| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: struggle. I set her down hastily and only supported her round the
waist for the rest of the way. My room, of course, was perfectly
dark but I led her straight to the sofa at once and let her fall on
it. Then as if I had in sober truth rescued her from an Alpine
height or an Arctic floe, I busied myself with nothing but lighting
the gas and starting the fire. I didn't even pause to lock my
door. All the time I was aware of her presence behind me, nay, of
something deeper and more my own - of her existence itself - of a
small blue flame, blue like her eyes, flickering and clear within
her frozen body. When I turned to her she was sitting very stiff
and upright, with her feet posed, hieratically on the carpet and
The Arrow of Gold |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: 'Well, it was because he did not know what the real thing was,'
he thought, concerning that Vasili Brekhunov. 'He did not
know, but now I know and know for sure. Now I know!' And again
he heard the voice of the one who had called him before. 'I'm
coming! Coming!' he responded gladly, and his whole being was
filled with joyful emotion. He felt himself free and that
nothing could hold him back any longer.
After that Vasili Andreevich neither saw, heard, nor felt
anything more in this world.
All around the snow still eddied. The same whirlwinds of snow
circled about, covering the dead Vasili Andreevich's fur coat,
Master and Man |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: in the open, buffeted by slanting gusts. The evenly ridged
fields were a blurred waste of mud, and the russet coverts
which he and Owen had shot through the day before shivered
desolately against a driving sky.
Darrow walked on and on, indifferent to the direction he was
taking. His thoughts were tossing like the tree-tops.
Anna's announcement had not come to him as a complete
surprise: that morning, as he strolled back to the house
with Owen Leath and Miss Viner, he had had a momentary
intuition of the truth. But it had been no more than an
intuition, the merest faint cloud-puff of surmise; and now
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