Gabo's town stays book-bound but Love emerges as a film

A move to change the name of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's birth town to the fictitious town name in one of his books has been abandoned.
Even though 93 percent of the votes were in favor of the name change of Aracataca to Macondo, the name of the town that features in Marquez's famous book One Hundred Years of Solitude, not enough people turned up to vote - Only 3,600 of the required 7,400 people voted.
The idea had been introduced by the banana-growing town's authorities who predicted the name change would increase tourism and so bring in money to make improvements. The town, located near the Caribbean coast in Colombia doesn't have a hotel and only half of its streets are paved.
Marquez, who now lives in Mexico and hasn't been back to Aracataca for twenty years, says he got much raw material for his books' unique magic realism from the town.
Marquez, 79, may not see the name of his birth town changed, but he will see one of his literary classics made into a film in the near future.
Stone Village Pictures and New Line Cinema are producing a film version of Marquez's beautiful novel Love in the Time of Cholera. The film is currently in pre-production.
Benjamin Bratt and Oscar nominees Catalina Sandino Moreno and Javier Bardem are set to star in director Mike Newell's adaptation of the novel.

Paulo Coelho's Warrior of the Light - small stories

In this issue
- Small stories

In the tavern
Rabbi Wolf entered a bar by chance. Some people were drinking, others were playing cards, and the atmosphere seemed heavy. The rabbi left without saying a word.
A young man followed him out: “I know that you didn’t like what you saw in there,” he said. “That’s a place for sinners.”
“No, I liked what I saw,” Wolf answered. “Those are men learning to lose everything. When they have lived the experience of losing, all that will remain is for them is to return to God. And from that moment on, what excellent servants they will make!”

Ten percent
“To be like me is very simple,” said the richest man in Babylonia. “All you have to understand is that a tenth of what you earn is yours.”
“That makes no sense,” answered the young man. “All that I earn is mine.”
“Don’t you pay the tailor? Don’t you pay the baker every day? You can’t live even for a day without spending. You pay everybody except yourself. From now on, pay yourself a tenth of your salary. Don’t forget that the paths of wealth are magical and strange; if you take good care of that tenth, one day it will reward all your efforts.”

Beyond the port
A hermit from the monastery of Sceta came up to Abbot Theodore:
“I know exactly what the objective of life is. I know what God asks of man, and I know the best way to serve Him. And even so, I am unable to do all that I should be doing to serve the Lord.”
“You know that there exists a city on the other side of the ocean,” replied Theodore. “But you haven’t found the ship yet, you still haven't packed your bags on board, and you haven’t crossed the sea. Why keep talking about what it is like and how we should walk down the streets? Put into practice what you’re saying and the path will reveal itself to you.”

At heaven’s door
When Don Enrique died he went straight to heaven. He knocked hard on the door and a voice asked: “Who’s there?”
“It’s Don Enrique Fernandez of Valdivieso.”
“Well go away, there’s no room here for two,” said the voice. And so Don Enrique was sent to Purgatory. Some time later, he very timidly returned to heaven.
“Who is it?” asked the voice. “It’s me,” answered Don Enrique.
“There’s no room here for two,” repeated the voice.
Don Enrique went back to Purgatory. One day he went back to knock on heaven’s door.
“Who is it?” asked the voice. “A small part of God,” he answered.
And heaven’s door opened to him.

Rigor and compassion
In the heart of winter the samurai presented himself to the Zen master.
“I am dying of cold and hunger and I have no way of supporting myself.”
Filled with pity, the master went to the statue of Yakushi-Buda, removed the gold chain that adorned the neck and handed it to the samurai.
The other pupils complained: "sacrilege!"
"Why sacrilege?" asked the master. "You have heard tell of David, who ate the bread from the tabernacle when he was hungry. Christ cured on the Sabbath whenever that was necessary. All I did was put the spirit of Buddha into action: now love and compassion can do their work."

Wrong questions
What is wisdom
A Sufi story tells us of a man who lived in Turkey who heard of a great master who lived in Persia who held the secret of wisdom.
Without hesitating, he sold his things, took leave of his family and went off in search of this secret. After years of traveling he managed to arrive at a cabin where the great master lived. Filled with awe, he drew closer and waited for the wise man to return from his morning stroll.
“I come from Turkey,” he said as soon as the wise man turned up. “I have made this long journey just to ask one question.”
“That’s fine. You can ask just one question.”
“I have to be clear in what I am going to ask; may I ask you in Turkish?”
“You may, “ said the wise man. “And I have already asked your only question. Anything else you want to know, you ask your heart. You don’t have to travel so far to discover that it is the best counselor of all.”
And he shut the door.

Why God did not help us
Master and disciple are walking through the deserts of Arabia. The Master uses each moment of the journey to teach his disciple about faith.
“Entrust your things to God,” he said. “Because He never abandons His children.”
When they camped down at night, the Master asked the disciple to tie the horses to a nearby rock. The disciple went over to the rock, but then remembered what he had learned that afternoon. “The Master must be testing me. The truth is that I should entrust the horses to God." And he left the horses loose.
In the morning he discovered that the animals had run off. Indignant, he sought out the Master.
“You know nothing about God! Yesterday I learned that I should trust blindly in Providence, so I gave the horses to Him to guard, and the animals have disappeared!”
“God wanted to look after the horses,” answered the Master. “But at that moment he needed your hands to tie them up and you did not lend them to Him.”

