| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: of green land grows narrower; the sand spreads and sinks,
shuddering and wrinkling like a living brown skin; and the last
standing corpses of the oaks, ever clinging with naked, dead feet
to the sliding beach, lean more and more out of the
perpendicular. As the sands subside, the stumps appear to creep;
their intertwisted masses of snakish roots seem to crawl, to
writhe,--like the reaching arms of cephalopods....
... Grande Terre is going: the sea mines her fort, and will
before many years carry the ramparts by storm. Grande Isle is
going,--slowly but surely: the Gulf has eaten three miles into
her meadowed land. Last Island has gone! How it went I first
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy: "Oh, as to that, go and ask those who send them. But may I ask
who are you?
"I am a stranger."
"Ah, well, good-afternoon; I have no time." The doctor was vexed;
he gave his trousers a downward pull, and went towards the beds
of the sick.
"Well, how are you getting on?" he asked the pale man with the
crooked mouth and bandaged neck.
Meanwhile the madman sat on a bed, and having finished his
cigarette, kept spitting in the direction of the doctor.
Nekhludoff went down into the yard and out of the gate past the
Resurrection |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: the sides in the sheltered corners under the bushes. From scene to
scene you follow on, delighted and expectant, until the night
suddenly drops its veil, and then you will be lucky if you can find
your way home in the dark!
Yes, it is all very good, this exploration of new streams. But, for
my part, I like still better to go back to a familiar little river,
and fish or dream along the banks where I have dreamed and fished
before. I know every bend and curve: the sharp turn where the water
runs under the roots of the old hemlock-tree; the snaky glen, where
the alders stretch their arms far out across the stream; the meadow
reach, where the trout are fat and silvery, and will only rise about
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