| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: weeks.
Here, the Bees plunder enthusiastically, fussing and bustling in
the spacious whorl of the stamens, which beflour them with yellow.
Their persecutrix knows of this affluence. She posts herself in
her watch-house, under the rosy screen of a petal. Cast your eyes
over the flower, more or less everywhere. If you see a Bee lying
lifeless, with legs and tongue out-stretched, draw nearer: the
Thomisus will be there, nine times out of ten. The thug has struck
her blow; she is draining the blood of the departed.
After all, this cutter of Bees' throats is a pretty, a very pretty
creature, despite her unwieldy paunch fashioned like a squat
The Life of the Spider |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell: manner that he sometimes affected. He looked thoughtfully into the
distance, as though he were addressing an audience somewhere behind
Winston's back.
'By itself,' he said, 'pain is not always enough. There are occasions when
a human being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death.
But for everyone there is something unendurable--something that cannot be
contemplated. Courage and cowardice are not involved. If you are falling
from a height it is not cowardly to clutch at a rope. If you have come up
from deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with air. It is
merely an instinct which cannot be destroyed. It is the same with the
rats. For you, they are unendurable. They are a form of pressure that you
1984 |
