| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: sloping roughly down toward the north at an angle of about forty-five
degrees, and evidently the result of some bygone collapse from
above.
Between its surface and the ground level was a gulf of
impenetrable blackness at whose upper edge were signs of gigantic,
stress-heaved vaulting. At this point, it appeared, the deserts
sands lay directly upon a floor of some titan structure of earth's
youth - how preserved through aeons of geologic convulsion I could
not then and cannot now even attempt to guess.
In retrospect,
the barest idea of a sudden, lone descent into such a doubtful
Shadow out of Time |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: with gaudy lights from the windows, and picked out with medallions
of the Dolorous Way. But there was one oddity, in the way of an EX
VOTO, which pleased me hugely: a faithful model of a canal boat,
swung from the vault, with a written aspiration that God should
conduct the SAINT NICOLAS of Creil to a good haven. The thing was
neatly executed, and would have made the delight of a party of boys
on the water-side. But what tickled me was the gravity of the
peril to be conjured. You might hang up the model of a sea-going
ship, and welcome: one that is to plough a furrow round the world,
and visit the tropic or the frosty poles, runs dangers that are
well worth a candle and a mass. But the SAINT NICOLAS of Creil,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Legend of Montrose by Walter Scott: into the house of Rimmon, a false god, or idol, to whom he had
vowed service, and to bow down when the king was leaning upon his
hand. But neither was this answer satisfactory to me, both
because there was an unco difference between an anointed King of
Syria and our Spanish colonel, whom I could have blown away like
the peeling of an ingan, and chiefly because I could not find the
thing was required of me by any of the articles of war; neither
was I proffered any consideration, either in perquisite or pay,
for the wrong I might thereby do to my conscience."
"So you again changed your service?" said Lord Menteith.
"In troth did I, my lord; and after trying for a short while two
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