It’s raining and can I go out?
An old Buddhist story goes like this: a man is passing through a village under a heavy storm when all of a sudden he sees a house catching fire. Drawing closer, he sees another man – (the fable uses the beautiful image "with fire to the eyelashes ") – crying in his direction: “Is it raining?”
The traveler is surprised.
“Your house is catching fire!” he says.
“I need to know if it’s raining or not. My mother told me that the rain can give us pneumonia.”
Zao Chi comments on the fable: "wise is the man who manages to change the situation when he is forced to do so. Foolish is the man who does not trust the hand of God, only the answers of his fellow humans."

What is the first step?
A man decided to visit a hermit who lived near the monastery of Sceta.
“What is the first step of one who aims to follow the spiritual path?” he asked.
The hermit took him to a well and asked him to look at his reflection in the water. The man obeyed, but the hermit began to throw small stones, making ripples on the surface.
“I won’t be able to see my face right if you keep throwing stones.”
“Just as it is impossible to see your face in troubled waters, so it is impossible to seek God if your mind is anxious about the search,” said the monk. “Don’t ask questions, just move forward with faith. This will always be the first and most important step of all.

Copyright @ 2006 by Paulo Coelho
Warrior of Light Online, published by www.paulocoelho.com.br

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Selected Warrior of the Light issues are available as free e-books (PDF format) from the Smink Works Books site

As you like it - Shakespeare on demand

Google's Book Search now includes Shakespeare's full repertoire. Google invites users to "Search within Hamlet for "to be or not to be" to read the rest of his famous soliloquy. Find out who called the world his "oyster" and why. Browse through a familiar play – or follow your curiosity to discover a new one."

Full access to the plays is available ... but only for some. Copyright restrictions mean in some countries readers can search a text, but not read the entire work since print versions of Shakespeare's plays are not in the public domain everywhere in the world.

Perhaps the biggest attraction is the integrated links to Shakespeare-related media - literary research, Internet groups, and videos of theater performances of Shakespeare plays, even "a literary field trip" to London's Shakespeare's Globe Theater on Google Earth (Google Earth combines satellite imagery of the world, maps and a search engine)

QUOTE: Kahlil Gibran

"You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give."

From the book The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

Paulo Coelho's Warrior of the Light - The man who followed his dreams

In this issue
- The man who followed his dreams

I was born in the Saint Joseph maternity in Rio de Janeiro. As it was a quite complicated childbirth, my mother consecrated me to the saint, praying to him to help me live. José became a reference in my life, and every year since 1987 - the year following my pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela - I throw a party in his honor on March 19. I invite friends and hard-working, honest people, and before dinner we pray for all those who try to maintain their dignity in their actions. We also pray for those who are jobless and have no prospects for the future.
In the short introduction I give before the prayer, I usually recall that four of the five times that the word “dream” appears in the New Testament refer to Joseph the carpenter. In all the cases, an angel is always trying to convince him to do exactly the opposite of what he was planning to do.
The angel asks him not to abandon his wife, although she is pregnant. He could say things like “what are the neighbors to think?” But he returns home and believes in the revealed word.
The angel sends him to Egypt. And his answer could have been: “but I’m already established here as a carpenter, I have my clientele, I can’t just leave everything now.” Nevertheless he packs his things and sets out for the unknown.
The angel asks him to return from Egypt. And again Joseph could have thought: “now that I have managed to establish a new life for myself and have a family to support?”
Contrary to what common sense dictates, Joseph follows his dreams. He knows that he has a destiny to fulfill, the destiny of almost all men on this planet: to protect and support his family. Like millions of anonymous Josephs, he tries to see to the task, even having to do things that are far beyond his comprehension.
Later on, both his wife and one of his sons become the great references of Christianity. The third pillar of the family, the workman, is only remembered in the Nativity scenes at the end of the year, or by those who have a special devotion for him, as is my case, and as is the case of Leonardo Boff, whose book on the carpenter contains an introduction I wrote.
Here I reproduce part of a text by the writer Carlos Heitor Cony (I hope it really is his, because I discovered it on the Internet!): “Now and again people find it strange that a confirmed agnostic like me, who does not accept the idea of a philosophical, moral or religious God, should be a devotee of some saints in our traditional calendar. God is too distant a concept or entity for my resources and even for my needs. As for the saints, because they were earthly beings with the same clay foundations that I was made of, they deserve more than my admiration. They really deserve my devotion.
“Saint Joseph is one of them. The Gospels do not register a single word of his, only gestures, and just one explicit reference: "vir justus" – a just man. Since he was a carpenter and not a judge, it can be deduced that Joseph was above all a good man. A good carpenter, a good husband, a good father to a boy who would divide the history of the world.”
Beautiful words by Cony. And often I read aberrations such as: “Jesus went to India to learn from the masters of the Himalayas.” For me, every man can change the task he is given by life into something sacred, and Jesus learned while the just man Joseph taught him to make tables, chairs and beds.
In my imagination I like to think that the table where Christ consecrated the bread and wine was made by Joseph – because there was the hand of an anonymous carpenter who earned his living with the sweat of his brow, and precisely because of that allowed miracles to take place.

Copyright @ 2006 by Paulo Coelho
Warrior of Light Online, published by www.paulocoelho.com.br

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Selected Warrior of the Light issues are available as free e-books (PDF format) from the Smink Works Books site