| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: as he expressed it, "and hearing a voice as it were from
my own intestines." Until the moment when I placed my mouth
in his World, he had neither seen me, nor heard anything except
confused sounds beating against -- what I called his side,
but what he called his INSIDE or STOMACH; nor had he even now
the least conception of the region from which I had come.
Outside his World, or Line, all was a blank to him; nay,
not even a blank, for a blank implies Space; say, rather,
all was non-existent.
His subjects -- of whom the small Lines were men and the Points Women
-- were all alike confined in motion and eye-sight to that single
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: to the listening circle, gathered around the blaze and welcoming
the coarse, gross jests, and coarser, grosser songs with roars of
boisterous laughter.
Yet bleak and dreary as was the winter in those days, and cold
and biting as was the frost in the cheerless, windy halls and
corridors of the castle, it was not without its joys to the young
lads; for then, as now, boys could find pleasure even in slushy
weather, when the sodden snow is fit for nothing but to make
snowballs of.
Thrice that bitter winter the moat was frozen over, and the lads,
making themselves skates of marrow-bones, which they bought from
Men of Iron |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: For crude and futile animosities,
And how much for the joy of being whole,
And how much for long sorrow and old pain.
On our side there are some who may be given
To grow old wondering what he thinks of us
And some above us, who are, in his eyes,
Above himself, -- and that's quite right and English.
Yet here we smile, or disappoint the gods
Who made it so: the gods have always eyes
To see men scratch; and they see one down here
Who itches, manor-bitten to the bone,
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