| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: turpentine so energetically into my neck that it burnt like a
collar of fire, and for a long time I was unable to get to sleep.
In the morning Radek, the two conductors who had charge
of the wagons and I sat down together to breakfast and had
a very merry meal, they providing cheese and bread and I a
tin of corned beef providently sent out from home by the
Manchester Guardian. We cooked up some coffee on a
little spirit stove, which, in a neat basket together with plates,
knives, forks, etc. (now almost unobtainable in Russia) had been
a parting present from the German Spartacists to Radek when
he was released from prison in Berlin and allowed to leave Germany.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Koran: O ye who believe! if ye engage to one another in a debt for a stated
time, then write it down, and let a scribe write it down between you
faithfully; nor let a scribe refuse to write as God taught him, but
let him write, and let him who owes dictate; but let him fear God
his Lord, and not diminish therefrom aught; but if he who owes be a
fool, or weak, or cannot dictate himself, then let his agent dictate
faithfully, and let them call two witnesses out from amongst their
men; or if there be not two men, then a man and two women, from
those whom he chooses for witnesses, so that if one of the two
should err, the second of the two may remind the other; and let not
the witnesses refuse when they are summoned; and let them not tire
The Koran |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: I met his kiss and I had to make, while I folded him for a minute
in my arms, the most stupendous effort not to cry. He had given exactly
the account of himself that permitted least of my going behind it,
and it was only with the effect of confirming my acceptance of it that,
as I presently glanced about the room, I could say--
"Then you didn't undress at all?"
He fairly glittered in the gloom. "Not at all.
I sat up and read."
"And when did you go down?"
"At midnight. When I'm bad I AM bad!"
"I see, I see--it's charming. But how could you be sure I would know it?"
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