Alchemy for Blind Boys and Men who Don't Like Gold

I reread The Alchemist this year and added it to the list of things that were going right. Below that list is another one far longer. Call me a pessimist. To fold the list in half as one does a jack knife would produce no more than a prick of a blade, and a long flat handle carved from elm—sturdy.

The longer side, the elm side, has on it things like Missed the train at Penn Station twice (when I was in New York), and School’s out for the summer (School’s out forever!), blue light does retinal damage over extensive periods, and similar thoughts that only spark the faintest clinical feeling in me.

I don't have depression—but that leads nowhere. I have hope, maybe for the children, maybe for myself. I like to look at the big picture, the world as a timeline that collapses into a pop up book of day to day. With your nose in the pop up book it’s hard to count. Look too closely and you’ll have to put a finger under each line to read.

Coelho’s book certainly makes for a substantial addition to the day to day. I’ve read The Alchemist before and don't intend to summarize excessively. It has spiritual qualities that require personal experience, physical touch (don't read it online, blue light does retinal damage). I’m lucky enough that my edition has coffee stains and stiff pages, giving it artificial age. Reading it then adds to the mysticism.

The Alchemist, I’ll remind you, is about dreams. The hypothetical of turning any metal to gold is metaphorical of dreams until it’s not, and then the book will trick readers into thinking it’s about riches. It has other tricks too, misdirecting readers with romance, religion, violence, work ethic.

Maybe it’s about all of these and maybe it’s not, but to me it is an inspiring story of hope—one that reminds us that dreams come true and that children are always right.

Flash forward to new years—I read the book at Christmas. We didn't make resolutions this year because none of us were particularly resolute. It seemed for once to be enough to have survived, to have prospered, even if the list looked like a particularly unbalanced jack-knife—even if the dog had long since stopped barking at the gate. We did drink champagne and tell stories, and in this way I suppose all happy families are alike, or however it goes. There are five of us in front of the television and maybe that’s enough.

On the second read, The Alchemist is shaking. I am far older than the first time. The book warns that dreams are often forgotten as children are ignored and that only careful cultivation and introspection keeps them alive. The child doesn't have access to the world but has unhindered access to the heart. A balance must be created.

Back to the list then. Next to every item on the lower portion, the losses stacked against the gains, seems to linger the dream forgotten. Going through the list requires a certain anxiety to rise, a trembling like the smoker’s lips. So I demand of Paulo Coelho: are the children allowed New Dreams? At which point is the world already moving, the train on the tracks again and the destination can't be changed and also that one goes to Newark not LaGuardia (it could’ve been the other way around. Big cities always fill me with apprehension and undue defensiveness).

Does it seem reasonable that destiny rests on a five, eight, twelve year old to remember dreams and passions, let alone the exits, the stops and the final station? The children see only the open heart, they do not hear the door that lets the cold in creak open.

Let’s start again. Clean slate. Find and replace, except it’s the whole page with just— space. The New Year did nothing for me this time. The apprehension is still there, School’s still out and each day in front of a camera seems lasting. As if we paused the world and got up for drinks, more popcorn. Now there’s a fight over soda and there’s no going back, the film is forgotten. It seems very difficult to count items on the list as "positive" and as much hope as I find in The Alchemist, I can't answer the question for Coelho.

That dreams exist, then, are sometimes made real, are childlike and require only energy and faith—not in god but in one’s own spirit—seems to be the point—

Yet here’s a tweet from the man himself—and quite timely (10 hours ago from when this was written):

“My 2 bestselling books in 2020: The Alchemist (expected) and Veronika decides to die (totally unexpected).”

It isn't the children who buy these books, not at five, eight, and twelve. In this way perhaps, the question is answered. The man at twenty is just as young as he is old, and it is his similarity to children, even with coat closed to the biting wind, that gives him his chance to dream.