Bookwizard 2016

The Bookwizard

Notes

p p

!e Works of

Paolo Coelho

An official publication of the Miriam College Philosophy & Theology Department

A P R I L 2 016

The Bookwizard Notes

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Artwork by Mary Claire P. Pascual 1 BA PSY

Preface / ii Acknowledgments / v 1. The Pilgrimage (1987), Jenny An L. Narciso, 3 BS BIO / 8 2. The Alchemist (1988), Maria Kanna Junio , 2 BSA / 12 3. Brida (1990), Marinelle A. Nazario, 4 AB ISI / 17 4. The Valkyries (1992), Fleur Angeline R. Quesada, 2 BA COM / 21 5. By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994) Lori Claire Q. Jacinto, 2 BS PSY / 25 6. Veronika Decides to Die (1998) Maria Gabriella Isabel G. Mercado, 2 BA COM / 30 7. The Devil and Miss Prym (2000), Jennise Gyle L. Manuel , 2 BA COM / 34 8. 11 Minutes (2003), Mikhaela Rae Ann M. Alejo, 2 BS BAM / 39 9. The Zahir (2006), Havienne Marie R. Jimenez, 2 BS BAM /44 10. The Witch of Portobello (2006), Pauline F. Aura, 2 BA COM /38 11. The Winner Stands Alone (2008), Ella Zaidelle A. Plana, 2 BS BAM /52 12. Aleph (2011), Sherwin A. Castillo, 2 BS PSY / 56

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The Bookwizard Notes

PREFACE

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aolo Coelho was born August 24, 1947 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

He attended a Jesuit school and dreamt ardently of becoming a writer. His mother dissuaded him, saying that their ancestry breeds talents of logical and mathematical skills but not of literary prowess.

Stereotypical images of writers such as those “who always wear glasses and never comb their hair” also discouraged his ambition. Perhaps, the passion that he suppressed brewed an interior turmoil because he grew up with an intolerable introversion and irascible behavior that his parents committed him to a mental asylum from which he tried to escape three times. At age 20, the asylum released him. He then enrolled in a law school, dropped out, lived happy-go-lucky, took drugs, composed songs here and there for a living, until his compositions for the Brazilian icon Raul Seixas which involved magic and occultism led him to some aberrant preoccupations. He was arrested by the military government (at that time) for ‘subversive activities’. When he was released, he had brief stints as actor, journalist, and theater director, all artistic jobs which were in opposition to what his mother earlier predicted.

In 1986, Coelho made a pilgrimage on the famous 500-mile road of Santiago de Compostela in Spain which became a spiritual turning point in his life. He seized the dream he once had, wrote his autobiography The Pilgrimage, followed by The Alchemist which launched a stellar writing career. The second novel was translated into 67 languages and sold 183 million copies which won the Guinness Book of World Records for the most widely translated book. Coelho had also been nominated for the Nobel award for literature. His works had been translated in 83 languages and had been read in 170 countries.

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This hippie-turned-spiritual guru was happily selected as the featured writer for our issue of Bookwizard Notes because his works have a blend of philosophical and spiritual themes but more importantly, because they are a favorite read of students. After being bombarded for the past three issues with nosebleed reading selections of Nobel awarded writers, canon philosophers and theologians, Christian Manaloto nudged the idea about inviting the students to read what they like and are able to digest.

There is something profound in the strange pair of rebellion and conversion.

Those who touched the Archimedes fulcrum were initially rascals, i.e., St. Paul, St. Augustine, Ignatius of Loyola, Oskar Schindler, etc., who all overturned an antiquarian world order. These people were moved by one and only one reason: they want to find magnanimous truth. But they have to tread on dangerous road. I find in their spirits much of what characterize, inspire, and move the students of present times.

I have been reading Paracelsus lately, a Renaissance philosopher and revolutionary doctor, who is also reputed for rebellious and bombastic temperament. His notion of alchemy resonates with that of Paolo Coelho’s Alchemist. Paracelsus believed that the world is composed of the tria prima: salt, sulphur, and mercury.

But they are not chemical substances as we know them now. They are the elements that are stable, combustible, and volatile contained in all species of natural life. Each has its own nature of the admixture, for example, that the tria prima found in the sampaguita is of a different kind found in human blood. A true man of medicine is an alchemist who has the capacity to extract these substances in pure form and blend them perfectly into a healing elixir. The knowledge of such secret recipes for healing is a knowledge given by God, hidden beneath nature, but given only to those who would overturn every leaf to seek. The tria prima are not chemicals, nor are they merely principles; they are spiritual substances, the stuff that probably angels are made of as St. Thomas Aquinas would imagine, but the most important thing - they are present in this world, made available to us. Alchemy is a spiritual art. The Alchemist is Coelho’s most celebral work. Alchemy is Paracelsus’ philosopher’s stone, which he believed was a creation of Adam, passed on to Noah and to Abraham, and subsequently, to every magus who

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would leave land, property, and loved ones, in order to search for the source of eternal life.

The one who finds the philosopher’s stone is one who could heal the world. as the works of Paolo Coelho are renowned sources of inspiration and healing.

Whenever I see a student pick a quaint book, she embarks on the adventure of the magus, a wizard, who yearns to find something more on dangerous ground. She wants a world that wrestles out of the “culture of the nice,” a world of hypocritical politicians who propagate injustice and want only academic reactions wrapped up in “nice words that don’t hurt,” telling their victims to “move on” and “consider alternatives.“ With all due respect,” Paulo Coelho writes,“the Mona Lisa is overrated.”

Mira T. Reyes Founding Editor, The Bookwizard Notes 6 January 2016, Feast of the 3 Wise Men

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Artwork by Melissa John M. Asuncion 1 BS LTM

The Bookwizard Notes

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Artwork by Althea Alessandra E. Ani 1 BA AV

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am bashfully indebted to Consolacion A. Estarija, faculty member of the Applied Arts department, for succumbing to an elbow twitch to solicit contributions of student artwork to embellish this e-mag. She devoted one class session to prompt her students to create abstract designs, motivating them with minimal grade points if their specimens get chosen for the Bookwizard Notes. All artwork displayed in this issue are creations of students which makes it, indeed, a student portfolio. I am so proud of our talented students.

I would also like to applaud Maria Teresita R. Rapadas, faculty of Theology and my best friend in the holocaust, for all the ecclesial mumbo-jumbo urging her students to read easy fiction and contribute essays. Only the Holy Trinity knows how difficult it is to prompt students to read, much less to write. But developing reading and writing skills is the titanic task of the Bookwizard Notes. v

To our Chair, Renato T. de la Cruz, for supporting us, may the Mockingjay be with you. To all my colleagues in the department who are all members of the vanishing species, especially Christian B. Manaloto who brilliantly placed third in the National Licensure Examinations for Teachers, it is not us who will be extinct, I swear it on the philosopher’s stone.

Finally, to my dearest cats Iggy Wiggy, Fuzzy Azz, and Cooney Bear, for tempting me with fur and fun during the most arduous work of editing until the wee hours in the morning. Because of your love, the Rabbit will live a thousand years.

Bring it on.

Mira T. Reyes Founding Editor, The Bookwizard Notes 1 April 2016, April Fools’ Day

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We would like to acknowledge these following free websites for the google images borrowed: http://www.examiner.com/article/the-snow-moon-how-romantic https://www.science-rumors.com https://www.pinterest.com/pin/28147566395567125/ https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112154 https://about.me/rika.angel https://www.artpeoplegallery.com/grim-folk-tales-inspire-magical-landscapes-photography-kilian-schonbe rger/ http://paper4pc.com/fantasy-1/99/ http://www.inspiringwallpapers.net/beautiful-small-butterfly-on-colorful-stones.html http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/kent-shiraishi-blue-pong http://www.halsteadspringwater.com/about/ http://www.intrawallpaper.com/wallpaper-5#static/images/Top-most-Amazing-Stunning-and-Inspiring-Abs tract-3D-Wallpapers-by-techblogstop-22.jpg http://paper4pc.com/1600x900/22/ https://wall.alphacoders.com/by_sub_category.php?id=134829 https://www.pinterest.com/pin/13370130116902572/ http://www.examiner.com/article/the-snow-moon-how-romantic http://www.uncalke.com/dark-red-rose-wallpaper-high-quality/ http://valentinedayisu.blogspot.com/2006/04/wallpaper-bamboo-forest.html

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Artwork by Princess M. Gomez, 1 BA AV

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!e Pilg"ma#

by Jenny An L. Narciso

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P

The Bookwizard Notes

P

aulo, a successful man in his Brazilian homeland, completed a training and underwent a sacred initiation to be ordained Master of the Tradition where he will receive a sword to symbolize his advancement. The rigorous initiation would induct him into the Order of the Regnus Agnus Mundi.

