I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... 'I spoke to three scholars,' [the character says 'at last.'] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]' ...I can see that he's excited. [narrator]' ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a 'literary' writer based on this quote. A 'literary' author knows that a character's excitement should be 'shown' in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator's commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the 'I can see that he's excited' sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), 'a remote human possibility.' He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!

7 Rules to a Happy Life:1. Be humble2. Don’t worry 3. Don't settle for less4. Mind your business5. Work hard 6. Play hard7. Be nice

I get so god damn lonely and sad and filled with regrets some days. It overwhelms me as I’m sitting on the bus; watching the golden leaves from a window; a sudden burst of realisation in the middle of the night. I can’t help it and I can’t stop it. I’m alone as I’ve always been and sometimes it hurts…. but I’m learning to breathe deep through it and keep walking. I’m learning to make things nice for myself. To comfort my own heart when I wake up sad. To find small bits of friendship in a crowd full of strangers. To find a small moment of joy in a blue sky, in a trip somewhere not so far away, a long walk an early morning in December, or a handwritten letter to an old friend simply saying ”I thought of you. I hope you’re well.”No one will come and save you. No one will come riding on a white horse and take all your worries away. You have to save yourself, little by little, day by day. Build yourself a home. Take care of your body. Find something to work on. Something that makes you excited, something you want to learn. Get yourself some books and learn them by heart. Get to know the author, where he grew up, what books he read himself. Take yourself out for dinner. Dress up for no one but you and simply feel nice. it’s a lovely feeling, to feel pretty. You don’t need anyone to confirm it.I get so god damn lonely and sad and filled with regrets some days, but I’m learning to breathe deep through it and keep walking. I’m learning to make things nice for myself. Slowly building myself a home with things I like. Colors that calm me down, a plan to follow when things get dark, a few people I try to treat right. I don’t sometimes, but it’s my intent to do so. I’m learning.I’m learning to make things nice for myself. I’m learning to save myself.I’m trying, as I always will.

She was an echo masquerading as a shadow and she followed me just the same. The night and its moon were her favor while the sunrise and sunlight the daggers that sliced her to ribbons. She looked through half closed eyes at a blind world filled with wide eyes staring at walls. She felt pity with no care while around here steamed a burden too dense to bear. In the hours before dawn her tears slide to her jaw as a soft song escapes from between her cracked lips. A barbed song of glory and woe that hugs her tight and steals her breath, each line a quiver, every word a bind. A cage in her image meant to be broken. Destroy and recreate, scar after scar shallow and deep, her dreams were her life and the nightmares her sleep. Dark circles under eyes that truly see, time while awake moves more slowly. It trickles past her, eroding her being and pulling on her delicate seams. She unravels a little each day, tucking the threads back in every which way. In the night she is flawless and clear, the moonlight dancing in swirls, throwing half formed monograms against her wall. She traces these curves and whispers her story, an imprint in an ocean of churning shadows. Her imagination plays a scene of a teary-eyed embrace on the shores of a former dream, where droplets of her soul fell wildly below, where they and her became a part of a much larger whole. A smile rips her taunt and clenched face, the memory of the feeling of an unreal embrace. She holds herself tightly in a corner with no light and shudders with every pinprick of the downpour of night. Though muffled by the glass of her self imposed flask, she hears the birds singing their song, the natural alarm of impending light. She waits patiently for the sun, counting the half seconds and making time slow, her grey eyes less than aimless and staring at the clouds. With half closed eyes now shining a golden haloed blue, she watches the sky change colors from soft to brilliant hue. The flood of life and color takes her by surprise every day and which way. The rip cuts a little more, her restless thoughts take note and pause. She just wants to scream. To swallow the vibrant light and flood her veins with all the color ever seen, a strange desire to fix what is broken and yet wanting to break. She loses count of the seconds in the wrinkles of her palms, mere dust to wind, ashes to gale. She recites the deadly seven and stops at lust, how different from love while still the same in a twisted way. Her knees press against the worn, wooden floor with no intent to pray, she just wants the numbness and the pain. There are some things right and a few that are wrong, feeling the breath of freedom tapered against the need to belong, The sun now vomits its light across the cragged horizon, illuminating manmade lines and verdurous fuzz, her rip widens in distaste and her mind frowns in disgust. Her heart hangs limp as a shattered mirror reflecting its own cracks, each inaudible beat a glimmer of a glimpse of something more than her created deceit. This is hope. In a fragile and faceted way, the reflects are abyss and ascension portrayed intertwined with no ties holding them together. She is the half second of the transition of the beat, the moment her heart begins to flex and show more than bones and maneuverable meat. She wonders about the subtle difference between spirit and soul and whether she needs only one or both to be whole. Shaking her head as if to dislodge her thoughts, they steer from the tracks and tumble and crash, destruction and turmoil birthing creation and a new path. She thinks about the way she thinks and comes full triangle, it feels right to be so jagged rather than unburdened as a circle. With a sigh and a breath, she stands against the weight of her shoulders and the unbalance of her feet. Her half closed eyes slowly fade to grey as the light and color in the sky changes and decays. She is the moments before the sun rises and sets-1-2-3

