| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: into our mountain valley, coming you know not whence, going you
cannot imagine whither, and belonging to every degree in the
hierarchy of musical art, from the recognised performer who announces
a concert for the evening, to the comic German family or solitary
long-haired German baritone, who surprises the guests at dinner-time
with songs and a collection. They are all of them good to see; they,
at least, are moving; they bring with them the sentiment of the open
road; yesterday, perhaps, they were in Tyrol, and next week they will
be far in Lombardy, while all we sick folk still simmer in our
mountain prison. Some of them, too, are welcome as the flowers in
May for their own sake; some of them may have a human voice; some may
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: obtain so much kindness of the country, and especially where they had
any the least satisfactory account to give of themselves, and
particularly that they did not come out of London too late. But others,
and that in great numbers, built themselves little huts and retreats in
the fields and woods, and lived like hermits in holes and caves, or any
place they could find, and where, we may be sure, they suffered great
extremities, such that many of them were obliged to come back again
whatever the danger was; and so those little huts were often found
empty, and the country people supposed the inhabitants lay dead in
them of the plague, and would not go near them for fear - no, not in a
great while; nor is it unlikely but that some of the unhappy wanderers
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: must they grow up and lose it all? Never will they be so happy again.
And he was angry. Why take such a gloomy view of life? he said. It
is not sensible. For it was odd; and she believed it to be true; that
with all his gloom and desperation he was happier, more hopeful on the
whole, than she was. Less exposed to human worries--perhaps that was
it. He had always his work to fall back on. Not that she herself was
"pessimistic," as he accused her of being. Only she thought life--and
a little strip of time presented itself to her eyes--her fifty
years. There it was before her--life. Life, she thought--but she did
not finish her thought. She took a look at life, for she had a clear
sense of it there, something real, something private, which she shared
To the Lighthouse |
