| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: how it was, but tonight that steward, after bringing me my supper,
went out to let me eat it, and left the door unlocked.
And I ate it--all there was, too. After I had finished I strolled
out on the quarter-deck. I don't know that I meant to do anything.
A breath of fresh air was all I wanted, I believe.
Then a sudden temptation came over me. I kicked off my slippers
and was in the water before I had made up my mind fairly.
Somebody heard the splash and they raised an awful hullabaloo.
`He's gone! Lower the boats! He's committed suicide!
No, he's swimming.' Certainly I was swimming. It's not
so easy for a swimmer like me to commit suicide by drowning.
The Secret Sharer |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: the town, namely, in Long Acre, Drury Lane, &c., and came on
towards the city very gradually and slowly. It was felt at first in
December, then again in February, then again in April, and always but
a very little at a time; then it stopped till May, and even the last week
in May there was but seventeen, and all at that end of the town; and
all this while, even so long as till there died above 3000 a week, yet
had the people in Redriff, and in Wapping and Ratcliff, on both sides
of the river, and almost all Southwark side, a mighty fancy that they
should not be visited, or at least that it would not be so violent among
them. Some people fancied the smell of the pitch and tar, and such
other things as oil and rosin and brimstone, which is so much used by
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles: Doer of foul deeds of bloodshed, horrors that no tongue can tell?
A foot for flight he needs
Fleeter than storm-swift steeds,
For on his heels doth follow,
Armed with the lightnings of his Sire, Apollo.
Like sleuth-hounds too
The Fates pursue.
(Ant. 1)
Yea, but now flashed forth the summons from Parnassus' snowy peak,
"Near and far the undiscovered doer of this murder seek!"
Now like a sullen bull he roves
Oedipus Trilogy |
