| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: shall know tragedy, never find anything but blustery
complications that turn out to be a farce?
"No one big enough or pitiful enough to sacrifice for.
Tragedy in neat blouses; the eternal flame all nice and safe
in a kerosene stove. Neither heroic faith nor heroic guilt.
Peeping at love from behind lace curtains--on Main Street!"
Aunt Bessie crept in next day, tried to pump her, tried to
prime the pump by again hinting that Kennicott might have
his own affairs. Carol snapped, "Whatever I may do, I'll
have you to understand that Will is only too safe!" She
wished afterward that she had not been so lofty. How much
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The White Moll by Frank L. Packard: "Youse're crazy, Pinkie! He thrust his head toward the opening
- and then turned and stared for a moment helplessly at Pinkie Bonn.
"So help me!" he said heavily. "It's - it's empty." He shook his
fist suddenly. "De Crab's handed us one, dat's wot! But de Crab'll
get his fer -"
"It wasn't the Crab!" Pinkie Bonn was stuttering his words. He
stood, jaws dropped, his eyes glued now on the paper in his hand.
The Pug, his face working, the personification of baffled rage and
intolerance, leered at Pinkie Bonn. "Well, who was it, den?" he
snarled.
Pinkie Bonn licked his lips.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: there were in existence only seven chapters of "Almayer's Folly,"
but the chapter in my history which followed was that of a long,
long illness and very dismal convalescence. Geneva, or more
precisely the hydropathic establishment of Champel, is rendered
forever famous by the termination of the eighth chapter in the
history of Almayer's decline and fall. The events of the ninth
are inextricably mixed up with the details of the proper
management of a waterside warehouse owned by a certain city firm
whose name does not matter. But that work, undertaken to
accustom myself again to the activities of a healthy existence,
soon came to an end. The earth had nothing to hold me with for
A Personal Record |
