Paulo Coelho
The men she had met since she arrived in Geneva always did everything they could to appear confident, as if they were in perfect control of the world and of their own lives; Maria, however, could see in their eyes that they were afraid of their wife, the feeling of panic that they might not be able to get an erection, that they might not seem manly enough even to the ordinary prostitute whom they were paying for her services. If they went to a shop and didn’t like the shoes they had bought, they would be quite prepared to go back, receipt in hand, and demand a refund. And yet, even though they were paying for some female company, if they didn’t manage to get an erection, they would be too ashamed ever to go back to the same club again because they would assume that all the other women there would know.
‘I’m the one who should feel ashamed for being unable to arouse them, but, no, they always blame themselves.’
To avoid such embarrassments, Maria always tried to put men at their ease, and if someone seemed drunker or more fragile than usual, she would avoid full sex and concentrate instead on caresses and masturbation, which always seemed to please them immensely, absurd though this might seem, since they could perfectly well masturbate on their own.
She had to make sure that they didn’t feel ashamed. These men, so powerful and arrogant at work, constantly having to deal with employees, customers, suppliers, prejudices, secrets, posturings, hypocrisy, fear and oppression, ended their day in a nightclub and they didn’t mind spending three hundred and fifty Swiss francs to stop being themselves for a night.
‘For a night? Now come on, Maria, you’re exaggerating. It’s really only forty-five minutes, and if you allow time for taking off clothes, making some phoney gesture of affection, having a bit of banal conversation and getting dressed again, the amount of time spent actually having sex is about eleven minutes.’
Eleven minutes. The world revolved around something that only took eleven minutes.
And because of those eleven minutes in any one twenty-four-hour day (assuming that they all made love to their wives every day, which is patently absurd and a complete lie) they got married, supported a family, put up with screaming kids, thought up ridiculous excuses to justify getting home late, ogled dozens, if not hundreds of other women with whom they would like to go for a walk around Lake Geneva, bought expensive clothes for themselves and even more expensive clothes for their wives, paid prostitutes to try to give them what they were missing, and thus sustained a vast industry of cosmetics, diet foods, exercise, pornography and power, and yet when they got together with other men, contrary to popular belief, they never talked about women. They talked about jobs, money and sport.
Something was very wrong with civilization, and it wasn’t the destruction of the Amazon rainforest or the ozone layer, the death of the panda, cigarettes, carcinogenic foodstuffs or prison conditions, as the newspapers would have it.
It was precisely the thing she was working with: sex.
in my book “Eleven Minutes”
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There is not only one person we can connect our soul to. But we cannot connect it to anyone out there.
It is not sex itself…..it is sex as made by media, as published in erotic magazines and porn movies….whichare driving away the whole idea and concept of what it was put within us for….to connect …to communicate…bodies and souls…to have more of us on this planet to live different experiences….even sex provided by prostitutes….when it started looooooong time back…it was as a stress release, and in soem countries it had it protocols…it was an intellectual and physical entertainment kind of a job, just like geishas in Japan..and that’s what i read through eleven minutes when i read it…though maria was a prostitute, she did see through sex alot more than just the physical part….and what’s ruining our civilization now adays is just that we don’t see beyond it any more….we are getting more mechanical rathr than sensible about our instincts now adays….
I like your insight into it…
indeed people don’t see beyond sex…what a pity!
Paulo says:
“I am not a body with a soul, but a soul with a body.”
Well my dear wol, what can I tell you about this is that our bodies, our skins become the point of connection for the souls. All the passion of love pertains to the body as much as to the soul. There it lies a real miracle!
Two souls meet each other, but they become one though their skin.
But in 11 minutes we aren’t dealing only with sex but something even deeper; human mind or more precisely, male’s mind.
I think Forde would have had a lot to say on this by relating sex to the subconscious.
It is so interesting how the situations in life are linked to each other and reflect their selves to each other as subconscious does.
We were discussing the same thing with my professor today, and he was giving some examples of how subconscious reveals itself in our daily life.
It is just like inside of us there is the main tool which gives shape and movement to the outside around us. Starting by appearance to the social relationships we create in our life.
Love
Olta
We live in a world of criminals and irrational childish sinners flirting with destruction, of deviants in a Wild Forest. A world that is complex and has layers and red herrings, above is a light.
The films, the stories and the news speak to us of our hidden unconscious, repressed and contradicting our conscious society self. We are in so much inner discord and so we have gone secretive. Fiction is a great art – it offers up people the archetype of their very own natures. We are noble savages. Once the can of worms and the unconscious impulses for harmony and beauty come out one’s identity becomes enlarged and archetypal, wondrous and awe inspiring.
The real culture is led from the underground, from the sexual predators imitating reptillian behaviour, and breaking all taboos we find shocking and beautiful…there is beauty in darkness too, in the primal oblivion and destruction of self in the abandon of desire.
