| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: crossed. At the same time, the first leg measures the distance; it
grips the last coil placed in position and brings within a suitable
range that point of the radius whereto the thread is to be fixed.
As soon as the radius is touched, the thread sticks to it by its
own glue. There are no slow operations, no knots: the fixing is
done of itself.
Meanwhile, turning by narrow degrees, the spinstress approaches the
auxiliary chords that have just served as her support. When, in
the end, these chords become too close, they will have to go; they
would impair the symmetry of the work. The Spider, therefore,
clutches and holds on to the rungs of a higher row; she picks up,
The Life of the Spider |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: But she shut her face away from him, as much as to say, "You can't
possibly understand."
As he did not leave her, however, she had to wipe her eyes, and to
raise them to the level of the factory chimneys on the other bank.
She saw also the arches of Waterloo Bridge and the carts moving
across them, like the line of animals in a shooting gallery.
They were seen blankly, but to see anything was of course to end her
weeping and begin to walk.
"I would rather walk," she said, her husband having hailed a cab
already occupied by two city men.
The fixity of her mood was broken by the action of walking.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: alone can fully express her impassioned maternity. "How handsome he
is, that son of mine!" she says to her little friend Modeste, as they
walk to church, with the beautiful Exupere in front of them. "He is
like you," Modeste Mignon answers, very much as she might have said,
"What horrid weather!" This silhouette of Madame Latournelle is quite
important as an accessory, inasmuch as for three years she has been
the chaperone of the young girl against whom the notary and his friend
Dumay are now plotting to set up what we have called, in the
"Physiologie du Mariage," a "mouse-trap."
As for Latournelle, imagine a worthy little fellow as sly as the
purest honor and uprightness would allow him to be,--a man whom any
Modeste Mignon |
