| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: all sides. The horses are nearly ready, and we are soon off.
We ride to death of some one. God alone knows who, or where,
or what, or when, or how it may be. . .
DR. VAN HELSING'S MEMORANDUM
5 November, afternoon.--I am at least sane. Thank God for that mercy
at all events, though the proving it has been dreadful. When I left
Madam Mina sleeping within the Holy circle, I took my way to the castle.
The blacksmith hammer which I took in the carriage from Veresti was useful,
though the doors were all open I broke them off the rusty hinges,
lest some ill intent or ill chance should close them, so that being entered
I might not get out. Jonathan's bitter experience served me here.
Dracula |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: the door of the van. This is the oiler, who had been creeping
under the carriages and tapping the wheels with a hammer.
"Are these your vans of cattle?" he asks.
"Yes. Why?"
"Why, because two of the vans are not safe. They can't go on,
they must stay here to be repaired."
"Oh, come, tell us another! You simply want a drink, to get
something out of me. . . . You should have said so."
"As you please, only it is my duty to report it at once."
Without indignation or protest, simply, almost mechanically, the
old man takes two twenty-kopeck pieces out of his pocket and
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: saying, appeared to the imposer of names an excellent instrument for the
expression of motion; and he frequently uses the letter for this purpose:
for example, in the actual words rein and roe he represents motion by rho;
also in the words tromos (trembling), trachus (rugged); and again, in words
such as krouein (strike), thrauein (crush), ereikein (bruise), thruptein
(break), kermatixein (crumble), rumbein (whirl): of all these sorts of
movements he generally finds an expression in the letter R, because, as I
imagine, he had observed that the tongue was most agitated and least at
rest in the pronunciation of this letter, which he therefore used in order
to express motion, just as by the letter iota he expresses the subtle
elements which pass through all things. This is why he uses the letter
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