Mankind needs to understand it’s secret tender sympathy with the criminality of voyeurism and degradation of women, of Freudian primeval impulses of incest and wild debauchery enacted our irrational part let loose the essence of our lust must be bridled therefore with reason and balance. We have only a seed of these, and they have watered those seeds. From this shocking realisation comes true compassion, we have the potential to be the same, and true maturity arises, no longer afraid of the dark we become enlarged and whole. We choose love from strength and are fully aware. Man, when he can understand his broadness of character, his goodness and his evil, he can then embrace the equation, the Kali redeemer and destroyer that he is in potential, he, a most sacred power. He will then have little qualm with any man, he would no longer point his shadow to some group in his denial of his own shadow, to religion or his hatred of gurus, of darkness etc or try to paint over his grey walls but accept himself, careful not to give into the darkness within, having owned he is one and all with his shadow, light shined in the darkness gets rid of it, to deny is to be trapped in the shadows secret clutch!
We must forgive the wild sexual stallion we watched in voyeurism, he is real and he is your secret friend… which formed a black box in your frustrated basement, as he made love to all ages of woman, and we must not feel frustrated that we could not be like him, and the woman who had two men at once, poor you! They are fortunate and they are worse off, reason it thus they have demons attached to their luxuries indeed. Because lust bleeds and is never sated, more deeper pleasure more darkness. Reason must come into this unconscious space and fine clarity. Dont feel guilt, there’s nothing wrong there’s beauty in each age, find that younger man… but then there are extremities.. which are reptillian behaviours. An older woman fine, a younger man is fine, a mother fine! It’s only recently they have become fetishes, why should we feel guilty, it’s only inevitable that every person would have come by pornography by accident through Goo-gle, and one would inevitably go through the shadow process, it was to give you self knowledge, but for the foolish one it was to bring him down. The liars will explode inside and be controlled by it. We have all been matured through these experiences everyone and yet we hide from this beautiful process we have come through. That’s why no one protests these days! And women have become desirable in their aggressiveness! No one tells any truths because they feel ashamed – they shouldnt, its a good thing!
How we long for a pure family!! like the Waltons, as our innocence becomes wiser and more rational too.
Blake talked brilliantly about the tensions of the opposites in our own nature and that is our harmony that tension!:
O Rose, thou art sick!
The Invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of Crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
William Blake
When I read the book I was so sad for about a week. I now think about what made me feel like that, and I think it’s the end of the book is what did it. At the end Maria comes back from darkness and gets revived by pure love. She no longer uses her body as a tool, but manages to find the love, that obviously never existed in her life. I think Paulo did a wonderful job describing the feeling.
To tell you all the truth it made me feel like I’ve lost some of the same passion she exercised and thus this realization made me feel down.
Beautiful book, each one of Paulo’s books has such spice that’s been added to my life, and thus each one has been a compliment of the other.
Monica
Spice girls feat – Pavarotti – VIVA FOREVER
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=NVT_xbO-eHw
It is No,as reply to your second question…
I have read the whole book, so is bit not easy to reffer only to a short piece. I think is mafia that controlls the real prostitution, so the character Maria had a “lucky” situation, respect the real prostitutes. Of course she was taken to Geneva with fake promises, so a bit the situation is almost as a real one. At times these women girls had a fake sense of control and manipulation on men, but they are only used, without involvment. The real think in the book was the “tabu” orgasm, G point, and I think still many men have never heard about it, and they are not interested.
I can tell that I loved the book as a whole, but I do not agree with each word in it, for example I hope eleven minutes is a metaphor for sex.
As I wrote not long ago, I had problems with a man who was not kind, and cant bare him. So I wonder how a woman is able to go to bed with men of all sort, for money, and I heard that some are forced to “manage” with twenty on night, else they are beaten fiercely.
But in your book they seem not forced by anyone.
The less we care to look inside oneself and connect, the more we search for the fulfilment on the outside.
Sex is an element that completes connection, sadly it is used more often as phisical end of fantasy that leaves unfulfilled and leads to craving for more in hope that ultimate fulfilment will come.
When that fulhfilment does come, realisation that there is nothing else there, brings us down crashing into reality of realisation that is either great sex or an amazing person and very seldom fusion of the two in one experience.
sex is one of the best things in the world, when it’s quality. when it’s not, you go for the next partner. then one day you fall inlove and sex is passionate and beautiful. and stick to that and try to keep that relationship or improve it. That’s my way.
It was my second book of Paulo Coelho, which I read. I was very moving, I’m still moving because of what I read. Thank you Paulo. Every part of our life is important. ;)
Only the unenlightened have not contemplated the miracle of the hand job.
its a handyman!
