| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: green and yellow backgrounds, where there were tin bathtubs and
gloomy hallways and verdureless, unnamable spaces in back of the
buildings; where even love dressed as seductiona sordid murder
around the corner, illicit motherhood in the flat above. And
always there was the economical stuffiness of indoor winter, and
the long summers, nightmares of perspiration between sticky
enveloping walls ... dirty restaurants where careless, tired
people helped themselves to sugar with their own used
coffee-spoons, leaving hard brown deposits in the bowl.
It was not so bad where there were only men or else only women;
it was when they were vilely herded that it all seemed so rotten.
This Side of Paradise |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Dreams by Olive Schreiner: than the heat of the day and the shining of the sun on the bricks of the
Roman road; and I lay my head upon my knees; I heard the breaking of the
water on the rocks three hundred feet below, and the rustling of the wind
among the olive trees and the ruined arches, and then I fell asleep there.
I had a dream.
A man cried up to God, and God sent down an angel to help him; and the
angel came back and said, "I cannot help that man."
God said, "How is it with him?"
And the angel said, "He cries out continually that one has injured him; and
he would forgive him and he cannot."
God said, "What have you done for him?"
|
