Forgiving and Forgetting

April 13, 2009 by

I would like to hear your opinion on forgiving and forgetting. When people hurt you: do you forgive and forget? Or do you just forgive but don’t forget?

People who tend to be seen as good – usually forgive and forget. But I don’t think that this is a question of being good or evil – I think the point is about being just. So maybe the tendency to forgive and forget those that have hurt us is not necessarily a good thing. Because if we don’t do anything to people that hurt us – they will probably continue on hurting others.

This is the way I see it and I would like to hear you about this subject and also your own experiences.

Filed Under: Stories

Your Space in my Blog: 13th of April 2009

April 13, 2009 by

This space is for you to share your ideas on anything that you consider relevant today.

You can publish here excerpts from your blogs or news and articles in general that you think make a difference to the world today. Try to make a bit of editing on what you post here – try to highlight passages with copy-paste, rather than simply giving links.

Please keep in mind that this blog is currently viewed by 230.000 unique visitors a month, and chances are that many of them are going to read your thoughts.

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Your Space in my Blog: 17th of April 2009

April 13, 2009 by

This space is for you to share your ideas on anything that you consider relevant today.

You can publish here excerpts from your blogs or news and articles in general that you think make a difference to the world today. Try to make a bit of editing on what you post here – try to highlight passages with copy-paste, rather than simply giving links.

Please keep in mind that this blog is currently viewed by 230.000 unique visitors a month, and chances are that many of them are going to read your thoughts.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Your Space in my Blog: 14th of April 2009

April 13, 2009 by

This space is for you to share your ideas on anything that you consider relevant today.

You can publish here excerpts from your blogs or news and articles in general that you think make a difference to the world today. Try to make a bit of editing on what you post here – try to highlight passages with copy-paste, rather than simply giving links.

Please keep in mind that this blog is currently viewed by 230.000 unique visitors a month, and chances are that many of them are going to read your thoughts.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

From Pirate Coelho Central

April 13, 2009 by

This week we are going to have the final veredict on the Pirate Bay, the website that allows sharing contents in internet. Yesterday I was browsing internet on pirates, and this is what I found out:

“Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” – from 1650 to 1730 – the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda-heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can’t? In his book Villains of All nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then – plucked from the docks of London’s East End, young and hungry – you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O’ Nine Tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains – and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century.” They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed “quite clearly – and subversively – that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy.”

The Pirate Coelho supports Pirate Bay!!!

UPDATE: THE SWEDISH COURT TODAY RULED AGAINST PIRATE BAY. 30 MILLION KRONER IN FINES + 1 YEAR IN JAIL.

Filed Under: Stories

The Caliph and his wife

April 13, 2009 by

Paulo Coelho

The Arab Caliph sent for his secretary:

“Lock up my wife in the tower while I’m away,” he ordered.

“But she loves Your Majesty!”

“And I love her,” answered the Caliph. “But I respect an old traditional prover­b of ours that says “keep your dog thin and he will follow you; make him fat and he will bite you.”

The Caliph went off to war and returned six months later. On arriving, he called for his secretary and asked to see his wife.

“She has abandoned you,” was the secretary’s answer. “Your Majesty quoted a beautiful proverb before leaving but forgot another Arab saying that goes: “If your dog is tied up it will follow anybody that opens its cage”.

Welcome to Share with Friends – Free Texts for a Free Internet

Filed Under: Stories

Association of the week: Wine

April 13, 2009 by

The traditional symbolism doesn’t link wine with the state of drunkenness. The only exception is when the drinker is in a state of “mystical drunkenness” – meaning in communion with the divine.

Wine in Ancient Cultures was reputed to dispel curses, reveal lies (in vino veritas) and could also be drunk by the dead when people would spell wine in the earth.

The idea that wine is “the blood of the vine” goes back to very ancient perceptions that later on were incorporated to the Christian symbolism of the Eucharist.

In Islam, the attitude towards wine is double: for the mystic current of Sufism – wine is considered to be a way of attaining the divine, whilst in other currents, wine is believed to be a curse that the angels brought to mankind after the fall of Adam. It is believed though that in paradise, people would drink the sweet wine of eternity.

Now you take the floor: what do you associate with wine?

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Bookstore in Greece by Dimitri

April 13, 2009 by

Dimitri Greece

Thank you Dimitri!

If you pass by a bookstore and you happen to have a camera on you, please take a picture and send an email to : image@paulocoelhoblog.com. Thank you!
To see the readers photos, check the sidebar in here.

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Quote of the Day

April 13, 2009 by

Paulo Coelho

No one day is like another, each moment has its special miracle, its magic moment in which old universes are destroyed and new stars created.
(By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept)

Welcome to Share with Friends – Free Texts for a Free Internet

Filed Under: Stories

Image of the Day

April 13, 2009 by

Dreams by Paula Braconnot

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Today’s Question by Maya

April 13, 2009 by

You won your first award in a school poetry contest. Do you read poetry now? What authors? Is it an inspiration for you now?

Actually it was my sister who won this poetry contest with one of my poems. She wanted to take part in this poetry contest but asked me to write something. I wrote the poem, but feeling it wasn’t good enough, I threw in the bin. She sneaked into my room and got it, later to win the contest. I remember my surprise at this, and today I feel it was one of these decisive moments where you say to yourself: I’m able to do it.

Today I read more novels than poetry but every once in a while, I’m drawn back to one of my favorite writers: William Blake. I also like to re-read Brazilian poets such as Manuel Bandeira or the Portuguese Fernando Pessoa.

To give an example of how much poetry inspires me: for my book, Like the Flowing River, I got this image out of one of Bandera’s poems that goes like this:

“Be like a river that flows
Silent in the middle of the night
Not fearing the dark of the night,
Reflecting any star that is in the sky.
And if the sky fills with clouds,
Clouds are water, like the river, so
Reflect them too with no regret In the silent depth.”

Filed Under: Q&A

Paul on the Road : from Roncesvalles

April 13, 2009 by

Roncesvalles

Hi Paulo,

well following an emotional visit to Lourdes the path did finally lead me to St Jean de Pied a Port but it was an interesting journey. At the station in Lourdes, whilst awaiting my train two young women arrived at the coffee shop, soaking with rain after their bike ride from Toulouse. Laughing, joking and singing to the loud music playing in the background, they changed their wet clothing and sat down to a hearty meal. Finally, one of them, Mylene, asked me where I was going, to which I replied “oh just to Santiago!”.

She told of their Easter plan to bike from Toulouse to Avachone near Bordeaux via Biarritz. We chatted about the risks and dangers of such a long journey, but Mylene and Celine, two primary school teachers, maintained that the freedom their journey offered them, was the very essence of life itself. Asked if I could take their photo to attach it to their story, but they said “only from behind” as they teach their pupils the same at school.” It’s to protect their identities for their own safety”, they added.

So as you can imagine, the subject of blogs and internet continued and I asked if they had read Paulo’s books, “oh yes” said Celine, 4 or 5 of them and her favorite was 11 Minutes, but she had lost it and would love to read it again. So I told them of Paulo’s phylosphy of free books for the internet and they said without hesitation “that’s the future of consumption!”. So it was time to board our train and as promised, Celine and Mylene posed for a photo from behind ;) My journey continued via Bayonne to SJPP, with an unexpected delay while we tried to clear the track of a small fallen tree. We finally gave up and they ordered a small bus to pick us up. Arriving almost one hour late in St Jean Pied a Port, the Herberge people were hungry and ready to go to Mass, but they kindly issued our “Carnets” and a bed for the night. More news tomorrow,

HAPPY EASTER,
Love,
Paul

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