| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: immediately strangled in her last convulsive struggle; besides, he
felt in his heart a sort of remorse which bid him respect a creature
that had done him no harm. He seemed to have found a friend, in a
boundless desert; half unconsciously he thought of his first
sweetheart, whom he had nicknamed "Mignonne" by way of contrast,
because she was so atrociously jealous that all the time of their love
he was in fear of the knife with which she had always threatened him.
This memory of his early days suggested to him the idea of making the
young panther answer to this name, now that he began to admire with
less terror her swiftness, suppleness, and softness. Toward the end of
the day he had familiarized himself with his perilous position; he now
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: saying? A rhapsode ought to have a better memory.
ION: Why, what am I forgetting?
SOCRATES: Do you not remember that you declared the art of the rhapsode to
be different from the art of the charioteer?
ION: Yes, I remember.
SOCRATES: And you admitted that being different they would have different
subjects of knowledge?
ION: Yes.
SOCRATES: Then upon your own showing the rhapsode, and the art of the
rhapsode, will not know everything?
ION: I should exclude certain things, Socrates.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: estuaries among a welter of pale green reefs and dazzling sand-
banks, in lonely straits of calm blue water all aglitter with
sunshine. Alone, far from the beaten tracks, she glided, all
white, round dark, frowning headlands, stole out, silent like a
ghost, from behind points of land stretching out all black in the
moonlight; or lay hove-to, like a sleeping sea-bird, under the
shadow of some nameless mountain waiting for a signal. She would
be glimpsed suddenly on misty, squally days dashing disdainfully
aside the short aggressive waves of the Java Sea; or be seen far,
far away, a tiny dazzling white speck flying across the brooding
purple masses of thunderclouds piled up on the horizon. Sometimes,
'Twixt Land & Sea |
