| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: man to whom it was rather difficult to be rude,
I replied with exaggerated meekness that I had
not done so yet. I thought there would be plenty
of time to do that to-morrow.
And I was about to turn away, withdrawing
my privacy from his fatuous, objectless attempts
to test what sort of stuff it was made of, when he
laid down his pipe in an extremely significant
manner, you know, as if a critical moment had
come, and leaned sideways over the table be-
tween us.
The Shadow Line |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: deceptive magic of the chiaroscuro. See! at this place the rich, clear
color of Titian has forced out the skeleton outline of Albrecht
Durier, as molten bronze might burst and overflow a slender mould.
Here and there the outline has resisted the flood, and holds back the
magnificent torrent of Venetian color. Your figure is neither
perfectly well painted nor perfectly well drawn; it bears throughout
the signs of this unfortunate indecision. If you did not feel that the
fire of your genius was hot enough to weld into one the rival methods,
you ought to have chosen honestly the one or the other, and thus
attained the unity which conveys one aspect, at least, of life. As it
is, you are true only on your middle plane. Your outlines are false;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay: The meal was finished in a constrained silence. Polecrab wiped his
mouth, and produced a seashell from a kind of pocket.
"Will you say goodbye to the boys? Shall I call them?" She
considered a moment.
"Yes - yes, I must see them."
He put the shell to his mouth, and blew; a loud, mournful noise
passed through the air.
A few minutes later there was a sound of scurrying footsteps, and the
boys were seen emerging from the forest. Maskull looked with
curiosity at the first children he had seen on Tormance. The oldest
boy was carrying the youngest on his back, while the third trotted
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