| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: into the distance: gradually did the town house and the life of gaiety
begin to loom larger and larger in the foreground. Oh, life, life!
Meanwhile in Government offices and chancellories there had been set
on foot a boundless volume of work. Clerical pens slaved, and brains
skilled in legal casus toiled; for each official had the artist's
liking for the curved line in preference to the straight. And all the
while, like a hidden magician, Chichikov's lawyer imparted driving
power to that machine which caught up a man into its mechanism before
he could even look round. And the complexity of it increased and
increased, for Samosvitov surpassed himself in importance and daring.
On learning of the place of confinement of the woman who had been
Dead Souls |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors; 180
Departed, have left no addresses.
Line 161 ALRIGHT. This spelling occurs also in
the Hogarth Press edition -- Editor.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
The Waste Land |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: "Before I proceed," he resumed, "I must recall to your minds Newton's
general law, 'that the attraction of two bodies is directly proportional
to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square
of their distances.'"
"Yes," said Servadac; "we remember that."
"Well, then," continued the professor, "keep it in mind for a few
minutes now. Look here! In this bag are forty five-franc pieces--
altogether they weigh exactly a kilogramme; by which I mean that
if we were on the earth, and I were to hang the bag on the hook of
the steelyard, the indicator on the dial would register one kilogramme.
This is clear enough, I suppose?"
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