| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from In the Cage by Henry James: down at Bournemouth, which had found itself selected as the field
of their recreation by a process consisting, it seemed, exclusively
of innumerable pages of the neatest arithmetic in a very greasy but
most orderly little pocket-book, the distracting possible melted
away--the fleeting absolute ruled the scene. The plans, hour by
hour, were simply superseded, and it was much of a rest to the
girl, as she sat on the pier and overlooked the sea and the
company, to see them evaporate in rosy fumes and to feel that from
moment to moment there was less left to cipher about. The week
proves blissfully fine, and her mother, at their lodgings--partly
to her embarrassment and partly to her relief--struck up with the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: words are true--they say that the soul of man is immortal, and at one time
has an end, which is termed dying, and at another time is born again, but
is never destroyed. And the moral is, that a man ought to live always in
perfect holiness. 'For in the ninth year Persephone sends the souls of
those from whom she has received the penalty of ancient crime back again
from beneath into the light of the sun above, and these are they who become
noble kings and mighty men and great in wisdom and are called saintly
heroes in after ages.' The soul, then, as being immortal, and having been
born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether in
this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all; and it is no
wonder that she should be able to call to remembrance all that she ever
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: (Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
"You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see."
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.
"Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring
feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all."
The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune
Prufrock/Other Observations |
