| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk; it is now at
best but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside-down, the
branches on the earth, and the root in the air; it is now handled
by every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery, and, by a
capricious kind of fate, destined to make other things clean, and
be nasty itself; at length, worn to the stumps in the service of
the maids, it is either thrown out of doors or condemned to the
last use - of kindling a fire. When I behold this I sighed, and
said within myself, "Surely mortal man is a broomstick!" Nature
sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition,
wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: Yet he couldn't help asking himself if she weren't, thus pressed,
speaking but to save him. It seemed to him he should be most in a
hole if his history should prove all a platitude. "Are you telling
me the truth, so that I shan't have been a bigger idiot than I can
bear to know? I HAVEN'T lived with a vain imagination, in the most
besotted illusion? I haven't waited but to see the door shut in my
face?"
She shook her head again. "However the case stands THAT isn't the
truth. Whatever the reality, it IS a reality. The door isn't
shut. The door's open," said May Bartram.
"Then something's to come?"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: had never worked, even if she had been reduced to live by her wits.
She was a wonderful old woman. She made me dumb. She held me
fascinated by the well-bred attitude, something sublimely aloof in
her air of wisdom.
I just simply let myself go admiring her as though I had been a
mere slave of aesthetics: the perfect grace, the amazing poise of
that venerable head, the assured as if royal - yes, royal even flow
of the voice. . . . But what was it she was talking about now?
These were no longer considerations about fatal women. She was
talking about her son again. My interest turned into mere
bitterness of contemptuous attention. For I couldn't withhold it
The Arrow of Gold |