;)
HI MR COELHO.where are you taking us this time?you hold the rudder and sail deep into your open seas,to discover your realm.we rise and fall and rise and fall with you,we wait eagerly for the next wave and we meet it with passion.thank you for this book.
What is wrong with civilization, sex … For me, it is something that was put as a sin by church authorities. Was something for Mary to come and tell that she was pregnant before marriage !!! According to the law, she should have been rejected. But Joseph took her. Then, there is that message that is transmitted that the need of love and being loved is satisfied by those 11 minutes. Well, many mix those up. Sex and love, yes, go together. But as it is cited in the Bible, love yourself as you love the other. Looking to fulfill a need of being loved and love in material possessions, in reproducing patterns taught that were put there to satisfy the need that do not satisfy, and then falling in going outside the structure to try to fulfill that need … which is not fulfilled. If you love yourself, then you will be able to love the other and have wonderful sex !!!! An 11 minutes that will be something put in its true context. That is what for the moment is there for me to share on that topic. By the way, I was impressed by your talent Mr. Coelho in the writing of that book. Not to say that the others weren’t showing talent, but the writing is really wonderful.
Love, Jojo.
Sex as a mask…
Mask II
Embraces like wine,
that warms and softens,
in a torpid way,
Rolling around on your tongue.
Peering through eyes,
mere holes,
thin air.
Caressing fingertips,
brush and tease,
little soft caterpillars,
curling, twisting,
feeling the fruit,
before taking a bite.
Soft breath,
and hair that clings,
with senses open,
nestling,
enclosing.
un-revealed,
outwardly glowing,
crying tears that speak,
rain seen falling,
from beneath the waves.
Naked,
concealed,
in a lover’s embrace.
That was lovely, like your style, good poem.
Nice! can I repost? :)
Sex is sacred, sex is love, sex is the very core of human existence, but here comes a big problem. All of us no matter from what religion, are forced to get under the concept that having sex with multiple people or even with the person u love, before marriage is a grave sin. From the Bible to the Quran, everywhere, this form of humanity is bounded. Why is this so? Why arn’t we free to experience something so profound with the person we love? Why is there a feeling of guilt? If sex is so beautiful, why from the beginning of time, it has been declared as sinful if not done in “proper” time………… There are people who want to experience this but are fiercely bounded by society and religion…. Is it really a sin? Are we all committing a major sin?????
Answers will be appreciated
REgards
Angelheart
A good book as mr Coelho is a talented writer, but the issue “prostitutes” is hardly a novelty. Why don´t we ever discuss evolved people and maybe their sexual lives? Why do we always believe that “saints” like f ex Mary (Jesus´ mother) did not enjoy sex? We even insist evolved ones do not have the right to have a sexual life, because in their cases we classify sex as dirty and simple! How treacherous we are! The Bible says Mary had several children after Jesus but the catholic church insists she hadn´t. Do they believe in the Bible at all? And why a married woman like her would not have the right to have sex with her beloved husband? The whole universe expresses pleasure. The pleasure we feel as we look around and see beautiful things, the pleasure we feel as we eat a good meal, the pleasure of touching something or someone soft, the pleasure of hearing good music and bird song. The building block of life is pleasure and yet we believe evolved people do not enjoy the pleasure of having sex…Something is really deeply wrong with us.
Hey, hey Caroline!!
Let’s not confuse the pleasure of having sex, with that of having a baby as a result of sex!
Indeed, perhaps there is an implicit guilt involved in the Christian faith with the fact that Mary was meant to be a virgin – but, somehow or other (and perhaps even unknown to her??), she fell pregnant in all innocence? Maybe that is what the whole “virginal” nature that is tied up with the story where Mary, mother of Jesus, is all about? It is probably that this aspect has been “lost in translation” somewhere – but perhaps conveniently so, as otherwise we typically lewd and lower-evolved types might get sidetracked.
Thus, sex – and any pleasure Mary MoJ may or might have derived from it in having Jesus (immaculate or not) – has nothing to do with the story. The plain fact of the matter is that it provides an extra dimension, spiritual or supernatural, to the story that allowed a great message to be conveyed to all of us in a more spicey way by one of the Apostles in his take on things.
The key point of it all however – lest we forget – is that we need to love, one another, as much as we love ourselves and/or God.
Indeed, if you love God – or “all things bright and beautiful”, as I like to thing of the concept of God as being (or should that be “Being”? or even Supremely Being) – is that you will then get “the pleasure” that you, Caroline, so rightly mention as being the most important thing in life, including pleasure gained from sex.
However, where sex is concerned, it does have to be for the right reasons, and not intentionally through doing harm to anyone else through deceiving them by having sex with someone else behind their back. As such, that is what I get the impression that this guilty pleasure of having 11 minutes of sex with a prostitute is all about: a pointless and meaningless sin – and Mr Coelho is simply highlighting that in the truest way that it could possibly be conveyed through the account of one woman’s experience of what these bigwigs do, despite what they could better do (and perhaps be less guilty about) through simply improving their love life with their wife (or, being honest, and leaving her – if sex with her is the problem) or sorting out what the issue is with themselves that leads to an act that seems to have little point to it (and perhaps irrespective of whether you consider it to be a sin or not!!).