But he failed and so his master decided to withhold the sword. To acquire the sword and to complete his initiation into the Order, he was given a task by his master to make a pilgrimage from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France to Santiago in Spain.

Paulo was guided by a man named Petrus as he followed a miraculous road first travelled by San Tiago, an evangelist who was crucified for his love of God, centuries ago. Petrus plied the same route before and had achieved the title of Master, which made him worthy and able to lead other future masters in their pilgrimages. But apart from being an effective guide, Petrus was just like any ordinary pilgrim walking that road. Petrus gave Paulo different exercises and trials in an order of increasing difficulty and taught him correspondingly how to surmount each.

The exercises were meant to impart some simple truths and they gave ideas on how to search for the sword. Paulo met many interesting people, who both helped and delayed him along the way. His experience from each of them coupled with his mentor’s teachings led him to understand the true purpose of his journey. Paulo won his sword in the end but he realised that the answer he was looking for had already been given during the journey.

Paulo’s experience in his journey is no different from what we have already gone through. As human beings, we have the tendency to be blinded by the success we are aiming for. We fix our eyes on the trophy and work half-heartedly, attempting to quicken the road to victory. In Paolo’s situation, he thought he had exhausted everything to advance toward the goal only to find himself back where he started at the beginning.

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The sword in this story stands for what we want in life – our goals. We all have our own aspirations and the only thing that makes us different from each other is how badly we want to achieve. But we can only meaningfully attain our goal if we know exactly the purpose of why we want it because that will dictate how much we are willing to sacrifice for it. As we progress on our own Road to Santiago fighting for our sword, we will have to face obstacles that test our courage. When we are faced with problems similar to Paulo’s, we think that these difficulties are too much to handle but the truth is that we are just frightened. The fear serves to intensify the spark in us to carry on our journey. We realize that it is possible to discover ways of fleeing from worries and becoming free even from fear.

Throughout the journey, the characters talked about faith, death, sin, God, and

“Teaching is only demonstrating that it is possible. Learning is making it possible for yourself.” ― Paulo Coelho

other profound mysteries. God is seen in Paulo’s mentor, Petrus. Their closeness developed naturally as they journeyed the road to Santiago together. What impressed me most about Petrus is that his way of training does not force himself on Paulo and lets him decide on his own. He had also been very sensitive and knows his student’s deepest feelings, like the way God would know the stirrings in our hearts even from afar and in silence. Petrus gave Paulo different exercises that oriented him toward a more enlightened perception of life and stretched his soul by overcoming his inner struggles. The person of God appears as someone loving, wise, and willing to go out of his way to accompany someone in need.

God appeared here as someone familiar with ways of being human, having experienced after all the same life. God knows well the difference between right and

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wrong and continually pushed people to do good. He is consistently magnanimous in his words, thoughts and actions.

Throughout the book we saw Paulo’s transformation from someone who had been shallow and had taken pride in his knowledge to someone who learned to see the simple ways of ordinary people and accepted them wholeheartedly.

There were many factors that have caused Paulo to change. One was that the legendary road to Santiago presented different spiritual battles which turned out to be hidden opportunities for him to become a better person. Another factor was that the lessons Petrus imparted to Paulo made a huge impact on his person; they awakened his sense of the spiritual and strengthened his moral fiber. Despite the fact that Paulo had Petrus walking by his side, he still encountered different kinds of evil. But with overflowing love, the seeker changed into someone who knew what he wanted to do with the gift of life and how he wanted to spend it.

The Pilgrimage is a journey book which made a very interesting read. I slowly realised that I am just like Paulo. I’m on the road in search of my sword and still on the process of becoming who I ought to be. I need not rush my journey for I might forget the reason why I want what I’m doing. The Pilgrimage reminds us that with love, magic can happen even in the most unexpected moments. Life is a journey and every day, we are given the chance to either run away or confront the obstacles squarely with a good fight.

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Artwork by Bettina Louise U. Francisco, 1 BA COM

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!e Alchem$t

by Maria Kanna Junio

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The Bookwizard Notes

T

here was once when a young Andalusian shepherd named Santiago slept under a sycamore tree beside an old church and dreamt of finding a treasure in the pyramids of Egypt. Since then, he nurtured a desire to look for it. He met a gypsy woman and an old king, Melchizedek, who both recognized the dream as prophetic and advised him to pursue it. It was Melchizedek who introduced him the idea of a Personal Legend: ever since we were young, we have dreamed of accomplishing something. The very desire moves all things in the universe to conspire in helping us achieve it. Santiago left his life of herding sheep to travel to Tangier, a foreign place. He was ambushed by a thief who stole all his money. He suddenly felt hopeless and despaired on pursuing his dream. With no money left, he decided to work for a crystal merchant until he had enough money to go back to his hometown. For almost a year of stay in the merchant’s crystal shop, he learned some life lessons, particularly the art of patience, which pushed again the passionate desire to find the treasure.

Unexpectedly, he met a fascinating English man who searched for an Alchemist in the desert so that he could train with him in the secret art of transforming any metal into gold. As the English man went on to find the Alchemist in the desert oasis, Santiago fell in love with a beautiful Arabian woman, Fatima. In his life in the desert, he had learned to listen to its voice and discovered the soul of the world.

With Fatima, he learned about the greatest alchemy of all—love. One day, by observing the flight of the hawks, Santiago had a vision that an army would invade the oasis which was forbidden in the rules of the desert. He shared the vision with the tribal chieftain, who prepared for the eventual attack. Then, Santiago met a black-veiled stranger atop a white horse - the Alchemist. Together with him, they fought the war and won it, obviously having an edge because of the early warning of Santiago. A thousand lives in the oasis were saved. Santiago was invited to become Counsellor of the Oasis but the Alchemist advised him to continue to pursue his Personal Legend.

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The Alchemist guided him through the last part of his journey and led him to the pyramids of Egypt. There he dug but he didn’t find anything. Santiago was again mauled by thieves and robbed of all his possessions. He managed to tell them that he had come to search for a treasure. One of the thieves told him a dream he had that the treasure was in an old sacristy in an abandoned church.

Santiago understood what he was meant to do. He returned to Andalusia in the old church under the sycamore tree where he had first dreamt about the treasure. And there he found it.

In the story, being human means living a life full of dreams and having the pas-

“Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.” ― Paulo Coelho

sion to pursue them. Indeed, each one of us dreams of something—whether it be an object, a person, or a thing—that we want to have. Our search of it becomes our Personal Legend. We allow ourselves to go beyond our comfort zones and limitations just to achieve it. The task demands the best of our determination and motivation in that no matter how big or impossible the dream may be, it would not matter to us. Difficulties, troubles, and failure only serve to advance us toward our lofty project.

The Alchemist thus, stands for the magus in us, who is able to discern what is true gold in things, especially those that hide under a negative face in our experiences. In the same way that the Alchemist turns metal into gold, so humans can turn transform their disappointments into possibilities. As Melchizedek had said in the story, “...at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

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The most significant lesson, thus, is that the only real failure we can have in life is not to fall but to believe that what we yearn for so desperately cannot be real.

Nevertheless, all of these will not be possible without the presence of God in our lives. In the story, it was God who preceded Santiago’s journey toward his dream.

God uses different instruments to direct us —dreams, people— like the gypsy woman, the old man, the thief, and the English man in the story who all seemed to have delayed the the boy’s journey but in the end turned out to have actually advanced it. God in the story is the pilot of our lives. He leads us to the right path. The old man asking for one-tenth of Santiago’s sheep represents God asking us to give of ourselves and our attachments because it will liberate the passion and intensify the belief in that which makes us happy.

The story also portrayed a God who is benevolent. In the story, we saw Santiago robbed, stripped of everything, yet, out of the lost horizon, he was provided for.

Through the crystal merchant—the instrument of God—Santiago was able to recover what he lost. In fact, even omens helped him in overcoming obstacles along the journey. Could it be God who put in our hearts our deepest desire.?

Maktub. “It is written.” But what is written is desire, not fate. God allows an interplay of freedom and grace instead of a predestined limitation.

