| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: "I know that you foreshadow the beginning of a scene.
Pray be careful, and as accurate as if the doors of heaven
Were to swing or to stay bolted from now on for evermore."
"Do you conceive, with all your smooth contempt of every feeling,
Of hiding what you know and what you must have known before?
Is it worth a woman's torture to stand here and have you smiling,
With only your poor fetish of possession on your side?
No thing but one is wholly sure, and that's not one to scare me;
When I meet it I may say to God at last that I have tried.
And yet, for all I know, or all I dare believe, my trials
Henceforward will be more for you to bear than are your own;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: the Tarantula's retreat when she is attracted by the spikelet and
standing on the upper floor, would be a manoeuvre certain of
success, if the soil were favourable. Unfortunately, this is not
so in my case: you might as well try to dig a knife into a block
of tufa.
Other stratagems become necessary. Here are two which were
successful: I recommend them to future Tarantula-hunters. I
insert into the burrow, as far down as I can, a stalk with a fleshy
spikelet, which the Spider can bite into. I move and turn and
twist my bait. The Tarantula, when touched by the intruding body,
contemplates self-defence and bites the spikelet. A slight
The Life of the Spider |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: "For those others?"
"Stick to the subject, please. Did it turn out that my suspicions
were right?"
"Yes, perfectly right. Mongrel has heard them planning. They are
after BB's life, for running them out of Medicine Bow and taking
their stolen horses away from them."
"Well, they'll get him yet, for sure."
"Not if he keeps a sharp look-out."
"HE keep a sharp lookout! He never does; he despises them, and all
their kind. His life is always being threatened, and so it has
come to be monotonous."
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