| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: what to him was a most tragic ending of our common enterprise. The
lurid swiftness of it all was like a stunning thunder-clap - and,
one evening, I found myself weary, heartsore, my brain still dazed
and with awe in my heart entering Marseilles by way of the railway
station, after many adventures, one more disagreeable than another,
involving privations, great exertions, a lot of difficulties with
all sorts of people who looked upon me evidently more as a
discreditable vagabond deserving the attentions of gendarmes than a
respectable (if crazy) young gentleman attended by a guardian angel
of his own. I must confess that I slunk out of the railway station
shunning its many lights as if, invariably, failure made an outcast
The Arrow of Gold |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: and learning; your smelting furnace is your own thoughtful soul. Do
not hope to get at any good author's meaning without those tools and
that fire; often you will need sharpest, finest chiselling, and
patientest fusing, before you can gather one grain of the metal.
And, therefore, first of all, I tell you earnestly and
authoritatively (I KNOW I am right in this), you must get into the
habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their
meaning, syllable by syllable--nay, letter by letter. For though it
is only by reason of the opposition of letters in the function of
signs, to sounds in the function of signs, that the study of books
is called "literature," and that a man versed in it is called, by
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: most troublesome in the afternoon. And I have discovered that it comes from
the Buddhist cemetery,-- a very old cemetery,-- in the rear of my garden.
Dr. Howard's book declares that, in order to rid a neighborhood of
mosquitoes, it is only necessary to pour a little petroleum, or kerosene
oil, into the stagnant water where they breed. Once a week the oil should
be used, "at the rate of once ounce for every fifteen square feet of
water-surface, and a proportionate quantity for any less surface." ...But
please to consider the conditions in my neighborhood!
I have said that my tormentors come from the Buddhist cemetery. Before
nearly every tomb in that old cemetery there is a water-receptacle, or
cistern, called mizutame. In the majority of cases this mizutame is simply
Kwaidan |
