| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: also, and, being unable to open it himself while seated on his
horse, he called loudly for assistance. As no one responded to
his shouts he dismounted and opened the gate, but as he was about
to remount, and had one foot in the stirrup, the horse became
frightened at some pigs and sprang suddenly to one side. The
superintendent fell across the fence and a very sharp picket
pierced his stomach, when Michael fell unconscious to the ground.
Toward the evening, when the serfs arrived at the village gate,
their horses refused to enter. On looking around, the peasants
discovered the dead body of their superintendent lying face
downward in a pool of blood, where he had fallen from the fence.
The Kreutzer Sonata |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: failed to imitate them. It is an old story, trite enough to those of
us who have cared to attend to it, how once on a time Nicias, the son
of Niceratus, owned a thousand men in the silver mines,[11] whom he
let out to Sosias, a Thracian, on the following terms. Sosias was to
pay him a net obol a day, without charge or deduction, for every slave
of the thousand, and be[12] responsible for keeping up the number
perpetually at that figure. So again Hipponicus[13] had six hundred
slaves let out on the same principle, which brought him in a net
mina[14] a day without charge or deduction. Then there was
Philemonides, with three hundred, bringing him in half a mina, and
others, I make no doubt there were, making profits in proportion to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poems by T. S. Eliot: Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year
Came Christ the tiger
In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering Judas,
To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk
Among whispers; by Mr. Silvero
With caressing hands, at Limoges
Who walked all night in the next room;
By Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians;
By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room
Shifting the candles; Fraulein von Kulp
Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door. Vacant shuttles
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