Issue nº 177

To visit Paulo Coelho's blog (up-dated daily), please click here.

I'm launching a new project: an experimental film, made by readers, based on my new book "The Witch of Portobello". All are invited to participate. I also suggest that you invite your friends to visit the link "The Experimental Witch".

In this case the title of the newsletter is not right. Since in the previous Warrior of Light Online I said refused to write about the reasons why men love woman (I would be considered a male chauvinist South-American writer who despises the liberation movement of the opposite sex), a reader called Julia decided to do it for me. So now we have the feminine version of why we love women. Of course, I don’t agree with everything, but this is a (relatively) free tribune. Let’s see what Julia has to tell us:

We men love women because they still feel they are adolescents even after they grow old.

Because they smile every time they pass a child.

Because they walk down the street erect, always looking straight ahead, never turning round to say thanks or return the smile or compliment we make when they pass by.

Because they are bold in bed, not because they have a perverse nature but because they want to please us.

Because they do everything necessary for the house to be tidy and perfect, and never expect any recognition for the work they have done.

Because they don’t read pornographic magazines.

Because they don’t complain about the sacrifices they make for the sake of the ideal of beauty, facing up to waxers, Botox injections and menacing machines in gyms.

Because they prefer to eat salads.

Because they draw and paint their faces with the same concentration as Michelangelo working on the Sistine Chapel.

Because if they want to know something about their own appearance, they ask other women and don’t bother us with this type of question.

Because they have their own ways of solving problems, which we never understand, and that makes us mad.

Because they feel compassion, and say “I love you” precisely when they are beginning to love us less, to make up for what we can feel and notice.

Because sometimes they complain about things that we feel too, such as colds and rheumatic pains, and then we understand that they are people just like us.

Because they write love stories.

Because while our armies invade other countries, they remain firm in their private and inexplicable war to put an end to all the cockroaches in the world.

Because they cry their eyes out when they hear the Rolling Stones singing “Angie”.

Because they are capable of going to work dressed like men, in their delicate little suits, whereas no man would ever dare go to work wearing a skirt.

Because in the movies – and only in the movies – they never take a shower before making love with their partners.

Because they always manage to find a convincing defect when we say that another woman is pretty, making us feel insecure about our taste.

Because they really take seriously everything that is happening in the private lives of celebrities.

Because they manage to fake orgasms with the same artistic quality as the most famous and talented of movie stars.

Because they just love exotic cocktails with different colors and delicate little ornaments, while we always have the same old whiskey.

Because they don’t waste hours thinking about how they are going to approach the pretty young man who has just come on the bus.

Because we came from them, will go back to them, and until that happens, live in orbit around the feminine body and soul.

And I would add: we men love them for being women. As simple as that.