She was a mimicry of a facade fashioned from the half-truths of her life. She was a beautiful abomination, patched together from the most pristine and terrible parts she could find. She was a black crystal of many cuts and facets whose dark glow suffocated and entranced those it washed over. There was a pointlessness in her eyes and apathy in her stature, and further in, past the symphonies of nightmarish screams was a blinding light. All the capability she could ever ask for kept in a place she would never reach. She chose the ice rather than the fire, shivering and hard with heat sparse, for while a flicker can exist in freeze's cold, it's heat will not radiate, no matter how bold. She took my face in hands that would make ice seem warm and whispered a blizzard into my ear, a cascading song of fear after fear. The lies she spilled, mixed with regrets and appeal, were cloaked in the inferno of her rage, the anger, the only thing that really made her real. This was her one semblance of life, a bottomless and endless void of proportions vast with a calamity of fusion and fission streaking through, a mindless hue, an emotion with a face, a darling of her race. The cracks spew darkness from within her ever so pale skin. They congregated on her curves and flesh in black and churning rivers and streams. They flooded every dip with blackness. They filled every hollow with unstable curiosity, this is her release, this is when she is free. The faces of deceit always laugh, they never wallow for their lies are a pleasure tool, her insides are contorted in laughter the same way, just as slick, just as cruel. A crude combination of fascination, of animation, of the darkest demons of them all. She was poetry written in pen, scratched and scribbled again and again. Ink splattered across the page, and within those scrawled words, those small, sharp incisions, an image can be seen, and you're left to wonder what, in the end, this all could mean...

I gave her the world, the moon, the sun, the stars, the planets... I gave her my breath, my voice, my sight, my life... I gave her memories, dreams, happiness... I gave her care and compassion... I gave her everything... and with sickly curved words, venom dripping from her fingers, she whispered in a way that would shatter glass... between her poisonous lips and her barbed teeth, she told me a story of blackness and catastrophe... from her mind a story of corruption and infamy sprang, her first touch an eternal perversion of my vision of life, an absolute seduction from the face of unbearable desire herself... the chills of a dead soul are frosty, a clouded layer of ash fills my insides, specks of dust fill my veins, empty thoughts smother my mind... and in the final steps of our pitifully destructive dance, I will dip you low, caress you so closely, feel the softness of your neck with the skin of my lips and, for that single moment, lost in the promise in your eyes and the intoxicating scent of your taunt body, I saw a sort of perfection that in any other place and light I would only hopelessly attempt to imagine... a horribly curious vividly creative swirl of chaos and flesh eating light, a specter of glow, paint and sound whose first inhalation is the slow quiver of last exhale, my exhale, my final whisper... I only wish I could have done more... but so impossible was it to resist what made her, her...

Spare parts lay scattered, every turn wrought with twisted dread, all over the ground, the rooftops, and they were still. Some moving, twitching, enough to almost see. Half cracked and shattered, but still visible and eerie, smiles spread wide and thin, teeth decayed and not, paralleled by hollowed, some missing or in other places, eyes of shades green and blue and some brown with red, but no white, just color portrayed, even if it may be dampened in every way. The beauty in the frivolity, the polished shining gears and cracked glass illuminated so brightly, create a portrait of terror and wonder, significance of a different sort, that only human eyes can see and human minds can feel, but all this is something only dreams, the ethereal concepts that fuse and mince chaos and order into a more paradoxical state, can create and fathom and fashion and make. And yet, doubts upon anxious contradictions, my fingers can feel the brokenness of what can be witnessed, an abyss within a void where deeper within the still lies a glow, a half pulse of a flutter, a vein of mimicry of the reverse of all I see, with concave eyes lost in the magnitude of image whole. Massive and monumental, my feet dragged behind me, cuts in the dirt and spiraling tracks. And then I awoke, half my world disappeared. So much empty within the whole, holes of sizes big and small and all between, the loss of, what it was to be called, my dream. And then my life ended, the holes and tears and cracks complete, empty eyes can still see so clearly, the nothingness that everything has become, shadow and matte a combination of dark on black, in the nothingness that all has become, it is all complete in a way opposite of what I know, a world different in every way and stretch I see, vision upon view of different and strange, only when empty eyes, longing for purpose dreading its meaning, gaze upon their own reflection will the last piece fall into place, a round puzzle of pieces triangular and square, the completeness in the nothingness can be seen, mind flooded with wonder, envisioning the antonym of a dream, and what, in this new beginning, this all could mean. With a blink it all changes, incomplete images appear, holes are wide and seen because you are back now, between death and dream, interwoven as an integral part of this necessary in between seam, and when you touch, worry creases the brow, their faces, half real and the other untouchable, your hand passes through their skin, penetration of the most intimate sort, holding their hearts as if for sport. The warmth, the beating, the crimson piercing blood, so beautiful, the engine that we run, pumping and pumping only to cause the most dreaded flood. Now I drown, and I see you drown too. Together, we are, for split seconds few, we are torn apart and disappear in this vast blood red hue.

