NIGHT WATCH

NIGHTWATCH

Also read:
Celestial Handbook by Robert Burnham
Observers' Handbook
Astronomical Calendar
Sky & Telescope magazine
Read famous book by Carl Sagan

Is there a book that tells the history of the constellations?

Look up the story of Cepheus and Cassiopeia

"Only faintly now I see Him, With the darkling veil between, But a blessed day is coming, When His glory shall be seen. Face to face shall i behold Him, Far beyond the starry sky; Face to face in all His glory, I shall see Him by and by!"

"Oh, telescope, instrument of much knowledge, more precious than any sceptre, is not he who holds thee in his hand made king and lord of the works of God?"

"Many people tend to postpone their enjoyment of the stars beause they are constantly with us, but ... once you come to know [the stars], they never lose their appeal." - Helen Hogg

"Look up at the heavens and count the stars - if indeed you can count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be." Genesis 15:5
[More than 8000 stars are visible in the darkness of a near Eastern Night]

"What is inconceivable about the universe is that it should be at all conceivable." - Albert Einstein

"It is the very error of the moon; She cmes more near the Earth than she was wont; And makes men mad.

"Astronomy offers one of those pleasures which follow the law of increasing, rather than diminishing returns. The more you develop it, the more you enjoy it." Viscount Grey

We are voyagers on the earth through space, as passengers on a ship, and many of us have never thought of any part of the vessel but the cabin where we are quartered. - S.P. Langley

We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. - Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn

Who were they, what lonely men, Imposed on the fact of night, the fiction of constellations? - Patric Dickinson

The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine - Sir James Jeans

Julius Caesar quote about the sky being full of unnumbered sparks.

The rotates counterclockwise. This is logical as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Also it orbits the sun in the same direction as it rotates.

The big dipper always visible in the northern hemisphere and easily used as a guide for the sky to find all familiar constellations. (For Canada, US, Japan and Europe)

Orion's constellation can only be seen from Nov to Apr.
Belt points to Sirius to the left and Aldebaran to the right. (brighest star in Taurus)
Barnard's loop (the C shaped nebula to the left of the belt.
Between Betelgeuse and Belletrex go north and u will see Capella (part of the pentagon)
Now big arc from Cappella to Sirius that touches Caster Pollux and Procyon.

The Ecliptic - the planets follow this pattern (solar system much like a race track)
Jupiter requires 12 earth years for one trip around the sun.
Michael Ovenden from UBC knew a lot about the history of the constellations (look him up he may have written a book).

Pinky = 1 degree
Index+ring+middle = 5 degrees
Fist = 10 degrees
Index and pinky stretched = 15 degrees
Pinky + Thumb = 25 degrees

Star Charts by Hipparchus more than 2000 years ago show the same stars in almost the exact same alignment as we now see them today.



Spica = ear of wheat in Latin

Procyon = before the dog in Greek

Orion = The Hunter (Rigel = the foot; Betelguese = ancient Arabic for armpit of the almighty one.)

Polaris = pole star

Canis Major = the Great Dog (Sirius = scorching)

Auriga = the Charioteer (Capella = She Goat)

Corona Borealis = the Northern crown

Bootes = The Herdsman (Arcturus = Bear Guard)

Cepheus = King of Ethiopia
Cassiopeia = Wife of Cephius
Cygnus = the Swan


Cancer / Capricorn / Leo
Gemini = the twins (Castor = Beaver; Pollux = much wine)
Virgo = The maiden
Libra = the Balance
Scorpius = The Scorpion
Sagitarius = the archer
Aquarius = the water carrier
Pisces = the two fish
Aries = the ram
Taurus = the Bull


Photograph ideas =
1) rotating sky
2) constant and then a space station or satellite moving across the sky (see note below)
3) Lake Louise in the Winter can see Orion in the middle of the lake
4)

note: To look for satellites prime time is first hour of darkness is spring and summer
They have an altitude of 300 to 500 km and move across the sky in 2 to 3 minutes (28,000 km/h). www.heavens-above.com - viewing of satellites and international space station given your city on earth.

The dark ages is when Arabic astronomy advanced (remember they adopted Greek philosophy when Rome burned Alexandria).

US Air force keeps tabs on about 11,000 objects

page 36 and 37 include names of all constellations and their meanings (L, G, A)

British call the big dipper a plough. (7 stars)

SPRING:
Arcturus is the brightest star in the spring... speed on to spica...
Top 2 stars of Corvus point to spica

Binoculars can spot the beehive (between Regulus and Pollux; right beside Cancer.... just fuzz to the naked eye)

SUMMER:
Vega, Denab and Altair
Cignus (the Northern Cross is very visible in summer; includes Deneb at its head)
Lyra, the harp (includes Vega)
Aquila (the eagle, is the brightest star in its constellation)
Denab is one of the brightest stars in the entire galaxy 60,000 x brighter than our sun
Center of milky way galaxy is at the edge of the Sagitarius teapot (great way to scout the milky way is through binoculars, otherwise looks like a mist)
Look at epsilon Lirae (Chart 10 on page 6 through binoculars in the summer as well)
The end of the Fish hook of scorpius to the tip of Sagitarius teapot (a ton of stars concentrated here but difficult to see at 48 degrees latitude)

AUTUMN
Cassiopeia is the main locator object in the sky during the fall.
- 2 middle stars point to the center square of pegasus (opposite direction to polaris). Pegasus is huge. (kind of looks like a huge big dipper)
- the 2 parallell lines of pegasus point to Diphda and Fomalhaut
- To the left of pegasus is Aries and has the most empty space in the sky.
- the V of the W closest to pegasus point to the Andromeda Galaxy which is sort of the left handle of the square of pegasus
- right overhead in November nights
- inside of W points to the 'double cluster'

WINTER:


An incident that emphasizes just how far some city dwellers are removed from real stars occurred in the hours following a major LA-area earthquake in 1994. The 4 AM quake, had prompted almost everyone who felt it to rush outdoors for safety and to inspect damage. But the quake had also knocked the power out over a wide area. Standing outside in total darkness for the first time in memory, hundreds of thousands of people saw a sky untarnished by city lights. That night and over the next few weeks, emergency organizations as well as observatories and radio stations in the LA area received hundreds of calls from people wondering whether the sudden brightening of the stars and the appearance of a 'silver cloud' (ie. the Milky Way) had caused the quake. Such a reaction can come only form people who have never seen the night sky from city lights.
Many anxious callers were reluctant to believe that what they had seen while the power was off was the normal appearance of the real night sky. pg47

- Orion is right in the middle of the winter sky.
- Rigel is 50,000 x more brighter than our sun


CHAPTER 5:
BINOCULARS
Through Binoculars you can see dozens of the moons craters and the four moons of Jupiter
When quoting 8 x 56 (8 is the power, 56 is the aperture)
8x42, 7x50, 10x50, 8x56 (40mm to 56mm is ideal for handholding)
52 feet for 1 degree
7x50 usually has between 7 to 8 degrees. 5 degree minimum for handheld
20x50 has 3 degrees. That is pretty useless for handheld. needs to be on a tripod.

Good examples: Celestron Ultima DX lines (example 8x56 = $200)
Zeiss 8x42 Victory FL (suberb) and Nikon 8x42 HG
Best on the market: Canon 15x50 IS ($1200). gets rid of shakes via image-stabilization prism with 4.5 degree field
- don't ever buy binoculars with zoom or wide angle because the edges get blurred.
- a tripod adaptor hold is useful (need an L shaped bracket that threads into the hole)

TELESCOPES
Mounts:
Dobsonian mount - you manually push the telescope (basically need to realign every minute, but are very portable).
Altazimuth mount - slow motion knobs that smoothly adjust the telescope up-down and left-right.
Equatorial mount with motor drives - compensate for the Earth's rotation. (polar axis of the mount needs to be aligned with the north celestial pole near polaris. these are obviously more expensive and heavy)

- finder scope (usually a miniature scope parallel to the main scope to assist with alignment wider field of view obviously; they are often flimsy and not attached very well so find one with 6 thumb screws) pg 67

1) REFRACTORS - 50 to 80mm is a beginners; 70mm to 100 mm is a lot better.
(a) achromatic - usually less than 100 mm scopes have this. Bigger than that it fuggs up the residual light coming in.
(b) apochromatic (aka apo-refractors)- 60 mm to 180 mm scopes where the main lens consists of 2 or 3 lenses and gets rid of the residual light. These usually go from $2500 to $5000 with an equatorial mount.

2) NEWTONIAN REFLECTORS - Reflects the light at a 45 degree angle to the top of the scope where it is then focussed. These telescopes tend to be large and on Dobsonian mounts. 8" scopes and under can go on equatorials, anything larger go on Dobsonians. These scopes are great value for the money but tend to be too large for portability. The massive scopes up to 25" are great for viewing nebulas and galaxies. Again very unrealistic to lug around though. THe 8" to 10" are the ideal beginner telescope on a Dobsonian mount. You can see a ton of the stars this way for the price between $400 to $700)
Smaller Newtonians are useless
3) SCHMIDT-CASSEGRAINS - are about half the length of a Newtonian so much more portable. Combines aspects of the Refractors and reflectors. Is the most popular amongst amataur astronomers (Celestron and Meade are the most popular brands - 8" with a tripod goes form $2000 to $3000).
4) MAKSUTOV-CASSEGRAIN - Meade ETX 90 mm = $600; but also have 105 mm and 125 mm)

Accessories:
1) Solar filter: $50 to $200 - reduces solar radiation to view the sun directly
2) Erecting prism: to get the image right side up when it is inverted in the telescope. This is almost never bought because it reduces the light captured.
3) Eyepiece filter: $20 - The only one really needed is a 'Lunar Filter'. All the rest are subjective to have and basically its a comfort thing via trial and error.
4) Nebula filter: $90 - blocks interfering glow from city lights to view nebulas better
5) Telecompressor $130 - widens field of view for Schmidt- Cassegrains - helps for photography
6) Dewcap: helps reduce Dew formation, alternatively you can use a hairdryer
7) Photographic accessories: wait a bit to buy adapters, webcams, off-axis guiders, dual-axis, slow motion motors. Try chapter 11 techniques first
8) Telrad and Motorized focuser - not really useful

