| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: the next three weeks, each section headed by a donkey carrying
a white man in new clothes and tan shoes, bowing from
that elevation right and left to the impressed pilgrims.
A quarrelsome band of footsore sulky niggers trod on the heels
of the donkey; a lot of tents, camp-stools, tin boxes, white cases,
brown bales would be shot down in the courtyard, and the air
of mystery would deepen a little over the muddle of the station.
Five such instalments came, with their absurd air of disorderly
flight with the loot of innumerable outfit shops and
provision stores, that, one would think, they were lugging,
after a raid, into the wilderness for equitable division.
Heart of Darkness |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest: By thinking you're going to do it.
LIFE
Life is a gift to be used every day,
Not to be smothered and hidden away;
It isn't a thing to be stored in the chest
Where you gather your keepsakes and treasure
your best;
It isn't a joy to be sipped now and then
And promptly put back in a dark place again.
Life is a gift that the humblest may boast of
And one that the humblest may well make the
A Heap O' Livin' |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: been lit with thousands of wax-tapers, a little cresset, that she
might see to read her prayers through the hours of night.
"There is no faith left in the earth! . . ." she said.
In such a perilous plight did I behold the fairest and the greatest,
the truest and most life-giving of all Powers.
"Wake up, sir, the doors are just about to be shut," said a hoarse
voice. I turned and beheld the beadle's ugly countenance; the man was
shaking me by the arm, and the cathedral lay wrapped in shadows as a
man is wrapped in his cloak.
"Belief," I said to myself, "is Life! I have just witnessed the
funeral of a monarchy, now we must defend the church."
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