1 result for (book:ur2 AND session:726 AND stemmed:chang)
[... 16 paragraphs ...]
The spirit of the first island visits the second one, and finds itself amazed. It feels an ever-thrusting power, rushing up from beneath, that erupts in always-changing form. Yet it is always itself, comparing its experience to what it has known. When the volcano itself, ceaselessly erupting, wishes for peace, the spirit of the first island thinks of its own quiet home shores. The volcano learns a new lesson: It can direct its power in whatever way it chooses, shooting upward or lying quietly. It can indeed be dormant and dream for centuries. (Slowly now:) It can, if it chooses, allow soft sands to lie gracefully upon its cooling expanse.
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
(Heartily:) What a transformation! Its volcano, it finds, now gives birth to soil and pollen, its excitement roused in a million different ways. It meets the spirit of the first island that has been living there, and says: “What a change! I would like a still more spectacular display. The flowers are not nearly colorful or wild enough. It is, if you will forgive me, too well-tamed — yet all in all you’ve done wonders. Now, however, I’d like a cultural interchange with others still unknown; and if you don’t mind I wish you’d go home. (Whispering:) This is, after all, me, and my land.”
[... 8 paragraphs ...]
What peace! Yet in the peace, what power! And so little by little cacti grow where there were none, delicate buds opening, filled with water. The spirit of the third island immediately begins to transform the desert island. Great changes appear, and showers of power — quick bursts of rain, explosive inundations of energy.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
So the volcano throws its energy into the formation of still more new species, while the desert spirit sings its calmness through their tissues. But this new life confounds it also, and it yearns to return home to its old quietude. There, the spirit of the third island has quickened the desert’s abilities so that it blooms with muted flowers not present before. The two spirits meet. Each island is changed. “We are counterparts, each of the other, yet inviolate.”
[... 23 paragraphs ...]
Stella Butts changed and grew. But in certain terms she was the masculine center of the family, emotions or not, the aggressive one; and speaking conventionally now, your father (Robert Sr.) accepted the more passive creative role. This has meaning in terms of your [unpublished] information8 involving the masculine and feminine aspects that united and separated your parents. Your father would have been more “comfortable” as a woman, and she as a male. Yet for their own purposes they each chose to experience the other side of the coin, so to speak.
[... 17 paragraphs ...]