| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: pictures.'
"'Me and George,' he explains, 'are up from the ranch, having a spell
of fun. Up to last month we owned four sections of watered grazing
down on the San Miguel. But along comes one of these oil prospectors
and begins to bore. He strikes a gusher that flows out twenty thousand
--or maybe it was twenty million--barrels of oil a day. And me and
George gets one hundred and fifty thousand dollars--seventy-five
thousand dollars apiece--for the land. So now and then we saddles up
and hits the breeze for Atascosa City for a few days of excitement and
damage. Here's a little bunch of the /dinero/ that I drawed out of the
bank this morning,' says he, and shows a roll of twenties and fifties
Heart of the West |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: the officer of the watch passing and repassing over our heads.
It was an infinitely miserable time. It was lucky that some
tins of fine preserves were stowed in a locker in my stateroom;
hard bread I could always get hold of; and so he lived on stewed
chicken, PATE DE FOIE GRAS, asparagus, cooked oysters, sardines--
on all sorts of abominable sham delicacies out of tins.
My early-morning coffee he always drank; and it was all I
dared do for him in that respect.
Every day there was the horrible maneuvering to go through so that my room
and then the bathroom should be done in the usual way. I came to hate
the sight of the steward, to abhor the voice of that harmless man.
The Secret Sharer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: really satisfied and has a more natural pleasure. Those who feast only on
earthly food, are always going at random up to the middle and down again;
but they never pass into the true upper world, or have a taste of true
pleasure. They are like fatted beasts, full of gluttony and sensuality,
and ready to kill one another by reason of their insatiable lust; for they
are not filled with true being, and their vessel is leaky (Gorgias). Their
pleasures are mere shadows of pleasure, mixed with pain, coloured and
intensified by contrast, and therefore intensely desired; and men go
fighting about them, as Stesichorus says that the Greeks fought about the
shadow of Helen at Troy, because they know not the truth.
The same may be said of the passionate element:--the desires of the
The Republic |
