| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: Mexican settlement at the Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio. With her
lived a father or grandfather, a lineal Aztec, somewhat less than a
thousand years old, who herded a hundred goats and lived in a
continuous drunken dream from drinking /mescal/. Back of the /jacal/ a
tremendous forest of bristling pear, twenty feet high at its worst,
crowded almost to its door. It was along the bewildering maze of this
spinous thicket that the speckled roan would bring the Kid to see his
girl. And once, clinging like a lizard to the ridge-pole, high up
under the peaked grass roof, he had heard Tonia, with her Madonna face
and Carmen beauty and humming-bird soul, parley with the sheriff's
posse, denying knowledge of her man in her soft /melange/ of Spanish
Heart of the West |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: And spies a far-off shore where he would tread,
Wishing his foot were equal with his eye,
And chides the sea that sunders him from thence,
Saying, he'll lade it dry to have his way.
So do I wish the crown, being so far off,
And so I chide the means that keeps me from it;
And so I say I'll cut the causes off,
Flattering me with impossibilities.--
My eye's too quick, my heart o'erweens too much,
Unless my hand and strength could equal them.
Well, say there is no kingdom then for Richard,
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Sa: the ear to catch the words of the crier.
There was a momentary silence among the people while they
listened to the ringing voice of the man walking in the center
ground. Then broke forth a rippling, laughing babble among the
cone-shaped teepees. All were glad to hear of the chieftain's
grandson. They were happy to attend the feast and dance for its
naming. With excited fingers they twisted their hair into glossy
braids and painted their cheeks with bright red paint. To and fro
hurried the women, handsome in their gala-day dress. Men in loose
deerskins, with long tinkling metal fringes, strode in small
numbers toward the center of the round camp ground.
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: the words "It is finished." And of this seductive frame of mind the
true source had been the eloquent discourse of his hospitable host.
Yes, for every man there exist certain things which, instantly that
they are said, seem to touch him more closely, more intimately, than
anything has done before. Nor is it an uncommon occurrence that in the
most unexpected fashion, and in the most retired of retreats, one will
suddenly come face to face with a man whose burning periods will lead
one to forget oneself and the tracklessness of the route and the
discomfort of one's nightly halting-places, and the futility of crazes
and the falseness of tricks by which one human being deceives another.
And at once there will become engraven upon one's memory--vividly, and
Dead Souls |
