| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that can
appreciate or deserves it. So is all change for the better,
like birth and death, which convulse the body.
I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves
Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw
their support, both in person and property, from the
government of Massachusetts, and not wait till they
constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right
to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they
have God on their side, without waiting for that other one.
Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: Cow, or of Man and the Horse[3] (also the Elephant) reach
so far into the past that their origin cannot be traced. The
Swallow still loves to make its home under the cottage eaves
and still is welcomed by the inmates as the bringer of good
fortune. Elisee Reclus assures us that the Dinka man on
the Nile calls to certain snakes by name and shares with them
the milk of his cows.
[1] Published originally in Le Magazine International, January
1896.
[2] See The Naturalist in La Plata, ch. ii.
[3] "It is certain that the primitive Indo-European reared droves
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: new South-side ball park seats thirty-five thousand (or is it
million?). Of what interest are such meager items compared with
the knowledge that "Pug" Coulan, who plays short, goes with Undine
Meyers, the girl up there in the eighth row, with the pink dress
and the red roses on her hat? When "Pug" snatches a high one out
of the firmament we yell with delight, and even as we yell we turn
sideways to look up and see how Undine is taking it. Undine's
shining eyes are fixed on "Pug," and he knows it, stoops to brush
the dust off his dirt-begrimed baseball pants, takes an attitude of
careless grace and misses the next play.
Our grand-stand seats almost two thousand, counting the boxes.
Buttered Side Down |
