| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: By reason grasped; there are the tempest times
And the bright lightnings to be hymned now-
Even what they do and from what cause soe'er
They're borne along- that thou mayst tremble not,
Marking off regions of prophetic skies
For auguries, O foolishly distraught
Even as to whence the flying flame hath come,
Or to which half of heaven it turns, or how
Through walled places it hath wound its way,
Or, after proving its dominion there,
How it hath speeded forth from thence amain-
Of The Nature of Things |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: Picture to yourself a plaster mask of Dante in the red lamplight, with
a forest of silver-white hair above the brows. Blindness intensified
the expression of bitterness and sorrow in that grand face of his; the
dead eyes were lighted up, as it were, by a thought within that broke
forth like a burning flame, lit by one sole insatiable desire, written
large in vigorous characters upon an arching brow scored across with
as many lines as an old stone wall.
The old man was playing at random, without the slightest regard for
time or tune. His fingers traveled mechanically over the worn keys of
his instrument; he did not trouble himself over a false note now and
again (a /canard/, in the language of the orchestra), neither did the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: earth, the sun in that next, the morning star and Mercury in the orbits
which move opposite to the sun but with equal swiftness--this being the
reason why they overtake and are overtaken by one another. All these
bodies became living creatures, and learnt their appointed tasks, and began
to move, the nearer more swiftly, the remoter more slowly, according to the
diagonal movement of the other. And since this was controlled by the
movement of the same, the seven planets in their courses appeared to
describe spirals; and that appeared fastest which was slowest, and that
which overtook others appeared to be overtaken by them. And God lighted a
fire in the second orbit from the earth which is called the sun, to give
light over the whole heaven, and to teach intelligent beings that knowledge
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