| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: taken possession of his heart and of his body, like a slow
poison.
He traveled through the most out-of-the-way places, and the most
lovely countries, and spent months and months at sea, and plunged
into every kind of dissipation and debauchery. But neither the
supple forms nor the luxurious gestures of the bayaderes, nor the
large passive eyes of the Creoles, nor flirtations with English
girls with hair the color of new cider, nor nights of waking
dreams, when he saw new constellations in the sky, nor dangers
during which a man thinks it is all over with him, and mutters a
few words of prayer in spite of himself, when the waves are high,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: been perfectly incapable.
"I reckoned it would be dark before we closed with the land,"
he continued, so low that I had to strain my hearing near
as we were to each other, shoulder touching shoulder almost.
"So I asked to speak to the old man. He always seemed
very sick when he came to see me--as if he could not look
me in the face. You know, that foresail saved the ship.
She was too deep to have run long under bare poles.
And it was I that managed to set it for him. Anyway, he came.
When I had him in my cabin--he stood by the door looking
at me as if I had the halter round my neck already--
The Secret Sharer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: No pangs of ours can change him; not though we
In the mid-frost should drink of Hebrus' stream,
And in wet winters face Sithonian snows,
Or, when the bark of the tall elm-tree bole
Of drought is dying, should, under Cancer's Sign,
In Aethiopian deserts drive our flocks.
Love conquers all things; yield we too to love!"
These songs, Pierian Maids, shall it suffice
Your poet to have sung, the while he sat,
And of slim mallow wove a basket fine:
To Gallus ye will magnify their worth,
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