| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Breaking Point by Mary Roberts Rinehart: another woman, you can hardly blame her."
"She waited a long time."
Later Dick made what was a difficult confession under the
circumstances.
"I know now - I think I knew all along, but the other thing was
like that craving for liquor I told you about - I know now that
she has always been the one woman. You'll understand that, perhaps,
but she wouldn't. I would crawl on my knees to make her believe it,
but it's too late. Everything's too late," he added.
Before the hour for the services he went in again and sat by Lucy's
bed, but she who had given him wise counsel so many times before
The Breaking Point |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: From this state he was awakened -- ages later, it seemed to
him -- by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat,
followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies
seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of
his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well
defined lines of ramification and to beat with an
inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of
pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As
to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of
fullness -- of congestion. These sensations were
unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: for himself.
He paced his apartment like a leopard. There was danger in Otto,
for a flash. Like a pistol, he could kill at one moment, and the
next he might he kicked aside. But just then, as he walked the long
floors in his alternate humours, tearing his handkerchief between
his hands, he was strung to his top note, every nerve attent. The
pistol, you might say, was charged. And when jealousy from time to
time fetched him a lash across the tenderest of his feeling, and
sent a string of her fire-pictures glancing before his mind's eye,
the contraction of his face was even dangerous. He disregarded
jealousy's inventions, yet they stung. In this height of anger, he
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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 Poems by T. S. Eliot: By all the martyr'd virgins kiss,
While the True Church remains below
Wrapt in the old miasmal mist.
Dans le Restaurant
Le garcon délabré qui n'a rien à faire
Que de se gratter les doigts et se pencher sur mon épaule:
"Dans mon pays il fera temps pluvieux,
Du vent, du grand soleil, et de la pluie;
C'est ce qu'on appelle le jour de lessive des gueux."
(Bavard, baveux, à la croupe arrondie,
Je te prie, au moins, ne bave pas dans la soupe).
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