| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: apparitions innocent and simple and calm and happy, which we beheld shining
in pure light, pure ourselves and not yet enshrined in that living tomb
which we carry about, now that we are imprisoned in the body, like an
oyster in his shell. Let me linger over the memory of scenes which have
passed away.
But of beauty, I repeat again that we saw her there shining in company with
the celestial forms; and coming to earth we find her here too, shining in
clearness through the clearest aperture of sense. For sight is the most
piercing of our bodily senses; though not by that is wisdom seen; her
loveliness would have been transporting if there had been a visible image
of her, and the other ideas, if they had visible counterparts, would be
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: transferred the whole thing, unopened, from my pocket to a drawer
which I double-locked would have amounted, for an initiated
observer, to some such pledge.
CHAPTER XII
Mrs. Saltram left me drawing my breath more quickly and indeed
almost in pain--as if I had just perilously grazed the loss of
something precious. I didn't quite know what it was--it had a
shocking resemblance to my honour. The emotion was the livelier
surely in that my pulses even yet vibrated to the pleasure with
which, the night before, I had rallied to the rare analyst, the
great intellectual adventurer and pathfinder. What had dropped
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: left her own people and how she had come so far south as the
country of the Alus, where I had found her.
At first Ajor hesitated to explain; but at last she consented,
and for the first time I heard the complete story of her origin
and experiences. For my benefit she entered into greater
detail of explanation than would have been necessary had I been
a native Caspakian.
"I am a cos-ata-lo," commenced Ajor, and then she turned
toward me. "A cos-ata-lo, my Tom, is a woman" (lo)
"who did not come from an egg and thus on up from the beginning."
(Cor sva jo.) "I was a babe at my mother's breast. Only among
The People That Time Forgot |