Since I was in high school, serving others had been my passion. I have always wanted to lead groups, facilitate meetings and discussions—just like what a typical leader should do. Having realized that I have the potentials of becoming a leader, I decided to run for a leadership position in our high school school council. I won in the first elections. I ventured for a second term. Unfortunately, I failed to be elected twice, but that did not stop me from pursuing my passion. What I did rather was to improve myself by honing my potentials and capabilities more until I got into college. Once again, I had been offered an opportunity to occupy a leadership position. Not giving up on my dream and passion, this time, I finally succeeded. And with that experience, I also came to realize two important things: that pursuing a dream is never an easy journey, and that failure will equally serve to bring you closer to success.

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The most significant twist in the story is that Santiago found the treasure on the spot where he originally conceived it. In short, the beginning is our end and the end our beginning, the formula for infinity. Everything we have left or sacrificed to embark on the journey for our Personal Legend we receive back in the end but in a hundredfold.

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Artwork by Daniela T. Pineda, 1 BA AV

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B"da

by Marinelle A. Nazario

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The Bookwizard Notes

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he story was set in Ireland during the 1880s. Brida was a pretty Irish girl who lived a conventional life: she attended college in the city, had an average-paying job, and an understanding boyfriend named Lorens. Yet Brida thirsted for something else-- something she could not identify and yet seemed so familiar to her-- and so she embarked on a journey in search of it through the path of witchcraft. She met the Magus in Folk, who introduced her to witchcraft in the Tradition of Sun. A man in his midlife, the Magus, was condemned to suffer loneliness in the forest for using his power to destroy his ex-woman’s lover. At the sight of Brida, he recognized his past love in his prior life.

Brida met Wicca, a woman advanced in age but young in beauty, who taught her magic through the Tradition of Moon. Wicca taught her rituals as old as human civilization: to commune with the universe and to meet her past incarnation in order to awaken her gift which would qualify her as a witch. Brida repeatedly failed in several attempts but in the long run, was able to unlock the whispering voice in her head--her gift.

Having tapped her higher powers, Brida after much confusion, eventually realized that the Magus was her soulmate. The story ended in the witches’ Sabbath, a ceremony that inducted her as part of the witches’ circle. After that, she and the Magus decided to part ways. Through Brida, the Magus finally learned the true meaning of love.

In the story, Coelho shared four elements that make up human essence: the search, the dark night, the gift, and the purpose. The search is inevitably part of our being. Searching employs active use of freedom in the sense that things will not come to us freely without our initiative to find it. But searching is like sailing into a steady, vast ocean; we sometimes do not know where to go. Choices are so countless that we fear to choose. We fear failures, too. This state is what Coelho calls the dark night. Our frustrations, disappointments, and failures should not to dilute nor provoke us to quit our search. Rather, failures are sup18

posed to set the tides to convey us closer to the dock, like a nature-made compass. Despite our uncertainties, many of us still go on-- to walk in faith, as they say. Faith motivates us to bear the dark night and to discover our gifts. These are our talents and capabilities that we have been endowed with since birth, and they determine our very purpose. With our gifts, we are like seedlings on the land. Our purpose is to nurture our gifts so that we could produce a harvest to be shared by all. Our gifts are not just for ourselves but for others. In sharing the fruit of our labor, we inspire others to do the same, thus becoming our own Magus and Wicca who help others grow their gifts, too.

Coelho’s notion of magic is not something of mirage but rather tangible. Magic, as defined by the Magus, is a bridge that connects the visible and the invisible

“Don’t bother trying to explain your emotions. Live everything as intensely as you can and keep whatever you felt as a gift from God. The best way to destroy the bridge between the visible and invisible is by trying to explain your emotions.” ― Paulo Coelho

and by crossing it, magic is understanding both dimensions. I interpret that magic as our encounter with God. Prayer is magic, for it is the bridge we cross to converse with God. We become magical whenever we perform goodness, for we project God through such deeds; turning us into bridges for others to cross over. We also perform magic whenever we feel that God relates with us through ordinary events: realizing what a majestic artist God is for perfecting the sun that sets vibrantly on the infinite horizon, or intuiting his mercy in the most banal events like giving us a free cut to give us the time to rush a term paper. By perceiving this magic, we understand God’s ways in the world.

We vary in understanding God because we all encounter God differently. Some have a deep understanding of God because they often pray and do spiritual 19

works while some are not even aware they are capable of prayer. God is projected through the Magus’ relationship with Brida. His new love with Brida envisioned no end as they were soulmates. But it is due to this infinite love that he learned to let go. He realized that it is freedom that paves the way for growth, and he wanted Brida to grow and bloom. Letting his love go meant he truly loved her, because even from a distance, he could still love her and in that sense never lose her. Physical distance was not anymore a basis for a spiritualized union.

The Magus realized the many possibilities Brida could have if she would stay with Lorens. He already had a full life with her. But the Magus knew her soulmate would never forget him and the love they shared.

Similarly, God is the master of this kind of genuine love that sets free. Out of his love for us, he gave us one of his special gifts to humankind: freedom. He knows this gift to humanity could be vulnerable and and yet could show us equally the beauty in life for we could never determine the good and beautiful if we had never known the bad and unpleasant. God knows that however winding the path may be, we would all come back to him, just as Brida’s search brought her to her ultimate love.

Indeed, the tale of Brida is our story. Being human is to unceasingly search our purpose on earth that brought us life. It means to have faith wired deep within our soul, that from eagerness, we would willingly walk the dark night even when besieged by fear and uncertainty, having only naked faith. All things both morbid and sublime only serve to mold our being, and through this process would enrich our endowed talents which we would use to finally carry out our long awaited purpose-- to cultivate God’s sanctuary on earth.

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Artwork by Arielle Faith V. Mamangon, 1 BA AV

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!e Valky"es

by Fleur Angeline R. Quesada

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The Bookwizard Notes

T

he story unfolded with Paulo Coelho meeting his master, a man called J. who directed him to go to the Mojave desert in order to meet his guardian angel. Coelho tagged his wife Cristina on a forty-day journey with the intention to save their failing marriage, hoping that he could confront his own demons in the desert. Coelho contemplated that he had a tendency to kill what he loved most. Driven by the couple’s ultimate goals of healing their past and trusting the future, they left Brazil without hesitation to fly to Los Angeles and began with their journey. Their adventures in the desert were filled with dangers, arguments, debates, and unexpected incidents that threatened their lives and delayed their search. They met Gene and the Valkyries, a band of leather-clothed women who travel on motorcycles and preach to the people. Valhalla became Coelho’s guru who guided him through the trials until he finally met his guardian angel. Cristina, who initially didn’t believe in spirits or magic, but she experienced a total change of perspective. In the end, Paulo and Cristina were able to survive their treacherous journey. Their extraordinary quest changed their persons and their lives.

There are three outstanding themes in the novel. First is the importance of having a sense of the spiritual. In the modern world, we have this idea that being born is all about having competitive skills and talents that will make us earn income and to survive on this earth. But that principle only serves an idea of us as biological beings, but we are more than that. We have a spiritual essence that requires nourishment and growth. By cultivating a contemplative lifestyle and environment, we encourage meditation and the spiritual arts that detach us from material preoccupations and elevate us to a higher state of mind. Shortsighted goals or whimsical desires are dispelled to reveal a profound knowledge and deep sense of God’s purpose.

The second is the significance of confronting the self to achieve inner peace. We achieve true peace when we let go of mistakes in the past with the haunting regret that comes with them. Coming to terms with ourselves gives us a harmonious relationship with others. Everything good starts from within. The requirement 22

in finding one’s angel is that we have to have the power to exorcise the demons from within - yes, to reinforce the angelic factor within us. We become defenders of the light. Coelho writes, "We are responsible for everything that happens in this world. We are the warriors of the light. With the strength of our love and our will, we can change our destiny, as well as the destiny of many others."

The third theme is that of faith - to trust God even if his ways are incomprehensible. No matter how wise or intelligent we are, we will never be able to fully understand God and His mysterious ways of communicating. But he does communicate and manifest his will in ways that could be understandable and comprehensible to us, only if we are truly listening. Sometimes, God may create endings and situations that do not seem to be in our favor but faith consists in trusting that a “When God wants to drive a person insane, he grants that person's every wish.” ― Paulo Coelho

higher power knows what is best for the situation. If there is patience, then the process could be seen through. The satisfaction and happiness that will come from God’s reward of a bright future will only be given to those who did not lose hope and did not give up on themselves. God sends down guardian angels in the form of humans to guide us and help conquer despair and prevail in the situation.

