| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: continuous flat wall of the tall houses that seemed to be one
immense abandoned building with innumerable windows shuttered
closely. Only here and there a small dingy cafe for sailors cast
a yellow gleam on the bluish sheen of the flagstones. Passing
by, one heard a deep murmur of voices inside--nothing more. How
quiet everything was at the end of the quays on the last night on
which I went out for a service cruise as a guest of the
Marseilles pilots! Not a footstep, except my own, not a sigh,
not a whispering echo of the usual revelry going on in the narrow
unspeakable lanes of the Old Town reached my ear--and suddenly,
with a terrific jingling rattle of iron and glass, the omnibus of
Some Reminiscences |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: ingredients though not of the fieriest, were perhaps those most
likely to keep his feeling for her at a pleasant temperature.
She had had a taste of the tropics, and wanted more equable
weather; but the idea of having to fan his flame gently for a
year was unspeakably depressing to her. Yet all this was
precisely what she could not say. The long period of probation,
during which, as she knew, she would have to amuse him, to guard
him, to hold him, and to keep off the other women, was a
necessary part of their situation. She was sure that, as little
Breckenridge would have said, she could "pull it off"; but she
did not want to think about it. What she would have preferred
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: With hideous orifice gaped on us wide,
Portending hollow truce: At each behind
A Seraph stood, and in his hand a reed
Stood waving tipt with fire; while we, suspense,
Collected stood within our thoughts amused,
Not long; for sudden all at once their reeds
Put forth, and to a narrow vent applied
With nicest touch. Immediate in a flame,
But soon obscured with smoke, all Heaven appeared,
From those deep-throated engines belched, whose roar
Embowelled with outrageous noise the air,
Paradise Lost |