Eyepieces (aka oculars):
- 0.965" are outdated technology. Standard now is 1.25" eyepieces.
- zoom eyepieces are also not ideal
*** - Modern Wide-Field - Recommend Panoptic by Tele Vue premium entry level with superb low-power definition. Should have at least one of these.
- Huygenian / Ramsden - too old to be any good usually 0.965"
- Kellner - narrow field of view is the main con. acceptable for low and medium power; relatively low priced
- Orthoscopic - slightly wider field of view than a Kellner eyepiece - $60 and up
*** - Plossl - superior to all the above, 4 element design with again wider FOV than Orthoscopic. Very versatile; can be used in low, medium, high power. Price ranges widely. These are good for planets / moon.
- Erfle - 5 element design, better to get "wide-field" design
- Wide-field - 6 or 7 elements ; can be very expensive. Panoptic by teleview is a good entry level eyepiece. see page 77
- Nagler series - among the finest and high power eyepieces available.
- Ultrawide Angle by Meade - $200
- MAGNIFICATION = Focal length of scope / Focal length of eyepiece (ex. 2000 mm / 25 mm = 80 x magnification)
low power: 40 mm to 20 mm
medium power: 19mm to 13mm
high power: 12 mm to 4 mm
***recommends one of each
- Barlow - a middle piece between eyepiece and the scope - doubles magnification. important to invest in a decent one because can effect optics. Costs about as much as a good quality eyepiece.
- 2" diameter eyepiece - much wider FOV but more expensive. Scmidt-Cassegrains need to be upgraded.
*** Eyepiece collection = 1/3 cost of the telescope as rule of thumb. They hold their value quite well and can be interchangeable on all other telescopes so they are long run investments.

List of good eyepieces:
Tele Vue: 27 mm Panoptic (2" barrel), 24 mm and 19 mm Panoptic (both 1.25")
Meade: 26mm and 20 mm Series 5000 Plossls
Celestron: 8 mm by Celestron
Meade: 6.7 mm and 4.7 mm Series 5000 Ultra Wides (Nagler Type)
Celestron: 2x Ultima Barlow
Tele Vue: 3x Barlow
Edmund's RKE line: Excellent budget series
Any brand of Plossl is usually good: probably good to get something with a 25 mm, 20 mm and 15 mm with a Barlow included. (as this provides 6 different magnifications).

CHAPTER 6:
- About 10,000 double star systems are available to a 6" telescope. Approximately 80% of all stars in the Milky Way belong to double or multiple star systems. (Rotate around each other).
- Charts at the end of this chapter have a list of all the main double / multiple star systems that can be viewed through binoculars or telescope.
- optical doubles are fake doubles (just appear to be aligned)
- Also magnitudes (brightness of each star) is included in the charts
- Can practice attributing light magnitudes of stars by knowing others in advance and adjusting accordingly (see Observers handbook at the end).
- VARIABLE STARS: vary in brightness up to a factor of 15,000 x in one year. These are stars that are being destroyed (can give clues to star evolution).
(a) Cepheid variables - highly regular pulsating stars used to navigate (pg 89)
(b) Eclipsing variables - binary systems that don't really actually fluctuate in brightness. But appear to do so because they are orbiting around each other. (example the star Algor in Perseus does this).
*** (c) Long period variables - start off as red giants like Betelgeuse and Anteres, then can change by 10 magnitude factors in a single year. Usually favorites among amateur astronomers.
(d) irregular variables - oscillating in brightness. Betelgeuse is part of this.
(e) novas - a star blowing up increases magnitude by 10 to 15 times. Can occur with a period of hours or days. These are extremely rare in the sky and occur only one or two times a decade.
(f) supernova - sudden explosive death of a massive star. Can be brighter than a galaxy when this occurs and stays in the sky for about a year. Occurs because the central fuel source of the star runs out but the heat generated by the star collapsing on itself causes it to explode. Rigel in Orion is a candidate for a future supernova. If it did, it would 100 times brighter than the moon with the naked eye because it is one of the closer stars to Earth. Johannes Kepler saw one in 1604; the only known supernova in the Milky Way. (was as large as Jupiter).

STAR CLUSTERS:
example) Second star from the end of the handle of the big dipper is a double star cluster; The trapezium at the heart of the Orion Nebula very famous star cluster.
examples) Plaiedes and Hyades that are part of Taurus).
- At least 20 star clusters can be seen with binoculars. (ex. M7 in scorpius; Perseus' double star cluster; Beehive M44 in Cancer
- 7 stars of Pleiades according to folklore were there cuz they were being pursued by bears. Read Celestial Handbook by Robert Burnham - will include more stories about the history of constellations and their names. during the age of the dinosaurs this star cluster was not even born yet; obviously very young.
- Big dipper is nearest star cluster; these 7 stars + 30 others; Ursa Major which this is called will approach Daneb millions of years in the future.

NEBULAS:
- Are where stars are born, atoms and matter get trapped in a pocket of gas and the gravitational forces have a feedback loop that keep attracting matter (the gas acts as a glue to keep everything together). Over tens of thousands of years, the temperature can go from -250 C to +15 million C; the ignition point for fusion reactions; a star is born. The process is still relatively unknown because the birth of the star is hidden from the naked eye by the gases that cover it. It almost symbolizes a womb where the star is born; the womb fades due to radiation from the new born star; actually, often star clusters are born. This is currently happening in the Orion Nebula.
- Orion Nebula only visible nebula to the unaided eye. Looks like cotton. Theta Orionis is the star at the center of this nebula. (further zoom of Theta shows that it is actually 4 stars; called the trapezium).
*** - always start by viewing nebulas with low power.
*** - Averted vision; take the target to the edge of the FOV; because peripheral vision can see things that the centered vision can not.

GLOBULAR CLUSTERS:
*** - Omega Centauri can be seen in the southern hemisphere; look for this if you go to South America.
- At least 150 Globular clusters surround the Milky Way; about 50 of these can be seen through everyday telescopes.
*** - M13 in Hercules and M22 in Sagittarius can be seen through binoculars. (Chart 6 on 105 for Hercules; late spring and early summer viewing)
- Definitely use Averted Vision when viewing these through a telescope greater than 4"
- These objects are by far the most senstive to telescope aperture; most other objects in the sky are not as sensitive to aperture.

GALAXIES:
(a) Spiral - similar to the Milky Way; Average size is about the same size as the Milky Way; twirling arms
(b) Elliptical - featureless spherical systems that can range from few million stars to 100 trillion. These are the largest objects that can be seen through a telescope.
- nearest galaxy is the Andromeda (remember Cassiopaia points to it). It is the furthest object in the sky that the unaided eye can see. This object doesn't look that nice in a telescope because you need a wider FOV. (larger binoculars are ideal).

CHAPTER 7:
*** Planets do not twinkle - as they don't pass through riffles in the sky. So do not flicker to the naked eye.
- Mercury - very difficult to spot; always in the suns glare. Best to see at sunrise or sunset.
*** - Venus is the brightest Planet and visible for 6 months of the year at night. Mayans had a 584 day calendar based on Venus coming back to its original place in the sky. When Venus would disappear from the sky; the Mayans would offer their enemies' blood as sacrifice. It is roughly the same size as the earth and is often called the 'earth gone wrong'. 90x more atmospheric density that causes a huge greenhouse effect = 460 C. It is almost all CO2. Will look like a crescent at sunset through a telescope.
- Pluto can't be seen except through a 6" telescope or larger
- Mars (half the size of Earth) - fluctuates in brightness more than any other because the distance fluctuates so far. Takes 1 year to travel half the sky for Mars. The Mariner Valley is 5 times deeper and 100 times longer than the Grand Canyon. Some of the volcanoes are way larger than Everest. Difficult to see except during oppositions (the point when Earth surpasses Mars on its orbit around the sun). The details are visible in a telescope during these times; Syrtis Major, Acidalium, and the polar caps. Phobos and Deimos are the 2 moons of Mars. but can't be seen with regular telescopes; Mars rotation is 40 minutes slower than Earths so during the oppositions; you have to see it 40 minutes later than the next day if u want the same view of Mars.
1976 - first photos of Mars
Dates of Mars Oppositions: January 29th, 2010, March 3, 2012, April 8, 2014, May 22, 2016
*** - Jupiter (12 earth years to orbit the sun) - brighter than any star, but less than Venus. Has 4 moons (actually 16, but only 4 are visible); one of the top targets to see through a telescope. Huge asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. You can see 4 moons through binoculars but must be mounted on a tripod. It is almost like a miniature solar system (2 days for one of the moons, 17 days for the furthest). WIth a 100x you can see Jupiter's moon cast a shadow. One of the top sites. "Observers Handbook" states when to see the shadow cast on the planet. By far the largest planet in a telescope. You can see some of the equatorial clouds.
- Saturn (29.5 earth years to orbit the sun) most mistakenly gets confused with a star, since it is similar brightness as other stars. Moonlets ranging from a spec of dust to a boulder the size of a house orbit saturn in its ring. 1/3 the width of Jupiter through a telescope; pale yellow. Has 18 moons, the largest the size of Mercury; loops around Saturn in 16 days.

