| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: of the question from every point of view: my brother, whose
recovery gave us both plenty to do, was ill for three months,
during which I never left him and at the end of which we had to
face the absolute prohibition of a return to England. The
consideration of climate imposed itself, and he was in no state to
meet it alone. I took him to Meran and there spent the summer with
him, trying to show him by example how to get back to work and
nursing a rage of another sort that I tried NOT to show him.
The whole business proved the first of a series of phenomena so
strangely interlaced that, taken together - which was how I had to
take them - they form as good an illustration as I can recall of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: entirely by a changed ray. Nostrils were dark wells;
sinews in old necks were gilt mouldings; things with no
particular polish on them were glazed; bright objects,
such as the tip of a furze-hook one of the men carried,
were as glass; eyeballs glowed like little lanterns.
Those whom Nature had depicted as merely quaint
became grotesque, the grotesque became preternatural;
for all was in extremity.
Hence it may be that the face of an old man, who had like
others been called to the heights by the rising flames,
was not really the mere nose and chin that it appeared
Return of the Native |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: projecting from a crevice in the ice-wall, with the hand
outstretched as if offering greeting! "The nails of this white
hand were still rosy, and the pose of the extended fingers
seemed to express an eloquent welcome to the long-lost light of
day."
The hand and arm were alone; there was no trunk.
After being removed from the ice the flesh-tints quickly
faded out and the rosy nails took on the alabaster
hue of death. This was the third RIGHT hand found;
therefore, all three of the lost men were accounted for,
beyond cavil or question.
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