| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: Snake's Call for protection--"We be of one blood, ye and I"--
for he believed that Kaa had turned tail at the last minute. Even
Baloo, half smothered under the monkeys on the edge of the
terrace, could not help chuckling as he heard the Black Panther
asking for help.
Kaa had only just worked his way over the west wall, landing
with a wrench that dislodged a coping stone into the ditch. He
had no intention of losing any advantage of the ground, and coiled
and uncoiled himself once or twice, to be sure that every foot of
his long body was in working order. All that while the fight with
Baloo went on, and the monkeys yelled in the tank round Bagheera,
The Jungle Book |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: that tears my very heart. I want something better than what is but what is
fled in an instant. But what is it, and where is it to be found? Yet, I know
in reality what it is I wish for. Oh! most happy were I, could I but reach one
aim--could but reach the happiest of all!"
And as he spoke the word he was again in his home; the long white curtains
hung down from the windows, and in the middle of the floor stood the black
coffin; in it he lay in the sleep of death. His wish was fulfilled--the body
rested, while the spirit went unhindered on its pilgrimage. "Let no one deem
himself happy before his end," were the words of Solon; and here was a new and
brilliant proof of the wisdom of the old apothegm.
Every corpse is a sphynx of immortality; here too on the black coffin the
Fairy Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: behind his regular and respectable vertex, a parallelogram
of twelve or thirteen inches in diagonal: -- what are you to do
with such a monster sticking fast in your house door?
But I am insulting the intelligence of my Readers by accumulating
details which must be patent to everyone who enjoys the advantages of
a Residence in Spaceland. Obviously the measurements of
a single angle would no longer be sufficient under such
portentous circumstances; one's whole life would be taken up
in feeling or surveying the perimeter of one's acquaintances.
Already the difficulties of avoiding a collision in a crowd are enough
to tax the sagacity of even a well-educated Square; but if no one
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
