| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: I know not)--we can easily imagine a member of the Emu
tribe, and disguised as an actual emu, having been ceremonially
slaughtered as a firstfruits and promise of the expected
and prayed-for emu-crop; just as the same certainly
HAS happened in the case of men wearing beast-masks of Bulls or
Rams or Bears being sacrificed in propitiation
of Bull-gods, Ram-gods or Bear-gods or simply in pursuance
of some kind of magic to favor the multiplication of
these food-animals.
"In the light of totemistic ways of thinking we see plainly
enough the relation of man to food-animals. You need or
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: klipspringer buck which I had been lucky enough to shoot as it bounded
out of some rocks in front of me.
There was a peach orchard planted round Maraisfontein, which just then
was a mass of lovely pink blossom, and as I rode through it slowly, not
being sure of my way to the house, a lanky child appeared in front of
me, clad in a frock which exactly matched the colour of the peach bloom.
I can see her now, her dark hair hanging down her back, and her big,
shy eyes staring at me from the shadow of the Dutch "kappie" which she
wore. Indeed, she seemed to be all eyes, like a "dikkop" or
thick-headed plover; at any rate, I noted little else about her.
I pulled up my pony and stared at her, feeling very shy and not knowing
Marie |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: which had attended us all through the night, went on gliding
gently past the black, glistening length of the ship. A few
strokes brought us alongside, and it was then that, for the very
first time in my life, I heard myself addressed in English--the
speech of my secret choice, of my future, of long friendships, of
the deepest affections, of hours of toil and hours of ease, and
of solitary hours, too, of books read, of thoughts pursued, of
remembered emotions--of my very dreams! And if (after being thus
fashioned by it in that part of me which cannot decay) I dare not
claim it aloud as my own, then, at any rate, the speech of my
children. Thus small events grow memorable by the passage of
A Personal Record |
