| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: They talked, to be sure; but not like they would if she'd put on airs.
She was so crushed and quiet that nobody seemed to want to humble her.
She never went anywhere. All that summer she never once came to see me.
At first I was hurt, but I got to feel that it was because this house
reminded her of too much. I went over there when I could, but the times
when she was in from the fields were the times when I was busiest here.
She talked about the grain and the weather as if she'd never had
another interest, and if I went over at night she always looked dead weary.
She was afflicted with toothache; one tooth after another ulcerated,
and she went about with her face swollen half the time. She wouldn't
go to Black Hawk to a dentist for fear of meeting people she knew.
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: Who mints his soul to laughter's coin
And wastes it with his lips--
Has grown too sad for sighs and seeks
To cheat himself with mirth;
We fools self-doomed to motley are
The weariest wights on earth!
But yet, for us whose brains and hearts
Strove aye in paths perverse,
Doomed still to know the better things
And still to do the worse,--
What else is there remains for us
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: drag all her anchors. But she now dragged away from the great
building and its lights,--away from the voluptuous thunder of the
grand piano, even at that moment outpouring the great joy of
Weber's melody orchestrated by Berlioz: l'Invitation a la
Valse,--with its marvellous musical swing!
--"Waltzing!" cried the captain. "God help them!--God help us
all now! ... The Wind waltzes to-night, with the Sea for his
partner!" ...
O the stupendous Valse-Tourbillon! O the mighty Dancer!
One--two--three! From northeast to east, from east to southeast,
from southeast to south: then from the south he came, whirling
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