| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: beating on their drums. When we came to the Tower of Apes we set
fruits before them, and they did not harm us. When we came to the
Tower of Serpents we gave them warm milk in howls of brass, and
they let us go by. Three times in our journey we came to the banks
of the Oxus. We crossed it on rafts of wood with great bladders of
blown hide. The river-horses raged against us and sought to slay
us. When the camels saw them they trembled.
'The kings of each city levied tolls on us, but would not suffer us
to enter their gates. They threw us bread over the walls, little
maize-cakes baked in honey and cakes of fine flour filled with
dates. For every hundred baskets we gave them a bead of amber.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: presently, here and there, people who mumbled that surely "there
must be some thing in it." However, on his next name-day (which
he used to celebrate by a great three days' shooting party), of
all the invited crowd only two guests turned up, distant
neighbours of no importance; one notoriously a fool, and the
other a very pious and honest person, but such a passionate lover
of the gun that on his own confession he could not have refused
an invitation to a shooting party from the devil himself. X met
this manifestation of public opinion with the serenity of an
unstained conscience. He refused to be crushed. Yet he must
have been a man of deep feeling, because, when his wife took
A Personal Record |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: They both would strive who first should dry his tears.
'To see his face the lion walk'd along 1093
Behind some hedge, because he would not fear him;
To recreate himself when he hath sung,
The tiger would be tame and gently hear him; 1096
If he had spoke, the wolf would leave his prey,
And never fright the silly lamb that day.
'When he beheld his shadow in the brook,
The fishes spread on it their golden gills; 1100
When he was by, the birds such pleasure took,
That some would sing, some other in their bills
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