| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: and the travelers remarked, very justly, that it was not much like
Belgrave Square. On one side was an enormous hotel, lifting up into
the hot darkness an immense array of open, brightly lighted windows.
At the base of this populous structure was an eternal jangle of horsecars,
and all round it, in the upper dusk, was a sinister hum of mosquitoes.
The ground floor of the hotel seemed to be a huge transparent cage,
flinging a wide glare of gaslight into the street, of which it formed a sort
of public adjunct, absorbing and emitting the passersby promiscuously.
The young Englishmen went in with everyone else, from curiosity, and saw
a couple of hundred men sitting on divans along a great marble-paved corridor,
with their legs stretched out, together with several dozen more standing
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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: slightly by the mere act of perspiration. We used to rub our
fingers with a little oil before handling the twigs in which the
Goldfinch was to be caught; even so the Epeira varnishes herself
with a special sweat, to operate on any part of her web without
fear of the lime-threads.
However, an unduly protracted stay on the sticky threads would have
its drawbacks. In the long run, continual contact with those
threads might produce a certain adhesion and inconvenience the
Spider, who must preserve all her agility in order to rush upon the
prey before it can release itself. For this reason, gummy threads
are never used in building the post of interminable waiting.
The Life of the Spider |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poems by T. S. Eliot: My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
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