Damn, I LOVE Coelho

HIPPIE

She was still capable of love, without expecting anything–changes, gratitude–in return.

And she had loved many times in her life. Whenever this had happened, love’s energy transformed the universe around her. Whenever this energy appears, it always manages to do its work–but things were different with her, she couldn’t stand to love for long.

She yearned for a vase where Love would come and leave its flowers and its fruit. Where the living water would preserve them as though they’d just been plucked, ready to be delivered to whoever had the courage–yes, “courage” was the word–to seize them. But no one like that ever showed up–or, more accurately, people would no sooner show up than they would flee in fear because she was no vase but a storm of lightning, wind, and thunder, a force of nature that could never be tamed or merely channeled to stir windmills, light up cities, sow terror.

I loved this book. It’s totally unexpected, and yet familiar. I picked up my copy–the first paperback I’ve owned in years–at Shakespeares Café in Paris. And read it here, on the beach in Goa, India. How perfect.

Blurb: Hippie

Drawing on the rich experience of his own life, best-selling author Paulo Coelho takes us back in time to relive the dreams of a generation that longed for peace and dared to challenge the established social order. In Hippie, he tells the story of Paulo, a young, skinny Brazilian man with a goatee and long, flowing hair, who wants to become a writer and sets off on a journey in search of a deeper meaning for his life.

Paulo’s travels take him from South America to the famous Dam Square in Amsterdam filled with young people wearing vibrant clothes and burning incense, meditating and playing music, while discussing sexual liberation, the expansion of consciousness, and the search for an inner truth.   

There he meets Karla, a Dutch woman in her twenties who has been waiting to find the ideal companion to accompany her on the fabled hippie trail to Nepal. She convinces Paulo to join her on a trip aboard the Magic Bus that travels across Europe and Central Asia to Kathmandu. They embark on the journey in the company of fascinating fellow travelers, each of whom has a story to tell, and each of whom will undergo a personal transformation, changing their priorities and values along the way. As they travel together, Paulo and Karla explore their own relationship: a life-defining love story that awakens them on every level and leads to choices and decisions that will set the course for their lives thereafter.

Pick up your copy on Amazon, Hippie by Paulo Coelho