| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: She floated at the starting-point of a long journey, very still in
an immense stillness, the shadows of her spars flung far to the
eastward by the setting sun. At that moment I was alone on her
decks. There was not a sound in her - and around us nothing moved,
nothing lived, not a canoe on the water, not a bird in the air, not
a cloud in the sky. In this breathless pause at the threshold of a
long passage we seemed to be measuring our fitness for a long and
arduous enterprise, the appointed task of both our existences to be
carried out, far from all human eyes, with only sky and sea for
spectators and for judges.
There must have been some glare in the air to interfere with one's
'Twixt Land & Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: had barked furiously at first, but seemed cowed and reluctant
when near the glen. Someone telephoned the news to the Aylesbury
Transcript; but the editor, accustomed to wild tales from Dunwich,
did no more than concoct a humorous paragraph about it; an item
soon afterwards reproduced by the Associated Press.
That night
everyone went home, and every house and barn was barricaded as
stoutly as possible. Needless to say, no cattle were allowed to
remain in open pasturage. About two in the morning a frightful
stench and the savage barking of the dogs awakened the household
at Elmer Frye's, on the eastern edge of Cold Spring Glen, and
The Dunwich Horror |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: be more temperate than the unquiet, seeing that temperance is admitted by
us to be a good and noble thing, and the quick have been shown to be as
good as the quiet.
I think, he said, Socrates, that you are right.
Then once more, Charmides, I said, fix your attention, and look within;
consider the effect which temperance has upon yourself, and the nature of
that which has the effect. Think over all this, and, like a brave youth,
tell me--What is temperance?
After a moment's pause, in which he made a real manly effort to think, he
said: My opinion is, Socrates, that temperance makes a man ashamed or
modest, and that temperance is the same as modesty.
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