| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: the sea, where it is beaten with the waves and the weather, turns
gradually into stone. But the chief reason assigned is from the
water of a certain spring or well, which, rising in the said cliff,
runs down into the sea among those pieces of clay, and petrifies
them as it runs; and the force of the sea often stirring, and
perhaps turning, the lumps of clay, when storms of wind may give
force enough to the water, causes them to harden everywhere alike;
otherwise those which were not quite sunk in the water of the
spring would be petrified but in part. These stones are gathered
up to pave the streets and build the houses, and are indeed very
hard. It is also remarkable that some of them taken up before they
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: God of Islam--"The Merciful, the Compassionate"--which closes the
book, there were to come several long sea passages, a visit (to
use the elevated phraseology suitable to the occasion) to the
scenes (some of them) of my childhood and the realization of
childhood's vain words, expressing a light-hearted and romantic
whim.
It was in 1868, when nine years old or thereabouts, that while
looking at a map of Africa of the time and putting my finger on
the blank space then representing the unsolved mystery of that
continent, I said to myself, with absolute assurance and an
amazing audacity which are no longer in my character now:
A Personal Record |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning--little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door--
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."
But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if its soul in that one word he did outpour
Nothing farther then he uttered; not a feather then he fluttered--
Till I scarcely more than muttered: "Other friends have flown before--
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before."
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