| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum: "Yes; but it's lots of fun, if it IS strange," remarked the small
voice of the kitten, and Dorothy turned to find her pet walking in the
air a foot or so away from the edge of the roof.
"Come back, Eureka!" she called, in distress, "you'll certainly be killed."
"I have nine lives," said the kitten, purring softly as it walked
around in a circle and then came back to the roof; "but I can't lose
even one of them by falling in this country, because I really couldn't
manage to fall if I wanted to."
"Does the air bear up your weight?" asked the girl.
"Of course; can't you see?" and again the kitten wandered into the air
and back to the edge of the roof.
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: dramatic interest consists entirely in the contrast between the irony of
Socrates and the transparent vanity and childlike enthusiasm of the
rhapsode Ion. The theme of the Dialogue may possibly have been suggested
by the passage of Xenophon's Memorabilia in which the rhapsodists are
described by Euthydemus as 'very precise about the exact words of Homer,
but very idiotic themselves.' (Compare Aristotle, Met.)
Ion the rhapsode has just come to Athens; he has been exhibiting in
Epidaurus at the festival of Asclepius, and is intending to exhibit at the
festival of the Panathenaea. Socrates admires and envies the rhapsode's
art; for he is always well dressed and in good company--in the company of
good poets and of Homer, who is the prince of them. In the course of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: Just by going on a ship we cut ourselves off entirely from the rest
of the world. I want to see England there--London there--all sorts
of people--why shouldn't one? why should one be shut up all by oneself
in a room?"
While she spoke thus half to herself and with increasing vagueness,
because her eye was caught by a ship that had just come into the bay,
she did not see that Terence had ceased to stare contentedly in front
of him, and was looking at her keenly and with dissatisfaction.
She seemed to be able to cut herself adrift from him, and to pass away
to unknown places where she had no need of him. The thought roused
his jealousy.
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