CHAPTER 8: MOON AND THE SUN
*** Look at page 140 and 141 for a great reference of what to view on the moon
- The terminator line is where the illuminated and un-illuminated portions of the moon are separated and the most detail can be seen.
*** - You should even through binoculars be able to see 12 craters. Actually the 1/4 (7 days) and 3/4 (22 days) are the best times to view it because the of the 'sharp relief effect' by the shadows (assumes new is the 1st day and full moon is the 14th or 15th day). A full moon is actually NOT ideal to view because the craters look like splashes of white light.
*** 6 to 9 days: - each of the craters are named after scientists and the dark plains are called seas (or mare in latin), because they were initially thought to be bodies of water. (Sea of Tranquility is where they landed on the moon; "Tranquility Base here.... the Eagle has landed").
- Most impressive crater is Theophilus (biggest); then Cyrillus and Catharina.
-9 to 11 days: Clavius crater becomes visible and so does the rugged section of the moon; can easily see this crater with binoculars
- we never see the other side of the moon. (Dark side of the moon).
To view the SUN:
- need a full-aperture solar filter, reduces the suns light by a factor of 100,000
*** THe moon illusion; objects on a horizon will always appear larger than those right above you. It happens in nature; on the horizon or in a dark room.

CHAPTER 9: COMETS, METEORS and AURORAS
- IF you are one of the first 2 to notify the International Astronomical Union's headquarters you can have a comet named after you.
- Comets are large pieces of ice floating in space; they eventually melt as they come across the sun and then forms gases and small debris. Some turn into meteors some get pulled toward the planets and other objects as the gravitational force brings them in.
- meteor is the small streak of light that occurs as the debris is burned up in the earth's atmosphere.
- meteoroid is a chunk of matter in space that can become a meteor
- meteorite is when a meteor hits the earth. (most don't because they get burned up in the process).
- Asteroids are matter that orbit around the sun, usually between Jupiter and Mars
- See chart on page 161 for times of the year where meteor showers occur and which constellation they will be near; they always occur in the same year because the debris is usually in the same place in space.
- Auroras occur because of the electromagnetic pull at the poles from small particles that come into the earth's atmosphere through attracted by earth's gravitational field. The gases end up at the poles (much like a television collecting static electricity and there's more color).
- oxygen emits greenish white light or a red hue; nitrogen emits bluish light.

CHAPTER 10: ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY
- Canons take the best pictures on long exposures; 20Da (specifically for astrophotographers); exposures take half as long because it is more sensitive to red light for nebulas.

Frequent Notes:
Look at the checklist on page 98 and the legend guide to the charts on page 97.
For sketches try and find a notebook with lined paper on one side and blank on the back for sketches and notes.; Record dates; time; place; instruments used and objects seen and conditions.
Images are always upside down when viewing through the scope
Moon maps on page 140 and 141 (lookup where they landed on the moon in 1969; easy to spot; called the Sea of Tranquility)
Windows always cause distortion. You need to freeze outside.
Rings of Saturn can be seen with any telescope 30x or more
Numbered dials on the mount are pretty inaccurate
Polar axis of mount aimed at Polaris; Crucial for astrophotography!
Focal Ratios: unlike in photography does not matter as much; Focal Length divided by diamater. F6 to F8 ideal. Schmitt Cassegrains have about F10. THe Maks range from F7 to F16.
Keeping glasses on does not effect the image.

CHAPTER 13: RESOURCES:
*** - "Burnham's Celestial Handbook" (must have!), 2100 page 3 volume set that took decades to prepare.
- "Bright Star Atlas" by Wil Tirion (all stars that are brightness 6.5 are shown)
- "Atlas of the Night Sky" by Dunlop, Tirion and Rukl goes to 7.5 magnitude
- "Sky Atlas of 2000" by Wil Tirion (is detailed 8th magnitude atlas with large uncluttered charts.
- Uranometria 2000 (willmann-Bell) - is a 9th magnitude atlas.
- "Atlas of the Moon" by Rukl is by far the best for viewing the moon
- Sky and Telescope magazine (check chapters)
- Astronomy magazine
- SKy News
- Join the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, they publish annually the "Observers Handbook"
- "Explore the Universe" by Astronomy magazine and "SkyWatch" by SKy and Telescope are annual productions as well available in Autumn of every year.
- SOFTWARE: planetarium type - Starry Night for PCs and Macs (www.starrynight.com). The Sky for PCs (website www.bisque.com). Nova Astronomics' Earth Centered Universe (www.nova-astro.com)
- Big telescope facilities; Tuscon Arizona, San Diego and Hawaii.
-
www.cleardarksky.com
antwerp.gsfc.nasa/apod/astropix.html
spaceweather.com
www.jpl.nasa.gov/news
oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Latest.html - latest Hubble Space Telescope photographs
www.heavens-above.com
www.universetoday.com




Check if the Meade 150 Mak has a good mount
Read about how hot the Meade Make becomes after short usage
Check if the Nexstar SE and Meade can both take 2" eyepieces
Check if the Meade has a Goto system and read about it.

VERONIKA DECIDES TO DIE

Read on some of the saints:
Ignatius Loyola
Teresa of Avila
Anthony
Francis of Assisi

The story is about a 24 year old female who decides to take a bottle of sleeping pills as she finds that her existence is so repetitive and that freedom is ultimately found in death. She takes the pills one by one and eventually goes unconscious; wakes up in a mental hospital called the Villette which is in Slovenia. When she wakes up she finds out that she has approximately 5 days to live. She begins by wanting to kill herself again but later starts experiencing new things that she had never experienced before. She becomes humiliated by others laughing at her for passing through an area; she slaps a man in the face for being mean to her; she plays the piano without permission, which she later realizes was her childhood dream; her attachment to Eduard the schizofrenic who she falls in love with. She hears different stories of the people in Villette. She falls in love with Eduard because he is the only one that recognizes her true beauty and when she is playing the piano. She masturbates in front of him and has an amazing orgasm. He later talks to her which is a surprise because he was a mute until this point.

Zedka - She was a mistress when she was young and was loved by another man who was married. She dreamed that he would eventually leave his wife to be married to her and craved his love. Later he ended it with her and she felt that extremely depressed because she wanted to be loved. Eventually the feelings subsided for a while and then she was married and had children. When everything became mundane she became depressed again about her lost love. She told the story about the poet who never got the girl of his dreams and eternally gazes into the church of the one he fell in love with. She also tells Veronika of the story of the king and the madness of his people by drinking from a fountain that was poisoned by a magician and how the king and queen decided to drink from the fountain so they were not overthrown by the people who had thought of revolting because the king and queen weren't considered normal (which the normal was now madness).

Mari - a very competant lawyer who started experiencing panic attacks; the first one in a movie theater the next one at work; she is initially hesitant to receive medical attention but after repetitive attacks she decides to check and finds that there is nothing physically wrong with her. She eventually decides to go to Villette and her old law firm doesn't want to risk a reputational hit so they say she can't come back even though she feels like it will help her to return to work; even she voluntarily resigned. Her husband divorces her. She is the only one Eduard opens up to and she is part of the Fraternity. She also starts being nice to Veronika.

Eduard - The schizophrenic that in childhood became inspired by the philosophers and saints and religious leaders of the past that stepped out of their shell of normal existence. He realized he wanted to become a painter and wanted to paint all of the souls of the greats in the past. He started failing in school and reading books on positive energy and negative energy and witchcraft and things of spiritual nature. His father became worried that this would effect his reputation because he was a diplomat from Slovenia living in Brazil at the time. So he asked Eduard in the name of love can you quit painting and focus on school and become a diplomat. Eduard later lost his mental faculties after agreeing and was placed in the Villette when the family returned from Brazil to Slovenia. He becomes a mute but only opens up to Mari and Veronika.

Dr. Igor was head of the Villette and had come up with a thesis for Psychology that Vitriol (or bitterness) was responsible for people becoming insane. Because eventually people could not cope with the everyday repetitive tasks of life. But that the eventual cure (which the reader is introduced at the end of the book) is an awareness of life and death. He had also lied to Veronika about her dying in 5 days but she never finds out. He used her as a guinea pig of sorts because he knew that she would likely kill herself anyways; so he wanted to induce an urgency to appreciate life and the present moment and that everyday of life was a miracle.


"Nothing in this world happens by chance". pg 2

Two very simple reasons lay behind her decision to die, and she was sure that, were she to leave a note explaining many people would agree with her.
The first reason: Everything in her life was the same and, once her youth was gone, it would be downhill all the way, with old age beginning to leave irreversible marks, the onset of illness, the departure o friends. She would gain nothing by continuing to live; indeed, the likelihood of suffering would only increase.
The second reason was more philosophical: Veronika read the newspapers, watched TV, and she was aware of what was going in the world. Everything was wrong, and she had no way of putting things right - that gave her sense of complete powerlessness. pg7

Veronika was certain that everything ended in death. That is why she had chosen suicide: freedom at last. Eternal oblivion.

"I'm going to tell you a story," said Zedka. "A powerful wizard, who wanted to destroy an entire kingdom, placed a magic potion in the well from which all the inhabitants drank. Whoever drank that water would go mad.
"The following morning, the whole population drank from the well and they all went mad, apart from the king and his family, who had a well set aside for them alone; which the magician had not managed to poison. The king was worried and tried to control the population by issuing a series of edicts governing security and public health. The policemen and the inspectors, however, had also drunk the poisoned water, and they thought the king's decisions were absurd and resovled to take no notice of them.
"When the inhabitants of the kingdom heard the decrees, they became convinced that the king had gone mad and was now giving nonsensical orders. They marched on the castle and called for his abdication.
"In despair the king prepared to step down from the throne, but the queen stopped him, saying: 'let us go and drink from the communal well. Then we will be the same as them.'
"And that was what they did: The king and the queen drank the water of madness and immediately began talking nonsense. Their subjects repented at once; now that the king was displaying such wisdom, why not allow him to continue ruling the country?
"The country continued to live in peace, although its inhabitants behaved very differently from those of its neighbors. And the king was able to govern until the end of his days."
pg 34

[Zedka's story] One evening, she walked past the statue of Preseren, the great Slovene poet, and she began to think about his life. When he was 34, he went into a church and saw a an adolescent girl, Julia Primic, with whom he fell passionately in love. Like the ancient minstrels, he began to write her poems, in the hope of one day marrying her.
*** It turned out that Julia was the daughter of an upper middle-class family and apart from that chance sighting inside the church. Preseren never again magnaged to get near her. But that encunter inspired his finest poetry and created a whole legend around his name. In the small central square of Llubljana, the statue of the poet stares fixedly at something. If you follow his gaze, you will see, on the other side of the square, the face of a woman carved into the stone of one of the houses. That was where Julia had lived. Even after death Preseren gazes for all eternity on his Impossible Love.
pg 57

"Do you remember the first question I ever asked you?" said Zedka
"Yes, you asked me if I knew what being crazy meant" said Veronika
"Exactly. This time I'm not going to tell you a story. I'll just say that insanity is the inability to communicate your ideas. It's as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that's going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don't understand the language they speak there."
"We've all felt that."
"And all of us, one way or another, are insane." pg 62

Veronika pushed open the door to the living room, went over to the piano, opened the lid, and summoning up all her strength pounded on the keys. A mad, cacophonous, jangled chord echoed around the empty room, bounced off the walls, and returned to her in the guise of a shrill sound that seemed to tear at her soul. Yet it was an accurate portrait of her soul at the moment.
She pounded the keys again and again the dissonant notes reverberated around her.
"I'm crazy. I'm allowed to do this. I can hate, I can pound away at the piano. Since when have mental patients known how to play notes in the right order?"
She pounded the piano again, once, twice, ten, twenty times and each she did it, her hatred seemed to diminish until it vanished completely.