Paulo Coelho translates love as a happy acceptance of our faults and the immense transformation it affords us and the lives of others that are affected by us.

He says, "If on the other hand, we accept all that is wrong about us - and despite it, believe that we are desiring of a happy life - then we will have thrown open an immense window that will allow love to enter. Little by little, our defects will disap23

pear, because one who is happy can look at the world only with love - the force that regenerates everything that exists in the universe."

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Artwork by Justine Allison J. Raymundo, 4 BA COM

By & River Pie'a 5

I sat Do! and Wept

by Lori Claire Q. Jacinto

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The Bookwizard Notes

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he story revolved around a woman named Pilar who had a childhood sweetheart. He became a monk of reputable spiritual and healing capacities. They had been very close when they were young but the boy left to learn about the world and to attain his dreams that laid beyond the fields of Soria. When he left, he sent her letters whenever he could.

Some of those letters, all mailed from his new home in France, spoke about God. In one letter, he wrote about wanting to enter a seminary and dedicate his life to prayer. In the latest message, he wrote to Pilar that he was going to speak to a small group in Madrid – and he invited her to come.

This was the beginning of how Pilar’s faith slowly awakened. She was not sure if she still believed in prayer because she felt that God did not listen to her prayers in the past. But when they finally met in the French Pyrenees at the River Piedra, the monk taught her a lot about the feminine side of God and shared stories that helped her trust in the power of prayer. In between their exchange of faith experiences, they also evoked once more the pristine young love that they had lost. Pilar struggled knowing the fact that she was in love with a man who had now become a mystic healer, who had visions of the Virgin Goddess and served her by healing others. The monk, too, went through a suffering of ambiguity, discerning whether to commit himself to Goddess alone or to fight for his love for Pilar.

Finally, the monk asked help from the Virgin Goddess for strength and decided to continue the path of exclusive spiritual discipleship. He discovered he didn’t want to cause Pilar more suffering because of his devotion to his mission. However, at the ending of the story, the monk changed his mind and told Pilar that the Goddess had given him enlightenment that his devotion will not be shaken if he would go with the woman he cherished. The story ended with him choosing to serve both God and the woman he loved.

The idea of being fully human in this story is that of having the ability to be faithful despite the throes we are facing. It is about accepting risks because we will only understand the miracle of life when we allow the unexpected to happen. But hu26

mans are prone to being anxious about what the future can bring. That is why in this story, it was stated that “the other” (implying the negative spirit) is afraid of disappointments and is keeping us from taking action. Coelho said that when we oust “the other” from our lives, the divine energy will begin to perform miracles.

Pilar was a strong and independent woman who fought against the temptations of “the other”. She listened to the child she once was, the child who still existed inside her. This child understood magic and knew that each day would be different from the past days. Coelho encourages us to learn to look at life with the innocence and enthusiasm of childhood. If we listen to the child who lives in our soul, it would enlighten us and we would not lose contact with the spontaneity of life.

Coelho calls this breaking the glass. The glass stands for everything that impedes us from the simple things that make us happy since a child is the epitome of happiness.

Throughout the story, Pilar took risks getting out of her comfort zone to discover where her real happiness laid. In the same way, we also find ourselves plunged in darkness and shadow. But we accept as premiss that in order to fight for what we want, we have to go through difficulty and suffer much disappointment but the story of Pilar demonstrated that these would be temporary. One day we would be able to prevail, look back, and become proud of the journey we have taken.

The story had interesting metaphors. One significant image was a dam that signified what love meant for the two lovers. The dam represented all our defensiveness in love. A tiny crack would allow a trickle of water to pass through, but that trickle will eventually bring down the whole structure, and when it does, no one would be able to control the force of the current. Love takes over, and it would no longer matter what is possible or impossible; to love is to lose control.

The prominent face of God in the story is that of Goddess - a female God. Catholics worship the Father and Son-God but are also drawn to the Virgin Mary as the feminine intercessor and personal representative of God’s compassion. In the story, the symbol of the feminine face of God is water because it is the source of life; we are generated in water, and for nine months we lived in it. Water is the symbol of the power of woman, the power that no man can capture no matter 27

how perfect he may be. In the story, the Goddess protected people with her walls of stone and washed away sins with her purifying water.

There was a scene wherein Pilar heard the Ave Maria being played from an ancient organ, for the first time since she had abandoned the path of her faith, she felt a strong desire to pray. She realized the Virgin’s sacrifices to carry Jesus inside Her womb. Despite the consequences Mary might face, she trusted the Lord and spoke her fiat “Thy will be done.” Mary was only barely an adolescent that time and she said “yes” to her destiny. In that enlightened moment, Pilar was more encouraged in faith so she prayed for God not to abandon her in the spiritual journey she would make.

“Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing what to do is the worst kind of suffering.” ― Paulo Coelho

Conversations with the monk and her participation in his spiritual rituals helped her recover her faith. He shared with her a lot of experience and literature about the Goddess. Pilar asked him where he had learnt all this and he responded by saying that all the light came “when he accepted love from on-high” and he allowed himself to be guided by it. Whenever someone follows the path to faith sincerely, he or she is able to unite with God. Gradually, the monk was able to prompt her faith. “How wonderful that God may be a woman,” Pilar said to herself. She had the idea that God’s feminine face is that special facet that teaches us how to love.

Coelho imparted the eternal principles that we already know but which we always forget. The closer we get to God through our faith, the simpler he becomes. The simpler he becomes, the greater his presence. Just like Jesus, he came as a son 28

of a carpenter from an obscure town who became a great teacher but lived in very ordinary ways. He taught us that no matter what we do, everything leads us to the experience of God. Coelho encourages us to release fear and never be afraid to take risks. Faith, as tiny as a seed, moves mountains. We only have to believe, accept, and be willing to make mistakes. The failure to take risks would make us remain in our comfortable niches but in the end, we might regret and agonize over the possibilities that we could have taken. In the final assessment, we may consider our lives a waste.

The lesson I will never forget from this story is to simply trust in God’s will and his perfect timing. I have learned to let go of my past, to surrender my present, and to have faith in my future. Maybe our plans at first seem different from God’s but following our deepest desires even in the labyrinth of crises would reveal that despite the winding ways, God always leads us to greater happiness. From this book, I gained the conviction that God had a purpose for my pain, a reason for my struggles, and a reward for my faithfulness.

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Artwork by Mariana Alejandria Lopez, 1 BA COM

6

Veronika Decides to Die

by Maria Gabriella Isabel G. Mercado

30

The Bookwizard Notes

T

he story unveiled the life of a 24-year old woman named Veronika Deklava who lived in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She had everything a woman could ever want: beauty, friends, men attracted to her, a successful career, and a caring family. But having placed much value on beauty, she had fears of aging. In that small town where she lived, she was bored with everything that was cyclical. Veronika watched people outside her window in the convent room which she rented from nuns. They did exactly the same routine over and over again. Her life, too, seemed dull and colorless. Then one day in a cold November night, she decided to end her life. She committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. A week later, she woke up finding herself inside Villette, a lunatic mental hospital which terrified many. There, she was told that she had damaged her heart and would have only a few more days more to live. Her perspective was overturned in that realizing her days were counted, Veronika started to live life with a heightened awareness and appreciation for things. Inside the hospital which she at first loathed, Veronika encountered three people who influenced her perspective of life: Zedka, a patient who had clinical depression, Mari, who suffered from panic disorders, and Eduard, a schizophrenic whom she fell in love with. Veronika discovered that in an environment filled with people who had various mental illnesses, crossing the border of reason, they actually lived in harmony with her with no awareness or criticism about how she looked, compared to the outside world where people were intelligent and knowledgeable, but then only saw things at their face value. She then wondered why at all did she ever behave and think according to the dictates of false social values. She discovered that she had a uniqueness that was hers alone including all those mad people who were “other” to the rational world, but she never appreciated it, in all that time, what she wanted to be was to be the same as everyone else. And yet when she didn’t stand out in that sameness with others she hated it. She seemed insignificant and anonymous. .

Enamored of Eduard’s affections, Veronika started to become aware of her emo-

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tions, allowing herself to feel and enjoy becoming alive, being fully human, falling in love, becoming aroused sexually, even hating and getting frustrated. For the first time in her life she understood the void inside her. She just wanted to feel.

