| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: I will not take it upon myself to assert that names have no influence
on the destiny of men. There is a certain secret and inexplicable
concord or a visible discord between the events of a man's life and
his name which is truly surprising; often some remote but very real
correlation is revealed. Our globe is round; everything is linked to
everything else. Some day perhaps we shall revert to the occult
sciences.
Do you not discern in that letter Z an adverse influence? Does it not
prefigure the wayward and fantastic progress of a storm-tossed life?
What wind blew on that letter, which, whatever language we find it in,
begins scarcely fifty words? Marcas' name was Zephirin; Saint Zephirin
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: wait till she is gone"--and stepped back within the perpendicular
folds of a portiere.
He saw her come up gradually, as if ascending from a well. At every
step the feeble flame of the candle swayed before her tired, young
face, and the darkness of the hall seemed to cling to her black skirt,
followed her, rising like a silent flood, as though the great night of
the world had broken through the discreet reserve of walls, of closed
doors, of curtained windows. It rose over the steps, it leaped up the
walls like an angry wave, it flowed over the blue skies, over the
yellow sands, over the sunshine of landscapes, and over the pretty
pathos of ragged innocence and of meek starvation. It swallowed up
Tales of Unrest |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Reader, may your immortal mind
To their sage lessons not be blind.
Poem: II
Reader, your soul upraise to see,
In yon fair cut designed by me,
The pauper by the highwayside
Vainly soliciting from pride.
Mark how the Beau with easy air
Contemns the anxious rustic's prayer,
And, casting a disdainful eye,
Goes gaily gallivanting by.
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