Then once more, a deep peace flooded through her and Veronika again looked out at the starry sky and at the new moon, her favorite, filling the room she was in with gentle light. The impression returned of Infinity and Eternity walking hand in hand; you only had to look for one of them - for example, the limitless universe - to feel the presence of the other, Time that never ends, that never passes, that remains in the Present, where all of life's secrets lie. As she had been walking from the ward to that room, she had felt such pure hatred that now she had no more rancor left in her heart. She had finally allowed her negative feelings to surface, feelings that had been repressed for years in her soul. She had actually felt them, and they were no longer necessary they could leave.

She sat on in silence, enjoying the present moment, letting love fill up the empty space left behind by hatred. When she felt the moment had come, she turned to the moon and played a sonata of homage to it, knowing that the moon was listening and would feel proud and that this would provoke the jealousy of the stars. Then she played music for the stars, for the garden, for the mountains she could not see in the darkness but which she knew were there.
WHile she was playing that music for the garden, another crazy person appeared; Eduard, a schizophrenic who was beyond all cure. She was not frightened by his presence; on the contrary, she smiled and to her surprise, he smiled back.
The music could penetrate even his remote world, more distant than the moon itself; it could even perform miracles.
pg 69

[conversation between Dr. Igor and Veronika]]
"You say they create their own reality," said Veronika, "but what is reality?"
"It's whatever the majority deems it to be. It's not necessarily the best or the most logical, but its the one that supports the desires of society as a whole. You see this thing I've got around my neck?"
"You mean your tie?"
"Exactly. Your answer is the logical, coherent answer an absolutely normal person would give; It's a tie! A lunatic however, would say that what I have round my neck is a ridiculous, useless bit of colored cloth tied in a very complicated way, which makes it harder to get air into your lungs and difficult to turn your neck. I have to be careful when I'm anywhere near a fan or I could be strangled by this bit of cloth.
"If a lunatic were to ask me what this tie is for, I would have to say, absolutely nothing. It's not even purely decorative, since nowadays it's a become a symbol of slavery, power and alloofness. The only really useful function a tie serves is the sense of relief when you get home and take it off; you feel as if you've freed yourself from something, though quite what you don't know.
"But does that sense of relief justify the existence of ties? No. Nevertheless, if I were to ask a madman and a normal person what this is, the sane person would say: "A tie". IT doesn't matter who's correct, what matters is who's right."
pg87

[When Veronika sits and hears the story about the wise Sufi teacher Nasrudin]
When she opened the door, she came upon an unusual scene; the tables and chairs had been pushed back against the walls, forming a large central space. There, sitting on the floor, were the members of the Fraternity, listening to a man in a suit and tie.
"... then they invited Nasrudin, the great master of the Sufi tradition, to give a lecture," he was saying.
When the door opened, everyone in the room looked at Veronika. The man in the suit turned to her.
"Sit down."
She sat down on the floor next to Mari, the white-haired woman who had been so aggressive on their first encounter. To Veronika's surprise, Mari gave her a welcoming smile.
The man in the suit went on: "Nasrudin arranged to give a lecture at 2 O'Clock in the afternoon, and it looked set to be a great success: The thousand seats were completely sold out and more than 700 people were left outside, watching the lecture on closed-circuit television.
"At 2 ol'clock precisely an assistant of Nasrudin's came in saying that for unavoidable reasons the lecture would begin late. Some got up indignantly, asked for their money back, and left. Even so a lot of people remained both inside and outside the lecture hall.
"By four in the afternoon, the Sufi master had still not appeared, and people gradually began to leave the place, picking up their money at the box office. THe working day was coming to an end; it was time to go home. By 6 o'clock the original 1700 spectators had dwindled to less than 100.
"At that moment Nasrudin came in. He appeared to be extremely drunk and began to flirt with a beautiful young woman sitting in the front row.
"Astonished the people who remained began to feel indignant. How could the man behave like that after making them wait 4 solid hours? There were some disapproving murmurs, but the Sufi master ignored them. He went on, in a loud voice, to say how sexy the young woman was, and invited her to go with him to France".
Some teacher! thought Veronika. Just as well I've never believed in such things.
"After cursing the people who were complaining. Nasrudin tried to get up but fell heavily to the floor. Disgusted, more people decided to leave, saying it was pure charlatanism, that they would denounce the degrading spectacle to the press.
Only 9 people remained. As soon as the final group of outraged spectators had left, Nasrudin got up; he was completely sober, his eyes glowed, and he had about him an air of great authority and wisdom. "Those of you who stayed are the ones who will hear me," he said. "You have passed through the two hardest tests on the spiritual road: the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what you encounter. It is you I will teach."
pg 98

In Mari's view this difficulty was due not to chaos or disorganization or anarchy, but to an excess of order. Society had more and more rules, and laws that contradicted the rules, and new rules that contradicted the laws. People felt too frightened to take even a step outside the invisible regulations that guided everyone's lives.
pg 105

No I was the one who wanted to die. She turned back to the piano. In the last days of her life, she had finally realized her grand dream: to play with heart and soul for as long as she wanted and whenever the mood took her. IT didn't matter to her that her only audience was a young schizophrenic; he seemed to understand the music, and that was what mattered.
pg 113

No, she must stop thinking. That's how she could be brought to sanity.
pg 118

"I want to do something completely different with my life. I want to have an adventure, help other people, do something I've never done before".
pg 120

"I feel like starting to live again, Eduard. I feel like making the mistakes I always wanted to make, but never had the courage to, facing up to the feelings of panic that might well come back, but whose presence will merely weary me, since I know, I'm not going to die or faint because of them. I can make new friends and teach them how to be crazy too in order to be wise. I'll tell them not to follow the manual of good behavior but to discover their own lives, desires, adventures, and to LIVE. I'll quote from Ecclesiastes to the Catholics, from the Koran to the Muslims, from the Torah to the Jews, from Aristotle to the atheists. I never want to be a lawyer again, but I can use my experience to give lectures about men and women who knew the truth about this existence of ours and whose writings can be summed up in one word; LIVE. If you live, God will live with you. If you refuse to run his risks, he'll retreat to that distant heaven and be merely a subject for philosophical speculation. Everyone knows this, but no one takes the first step, perhaps for fear of being called insane. At least, we haven't got that fear, Eduard. We've already been inmates of Villete."
pg152

"We all live in our own world. But if you look up at the starry sky, you'll see that all the different worlds up there combine to form constellations, solar systems, galaxies."
pg 162

"Have you ever been to Florence?" asked Dr. Igor.
"No."
"You should go there; it's not far, for that is where you will find my second example. In the cathedral in Florecne, there's a beautiful clock designed by Pauolo Uccello in 1443. Now, the curious thing about this clock is that, although it keeps time like all other clocks, its hands go in the opposite direction to that of normal clocks."
"What's that got to do with my illness?"
"I'm just coming to that. WHen he made this clock, Paolo Uccello was not trying to be original: The fact is that , at the time, there were clocks like his as well as others with hands that went in the direction we're familiar with now. For some unknown reason, perhaps because the duke had a clock with hands that went in the direction we now think of as the "right" direction that became the only direction and Uccello's clock then seemed an aberration, a madness."
Dr. Igor paused, but he knew that Mari was following his reasoning.
"So, let's turn to your illness: Each human being is unique, each with their own qualities, instincts, forms of pleasure, and desire for adventure. However, society always imposes on us a collective way of behaving, and people never stop to wonder why they should behave like that. They just accept it, the way typists accepted the fact that the QWERTY keyboard was the best possible one. Have you ever met anyone in your entire life who asked why the hands of a clock should go in one particular direction and not in the other?"
"No."
"If someone were to ask, the response they'd get would probably be: 'you're crazy.' If they persisted, people would try to come up with a reason, but they'd soon change the subject, because there isn't a reason apart from the one I've just given you. So to go back to your question. What was it again?"
"Am I cured?"
"No. You're someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that, in my view , is a serious illness."
"Is wanting to be different as serious illness?"
"It is if you force yourself to be the same as everyone else. It causes neuroses, psychoses, and paranoia. It's a distortion of nature, it goes against God's laws, for in all the world's woods and forests, he did not create a single leaf the same as another. But you think it's insane to be different, and that's why you chose to live in Villete, because everyone is different here, and so you appear to be the same as everyone else. Do you understand?"
pg 169

"Then last night, I heard a woman playing the piano. She played superbly, in a way I've rarely heard before. As I was listenting to the music, I thought of all those who had suffered in order to compose those sonatas, preludes, adagios: How foolish they must have been made to feel when they played their pieces - which were, after all different - to those who held sway in the world of music then. I thought about the difficulties and humiliations involved in getting someone to fund an orchestra. I thought of the booing public who was not yet used to such harmonies.
"Worse than the composers' suffering, though, was the fact that the girl was playing the music with such soul because she knew she was going to die. And am I not going to die? where is my soul that I might play the music of my own life with such enthusiasm?"
pg170

Be like the fountain that overflows, not like the cistern that merely contains.
pg 198

"... the danger of an adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort."
pg 199

For a few moments, he was assailed by another doubt: Sooner or later Veronika would realize that she wasn't going to die of a heart attack. She would probably go to a specialist who would tell her that her heart was perfectly normal. She would decide that the doctor who had taken care of her in Villete was a complete incompetent; but then, all those who dare to research into forbidden subjects require both a certain amount of courage and a good dose of incomprehension.
But what about the many days that she would have to live with the fear of imminent death?
Dr. Igor pondered the arguments long and hard and decided that it didn't really matter. She would consider each day a miracle - which indeed it is, when you consider the number of unexpected things that could happen in each second of our fragile existences.
pg 209

The Last Lecture

LAST LECTURE:

"If you can dream it, you can do it" - Walt Disney

I always like the story of Pandora's box, so Tammy and I painted our version of it. Pandora, from Greek mythology, was given a box with all the world's evil in it. She disobeyed orders not to open it. When the lid came off, evil spread throughout the world. I was always drawn to the story's optimistic ending; Left at the bottom of the box was "hope".