The entire landscape of emotions made her realize the value and meaning of life which was not so much a reason to live for inasmuch as it was the feeling of being alive and to be with someone who can share it.

But then, she slowly awakened to the view that perhaps, it wasn’t really her appearance that she anguished about. Something was missing; a gap or hole that needed to be filled. She longed for a happiness and belongingness that for a long time she had never felt.

“Collective madness is called sanity ..” ― Paulo Coelho

But it wasn’t all too easy for Veronika to respond to the warmth and love given to her by these special people that she met. Falling and being in love meant sacrificing certain valuable attachments as it meant also gambling with future outcomes which supposedly have been already secured and predicted for with plans. What added to the insecurity was the many stories of different people who gambled their lives on love and their outcomes were so frustrating. These people ended up bitter, shutting themselves away from the world, putting up all sorts of defenses. Their world had shrunk and they shut out all possibilities and opportunities that the future could bring.

What could open up these people to trust again could have been a firm foundation in faith but Veronika never really believed that God exists. Her way of ra32

tionalizing this was that if God had existed, then he would know our limitations, weaknesses, as well as tendencies for evil and perversion. If he was all that powerful, then he would have insulated and protected us from ourselves but then, evil continued to prevail. There was still corruption, injustice, greed, and poverty. The permission of all things evil by God, wasn’t that also a participation in the evil itself?

Veronika remembered her mother who once said “God knows the past, the present, and the future.” Veronika speculated that if God had known her tendency to commit suicide, and actually allowed it, then he might have had a specific reason or purpose for it, not that God encouraged it, but that the experience of dying might actually bring with it its own brand of wisdom. Coelho said “Dying makes us conquer fear of death.”

The real death may not really be biological at all but a life lived with no purpose. Coelho said that that purpose had to be found by us from experience; it is not a knowledge that society could give us. Of course, we don’t have to commit suicide in order to discover the value of life more intensively but that, with the story of Veronika, those who did it and survived it testify that even from the other end of life there is greater life still.

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Artwork by Maria Alexandra Camille C. Ramos, 1 BS EPU

7

!e Devil and M$s Prym

by Jennise Gyle L. Manuel

34

The Bookwizard Notes

I

n a little village called Viscos in France, with only 281 inhabitants, there lived Berta, a widow who always sat outside her humble shack observing common people passing by, and Chantal Prym, an attractive young girl who worked in the bar. A stranger visited this remote place in search of an answer for his bewildered thoughts: are people naturally good or evil? He brought with him a notebook where he recorded everything and eleven gold bars, which he utilized as a reward to challenge the village people’s fear of committing murder. The stranger told Chantal his plans and gave her the task to announce to the villagers that within a week, if there will be an inhabitant found murdered, the gold bars will be divided equally and distributed to all the inhabitants of the village.

As the inhabitants fell into the trap of the stranger, a priest, the mayor, together with other villagers of Viscos came up with the suggestion to sacrifice Berta who was old anyway. Berta was a good choice to be expended, being the village fool.

She talked to the ghost of her dead husband and other spirits, read people’s evil intentions and predicted future events. Human nature is defined in the story as having tendencies for both good and evil and having the freedom to choose between. The story is a modern version of the ancient tale of the battle between good and evil.

I would first like to tackle the faces of the devil here. To begin with, the stranger who fueled the entire drama, happened to be a good person in the past but his entire family had been murdered by terrorists. He was overwhelmed by the question as to whether the human is really innately good or bad. And so he planned on experimenting, choosing a small naive village where community relationships were close and organic, seemingly untouched by systemic evil prevalent in large modern societies. But his very experiment is evil in itself. We are reminded here of the biblical tale of Job, about the devil putting to test human beings in order to prove to God their innate weakness, as it were, to make God guilty about the mistake of loving the human race. In the book, one philosopher said, “Even God has his evil, his love for mankind.”

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The devil in us is also revealed in our attachments that weaken the resolve for the good. The stranger’s first victim was an easy prey, Chantal, a pretty barmaid who would give anything to get out of the village and go to the big city but didn’t have enough funds to do it. She reenacted the temptation of the stranger over to the villagers by inciting them to murder and the villagers were also enamored of the lusty offer because they too, dreamt of transforming the quaint anonymous village into a prominent place. Attachments dull our sensibilities for the objective system of values. We are reminded of Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov in ‘Crime and Punishment’ who planned of killing his landlady because he would do the world some favor by eliminating the good-for-nothing. This was also the same reasoning used by the villagers on Berta. One fool for the prosperity of all was the grand choice. Berta was the escape goat in psychoanalysis’ shadowplay. The refusal to

“There are two kinds of idiots - those who don't take action because they have received a threat, and those who think they are taking action because they have issued a threat.” ― Paulo Coelho

accept the evil in oneself is to cast fault upon another, the shadow. We remember that Jesus was killed as a societal scapegoat, “it is better that one man be killed in place of many others.” It was a social evil. Such was also the fate of Berta.

There is also a devil in the temptation of performing murder for the sake of ‘being different’ and having ‘something new’. Viscos had a past history of being a place marauded by thieves, prostitutes, and criminals. It had been transformed into a quiet and stable village for so many years that people who lived in it got bored.

Part of the reason why the villagers wanted to commit murder was the boredom of not having ‘anything big’ happening in the village. People were trapped in the idea of their life in the village as being ‘too unchangeable and customary’, that

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probably, they had been dreaming of committing murder all their lives just to have some form of perk.

The next aspect to be discussed is the faces of God inherent in the goodness of the characters. The past life of the stranger which was revealed to be originally good reminded us of Lucifer who started out as God’s favorite but fell from grace.

We presume that Chantal had a good life before her parents died. Berta was the outcast of the village but tried to serve it by reading its future disasters through her special divination powers. She had known that the stranger would inflict harm and disorder in the village. It was young and impressionable Chantal who won over the side of good and overturned evil. Chantal planned on stealing the gold bars and escaping but by a twist of conscience and circumstances went back to the villagers and halted the murder on Berta. She disclosed the plan of the stranger and argued that by killing Berta, the people prove to the stranger and also to themselves that their innate nature was indeed evil. Berta was thus spared.

The face of God here is the recognition that human dignity, if we believe it initially to be of grace, cannot sell itself for all the gold in the world. It was shown in the story that the villagers loved their little Viscos and cared enough for its reputation.

Viscos had a folk legend that told of Saint Savin whom the villagers believed was the predecessor of their race. Saint Savin fought the evil, Ahab, who, later on discovered his oneness of nature with Savin. In short, a great convincing force to battle evil is simply to remember that one has an equal capacity for the good because they are two faces of the same coin.

To reinforce one’s identification for the good, God must will it necessary to put us to the test. We cannot be spared of the test, as Jesus himself, who supposedly contained goodness beyond test was also put to the test. For good to prevail over evil, evil must be emphasized before the tempted subject. The very chaos in the village had the intent of exposure that the confusion was caused by an external element set at turning all of them against each other, as is the nature of every evil agenda. The villagers before had lived in peace and rallied behind the figure of Saint Savin. The villagers needed a historical moment that would remind them to drop their weapons and make a claim of their origin. The book quoted the bibli37

cal passage “And Jesus said unto him, “Why callest thou me good? None is good, save one, that is God.” Goodness is not so much to remember one’s nature as it is to remember that one comes from God or that one is beloved by God who alone is good.

The book touches the sensitive question: does God have to allow evil to happen to us in order for us to do good such as the tragic loss of the stranger’s beloved wife and daughter to terrorists? This is a difficult question. One cannot divine the mind of God let alone his agenda in history. But what the book suggests is that the battle between good and evil in us is portrayed in external events, as if we’re watching our own drama on historical television. The effects of good and evil are juxtaposed in a kind of barometer such that the intensity of evil is always matched by an equal intensity of goodness and we have to see it on the external plane for us to make the choice.

The character that I adore the most is Chantal Prym. I resonate in her as a young woman: gullible, rash in judgment, and yet did not fail to confront the great evil before her. In bravely rushing at the forefront of the battle, she was able to convince the entire village of what was at stake. What I would remember from this story is our lesson on freedom: we discover its full use at the pinnacle of our entrapment in the battle between good and evil.

