| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: pictures of the Palaeozoic or Mesozoic landscape into these primitive
fables, I could not even guess; but the pictures had been there.
Thus, a basis existed for the formation of a fixed type of delusion.
Cases of amnesia no doubt created the general myth pattern -
but afterward the fanciful accretions of the myths must have reacted
on amnesia sufferers and coloured their pseudo-memories. I myself
had read and heard all the early tales during my memory lapse
- my quest had amply proved that. Was it not natural, then, for
my subsequent dreams and emotional impressions to become coloured
and moulded by what my memory subtly held over from my secondary
state?
Shadow out of Time |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Betty Zane by Zane Grey: music and singing, storytelling became the order of the evening. Little Noah
told of the time he had climbed the apple-tree in the yard after a raccoon and
got severely bitten.
"One day," said Noah, "I heard Tige barking out in the orchard and I ran out
there and saw a funny little fur ball up in the tree with a black tail and
white rings around it. It looked like a pretty cat with a sharp nose. Every
time Tige barked the little animal showed his teeth and swelled up his back. I
wanted him for a pet. I got Sam to give me a sack and I climbed the tree and
the nearer I got to him the farther he backed down the limb. I followed him
and put out the sack to put it over his head and he bit me. I fell from the
limb, but he fell too and Tige killed him and Sam stuffed him for me."
Betty Zane |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: our Italian sailors must return to Cagliari to-night, as the little
cable will take us nearly to Galita, and the Italian skipper could
hardly find his way from thence. To-day - Sunday - not much rest.
Mr. Liddell is at Spartivento telegraphing. We are at Chia, and
shall shortly go to help our boat's crew in getting the small cable
on board. We dropped them some time since in order that they might
dig it out of the sand as far as possible.
'June 21.
'Yesterday - Sunday as it was - all hands were kept at work all
day, coaling, watering, and making a futile attempt to pull the
cable from the shore on board through the sand. This attempt was
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