That's too bad. There are no better role models than people like Jackie Robinson and Sandy Blatt. The message in their stories: Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won't make us happier.

Carry a crayon around and smell it. It will bring back childhood memories

Each of us must decide: Am I a fun loving TIgger or am I a sad-sack Eeyore? Pick camp.

Watch his last lecture on the internet

"It's not about how to achieve your dreams. It's about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you."

The Zahir

The Zahir - A Novel of Obsession

Published in 2005
Mountain in Pyrenees - Caulho climbed before writing this book.

According to the writer Jorge Luis Borges, the idea of the Zahir comes from Islamic tradition and is thought to have arisen at some point in the eighteenth century. Zahir, in Arabic, means visible, present, incapable of going unnoticed. It is someone or something which, once we have come into contact with them or it, gradually occupies our every thought, until we can think of nothing else. This can be considered either a state of holiness or of madness.

What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?
Luke 15:4

[passage]
But what is freedom?
I've spent a large part of my life enslaved to one thing or another, so I should know the meaning of the word. Ever since I was a child, I have fought to make freedom my most precious commodity. I fought with my parents, who wanted me to be an engineer, not a writer. I fought with other boys at school, who immediately homed in on me as the butt of their cruel jokes, and only after much blood had flowed from my nose and from theirs, only after many afternoons when i had to hide my scars from my mother - because it was up to me, not her , to solve my problems - did i manage to show them that I could take a thrashing without bursting into tears. I fought to get a job to support myself, and went to work as a delivery man for a hardware store, so as to be free from that old line in family blackmail: "We'll give you money, but you'll have to do this, this, and this."
pg8

[passage]
While I was fighting, I heard other people speaking in the name of freedom, and the more they defended this unique right, the more enslaved they seemed to be to their parents' wishes, to a marriage in which they had promised to stay with the other person "for the rest of their lives", to the bathroom scales, to their diet, to half-finished projects, to lovers to whom they were incapable of saying "No" or "It's Over", to weekends when they were obliged to have lunch with people they didn't even like. Slaves to luxury, to the appearance of luxury, to the appearance of the appearance of luxury. Slaves to a life they had not chosen, but which they had decided to live because someone had managed to convince them that it was all for the best. And so their identical days and nights passed, days and nights in which adventure was just a word in a book or an image on the television that was always on, and whenever a door opened, they would say: "I'm not interested. I'm not in the mood".
pg 9

[passage]
"Free again, but it's just a feeling; freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose - and commit myself to - what is best for me."
pg 16

[passage]
I was a member of secret societies, I became involved in exotic sects, I bought obscure, extremely expensive books, spent an enormous amount of time performing rituals and invocations. I was always joining and leaving different groups and fraternities, always thinking that i had finally met the person who could reveal to me the mysteries of the invisible world, but in the end I was always disappointed to discover that most of these people, however well-intentioned, were merely following this or that dogma and tended to be fanatics, because fanaticism is the only way to put an end to the doubts that constantly trouble the human soul.
pg 25

[passage]
"Some people appear to be happy, but they simply don't give the matter much thought. Others make plans: I'm going to have a husband, a home, two children, a house in the country. As long as they're busy doing that, they're like bulls looking for the bull-fighter: they react instinctively, they blunder on, with no idea where the target is. They get their car, sometimes they even get a Ferrari, and they think that's the meaning of life, and they never question it. Yet their eyes betray the sadness that even they don't know they carry in their soul. Are you happy?"
"I don't know"
"I don't know if everyone is unhappy. I know they're all busy working overtime, worrying about their children, their husband, their career, their degree, what they're going to do tomorrow, what they need to buy, what they need to have in order not to feel inferior, etc. Very few people actually say to me: "I'm unhappy". Most say: "I'm fine, I've everything I ever wanted." Then I ask: "what makes you happy?" Answer: "I've got everything a person could possibly want - a family, a home, work, good health". I ask again "Have you ever stopped to wonder if that's all there is to life?" Answer: "Yes that's all there is." I insist: "So the meaning of life is work, family, children who will grow and leave you, a wife or husband who will become more like a friend than a real lover. And, of course, one day your work will end too. What will you do when that happens?" Answer: There is no answer. They change the subject."
"No what they say is: "When the children have grown up, when my husband or my wife has become more my friend than my passionate lover, when I retire, then I'll have time to do what i always wanted to do: travel." Question: "But didn't you say you were happy now? Aren't you already doing what you always wanted to do?" Then they say they're very busy and change the subject".
pg 35

[passage]
"Years ago, I read a book that told an interesting story. Just suppose that Hitler had won the war, wiped out all the Jews and convinced his people that there were really was such a thing as a master race. The history books started to be changed, and a hundred years later, his successors manage to wipe out al the Indians. Three hundred years later and the Blacks have been eliminated too. It takes five hundred years, but, finally, the all-powerful war machine succeeds in erasing all Asians from the face of the earth as well. The history books speak of remote battles waged against barbarians, but no one reads too closely, because it's of no importance. Two thousand years after the birth of Nazism, in a bar in Tokyo, a city that has been inhabited for five centuries now by tall, blue-eyed people, Hans and Fritz are enjoying a beer. At one point, Hans looks at Fritz and asks: "Fritz, do you think it was always like this?"
"What?" asks Fritz.
"The world."
"Of course the world was always like this, isn't that what we were taught?"
"Of course, I don't know what made me ask such a stupid question", says Hans. They finish their beer, talk about other things and forget the question entirely".
pg 37

[passage]
"I don't know. And I'm not saying that I'm unhappy all the time. I have fun, I love you, I adore my work. Yet now and then, I feel this profound sadness, occasionally mingled with feelings of guilt or fear; the feeling passes, but always comes back later on, and then passes off again. Like Hans, I ask the same question; when I can't answer it, I simply forget. I could go and help starving children, set a foundation for street children, start trying to save people in the name of Jesus, do something that would give me the feeling I was being useful, but i don't want to."
"So why do you want to go cover this war?"
"Because I think that in time of war, men live life at the limit; after all, they could die the next day. Anyone living like that must act differently."
"So you want to find an answer to Hans's question?"
"Yes, I do."
pg 39

It's not life that matters, but the journey.
pg 51

[passage]
"...You've often said that absolute freedom doesn't exist; what does exist is the freedom to choose anything you like and then commit yourself to that decision. The closer I was to my neighbor, the more I admired you: a man who decided to go on loving the wife who had abandoned him and who wanted nothing more to do with him. You not only decided to do that, you made your decision public. This is what you say in your book; it's a passage I know by heart:
"When I had nothing more to lose, I was given everything. When I ceased to be who I am, I found myself. When I experienced humiliation and yet kept on walking, I understood that i was free to choose my destiny. Perhaps there's something wrong with me, I don't know, perhaps my marriage was a dream I couldn't understand while it lasted. All I know is that even though I can live without her, I would still like to see her again, to say what I never said when we were together: I love you more than I love myself. If I could say that, then I could go on living, at peace with myself, because that love has redeemed me."
pg 71

[passage]
"I'm not sure, but it did allow me to see that, paradoxical thought it may seem, people are happy when they're at war. For them, the world has meaning. As I said before, total power or sacrificing themselves for a cause gives meaning to their lives. They are capable of limitless love, because they no longer have anything to lose. A fatally wounded soldier never asks the medical team: "Please save me!" His last words are usually: "Tell my wife and my son that I love them". At the last moment, they speak of love!"
"So, in your opinion, human beings only find life meaningful when they're at war".
"But we're always at war. We're at war with death, and we know that death will win in the end. In armed conflicts, this is simply more obvious, but the same thing happens in daily life. We can't allow ourselves the luxury of being unhappy all the time".
"What do you want me to do?"
"I need help. And that doesn't mean saying to me, "Go and hand in your notice," because that would only leave me feeling even more confused that before. We need to find a way of channelling all this, of allowing the energy of this pure, absolute love to flow through our bodies and spread around us. The only person so far who helped me understand this is a rather otherworldly interpreter who says he's had revelations about this energy."
"Are you talking about the love of God?"
"If someone is capable of loving his partner without restrictions, unconditionally, then he is manfesting the love of God. If the love of God becomes manifest, he will love his neighbor. If he loves his neighbor, he will love himself. If he loves himself, then everything returns to its proper place. History changes."
"History will never change because of politics or conquests or theories or wars; that's mere repetition, it's been going on since the beginning of time. History will only change when we are able to use the energy of love, just as we use the energy of the wind, the seas, the atom."
"Do you think we two could save the world?"
"I think there are more people out there who think the same way. Will you help me?"
"Yes, as long as you tell what i have to do"
"But that's precisely what I don't know!"
pg 90

