| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: frenzied efforts, the boat sank, carrying the stubborn but now
too-late-repentant travelers, together with their screaming wives
and virgin daughters, to the very bottom of the sea.
The Limit
One day a man was walking through a forest and got lost. "Nothing
could be worse than this," he said. Then it got dark. "Lost in
the dark. What could be worse?" he asked. Then it got cold.
"Now nothing could possibly be worse," he said as he shivered and
stumbled around. But then it began to rain. "How could anything
be worse than this?" he asked himself. But then the rain turned
to snow and the wind came up. "This is absolutely the worst
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: collection could only have been got together little by little,
and the same lover had certainly not begun and ended it.
Not being shocked at the sight of a kept woman's dressing-room, I
amused myself with examining every detail, and I discovered that
these magnificently chiselled objects bore different initials and
different coronets. I looked at one after another, each recalling
a separate shame, and I said that God had been merciful to the
poor child, in not having left her to pay the ordinary penalty,
but rather to die in the midst of her beauty and luxury, before
the coming of old age, the courtesan's first death.
Is there anything sadder in the world than the old age of vice,
Camille |
