| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 1492 by Mary Johntson: to their village, just behind the trees. A handful of men
we left with the boats and the rest of us crossed sand.
Harquebuses and crossbows went with us, but we had no need
of them. The island apparently followed peace, and its
folk greatly feared to give offense to gods from the sky.
Above the ships held a range of pearly clouds, out of which
indeed one might make strange lands and forms. The Indians
--Christopherus Columbus called them ``Indians''--
pointed from ships to cloud. They spoke with movements
of reverence. ``You have come down--you have come
down!'' We understood them, though their words were not
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: caught my ear. I looked up, for the sound came from above, and saw
a huge mass bounding down the steep side of the pyramid. Even then
I knew it again; it was the idol of the god Tezcat that the
Spaniards had torn from its shrine, and like an avenging demon it
rushed straight on to me. Already it was upon us, there was no
retreat from instant death, we had but escaped sacrifice to the
spirit of the god to be crushed to powder beneath the bulk of his
marble emblem. On he came while on high the Spaniards shouted in
triumph. His base had struck the stone side of the pyramid fifty
feet above us, now he whirled round and round in the air to strike
again within three paces of where we stood. I felt the solid
Montezuma's Daughter |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: wick. It causes no great sensation there when a Dane is found
swinging to his own windmill tower, and most of the Poles after
they have become too careless and discouraged to shave themselves
keep their razors to cut their throats with.
It may be that the next generation on the Divide will be very
happy, but the present one came too late in life. It is useless
for men that have cut hemlocks among the mountains of Sweden for
forty years to try to be happy in a country as flat and gray and
naked as the sea. It is not easy for men that have spent their
youth fishing in the Northern seas to be content with following a
plow, and men that have served in the Austrian army hate hard work
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