[passage]
"...First, that as soon as people decide to confront a problem, they realize that they are far more capable than they thought they were. Second, that all energy and all knowledge come from the same unknown source, which we usually call God. What I've tried to do in my life, ever since I first started out on what i believe to be my path, is to honor that energy, to connect up with it every day, to allow myself to be guided by the signs, to learn by doing and not by thinking about doing.
"Third, that no one is alone in their troubles; there is always someone else thinking, rejoicing or suffering the challenge before us."
"Does this include suffereing for love?"
"It includes everything. If there is suffering, then its best to accept it, because it won't go away just because you pretend its not there. If there is joy, then its best to accept it too, even thought you're afraid it might end one day. Some people can only relate to life through sacrifice and renunciation. Some peoplecan only feel part of humanity when they think they are happy. But why all these questions?"
"Because I'm in love and I'm afraid of suffering."
"Don't be afraid; the only to avoid that suffering would be to refuse to love."
pg108

[passage]
"It has everything to do with marriage and with the two stories we have just heard. At some point in history, someone turned up and said: When two people get married, they must stay frozen like that for the rest of their lives. You will move along side by side like two tracks, keeping always that same distance apart. Even if sometimes one of you needs to be a little farther away or a little closer, that is against the rules. The rules say: Be sensible, think of the future, think of your children. You can change, you must be like two railway tracks that remain the same distance apart all the way from their point of departure to their destination. The rules don't allow for love to change, or to grow at the start and diminish halfway through - it's too dangerous. And so after the enthusiasm of the first few years, they maintain the same distance, the same solidity, the same function nature. Your purpose is to allow the train bearing the survival of the species to head off into the future: your children will only be happy if you stay just as you were - 143.5 centimeters apart. If you're not happy with something that never changes, think of them, think of the children you brought into the world.
"Think of your neighbors. Show them that you're happy, eat roast beef on Sundays, watch television, help the community. Think of society. Dress in such a way that everyone knows you're in perfect harmony. Never glance to the side, someone might be watching you, and that could bring temptation; it could mean divorce, crisis, depression.
"Smile in all photos. Put the photos in the living room, so that everyone can see them. Cut the grass, practice a sport - oh, yes, you must practice a sport in order to stay frozen in time. When sport isn't enough, have plastic surgery. But never forget these rules were established long ago and must be respected. Who established these rules? That doesn't matter. Don't question them, because they will always apply, even if you don't agree with them."
118

[passage]
We had our ups and downs; one or other of us had occassionally threatened to leave for good; and yet we continued on together.
Until two years ago.
Or until the moment when she began to want to know why she was unhappy.
No one should ever ask themselves that: Why am I unhappy? The question carries within it the virus that will destroy everything. If we ask that question, it means we want to find out what makes us happy. If what makes us happy is different from what we have now, then we must either change once and for all or stay as we are, feeling even more unhappy.
120

[passage]
The most important thing in all human relationships is conversation, but people don't talk anymore, they don't sit down to talk and listen to the radio, read books, but they almost never talk. If we want to change the world, we have to go back to a time when warriors would gather around a fire and tell stories.
125

[passage]
"War doesn't leave me time to think. I simply am, full stop."
133

[passage]
And that the meaning went far beyond my marriage; all men and all women are connected by an energy which people call love, but which is, in fact, the raw material from which the universe was built. This energy cannot be manipulated, it leads us gently forward, it contains all we have to learn in this life. If we try to make it go in the direction we want, we end up desperate, frustrated, disillusioned, because that energy is free and wild.
We could spend the rest of our life saying that we love such a person or thing, when the truth is that we are merely suffering because, instead of accepting love's strength, we are trying to diminish it so that it fits the world in which we imagine we live.
The more I thought about this, the weaker the Zahir became and the closer I moved to myself. I prepared myself mentally to do a great deal of work, work that would require much silence, meditation, and perseverance. The accident had helped me understand that i could not force something that had not yet reached its time to sew.
145

[passage]
"I've written a boook about her visions and I had to study the matter closely," I say. "I read everything that was published about it at the end of the 19th century; i had access to Bernadette's many statements to the police, to the church and to scholars. At no point does she say that she saw a woman; she insists it was a girl. She repeated the same story all her life and was deeply angered by the statue that was placed in the grotto; she said it bore no resemblance to her vision, because she had seen a little girl, not a woman. Nevertheless, the chruch appropriated the story, the visions, and the place and transformed the apparition into the Mother of Jesus, and the truth was forgotten, If a lie is repeated often enough, it ends up convincing everyone. THe only difference is that 'the little girl' - as Bernadette always referred to her - had a name."
"What was it?", asks Mikhail
"I am the Immaculate Conception."
165

[passage]
"I reminded him that he knows my story: the little girl, the voice, the attacks that allow me to hear things that other people do not know. He says this is just part of my illness; there is only one prophet, Mohammed, and everything that needed to be said has already been revealed. This, he goes on, does not mean that the devil is not still abroad in the world, using all kinds of tricks - including a supposed ability to foresee the future - to deceive the weak and lure people away from the true faith. He had given me a job because Islam demands that we should be charitable, but now he deeply regretted it: I am clearly either a tool of the secret services or an envoy of the devil.
170
---> DK: This was particularly interesting because most Christians blame anything that is not explainable that is supernatural to the devil as well. Funny how monotheistic religions pass the blame so quickly instead of being open minded that maybe there are some things that we can not explain that can still attributed to God.

[passage]
"At last we are ushered in. By acting as interpreter at that interview and by reading and rereading Esther's article when it was published, I learn several things I needed to know.
"Esther asks why people are sad.
" 'That's simple', says the old man. 'They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. THey never ask if that plan is theirs or if t was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people's ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams.'
"Esther remarks that many people say to her, 'You're lucky, you know what you want from life, whereas I don't even know what I want to do.'
" 'Of course they know', replies the nomad. 'How many people do you know who say: I've never done what I wanted, but then, that's life. If they say they haven't done what they wanted, then, at some point, they must have known what it was that they did want. As for life, it's just a story that other people tells us about the world and about how we should behave in the world.'
" 'Even worse are those people that say: I'm happy because I'm sacrificing my life for those I love.'
" 'And do you think that the people who love us want to see us suffereing for their sakes? Do you think that love is a source of suffering?'
" 'To be honest, yes'
" 'Well, it shouldn't be.'
177
---> DK: reminds me of John Galt's speech that people sacrifice happiness for duty. When people do this they deserve to be unhappy because they are not going after their own happiness or doing something because they agree with it or because it makes themselves happy. They do it because they 'have to', which is entirely idiotic.


[passage]
" '.... and, after a while, by despair, fear, loneliness, and your attempts to control the uncontrollable. According to the tradition of the steppes - which is known as the Tengri - in order to live fully, it is necessary to be in constant movement; only then can each day be different from the last.
178
---> DK: Consistent with the conclusion that i have come across that all human beings need to progress or they will eventually be destroyed both mentally then physically.

[passage]
"Yes, and how he might have lost them or given them away, or else they might have turned out to be more expensive than expected, etc. Don't worry, I know there are no absolute answers. But first, did Joan of Arc suffer from epilepsy?"
"Oddly enough, my friend mentioned her during our conversation. Joan of Arc started hearing voices when she was 13. Her statements reveal that she saw lights, which is one of the symptoms of an attack. According to the neurologist, Dr. Lydia Bayne, the warrior-saint's ecstatic experiences were caused by what we now call musicogenic epilepsy, which is provoked by hearing a particular kind of sound or music: in Joan's case it was the sound of bells.
187
---> DK: interesting when i read this because it made me want to read the story of Joan of Arc. She was later labelled a witch i believe.


[passage]
"Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Dante ... I didn't make a full list, since what you were interested in was the boy's prophecy. What was his name by the way?"
"You don't know him, and since you've nearly always got another appointment to go to, perhaps you'd better just finish your explanation."
"All right. Medical scientists who study the Bible are sure that the apostle Paul was an epileptic. They base this on the fact that, on the road to Damascus he saw a brilliant light near him which caused him to fall to the ground, leaving him temporarily blind and unable to eat or drink for some days. In medical terms, this is known as 'temporal lobe epilepsy'.
"I don't think the church would agree."
"I'm not even sure that i agree, but that's what the medical literature says. Other epileptics develop their self-destructuve side, as was the case of Van Gogh. He described his convulsions as 'the storm within'. In Saint-Remy, where the was a patient, one of the nurses saw him having a convulsive seizure."
"At least he managed in his paintings to transform his self-destruction into a reconstruction of the world."
"Some people suspect that Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland in order to describe his own experiences of epilepsy. The story at the beginning of the book, when Alice falls down a black hole, is an experience familiar to most epileptics. During her journey through Wonderland, Alice often sees things flying and she herself feels very light. - another very precise description of the effects of an epileptic attack."
"So it would seem epileptics have a propensity for art."
"Not at all, it's just that beacuase artists tend to become famous, art and epilepsy become linked in people's minds. Literature is full of examples of writers with a suspected or confirmed diagnosis of epilepsy: Moliere, Edgar Allan Poe, Flaubert.... Dostoevsky had his first attack when he was 9 years old, and said that it brought him moments when he felt utterly at peace with the world as well as moments of terrible depression...."
189
---> DK: just more names to the list of epileptics in the past who were also among the greats. Especially the apostle Paul's possible story.