Anyhow, that is what I find and think is great about Mr Paulo Coelho – he gets down to the nitty gritty of it all!!
P.S. Gonna have to read this book now – and just finished both The Zahir and The Pilgrimage (in that order) over the New Year break.
P.P.S. Read Richard Bach’s “A Bridge Across Forever”, amongst others, if you are interested in discussing “evolved people” – however I am sure Mr Coelho will get around to writing about the sex and love life of the guru Buddha, prophet Muhammed or the wizard Merlin at some stage, but leaving aside the chaste and unrequited love of the good Lord Jesus…
All the Best – and The Best for All!! ;-)
Matt
The Tortoise — 11 min — Achilles
It’s clear that for Achilles it’s enough with 11 min.
Unfortunately, for the Tortoise it’s NOT enough. The Tortoise asks for more: 11 min + 1.5 hr (Arcanum 17 the Star; Tsadi/Cade = 90; renewal through sex).
Sex can be sacred, but not the way Achilles sees it…
Ilva dear, your riddles are so funny.
In Eleven Minutes it is the orgasm part taking 11 mins, and then there is for-spiel (as they say in German)and nach-spiel. So of course pleasure is there for the Tortoise too!
An angel just gave me a thousand 11 minutes with Paulo today, and we should listen to angels, right? And in some circumstances even Achilleses quick fix might be sacred too? I’m just thinking out loud….*teasing you*
This excerpt as the whole book generates understanding, enlightenment. It is an important book which gives hope and I´m sure comfort to a lot of people, too. Bravo & thank you for writing it.
“Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as far as meaningless experiences go its pretty damn good.”
-Woody Allen ;-)
loveNlight
Gabi
Hi Gabriela!
..and he hooked up with his adopted, much younger daughter, which is a bit creepy for most people. But they look happy on the celebrity pictures!
Love,
Heart
aahh…
this’s one of my favourite books.
god bless u.
In my view, Eleven Minutes is your best piece of course after The Alchemist. I love this part.
Well,
When you have sex with the right person with the right chemistry, then it is the most Natural, not-shameful and perfect thing a person has ever done in his/her life :-)
What a contentment heart it would be…How happy he/she is…
Simple!
Eleven minutes. The world revolved around something that only took eleven minutes!!! Paulo Coelho.
I think that ‘the eleven minutes’ are the minutes that either we are connected, with our material bodies to Earth, or – if we are ‘lucky’- we can connect with the …SOUL of the UNIVERSE; first by being ONE with the other person and then to be able to transcend our material being and with our ‘transformed’, from LOVE, luminous Soul and Body to lose our mortal self, the I, and through ecstasy to become ONE and have a glimpse behind Isis’s veil! ;-]
As from the minute of our birth we feel … ‘incomplete’, ‘half’, our life is a ..continuous struggle, a search for our ..other half, our Soul Mate. With sex either we feel ..complete or we face ..mere loneliness. ;-]
LOVE,
Thelma xxx
Very beautiful thoughts BFF.
xxx
…Yes, and often the loneliness after an unsuccessful sexual encounter can be profound…Thank you, Thelma
Thelma,
exquisite, succinct description. I agree.
My “biggest problem” with Paulo’s books is that I always need a full retreat to read through them. There are too many paragraphs that touches me deeply, like this.
I wish Paulo’s books would come with a large margin on the right side where I could write down what “comes up” in my mind :o)
sex or rainforest ?
it seems to be all about the lie. the lie to behave “as if”, the lie within relationships. the lies within the system we choosed.
the lie to leave it like it is, though knowing it does not work anymore.the lie to keep on going though feeling its the wrong – or not benefitting – way. the lie to feel alive for 11 minutes if the 23 hours and 49 minutes left, feel like struggling.
sex is one of the strongest instincts in nature. its maybe equal to survival in one way. its a sensible but very, very powerful exchange of energy between human beings.
abuse or desensibilisation of “energy exchange” also influences
our feelings, our caring for the world we live in.
it can result in self-destruction and also in destruction of our environment.
When I read this book this one was definitely one of the parts I liked the most.
Love
Olta
Quant a moi, pour le moment c’est “chiffonade de jambon cuit superieur” et m’etirer comme font les chats chauvages. – un remplacement pour l’hormone thereapie peut etre?-
:)
One thing I do not agree with Maria – about the destruction of the Amazon rainforest – then again Avatar was not shown yet.:)
this is one of my favourite books
Alla Sobirova
“Je vous salue Marie.”
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