| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: The littered papers, the dust, the tarnished grass,
Grey death, stale ugliness, and sodden hours.
Deep in his heart old bells are beaten again,
Slurred bells of grief and pain,
Dull echoes of hideous times and poisonous places.
He desires to drown in a cold white peace of snow.
He desires to forget a million faces . . .
In one room breathes a woman who dies of hunger.
The clock ticks slowly and stops. And no one winds it.
In one room fade grey violets in a vase.
Snow flakes faintly hiss and melt on the window.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: pretence that my play is historical. The later suggestion of Mr
Acheson that the Dark Lady, far from being a maid of honor, kept a
tavern in Oxford and was the mother of Davenant the poet, is the one I
should have adopted had I wished to be up to date. Why, then, did I
introduce the Dark Lady as Mistress Fitton?
Well, I had two reasons. The play was not to have been written by me
at all, but by Mrs Alfred Lyttelton; and it was she who suggested a
scene of jealousy between Queen Elizabeth and the Dark Lady at the
expense of the unfortunate Bard. Now this, if the Dark Lady was a
maid of honor, was quite easy. If she were a tavern landlady, it
would have strained all probability. So I stuck to Mary Fitton. But
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: along a few inches at a time, dragging Ajor beside me. Her sweet
voice, now almost inaudible from weakness, implored me to
abandon her and save myself--she seemed to think only of me.
Of course I couldn't have left her there alone, no matter how
much I might have desired to do so; but the fact of the matter
was that I didn't desire to leave her. What I said to her then
came very simply and naturally to my lips. It couldn't very
well have been otherwise, I imagine, for with death so close, I
doubt if people are much inclined to heroics. "I would rather
not get out at all, Ajor," I said to her, "than to get out
without you." We were resting against a rocky wall, and Ajor
The People That Time Forgot |