[passage]
One day, I'm going to write a travel guide containing only maps and addresses of hotels, and with the rest of the pages blank. That way people will have to make their own itinerary, to discover for themselves restaurants, monuments, and all the magnificent things that every city has, but which are never mentioned because "the history we have been taught" does not include them under the heading THings You Must See."
192

[passage]
"I don't know. I think love and dependency go hand in hand."
"Possibly. But let's suppose that instead of writing A Time to Rend and a Time to Sew, which is really just a letter to a woman who is far away, i had chosen a different plot, for example, a husband and wife who have been together for ten years. They used to make love every day, now they only make love once a week, but that doesn't really matter because there is no solidarity, mutual support, companionship. He feels sad when has to have supper alone because she is working late. She hates it when he has to go away, but accepts that it is part of his job. They feel that something is missing, but they are both grown-ups, they are both mature people, and they know how important it is to keep their relationship stable, even if only for the children's sake. They devote more and more time to work and to the children, they think less and less about their marriage. Everything appears to be going really well, and there's certainly no other man or woman in their lives.
"Yet they sense that something is wrong. They can't quite put their finger on the problem. As time passes, they grow more and more dependent on each other; they are getting older; any opportunities to make a new life are vanishing fast. They try to keep busy doing reading or emroidery, watching television, seeing friends but there is always the conversation over supper or after supper. He is easily irritated, she is more silent than usual. THey can see that they are growing further and further apart, but cannot understand why. They reach the conclusion that this is what marriage is like, but won't talk to their friends about it; they are the image of the happy couple who support each other and share the same interests. She takes a lover, so does he, but it's never anything serious of course. What is important, necessary, essential, is to act as if nothing is happening, because it's too late to change."
195
---DK: such a great passage that summarizes the lack of foresight of people when they marry. Don't all of them end up in the same place when they don't marry the right person who makes them happy? ie. they sell out or just settle for a comfortable life??

[passage]
I place one foot on the surface, the whole sheet of ice moves, but does not crack. With one eye on the rising sun, I make a kind of wager with God: if i manage to reach the clumn and come back without the ice cracking, that will be a sign that i am on the right path, and that his hand is showing me where I should go.
"You'll fall in the water."
"So? The worst that can happen is that I'll get a bit cold, but the hotel isn't far away and I won't have to suffer for long."
I put my other foot on the ice: I am now in the fountain. The ice breaks away from the edges and a little water laps onto the surface of the ice, but the ice does not break. I set off toward the column. It's only about four meters there and back, and all i risk is getting a very cold bath. HOwever, I mustn't think about what might happen: I've taken the first step and I must continue to the end.
I reach the column, touch it with my hand, hear everything around me creaking, but I'm still on the ice. My first instinct is to run back, but something tells me that if i do that, my steps will become heavier, firmer, and I'll fall into the water. I must walk back slowly, at the same pace.
The sun is rising ahead of me; it dazzles me slightly. I can see only Marie's silhouette and the shapes of the buildings and the trees. The sheet of ice keeps shifting, water spills over on to the surface, but i know - with absolute certainty - that i will reach the edge. I am in communion with the day, with my choices, I know the limits of the frozen water; I know how to deal with it, how to ask for its help, to keep me from falling. I begin to enter a kind o trance, a euphoric state; I am a child again, doing something that is wrong, forbidden, but which gives me enormous pleasure. Wonderful! Crazy pacts with God, along the lines of "If I manage to do this, then so and so will happen," signs provoked not by anything that comes form outside, but by instinct, by my capacity to forget the old rules and create new situations.
197
---> DK: I remember i would always make pacts with God when I was child that were as ridiculous as this passage.

[passage]
All that will disappear. What remains will be the love that moves the heavens, the stars, people, flowers, insects, the love that obliges us all to walk across the ice despite the danger, that fills us with joy and with fear, and gives meaning to everything. I touch the edge of the fountain, a hand reaches out to me, I grab hold of it, and Marie helps to steady me as I step down.
"I'm proud of you I would never do anything like that."
"Not so long ago I wouldn't have either, it seems so childish, irresponsible, unnecessary, pointless. But I am being reborn and I need to take new risks."
"The morning light is obviously good for you: you're talking like a wise man."
"No wise man would do what I've just done."
198

[passage]
The idea that love leads to happiness is a modern invention, dating from the end of the 17th century. Ever since then, people have been taught to believe that love should last forever and that marriage is the best place in which to exercise that love. In the past, there was less optimism about the longevity of passion. Romeo and Juliet isn't a happy story, its a tragedy. In the last few decades, expectations about marriage as the road to personal fulfillment have grown considerably as have disappointment and dissatisfaction.
204

[passage]
THe acomodador or giving up point: there is always an event in our lives that is responsible for us failing to progress: a trauma, a particularly bitter defeat, a disappointment in love, even a victory that we did not quite understand, can make cowards of us and prevent us from moving on. As part of the process his hidden powers, the shaman must first free himself from that giving-up point and, to do so, he must review his whole life and find out where it occurred.

The acomodador. This fit in with my experience of learning archery - the only sport I enjoyed - for the teacher of archery says that no shot can ever be repeated, and there is no point trying to learn from good or bad shots. What matters is repeating it hundreds of times, until we have freed ourselves from the idea of hitting the target and have ourselves become the arrow, the bow, the target. At that moment, the energy of the "thing" (my teacher of kyudo - the form of Japanese archery I practiced - never used the word "God") guides our movements and then we begin to release the arrow not when we want to, but when the "thing" believes that the moment has come.
205

[passage]
THe acomodador. For two years, I tried to learn how to play the guitar. To begin with, I made rapid progress, but then reached a point where I could progress no further, because I discovered that other people were learning faster than I was, which made me feel mediocre; and so as not to have to feel ashamed, I decided that I was no longer interested in learning. The same thing happened with snooker, football, bicycle racing. I learned enough to do everything reasonably well, but there was always a point where I got stuck.
Why?
Because according to the story we are told, there always comes a moment in our lives when we reach "our limit". I often recalled my struggle to deny my destiny as a writer and how Esther had always refused to allow the acomodador to lay down rules for my dream. The paragraph I had just read fit in with the idea of forgetting one's personal hisotry and being left only with the instinct that develops out of the various difficulties and tragedies one has experienced. THis is what the shamans of Mexico did and what the nomads on the steppes of Central Asia preached.
The acomodador: there is always an event in our lives that is responsible for us failing to progress.
206

[passage]
I describe how difficult it was to write A Time to Rend and a Time to Sew, and that there are many parts of the book which I myself am only beginning to understand now, as I reread it, as if the created thing were always greater and more generous than its creator.
213

[passage]
But I resisted the temptation and tried to get through that moment, discovering, in the process, that there is nothing worse than the feeling no one cares whether we exist or not, that no one is interested in what we have to say about life, and that the world can continue turning without our awkward presence.
"I began to imagine how many millions of people were, at that moment, feeling utterly useless and wretched - however rich, charming, and delightful they might be - because they were alone that night, as they were yesterday, and as they might well be tomorrow. Students with no one to go out with, older people sitting in front of the TV as if it were their sole salvation, businessmen in their hotel rooms, wondering if what they were doing made any sense, women who spent the afternoon carefully applying their makeup and doing their hair in order to go to a bar only to pretend that they're not looking for company; all they want is confirmation that they're still attractive; the men ogle them and chat them up, but the women reject them all disdainfully, because they feel inferior and are afraid the men will find out that they're single mothers or lowly clerks with nothing to say about what's going on in the world because they work from dawn to dusk to scrape a living and have no time to read the newspapers. People who look at themselves in the mirror and think themselves ugly, believing that being beautiful is what really matters, and spend their time reading magazines in which everyone is pretty, rich and famous. Husbands and wives who wish they could talk over supper as they used to, but there are always other things demanding their attention, more important things, and the conversation can always wait for a tomorrow that never comes.
213

[passage]
I didn't leave because I was feeling free, doing things I hadn't done for years, opening up a space in my soul for new experiences, driving the acomodador out of my life, experiencing things that might not interest me very much, but which were at least different.
220

[passage]
"If you want to know why the tape is there, you'll have to give me a euro. Everything in life has its price, as you know better than anyone. And information is one of the most expensive products in the world."
No one in the group came to my aid, so I had to pay him a euro for his answer.
"The tape is here because we put it there. As you can see, there are no repairs going on at all, just a stupid orange-and-white tape blocking the stupid pavement. But no one asks what it's doing there; they step off the pavement, walk along the road at the risk of being knocked down, and get back on farther up. By the way, I read somewhere that you had an accident. Is that true?"
"Yes I did, and all because I stepped off the pavement."
223

[passage]
The Zahir was a fixation on everything that had been passed from generation to generation; it left no question unanswered; it took up all the space; it never allowed us even to consider the possibility that things could change.

... People who are different are dangerous, they belong to another tribe; they want our lands and our women.
We must marry, have children reproduce the species.
Love is only a small thing, enough for one person, and any suggestion that the heart might be larger than this is considered perverse.
When we marry, we are authorized to take possession of the other person, body and soul.
We must do jobs we detest because we are part of an organized society, and if everyone did what they wanted to do, the world would come to a standstill.
We must buy jewelry; it identifies us with our tribe, just as body piercing identifies those of a different tribe.
We must be amusing at all times and sneer at those who express their real feelings' it's dangerous for a tribe to allow its members to show their feelings.
We must at all costs avoid saying no because people prefer those who always say yes, and this allows us to survive in hostile territory.
What other people think is more important than what we feel.
Never make a fuss - it might attract the attention of an enemy tribe.
IF you behave differently, you will be expelled from the tribe because you could infect others and destroy something that was extremely difficult to organize in the first place.
We must always consider the look of our new cave, and if we don't have a clear idea of our own, then we must call in a decorator who will do his best to show others what good taste we have.
WE must eat three meals a day, even if we're not hungry, and when we fail to fit the current ideal of beauty we must fast, even if we're starving.
We must dress according to the dictates of fashion, make love whether we feel like it or not, kill in the name of our country, wish time away so that retirement comes more quickly, elect politicians, complain about the cost of living, change our hairstyle, criticize anyone who is different, go to a religious service on Sunday, Saturday or Friday, depending on our religion, and there beg forgiveness for our sins and puff ourselves up with pride because we know the truth and despise the other tribe, who worship a false god.
Our children must follow in our footsteps; after all, we are older and know about the world.
We must have a university degree even if we never get a job in the area of knowledge we were forced to study.
We must study things that we will never use, but which someone told us were important to know: algebra, trigonometry, the code of Hammurabi.
We must never make our parents sad, even if this means giving up everything that makes us happy.
We must play music quietly, talk quietly, weep in private, because I am the all-powerful Zahir, who lays down the rules and determines the distance between railway tracks, the meaning of success, the best way to love, the importance of rewards.
230

