| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery: with your hat rigged out ridiculous with roses and
buttercups. What on earth put you up to such a caper?
A pretty-looking object you must have been!"
"Oh. I know pink and yellow aren't becoming to me," began Anne.
"Becoming fiddlesticks! It was putting flowers on your
hat at all, no matter what color they were, that was
ridiculous. You are the most aggravating child!"
"I don't see why it's any more ridiculous to wear flowers
on your hat than on your dress," protested Anne. "Lots of
little girls there had bouquets pinned on their dresses.
What's the difference?"
Anne of Green Gables |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his
nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and
feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion.
Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely
the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung
through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast
pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the
light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud splash;
a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and
dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the
rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: of the owner of the mirror that had made so much trouble. One of these
persons was a woman called Umegae,-- famed in Japanese legend because of
her relation to Kajiwara Kagesue, a warrior of the Heike clan. While the
pair were traveling together, Kajiwara one day found himself in great
straits for want of money; and Umegae, remembering the tradition of the
Bell of Mugen, took a basin of bronze, and, mentally representing it to be
the bell, beat upon it until she broke it,-- crying out, at the same time,
for three hundred pieces of gold. A guest of the inn where the pair were
stopping made inquiry as to the cause of the banging and the crying, and,
on learning the story of the trouble, actually presented Umegae with three
hundred ryo (3) in gold. Afterwards a song was made about Umegae's basin
Kwaidan |
