| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: running its brick arches along the garden side of the house. It
was really a magnificent garden: smooth green lawns and a gorgeous
maze of flower-beds in the foreground, displayed around a basin of
dark water framed in a marble rim, and in the distance the massed
foliage of varied trees concealing the roofs of other houses. The
town might have been miles away. It was a brilliantly coloured
solitude, drowsing in a warm, voluptuous silence. Where the long,
still shadows fell across the beds, and in shady nooks, the massed
colours of the flowers had an extraordinary magnificence of effect.
I stood entranced. Jacobus grasped me delicately above the elbow,
impelling me to a half-turn to the left.
'Twixt Land & Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: many fell out, the clay not being stiff enough to bear its own
weight; how many cracked by the over-violent heat of the sun, being
set out too hastily; and how many fell in pieces with only
removing, as well before as after they were dried; and, in a word,
how, after having laboured hard to find the clay - to dig it, to
temper it, to bring it home, and work it - I could not make above
two large earthen ugly things (I cannot call them jars) in about
two months' labour.
However, as the sun baked these two very dry and hard, I lifted
them very gently up, and set them down again in two great wicker
baskets, which I had made on purpose for them, that they might not
Robinson Crusoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: and ears with pattern of dainty olive-leaf, or foliated acanthus,
or curved and crested wave. Then in black or red he painted lads
wrestling, or in the race: knights in full armour, with strange
heraldic shields and curious visors, leaning from shell-shaped
chariot over rearing steeds: the gods seated at the feast or
working their miracles: the heroes in their victory or in their
pain. Sometimes he would etch in thin vermilion lines upon a
ground of white the languid bridegroom and his bride, with Eros
hovering round them - an Eros like one of Donatello's angels, a
little laughing thing with gilded or with azure wings. On the
curved side he would write the name of his friend. [Greek text
|