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Artwork by Anna Patricia G. Nuque, 1 BA AV

Eleven

8

Minutes

by Mikhaila Rae Ann M. Alejo

39

The Bookwizard Notes

T

he story took place in Brazil in the home of a prostitute named Maria. Her heart was broken on her first encounter with love at a young age. Maria attempted to find love through numerous relationships with different men but failed. She came to the point of realizing that love was nothing but a source of pain and suffering and swore never to fall again in love’s traps. Maria settled to find a new life when an opportunity to go to Geneva came up. She aimed at a goal to find fortune, adventure, and surprisingly, a husband during her stay there. In Geneva, Maria received a couple of job offers, but due to an unfortunate turn of events, she winded up again in prostitution. In a year’s time, Maria planned to use the money she had invested to return home and build up her own business.

While love was a distant memory in her mind, sex remained a constant desire.

However, an unexpected meeting with a handsome painter named Ralph Hart challenged her categories of love and sex, and Maria is torn between finding her light and following the path of darkness with no guarantee of stability in both ways. A few days before she left for Brazil, she received an enlightenment about the path she should choose and the story ended with the last scene of the painter, waiting for her at the Paris airport, hoping for a reunion and a life of genuine love.

Paulo Coelho’s portrayal of human life in this story is characterized as dull and monotonous. There’s nothing new or exciting that ever happens in a person’s life; things always being a routine and persons living the same cycle of events. But despite the ennui, human life at least enjoys a stability and people seem to prefer that rather than risk its predictability for an “adventure”. Such was the life of Maria. Selling her own body to clients provided her a stable job but finding another means of income would mean placing her source of livelihood at risk. But she lacked fulfillment at what she did. Almost everyone in the story appeared dissatisfied with what they do. Instead of being able to pursue the path people truly desired, they end up taking something else, which repeats the same pattern of boredom and a desperation to get out of it. Maria stated that no one ever chose 40

to do the things they do, including her. They just found themselves caught in the hob of meaninglessness. The sexual act which was prominent in the life of Maria was symbolical in the search for ultimate passion which provided temporary fulfillment. Sex alone, according to Ralf, without the essence of heart, makes the passion ebb down to the same emptiness, nothing but a routine and a basic necessity to feed primal instinct.

Thus, all the characters in the story appeared to have a significant need for companionship. Maria observed that the customers who visited the nightclub were experiencing loneliness and insecurities, and for which all prostitutes provided therapy, even if it meant engaging in flattery and pretension, because it served capitalistic purposes. It would make them come back to the nightclub and thus, keep the business going. Prostitution was shown to be extremely manipulative, on both ways, for the client and the prostitute, banking on people’s weaknesses in a kind of a sadomasochistic ritual, and having some temporal gain out of it but only to be riveted to it in some sort of existential despair. Being engaged in the business of prostitution, the characters in the story demonstrated an inability to remain faithful to their spouses or to anyone, such as that of the case of a librarian’s infidelity. People were often changing interests, Lastly, it implied that the human can never be completely loyal to anyone. As shown by the librarian’s inability to remain faithful to her husband, people can be spontaneous, often changing interests and possibly straying from the path they had chosen, even if it was only for a short period of time.

All the seemingly morally depraved characters made the story very unusual in the sense that there was no one who could appeal to the reader’s sympathy; they were all disagreeable people: bored, selfish, egoistic, and narrow-minded. It was their pain and suffering that begged the reader’s compassion; their inability to understand their situation as such, the human fragility wrought from a pattern of dependency, trust, but in the end, disappointment at being deluded. Life here is a double-edged sword. If you trust someone with love, you end up being tricked. If you try isolation and independence, you suffer loneliness.

To sketch God in the story, he is someone who reveals himself only to the few people who wish to recognize him. He appeared to be apathetic to people’s suf41

fering as most of the characters have experienced nothing but misfortune and loneliness; some had to endure a life they have never wanted, and others had to part with their loved ones in order to make a living.

Despite the hopelessness, the novel Eleven Minutes, showed that God never gives up on his people, and will always guide their souls to the right path by the end of the day from all of their temptation and deceit. As implied in the story, God seemed to be in charge of people’s fates. The people were unaware of this, but realize after some events that God had never left them alone and that each event in their life was significant and had served a purpose. A lot of people in the story seemed to have little to no faith in God, mostly because of their life’s circum“I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It's all a question of how I view my life.” ― Paulo Coelho

stances and would judge belief based on how agonizing or pleasurable life is, but few people, who remained strongly devoted to him, such as Maria, were always open to surprises and blessings, no matter how absurd they are.

Since the face of God here appeared to be one who was alienated and absent in the lives of people who in turn, had very little or no faith, the recourse of the people was to seek their own ways of finding solutions whether by succumbing to sexual temptations or a more ideal one such as confronting one’s demons by introspection but even that seemed to fail. But for those like Maria who never gave up the search, willing to gamble for the road less travelled, spontaneous grace could be given, through the person of Ralf, an artist, who presented her the other side of life, one with love and conviction. The choice for a possible life with Ralf became Maria’s redemption, from which light and God’s mercy shone through.

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The presence of God meant a deliverance from senselessness, and a surging feeling of wholeness, healing, and a greater purpose for which one may dedicate one’s life to- like love.

One could only wonder what the other characters’ salvation would be but with Maria’s happy ending, the reader gains an insight that every person’s life is different and that special secret passage which is a way out of loneliness and meaninglessness would be unique. While the opening scenario awakened us to the absurdity and complexity of life, Maria’s story leaves hope for mercy that could only come from a transcendent being.

Perhaps the title “Eleven Minutes” which supposedly is a tragic number for many who recall the 9-11, but in contradiction, the number 1 (and a double 1 at that) really indicates a new birth, a new beginning. Maria found a life beyond the roller coaster of sex and money. There is a life beyond darkness if one had faith, a passion to search, a willingness to risk, and a sense of adventure.

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Artwork by Alyssa Mariel L. Bauza, 1 BA COM

9

!e Zahir

by Havienne Marie R. Jimenez

44

The Bookwizard Notes

Z

ahir in Arabic language means conspicuous or obvious. The story took place in Paris, France. This seemed a variation of Coelho’s many autobiographical fictions. The narrator (Michael Gardiner) was a successful writer with many bestselling books translated into different languages. He lived a life of luxury and engaged in some wayward love affairs. He was married to a woman named Esther for 10 years. Esther worked as a journalist and war correspondent. Other characters were: Mikhail, who served as Esther's interpreter for Kazakh language since he came from Kazakhstan in Central Asia; and Marie, who became the narrator’s girlfriend after the disappearance of his wife, Esther.

The reason for Esther’s disappearance was unknown and the Narrator wondered if she had been killed or murdered or that she intentionally left because she was dissatisfied with her marital relationship. The narrator embarked on a journey to find her, gradually discovering that the search for his wife was also a search for himself. In a book launching, he met Mikhail with whom Esther had worked closely with before her disappearance and thus could be of help in finding her. To enlist the support of Mikhail, the Narrator got engaged into the latter’s esoteric beliefs and customs in their meetings at the Armenian restaurant. Mikhail introduced the author into the art of listening to the voice and letting it take lead and his outreach work of ‘spreading love’ by helping beggars and nomads. This kind of adventure appealed to the narrator as people shared with him their own personal tales and experiences which filled him with love and joy. One day, the narrator received a note from Mikhail which indicated the place where Esther could be found. In a hurry to meet his wife, the narrator met an accident. This delayed the most suspenseful reconciliation but it gave him time to reflect. Eventually, he understood that the timing was right, to let things be as they came.

When the narrator was prepared to finally meet his wife in Kazakhstan, he went accompanied by Mikhail. Along the journey with Mikhail, the narrator was reborn according to the Tengri tradition.

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In this religious tradition, people worship the sky and believe in divinities. They ask the divine for blessings and bless other people in return, directing and circulating the free energy of love that flows through the world. But what blocks that energy are negative feelings stored in us like guilt, confusion, attachments such as those demonstrated in the character of the narrator. Happiness is to let go of those blocks and allow the energy of love to flow into the empty spaces inside us in order to be reborn. As a result of the narrator’s rebirth, the ending twisted in that instead of going to the place where the wife could be found, the narrator went to the place where he could find himself. This freed him from the Zahir which was Esther, his obsession.

“The wise are wise only because they love.

