| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: even get dismasted. Ships have been dismasted in
squalls simply because they weren't handled quick
enough, and we have no power to whirl the yards
around. It's like being bound hand and foot pre-
paratory to having one's throat cut. And what
appals me most of all is that I shrink from going on
deck to face it. It's due to the ship, it's due to the
men who are there on deck--some of them, ready
to put out the last remnant of their strength at a
word from me. And I am shrinking from it. From
the mere vision. My first command. Now I
The Shadow Line |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs: beginning of earthly time. For all these eons the Wieroos might
have been collecting human skulls from their enemies and their
own dead--enough to have built an entire city of them.
Feeling his way along the narrow ledge, Bradley came presently to
a blank wall that stretched out over the water swirling beneath
him, as far as he could reach. Stooping, he groped about with
one hand, reaching down toward the surface of the water, and
discovered that the bottom of the wall arched above the stream.
How much space there was between the water and the arch he could
not tell, nor how deep the former. There was only one way in
which he might learn these things, and that was to lower himself
Out of Time's Abyss |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: the existence of a rookery far beyond. Had those others disturbed
such a place and aroused murderous pursuit? The obstructions did
not suggest it, for penguins’ beaks against the tough tissues
Lake had dissected could hardly account for the terrible damage
our approaching glance was beginning to make out. Besides, the
huge blind birds we had seen appeared to be singularly peaceful.
Had there, then, been a struggle among those others, and were
the absent four responsible? If so, where were they? Were they
close at hand and likely to form an immediate menace to us? We
glanced anxiously at some of the smooth-floored lateral passages
as we continued our slow and frankly reluctant approach. Whatever
At the Mountains of Madness |