[passage]
"Why do I write? The real answer is this: I write because I want to be loved."
The journalist eyed me suspiciously: What kind of confession was this?
"I write because when I was an adolescent, I was useless at football, I didn't have a car or much of an allowance, and I was pretty much of a weed."
I was making a huge effort to keep talking. The conversation with Marie had reminded me of a past that no longer made any sense; I needed to talk about my real personal history, in order to become free of it. I went on:
"I didn't wear trendy clothes either. That's all the girls in my class were interested in, and so they just ignored me. At night, when my friends were out with their girlfriends, I spent my free time creating a world in which I could be happy: my companions were writers and their books. One day, I wrote a poem for one of the girls in the street where I lived. A friend found the poem in my room and stole it, and when we were all together, he showed it to the entire class. Everyone laughed. They thought it was ridiculous - I was in love!
"The only one who didn't laugh was the girl I wrote the poem for. The following evening, when we went to the theater, she managed to fix things so that she sat next to me, and she held my hand. We left the theater hand in hand. There was ugly, puny, untrendy me strolling along with the girl all the boys in the class fancied."
243

[passage]
"Well it's been in existence since the beginning of civilization, but it was only officially set down in 1933 by a Danish writer. In the small town of Jante, the powers that be came up with 10 commandments telling people how they should behave, and it seems to exist not only in Jante, but everywhere else too. If I had to sum it up in one sentence, I'd say: 'Mediocrity and anonymity are the safest choice. If you opt for them, you'll never face any major problems in life. But if you try to be different....' "
"I'd like to know what these Jante commandments are," said the journalist who seemed genuinely interested.
"I don't have them here, but I can summarize if you like."
I went over to my computer and printed out a condensed and edited version.
"You are nobody, never even dare to think that you know more than we do. You are of no importance, you can do nothing right, your work is of no significance, but as long as you never challenge us, you will live a happy life. Always take what we say seriously and never laugh at our opinions."
The journalist folded up the piece of paper and put it in his pocket.
"You're right. IF you're a nobody, if your work has no impact, then it deserves to be praised. If, however, you climb out of that state of mediocrity and are a success, then you're defying the law and deserve to be punished."
244

[passage]
A warrior of light knows that he has much to be grateful for.
He was helped in his struggle by the angels, celestial forces placed each thing in its place, thus allowing him to give of his best. That is why, at sunset, he kneels and gives thanks for the Protective Cloak surrounding him.
His companions say: 'He's so lucky!' But he knows that "luck" is knowing to look around him and to see where his friends are, because it was through their words that the angels were able to make themselves heard.
247

[passage]
I know that all the women at the gala supper will be wearing outfits designed to make their breasts and curves the center of attention, and that their husbands or boyfriends, knowing that their wives or girlfriends are desired by other men will think: "All right, have a good look, but keep your distance, because she's with me, she's mine. I'm better than you are, because I have something you'd all like to have."
249

While we wait for the taxi, I draw up a list of possible topics of conversation:
(a) Comments about people's appearance: "You're looking very elegant." "What a beautiful dress." "Your skin's looking fabulous." WHen they go back home, they'll say how badly dressed everyone was and how ill they looked.
(b) Recent holidays: "You must visit Aruba, its fantastic." "There's nothing like a summer night in Cancun sipping a martini by the seashore." In fact no one enjoys themselves very much on these holidays, they just experience a sense of freedom for a few days and feel obliged to enjoy themselves because they spent all that money.
(c) More holidays, this time to places which they feel free to criticize: "I was in Rio de Janeiro recently - such a violent city." "The poverty in the streets of Calcutta is really shocking." They only wen tto these places in order to feel powerful while they were there and privileged when they came back to the mean reality of their little lives, where at least there is no poverty or violence.
(d) New therapies: "Just one week of drinking wheatgrass juice really improves the texture of your hair" "I spent two days at a spa in Biarritz; the water there opens the pores and eliminates toxins." THe following week, they will discover that wheatgrass has absolutely no special properties and that any old hot water will open up pores and eliminate toxins.
(e) Other people: "I haven't seen so and so in ages - what's he up to? "I understand what's her name is in financial difficulties and has had to sell her apartment." They can talk about the people who weren't invited to the party in question, they can criticize all they like, as long as they end by saying, with an innocent, pitying air: "Still, he / she's a wonderful person."
(f) A few little complaints about life, just to add savor to the evening: "I wish something new would happen in my life." "I'm so worried about my children, they never listen to proper music or read proper literature." They wait for comments from other people with the same problem and then feel less alone and leave the party happy.
(g) At intellectual gatherings, like the one this evening we will discuss the Middle East conflict, the problem with Islamism, the latest exhibition, the latest philosophy guru, the fantastic book that no one has heard of, the fact that music isn't what it used to be; we will offer our intelligent, sensible opinions, which run completely counter to our real feelings - because we all know how much we hate having to go those exhibitions, read those unbearable books, or see those dreary films, just so that we will have something to talk about on nights like tonight.

[passage]
"No, I don't need your help. I'm just surprised by certain coincidences. It seems there are a lot of people, all over the world, who are becoming aware of the same thing and acting in a very similar way."
"The first thing you feel, when you set out on a journey like this , is that you'll never arrive. Then you feel insecure, abandoned, and spend all your time thinking about giving up. But if you can last a week, then you'll make it to the end."
268

[passage]
A sense of paradise descends from the skies. And I am aware that I am living through an unforgettable moment in my life; it is the kind of awareness we often have precisely when the magic moment has passed. I am entirely here, without past, without future, entirely focused on the morning, on the music of the horses' hooves, on the gentleness of the wind caressing my body, on the unexpected grace of contemplating sky, earth, men. I feel a sense of adoration and ecstasy. I am thankful for being alive. I pray quietly, listening to the voice of nature, and understanding that the invisible world always manifests itself in the visible world.
I ask the sky some questions, the same questions I used to ask my mother when I was a child:
Why do we love certain people and hate others?
Where do we go after we die?
Why are we born, if in the end, we die?
What does God mean?
272

[passage]
As soon as the sun began to sink low on the horizon, we went to an area on the steppes that was full of vast sand dunes. I became aware of a different sound, a kind of resonance, an intense vibration. Mikhail said that it was one of the few places in the world where the dunes sing.
"When I was in Paris and i talked to people about this, they only believed me because an American said that he experienced the same thing in North Africa; there are only 30 places like it in the world. Nowadays, of course, scientists can explain everything. It seems that because of the place's unique formation, the wind penetrates the actual grains of sand and creates this sound.
278

[passage]
"I want to tell you something, Mikhail. I too have travelled back and forth between many contradictions since I first met you. I began by hating you, then I accepted you, and as I've followed in your footsteps, that acceptance has become respect. You're still young, and the powerlessness you feel is perfectly normal. I don't know how many people your work has touched so far, but I can tell you one thing: you changed my life."
"You were only interested in finding your wife."
"I still am, but that didn't just make me travel across the Kazakhstan steppes: it made me travel through the whole of my past life. I saw where I was wrong, I saw where I stopped, I saw the moment when I lost Esther, the moment that the Mexican Indians call the Acomodador - the giving up point. I experienced things I never imagined I would experience at my age. And all because you were by my side, guiding me, even though you might not have been aware that you were. And do you know something else? I believe that you do hear voices and that you did have visions when you were a child. I have always believed in many things, and now I believe even more."
283

[passage]
I am filthy. My clothes and my face are caked with sand, my body drenched in sweat, even though it's very cold.
I worry about my appearance, the most superficial thing in the world, as if I had made this long journey to my personal Ithaca merely in order to show my new clothes. As I walk the remaining hundred meters, I must make an effort to think of all the important things that have happened to her - or was it my? - absence.
289



Freedom
to open up that which you did not know you had
and in turn open up an aspect of truth unveiled for all of mankind
to try and pursue your own happiness
to become separated from that which you thought you loved
but found out later that you did not love at all and then again
later find out that you did love
Free to be wretchedly alone
and when you are not alone you lack freedom and is a form of suffering
Free to realize that loneliness is an illusion because it is suffering,
but that suffering is an illusion
because nothing exists except the present
because the past and the future are an illusion
so says the enlightened one

O, how does one become truly free?
Free to live in the present, to be free of the past and of the future
Free after enlightenment
Free to soar to the heights of your potential
Free to open up your imagination to any and all things
to travel beyond our earth and into the universe
past our galaxy of milk and beyond and ask your self is the infinite finite
Do we all just live in a thought that was predetermined and freedom is just an illusion in the grand scheme of the infinite
Free to think and connect and reconnect and link everything
Free to read about the history of mankind
Free to find yourself in others that had lived in the past
Free to shape your destiny in any way shape or form you would like
only to find that you ultimately have no control over your own destiny

Freedom from the circle of duty
Freedom from the circle of tradition
Freedom from the circle of the expectation of reciprocity
Freedom from family
Freedom from duty to do a repetitive task all day long
Freedom from work

How free is the baby bird when she breathes air outside of the eggshell?
How free is a baby when she is out of water and breathes air for the first time
outside of her mother's womb?
How free is the tadpole when he changes shape and breathes air for the first time
after he has grown legs and lungs and leaps onto land?
How free is a seed when it finally grows and first feels the sun when it comes out of the soil?
How free is the butterfly when it has been caccooned for so long?
How free are the horses when the run and run and run with the wind in front of them and no saddle on their back?

How wide is the wing span of an eagle?


Look up Joan of Arc
Look up the Italian Renaissance of the 15 and 16th centuries.


Ithaca
When you set out on your journey to Ithaca
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge,
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon - do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your hear heart does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, whn,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would never have set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

Constantine Cavafy (1863 - 1933)