new incarnation as an avant-garde intellectual, probably also has a thesis defending this.

3] I go back home, the bags are packed, the driver waiting, and the car heads for Charles de Gaulle airport. The flight is scheduled for 22:15, but the modern torture chambers known as “airports” demand that we be there ages before take-off.

4] Take-off at 23:50 (a one-hour delay). I am going to spend twenty days in Brazil before going to Frankfurt. But as usual I won’t go to any of the “in” restaurants, which means that soon I’ll be hearing the same old question: “when are you coming to your country?”

As far as I can understand, if you don’t go to “in” restaurants, you just don’t exist.

http://paulocoelhoblog.com/warrioroflight

Warrior of Light – Issue no. 199 – How the City Was Pacified

How the city was pacified

An old legend tells of how a certain city in the Pyrenees mountains used to be a stronghold for drug-traffickers, smugglers and exiles. The worst of them all, an Arab called Ahab, was converted by a local monk, Savin, and decided that things could not continue like that.

As he was feared by all, but did not want to use his fame as a thug to make his point, at no moment did he try to convince anyone. Knowing the nature of men as well as he did, they would only take honesty for weakness and soon his power would be put in doubt.

So what he did was call some carpenters from a neighboring town, hand them a drawing and tell them to build something on the spot where now stands the cross that dominates the town. Day and night for ten days, the inhabitants of the town heard the noise of hammers and watched men sawing bits of wood, making joints and hammering in nails.

At the end of ten days the gigantic puzzle was erected in the middle of the square, covered with a cloth. Ahab called all the inhabitants together to attend the inauguration of the monument.

Solemnly, and without making any speech, he removed the cloth.

It was a gallows. With a rope, trapdoor and all the rest. Brand-new, covered with bee’s wax to endure all sorts of weather for a long time.

Taking advantage of the multitude joined together in the square, Ahab read a series of laws to protect the farmers, stimulate cattle-raising and awarding whoever brought new business into the region, and added that from that day on they would have to find themselves an honest job or else move to another town. He never once mentioned the “monument” that he had just inaugurated; Ahab was a man who did not believe in threats.

At the end of the meeting, several groups formed, and most of them felt that Ahab had been deceived by the saint, since he lacked the courage he used to have. So he would have to be killed. For the next few days many plans were made to this end. But they were all forced to contemplate the gallows in the middle of the square, and wondered: What is that thing doing there? Was it built to kill those who did not accept the new laws? Who is on Ahab’s side, and who isn’t? Are there spies among us?

The gallows looked down on the men, and the men looked up at the gallows. Little by little the rebels’ initial courage was replaced by fear; they all knew Ahab’s reputation, they all knew he was implacable in his decisions. Some people abandoned the city, others decided to try the new jobs offered them, simply because they had nowhere to go or else because of the shadow of that instrument of death in the middle of the square. Some time later the place was at peace, it had grown into a great business center on the frontier and began to export the best wool and produce top-quality wheat.

The gallows stayed there for ten years. The wood resisted well, but now and again the rope was changed for another. It was never put to use. Ahab never said a single word about it. Its image was enough to change courage to fear, trust to suspicion, stories of bravado to whispers of acceptance. After ten years, when law finally reigned in Viscos, Ahab had it destroyed and replaced by a cross.

Read More: http://paulocoelhoblog.com/warrioroflight/27.05.2009/issue-n%C2%BA-199-how-the-city-was-pacified/

nymph

I am a river sailing turning you into nymph with

passionate tectonic balconies

radiance of

anguished lover

by gulls in the sand

unveil the path as the seer

body of light curves your gentle lines,

white hands sin the lust of black fields

the youth of sculpture and the ecstasy

reveals all of winepresses and grapes of love

like the memory of

dreams of flesh in the harvests of shadows

I blame you you blame me

with the black instincts all given inside the white linen

aegean lamentations( a notebook)

 

THURSDAY

stolen soul fragments 

grapes and figs

seaweed beds and sails

linear secrets snake skins 

dressed you with silver and lace

 

stolen touch opium of lovers

dream-light eyes moon-shadow smiles

erotic ecstasy in the golden isles

 

i slept with you in velvet grass

and love was born forever then

 

 

 

