| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: brown wooden cottages of workmen, characterless as cells, as they rattled
across warehouse-districts which by drunken night seemed vast and perilous, as
they were borne toward the red lights and violent automatic pianos and the
stocky women who simpered, Babbitt was frightened. He wanted to leap from the
taxicab, but all his body was a murky fire, and he groaned, "Too late to quit
now," and knew that he did not want to quit.
There was, they felt, one very humorous incident on the way. A broker from
Minnemagantic said, "Monarch is a lot sportier than Zenith. You Zenith
tightwads haven't got any joints like these here." Babbitt raged, "That's a
dirty lie! Snothin' you can't find in Zenith. Believe me, we got more houses
and hootch-parlors an' all kinds o' dives than any burg in the state."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: value, and merit the position I should hold as soon as I could
escape from nothingness. I consumed more oil than bread; the
light I burned during these endless nights cost me more than
food. It was a long duel, obstinate, with no sort of consolation.
I found no sympathy anywhere. To have friends, must we not form
connections with young men, have a few sous so as to be able to
go tippling with them, and meet them where students congregate?
And I had nothing! And no one in Paris can understand that
nothing means NOTHING. When I even thought of revealing my
beggary, I had that nervous contraction of the throat which makes
a sick man believe that a ball rises up from the oesophagus into
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: midst of all these quiet streets where my friends live.
They are all safe and at peace with themselves.
But I am never at peace. I feel always on the edge
of danger and change.
I keep remembering locoed horses I used
to see on the range when I was a boy.
They changed like that. We used to catch them
and put them up in the corral, and they developed
great cunning. They would pretend to eat their oats
like the other horses, but we knew they were always
scheming to get back at the loco.
Alexander's Bridge |
