| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: pretending to feel what they did not feel, while somewhere above
her floated the idea which they could none of them grasp, which they
pretended to grasp, always escaping out of reach, a beautiful idea,
an idea like a butterfly. One after another, vast and hard and cold,
appeared to her the churches all over the world where this blundering
effort and misunderstanding were perpetually going on, great buildings,
filled with innumerable men and women, not seeing clearly,
who finally gave up the effort to see, and relapsed tamely into praise
and acquiescence, half-shutting their eyes and pursing up their lips.
The thought had the same sort of physical discomfort as is caused
by a film of mist always coming between the eyes and the printed page.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: "It isn't Rubaiyat you're thinking of, my dear,"
I told her. It's Rabindranath. Rabindranath
Something-or-other, that new man -- he's wonder-
ful, my dear, simply wonderful."
And then she quoted some of it and -- the idea
is too absurd for anything, but what do you sup-
pose it was?
Omar Khayyam -- imagine!
And really, you know, it's been years since anybody
quoted Omar Khayyam; he's QUITE gone out, you know!
Even the question whether he was moral doesn't
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest: toil are few;
There is not time enough on earth for all I'd
like to do;
But, having lived and having toiled, I'd like the
world to find
Some little touch of beauty that my soul had
left behind.
THE FINEST AGE
When he was only nine months old,
And plump and round and pink of cheek,
A joy to tickle and to hold,
A Heap O' Livin' |