TUESDAY

the sea is calm now dressed in green full of leaves like aqua flowers

coming out to the south beach mixed with foam and trash

the northeast wind escapes from the less luminous mountaintops

spinning the dry sand spraying the meadows waiting , bathing in the moment of light

the monks are coming out of the sky monastery with less worship for the forbidden tourist

to do some fishing and pray for a sea mist or rain that will come as a blessing in the fall

the sea museum man will watch television all night talking to his dog

the retired captain will give us the daily weather stats

the fall bloodless sky will gather all the ghosts in the hills.

earth and stars are waiting for full darkness….. spinning away a greater silence

 

 

 

FRIDAY

o Muse

o muse sometimes you enter my mind like a serpent

with your eyes rapped in your veil of illusion

you torture me with your gnostic mysteries of feeling in the world of dreams

 

there you appear in my soul divine ,naked, pure hellenic goddess

 

I follow you powerless in deserted monasteries of logos

in hidden places of the heart in secret prisons of acoustic harmony

 

a slave of your poetic passion a student of the object of desire

 

come tonight again and open the door of my loneliness

 

o muse sometimes you enter my mind like a serpent

 

 

 

 

THURSDAY

being

She arrived at the end of her dream space lost in the staircase of her mind with her eyes closed yet able to visualize the shadows drifting

closer to the first explosion of light that was becoming amorphous a river of wind not

visible but felt in her face.She had being brain alive though half asleep as she started this polysyllabic inner song that resembled a

sonic echo from the world of hypnotic state So she laid paralyzed unable to react to her kinetic thoughts.

Suddenly the sun-rays found the window cracks and came in the room tete a tete with the mirror.She awoke terrified to this double exposure of image not aware that it was her

ikon her real reflection.

 

 

 

Patmos island sorrow

Dreaming in southern Patmos holy island

 

 

In the hidden shoreline daydreaming of springtime

daisies seaweed and cyclamens fly in my mind

life will surrender to the light of dawn

goddess the sea with long curve photons

 

I dream of lips of skin of touch of Alexandrian hands

art I have not to be a slave of passion play

 

in daisies beds the beauty laid

with my poverty of poetry that that labored nights and days

in love lost in communion of wine

labyrinth moonshine of desire

 

Summer wind summer dreams die in mire ,all things must end

 

I never found her again

 

 

 

TUESDAY

Aphrodite of Milo

Do not speak of old loves in the sand of time

I went away to find love and got to loose my mind

 

 

All your snake roads of your body takes me south

 

your silky skin light inside my heart

 

torch in my black nights

 

 

I want to find you again sitting in a windy top of the tempest hill

 

like black Aphrodite of Milo dressed in blue

 

or inside the the mind of a drunk butterfly

 

climbing like an angel the stairs of eternity playing harps notes

dancing around the blue clock

 

I want to find you again. a bedouin girl in the sand of time

 

————————————————————————————-

aegean rose fields

 

 

this gentle breeze in the rose-fields

falls in love with the sea ,plays wind songs while the waves with ocean lights star lights facing the azure come to earth to embrace her wounds

At night I am going inside the heart of the island, and feel the barren hills

I walk with the monks in the monastery of the mind where the souls seek the fisherman

here all my childhood dreams were stolen by the crossers the demons and the vagabonds

the velocity of time is the narcotic power of the mind

is the opium of the night that will bring tears in my eyes

one life was lost so one moment eternal would be gain

 

and as the vision of the isle faints

this gentle breeze the only solace remains

I am still the seagull boy- man to migrate

 

 

 

 

SUNDAY

A sailor”s wife

in the dusk of a narrow island street

passing the straits of silence into the valley of memory

suddenly she was there, right there.

 

I tried to run in vein like a deer in danger

the eyes suspended jasmine and rose smiles

 

Many years I did not see her

 

tired now from the skin of old loves and

ruby lips of dry desire. 

 

 

 

 

I never had a dream of her or our time

the pleasure of loneliness belongs to past lovers

 

returning to the places of my heart blinded my mind

shadows of motion became a cry , wind the circular sky.

 

 

gazing off the ocean I feel all alone

 

the souls emerge and climb the hills

 

leaving last sailors behind

 

like music like a night that dies

————————————————————-

 

 

 

 

virtual homelands

——————————————-

 

the painter aqua god disguised as the art hand of love

the sun lover deprived of sand and blood reflections of chance

and circumstance created the dragons tongue

erotic waves the tempest wrath the seekers dove

the pigeons gossip the silences mock

and gondoliers river sad Gipsies for all seasons

the sea aroma will make you drunk

you dream of staircases into your minds shafts

the blonde woman will turn with your whispers charm

—————————————————————————