Reflections of Coelho March 2, 2013
At some point in all of this mixed up, jumbled up world of
hers, she posted a saying by Paulo Coelho, which said, “If you’re brave to say
‘Good Bye’ life will reward you with a new ‘Hello’.”
Coelho de, born in August, 1947is a Brazilian lyricist and
novelist and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters since 2002. Coelho
wrote the best-selling novel, 'The Alchemist,' which sold 35 million copies and
is the most translated book in the world by a living author.
He has been frequently described as an author that “thrives
on contradictions and extremes,” which may well be why she is attracted to him,
and why she recently got into the role of Mata Hari in her real life, perhaps
influenced by Coelho’s fictional take on the well-known temptress and spy.
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Coelho attended Jesuit
schools and was raised by devout Catholic parents.
He was obsessed at an early age with the idea of becoming a
writer, something his parents frowned on, and his insistence resulted in their
committing him to an insane asylum several times. He concluded at one point in
his life that “love can be very destructive.”
At age 28, Coelho had a spiritual awakening in Spain and
wrote about it in his first book, The Pilgrimage. He gave up attending law school to become a
hippie and indulged in sex, drugs and rock music, and was part of protests
against his county’s leadership that had him jailed several times.
Earlier this year, she apparently had an awakening of her
own.
“One of the larger revelations I've had in the past year --
thanks in part to life circumstance and having read Coelho's biography -- is
that mentors and spiritual guides are also, by necessity, human,” she wrote on
her Facebook page. “It was a hard lesson, but an important one, as I've been
bolstered by Coelho's philosophy for over ten years after having read ‘The
Alchemist.”
She apparently got caught up with Coelho’s book the
Alchemist while still in college
“What I'd missed in youthful desperation to justify what
increasingly proves to be an impartial and non-meritocratic life is that yes,
the universe conspires to help you achieve your dreams, but that oftentimes
what you believe to be your dreams change over time and experience,” she wrote.
“And that what makes the small realizations along the way so beautiful is the
larger context of an impartial, largely meaningless life.”
“The Alchemist” follows the sad tale of a sheepherder
through his trials and tribulations, and by default, through some of the social
strata – a boy who took up herding in order to see all those places he always
wanted to see, briefly falling in love, and, of course, caught in the bind of
settling down or keeping to his dream.
Coelho opened his book with the story of the Narcissus
mythology, where a beautiful youth, son of Cephissus (the Boeotian river) and
Liriope, a nymph, could find no one he could love until he saw his own
reflection in the water, fell in love, pined away, died, and was turned into
the flower of like name.
In Coelho’s tale, the goddess turned the lake from fresh
water to salt water – as if salty tears – then asked the lake why it cried. Was
it because narcist was so beautiful? The lake replied that it never saw
Narcissus as beautiful, but saw its own beauty in the eyes of Narcissus when he
stared down.
And in some ways, I get this same mirror image when I read
her poems, her seeing her own reflection in the eyes of those who look at her,
desperate to have people stare into the surface of her poetry, so she could
admire herself in the mirror of their eyes.
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