She was beauty and intelligence stitched together with no seams She lived in a world with no difference between reality and dreams Excellence as habit, she was much more than simple flesh and bone She walked in the way that forced her presence to be known If I viewed the world in melody, she is the only one I would see She could conquer that world in a day and still have time for tea Soft lips curved in confidence spilling sweetness with every breath Ideas remaining and growing even after the revolving dance of death Fingers curled with the power of creation and the ease with which it came She sat upon a throne as a queen playing the world like a simple game She was fire, and laughter, and the warmth both of them brought She made the idea of perfection appear as a simple afterthought Her body danced with the tidal currents of marvelous desire She could reach the sky in a day and then push on even higher She was the best getting better, the absolute antonym of threshold The words she wrote were gilded, laid heavy with amber glow gold She was one of very many, and yet, she was the only one of them all Her taste made my mouth water, her effect hit me harder than alcohol She was quality, and substance, an actual angel in every way real Her word was solid, it was a better guarantee than a devil with a deal She was better than just human, more like power that has taken shape and form And I the lucky one who holds her close, feels her heartbeat quicken like a storm

We are sometimes dragged into a pit of unhappiness by someone else’s opinion that we do not look happy.

happiness pleasure humor despair sadness pain heartache joy suffering joke sad grief humour funny broken-hearted torment sorrow contentment blue impression misery depression happy heartbroken hurting melancholy ecstasy satisfaction smiling unhappy humorous quotes agony face opinion opinions unhappiness satire miserable holes impressions enjoyment jokes cheerfulness tribulation euphoria faces aphorism quotations dejection depressed hilarious distress down delight well-being joyful bliss content satisfied desolation aphorisms blissful woe hole sunny lightheartedness exhilaration joyfulness merriment gloom euphoric woeful forlorn cheerful rapture anguish carefree despondency despondent delighted morose aphorist aphorists gloomy exuberance merry joyous lighthearted wretchedness gaiety on-top-of-the-world glee beatific elated despairing ecstatic chagrin mournful pleased gratified as-happy-as-a-clam beaming blissfulness blithe buoyant cheerless cheery chirpy contented dejected disconsolate dispirited doleful dolefulness down-at-the-mouth down-in-the-dumps down-in-the-mouth downcast downhearted elation exhilarated exultant gleeful gloominess glum glumness good-spirits grinning in-a-good-mood in-good-spirits in-seventh-heaven jocular jocund jollity jolly jovial joviality joyless jubilant jubilation jumping-for-joy long-faced low-spirits lugubrious malaise mournfulness on-a-high on-cloud-nine over-the-moon overjoyed pit pits radiant rapturous sorrowful the-blues thrilled tickled-pink transports-of-delight untroubled walking-on-air woebegone

Christians must show that misery fits the good for heaven, while happiness prepares the bad for hell; that the wicked get all their good things in this life, and the good all their evil; that in this world God punishes the people he loves, and in the next, the ones he hates; that happiness makes us bad here, but not in heaven; that pain makes us good here, but not in hell. No matter how absurd these things may appear to the carnal mind, they must be preached and they must be believed. If they were reasonable, there would be no virtue in believing. Even the publicans and sinners believe reasonable things. To believe without evidence, or in spite of it, is accounted as righteousness to the sincere and humble christian.In short, Christians are expected to denounce all pleasant paths and rustling trees, to curse the grass and flowers, and glorify the dust and weeds. They are expected to malign the wicked people in the green and happy fields, who sit and laugh beside the gurgling springs or climb the hills and wander as they will. They are expected to point out the dangers of freedom, the safety of implicit obedience, and to show the wickedness of philosophy, the goodness of faith, the immorality of science and the purity of ignorance.

Happiness found me alone one day and took me by the hand.He showed me how the sun gave out its warmth across the land.Sadness found me content and smiling upward at the sun.He talked of droughts and blindness and what burning rays had done.Happiness found me alone again and pointed to the sky.He showed me how the storms created rainbows way up high.Sadness found me intrigued and took me to the rainbow’s end.He showed me how it disappeared to ne’er return again.Happiness found me alone and taught me how to sing a song.He sang a dozen melodies as I chirped right along.Sadness found me singing out and covered up his ears.He said the noise was deafening, and wished he couldn’t hear.Happiness found me alone and gave me seven coins of gold.He showed me many fancy things that merchants often sold.Sadness found me admiring the pretty things I’d bought.He pointed out my empty purse and money I had not.Happiness found me alone and helped me talk to someone new.He called the boy my friend and said that I was his friend too.Sadness found me together with my kind, attentive friend.He whispered of betrayal and how broken hearts don’t mend.Happiness found me alone and held me tight in his embrace.He whispered kindness in my ear and kissed me on the face.Sadness found me with Happiness but before he spoke at all,I told him he’d have better luck at talking to the wall.