| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: to the foundry, the bell-founders discovered that there was one mirror
among them which would not melt. Again and again they tried to melt it; but
it resisted all their efforts. Evidently the woman who had given that
mirror to the temple must have regretted the giving. She had not presented
her offering with all her heart; and therefore her selfish soul, remaining
attached to the mirror, kept it hard and cold in the midst of the furnace.
Of course everybody heard of the matter, and everybody soon knew whose
mirror it was that would not melt. And because of this public exposure of
her secret fault, the poor woman became very much ashamed and very angry.
And as she could not bear the shame, she drowned herself, after having
written a farewell letter containing these words:--
Kwaidan |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing
inorganic. These foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the slag
of a furnace, showing that Nature is "in full blast" within. The
earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum
like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and
antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree,
which precede flowers and fruit -- not a fossil earth, but a living
earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and
vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our
exuviae from their graves. You may melt your metals and cast them
into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me
Walden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs: undertake the command of this party. Ninaka, he said,
would furnish guides to escort Bulan and his men
through the jungle to the point at which they might
expect to find Muda Saffir.
And so, with the girl he sought lying within fifty feet
of him, Bulan started off through the jungle with two
of Ninaka's Dyaks as guides--guides who had been well
instructed by their panglima as to their duties.
Twisting and turning through the dense maze of
underbrush and close-growing, lofty trees the little
party of eight plunged farther and farther into the
The Monster Men |
