| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Under the Andes by Rex Stout: stayed behind to hold them off. He left me, and in a moment later
I heard his voice crying to me to follow. I did so, sliding down
the face of the rock feet first.
Then began a wild and desperate scramble for safety, with the
Incas ever at our heels. Without Desiree we would have made our
goal with little difficulty, but half of the time we had to carry
her.
Several times Harry hurled her bodily across a chasm or a
crevice, while I received her on the other side.
Often I covered the retreat, holding the Incas at bay while
Harry assisted Desiree up the steep face of a boulder or across a
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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: Sitting stolidly at the head of the table I became terrified at
the sight of the garment on his arm. Of course he made for my door.
There was no time to lose.
"Steward," I thundered. My nerves were so shaken that I
could not govern my voice and conceal my agitation.
This was the sort of thing that made my terrifically
whiskered mate tap his forehead with his forefinger.
I had detected him using that gesture while talking on deck
with a confidential air to the carpenter. It was too far
to hear a word, but I had no doubt that this pantomime could
only refer to the strange new captain.
The Secret Sharer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: in dreams and more like pictures, rapidly succeeding one another in our
waking thoughts, attaining a greater distinctness and consecutiveness in
speech, and a greater still in writing, taking the place of one another
when we try to become emancipated from their influence. For in all
processes of the mind which are conscious we are talking to ourselves; the
attempt to think without words is a mere illusion,--they are always
reappearing when we fix our thoughts. And speech is not a separate
faculty, but the expression of all our faculties, to which all our other
powers of expression, signs, looks, gestures, lend their aid, of which the
instrument is not the tongue only, but more than half the human frame.
The minds of men are sometimes carried on to think of their lives and of
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