And the foolish are foolish only because they think they can understand love.” ― Paulo Coelho

In this fiction work, being human means to intensify the quality of life by finding love and happiness. Every human wants to live happily. People pretend to be happy just because they have everything in which that everything is defined by what they thought they wanted. That everything is also what society imposed as the ideal of contentment. Only a few people know what they really want. Thus, unhappiness is the experience of finding out that after gaining all what was initially thought could be the source of happiness, those things, still, are void of meaning.

Being unhappy stems from the question of why we are still unhappy after amassing all the riches in the world. And so we are launched into our own personal saga of searching for more. That which we search, we do not know. But we hope to find what it is as soon as we push ourselves in the search. This is the experience of faith.

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The Zahir also means the rules we follow and respect or that which is the object of our obsession. In order to move forward and to let go of the Zahir in our life.

We need to be an acomadador, which means one who gives up or lets go. The story reminds us of a common experience in love in that when someone we love is with us, we tend to take that person for granted, or in worst cases, abuse the person, but when we lose him or her, it is only then when we discover the value of the fact that we were loved and what gives us pain is that we didn’t even deserve that love. So we look again for a lost love but what we are really looking for is a reconciliation with ourselves; it is not forgiveness of the other that we seek but that we may forgive ourselves. It is only then that we could open ourselves to the possibility of loving and being loved again.

God is projected in this story, first, as the current of love that permeates the world freely as mentioned earlier in the Tengri religion, then in the person of the voice.

The voice told Mikhail that he must do something about a particular thing or situation when the time was right. Mikhail surrendered his decisions to the voice and it guided him reliably. We translate this in life as listening to our hearts especially in times of confusion and despair when all advice by others seem not to make sense or give light. When the beckoning interior voice is coupled with external symbols, people would recognize their meaning because they would feel a personal familiarity with it.

I learned that indeed, this life is a process of becoming human and the story featured that process in the act of forgiving and rediscovering ourselves. There is an adage that says we cannot love others unless we love ourselves first. But even the act of love, that we say is paramount in all virtues, needs reflection. It is that process of reflection which defines what is good for us and what will make us happy and most importantly, how to love. When we understand our past, we are freed from its fetters. We become free to love, to be happy, and even to suffer again for the sake of those whom we cherish. If God’s energy of love flows in and through beings, then salvation is always available. It just depends on our recognition of it, how we understand its purpose, and take up the task.

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Artwork by Christine Joy B. Sarmiento, 1 BS LTM

!e Witch

of Po(obello

by Pauline F. Aura

48

The Bookwizard Notes

T

he most unique style about this novel is that the story was unravelled not only from one person’s point of view but from the eyes of the different people who had known a woman named Athena. To add a spicy twist, it turned out that the said character had been already dead.

Athena’s real name was Sherrine Khalil, the mysterious Witch of Portobello. Narrating their personal experiences about her were: Heron Ryan, a forty-four year old journalist, Andrea McCain, a thirty-two year old actress who was also the girlfriend of Heron, and of course, Athena herself. The story started off with Heron lamenting about the death of Athena, nostalgic about his life before with her, and the feelings he had nurtured for her. The narrative of Andrea takes over who, despite her bitterness toward Athena, seemed to be equally saddened over the news of her death. Other voices also shared stories, but the most significant ones were those of Athena’s mother and her ex-husband.

From the nuggets of stories about Athena, the book gradually revealed that she was a special child, born of a gypsy woman, and as such trained to have some sixth sense or as some would plainly put it, highly spiritual. She possessed prophetic gifts and to demonstrate, she had once predicted an incoming war in their homeland. Athena was also perceived to be psychologically mature for her age.

The nickname given her after the Greek goddess bore her a special mark. Her reputation of having unusual powers accompanied her as she grew up, sometimes throwing others into a confusion about who she really was but whether taken in the negative or in the positive sense, the people who knew her had reported an unquestionably immense spirituality exuded by her person.

The theme of this story was apparently the journey of self-discovery. “How do we find the courage to be true to ourselves – even if we are unsure of who we are?”

Athena had traveled through all sorts of different places and countries in the hope of discovering her roots – starting from the mother who had abandoned her.

She wanted to fill up this emptiness in her heart, the blank spaces, and she thought that if she found her origin, this would fill up the gaps in her heart. But even when she had already met her mother, whom she came to forgive for aban49

doning her, Athena continued searching. I can’t seem to explain it, but once humans have realized that the world had a lot more depth than it seemed to have, it spurned an endless desire for them to search. I don’t know why exactly we are driven to such a cause, but our insatiable thirst to reach our fullest potential had always characterized human nature.

The story presented Athena as a person who was so successful at everything she did to the point that every single person who met her adored her; they’re fascinated by her enigma. What was astonishing was that despite her being an epitome of perfection, a person whom everybody definitely wanted to imitate and become, the truth was quite the contrary: she was deeply dissatisfied and unfulfilled.

“The Martyr finds her way to self-knowledge through pain, surrender, and suffering.

The Saint finds her true reason for living in unconditional love and in her ability to give without asking anything in return.

Finally, the Witch justifies her existence by going in search of complete and limitless pleasure.” ― Paulo Coelho

I couldn't help but relate to Athena in some points of the story, especially with her personality. Just like Athena, I was raised by loving parents, and yet, even that turned out to be inadequate for me to achieve happiness. Having been dissatisfied with her worldly aims, Athena moved beyond and considered searching for God’s purpose, a more noble aim but alas, had unpredictably winded her in reckless decisions, such as marrying and having a baby out of wedlock. While Athena’s desires were honest, her mistakes reminded us that she too, was human, and therefore flawed. She shouldered a lot of burden and suffering and yet considered these experiences as a participation in the holiness of this world. It certainly resonated with the image of Christ who was a perfect man in an imperfect society, sinless and yet shared all the yoke of sinfulness. Although we could 50

never achieve the perfection of character that Christ demonstrated, the struggle to be perfect, at least to our level of perfection inasmuch as one could muster, could be considered as our personal sacrifice for holiness.

This story had opened me to the possibility that God could be portrayed as a woman. It certainly awakened me about my physical perception of God, after all, we’ve never seen what God actually looked like. The story featured God as Mother or the Mother Goddess. Worshipping the Goddess meant giving praise to all of nature and creation, as Athena believed that everything is one with the Goddess; that all creation is a part of the Goddess as well. Though I know most of us refer to God as the Father, I think that it is possible to imagine a God - Mother as well. We commonly describe creation as a paternal act, yet, isn’t creation also a birthing - a maternal act? It would be interesting to take the challenge of classifying the abstract omnipotent God in a gender category, for it would certainly oscillate between the two genders. The story revealed a psychological principle in faith attitudes. Coelho teaches, for example, that people who disliked a Father figure who ruled with rigid discipline would prefer the more caring and loving Mother. Similarly, people who felt smothered by maternal love would probably identify more with the God-Father figure. But gendered or not, we recognize that God’s love is eternal and certainly transcends any categories even those of gender.

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Artwork by Joy Anne Javier, 2 BS ENT

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!e Winner Stands Alone

by Ella Zaidelle Plana

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The Bookwizard Notes

A

n engrossing introspection of human aspirations, The Winner Stands Alone invites us to reflect on the ethical implications of the price of our desires. The story unveiled in the prestigious Cannes Film Festival wherein all the world’s directors, producers, aspiring models, famous stars, what Coelho called the Superclass converged. The center of the story was the life of Igor--- a brilliant Russian telecom billionaire who lived a prosperous life. His life was all too perfect until his wife, Ewa, left him because of his treachery. Perfectly convinced that he was divinely ordained to possess his wife forever, he set out to do whatever it took just to get the love of his life back, even if it entailed destroying the entire world.

Other characters portrayed different shades of obsession. Hamid, a successful fashion designer desired nothing but the good of other people, but had been trapped in his own success. Gabriella, who aspired to live a glamorous life, had been convinced that fame is what mattered most in life. They only want one thing - to be a winner of life. Being a winner meant having everything--- love, success, honor, and fame, seemingly noble ideals according to society. But Coelho exposed his characters as merely blind pawns of societal expectations and norms.

He posed the question if the chase for worldly desires could really satisfy us.

As humans, we are given the freedom of choice to decide what ideals to pursue but sometimes the desire is overblown. Love, which is supposedly a spiritual aspiration, turns deadly when short-circuited. Igor threatened Ewa with cryptic messages about the series of murders that he plotted if she would not consent to return to him. The story unfolded as a psychological thriller of how Igor carried out ceremoniously each bloody murder one after another. Ewa ignored his warnings, as she’s already caught up in her own affair with a rich entrepreneur and designer of haute couture, Hamid.

A highlight of the story was an interesting tale by Igor. If a frog is placed in a container with water, it will remain there even when the water is being slowly heated up. When the water reaches its boiling point, the frog dies. But when a frog is 53

thrown into a container full of boiling water, it would jump, scalded but alive. I interpret this as two reactions to life’s suffering - the boiling point. One is denial, wherein a person immersed in suffering and pain for a long time learns to live within it and pretends not to know what’s going on. But some people who had an orientation of a basically good life choose to jump up and take a different path to escape the miserable condition. Whatever the aftermath of the choice, Igor implied that they are both fueled by an obsessive desire for a peak experience.

Images of God were shown through the characters’ life experiences. Igor had a military service background wherein surviving war battles gave him a distorted messianic complex of being ordained by God for a higher purpose. He interchanged evil for good and perversely interpreted the murders he orchestrated as sacrifices for the pleasure of God. “People are never satisfied. If they have a little, they want more. If they have a lot, they want still more. Once they have more, they wish they could be happy with little, but are incapable of making the slightest effort in that direction.” ― Paulo Coelho

Hamid, Igor’s rival and present husband of Ewa came from a family of textile manufacturers. His country and family were oppressed by a ruler. The ruler offered him a choice that changed his life forever. The proposal was that in exchange of building a long-awaited city establishment, he may request anything from the ruler. Hamid carefully weighed the decision as it entailed the demolition of his family’s treasured ancestral house and the banishment of their business.

He consented to the proposal by telling the ruler that his request was a sponsorship to study in a fashion school in France. Hamid rose from all that he had lost

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to become a world icon in the fashion industry. Hamid believed in a God as one who picked up an anonymous person and gave him a prominent place.

Gabriella was a girl who was determined to do almost everything just to boost her fame and acting career. As a child, Gabriela was fond of acting but the people around her disapproved her passion. She lived in constant criticism. All the bitterness that she carried in life had made her strong. She promised herself that when the time came, everyone would look at her with wonder and jealousy. She believed that God would support her aspiration to succeed in tinseltown.

Personally, I admit that I desire to succeed, to live a happy and comfortable life someday. I labor to get good grades from professors so that I can return the sacrifices my parents are giving me. I aspire to be a women leader someday known to many people. But as I reread the story a couple of times, questions popped up inside my head: why am I doing the things I’m doing right now? what drives me to wake up every day? would I be really contented if I finally had the success, fortune, and comfort that I dreamed of? I resonated well in each of the characters in the sense that I discovered that dreams could sometimes be so self-centered.

What amazed me was the extent to which people could go in order to materialize their desires, like Igor, to kill, just for love. There is a temptation to turn an obsessive desire into a kind of worship and religion, that we lose touch of reality and the formal order of values. Media plays a big role in blowing up the representations of false values. Even the idea of God could be distorted, as supporter of ego and self-centeredness. The desire of Igor to destroy the world for the sake of possessing Ewa was a sign of an ego that had been expanded to gigantic proportions larger than the world itself. In themselves, fame, power, beauty, and money don’t mean anything if their final objective happens to be just our selves.

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Artwork by Anna Cecilia S. Vergara, 2 BA COM

12

Aleph

by Sherwina A . Castillo

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The Bookwizard Notes

A

leph is about Paulo Coelho’s life, how he gained renewal, happiness, and satisfaction in life through faith. In the story, he recounted a supposedly exciting career of a popular writer that he was in the many book launching and signing events he had, but complained about being trapped in the tiring routine of life. He felt expended, purposeless, and empty, as if life didn’t have spice and he wasn’t looking forward anymore to any adventure.

The story began in his conversation with his friend, J, whom he regarded as a spiritual guru. J. advised him to conquer his kingdom again, which meant to get rid of the inner conflict in his life, to stand up, bounce back, and regain the happiness he had lost from within. He told Paulo to move and do something about the present to alter the future. At first, he did not fully comprehend J.’s words but then, they began to have meaning when he read the myth about the Chinese bamboo tree. In the myth, a man plants a bamboo tree which doesn’t sprout immediately despite relentless watering and nurturing. But he doesn’t not give up.

When finally it gave shoots, it grew up ninety feet tall.

The myth about the bamboo sparked in Coelho a motivation to explore the world and search for happiness. He traveled along the Trans-Siberian railway and met a young girl named Hilal, a violinist he had loved in a past reincarnation.

Paulo and Hilal, being soulmates, were swept by primordial feelings, became friends instantly and had many enjoyable and intimate moments together which culminated in a place known as Aleph, in which they felt being at the same place at the right time. They fell in love, discovered their identities as ancient lovers and resolved their conflict about their past tragic love affair. Paulo’s frustrated love affair in a past reincarnation was a conflict between his religious vows to the Church and the love he bore for Hilal which he had nurtured since childhood. Hilal was a woman equally torn apart by sexual abuse from another and thus battled against humiliation and loss of self-respect as a woman. Yao, Paolo’s trans-

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lator, joined the party of misery. He was also encumbered by grief over the death of his wife.

In their trip, Paulo encountered more people of different backgrounds and dramas, and in all his experiences of them, he learned the value of love, forgiveness, and courage. In the end, Paulo overcame the darkness of his past and rekindled his life with faith.

Paulo’s story speaks of the human odyssey of trying to fill life with what society considers as significant preoccupations such as trying to be successful in a career, becoming famous, and creating a name for ourselves. What is ironical is

“God only allows us to see such things when he wants something to change” ― Paulo Coelho

that for those of us who had never reached the peaks and have settled for the mediocre, we supposedly look up to these people who have become icons of what it means to have a flawless life, and yet we are treated to the same scenario of hopelessness and meaninglessness. They are in the same boat as we are and so does it still make sense to achieve anything in life?

It brings us to a realization that there are deeper needs than money and fame. It is the endless yearning to understand ourselves. In the disability to pick up the pieces, we question the idea of transcendence and it helplessly delivers us over to a confrontation with God. Surprisingly, the God we seek appears in the compassion of people around us who share the same fate as we do. The world has 58

become suddenly large. In this communion and fellowship, all our sufferings together shrink and shrivel. Hilal, for example, shared that the greatest temptation that pain could give us is not the hopelessness but the tendency to alienate ourselves, thinking that we are the target of curse. But even in pain, when we find friendship and are filled with love, we heal and begin to acknowledge that there is a God who saves.

God, in Aleph, appears to be a persona who is the host of the odyssey. There seems to be three origins of pain and suffering in the story. Paulo exemplifies the suffering borne from one’s decisions. Hilal is a figure that demonstrates the origin of misery from evil done by others whereas with Yao, his fate is drawn from an existential limitation of being mortal. In all of three, God appears as the host of never-ending questions. He is the host of philosophy and the master of the game of search. God pokes the questions but he suspends the answers, as if not wanting us to find the absolute truth that easily. Perhaps, the reason why God suspends the finale is that he wants us to find friendship in the search, like people giving feed to each other’s questions, filling up each other’s holes. In a community of seekers of truth, the search becomes the very answer to our questions, when we discover that love and friendship heal all forms of alienation and brokenness and they are far more important than the questions human beings bear in their hearts.

God is depicted as the ruler of time and eternity. Perhaps, the reason why the novel was entitled Aleph is that God designates the right place and time for us to encounter truth. God, as an Omnipotent has control of everything; he meets up and matches people with each other wherein one’s richness may fill another’s lack. The definition of faith in Aleph is waiting for God’s time - when things will have a convergence point. The idea is that the question we have is not just about us but about the world we belong to.

Growing up in an average family in which financial challenges are somehow normal, I was raised by my parents to study very hard and aim high in my life as a student. My preoccupation with perfection became very evident in my own achievements in academics especially in grades. I am very happy and for a moment thought that my life was on a steady path already. But like Paulo, my consis59

tent efforts to achieve left me feeling very tired, as if life is just a routine of studying and stressing myself. Things changed when I met my friends who have taught me to explore and go beyond my familiar zone, to live a life of fun and adventure. We shared realizations in life. I grew in social awareness. I realized that the universe cannot be all about achieving. I learned how to accommodate more spontaneity and have less of judgments that spring from the nagging standards of excellence. I also began to accept my flaws and fears.

Hope in Aleph means something unknown and undefinable awaits me and I wish to participate in its revelation.

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