The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: they tell the fact that strikes them, and present it as they felt it.
This tale was made as sharply incisive as the blow of an axe.
"I shall not go to Batz," said Pauline, when we came to the upper
shore of the lake.
We returned to Croisic by the salt marshes, through the labyrinth of
which we were guided by our fisherman, now as silent as ourselves. The
inclination of our souls was changed. We were both plunged into gloomy
reflections, saddened by the recital of a drama which explained the
sudden presentiment which had seized us on seeing Cambremer. Each of
us had enough knowledge of life to divine all that our guide had not
told of that triple existence. The anguish of those three beings rose
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: shadow. It has perplexed even Emile Roux, that merciless
dissector of egoism. She has puzzled him the more because be saw
at a glance what some of them do not perceive at once, and what
will be mercifully concealed from Arthur until the trump sounds;
namely, that all Flavia's artists have done or ever will do means
exactly as much to her as a symphony means to an oyster; that
there is no bridge by which the significance of any work of art
could be conveyed to her."
"Then, in the name of goodness, why does she bother?" gasped
Imogen. "She is pretty, wealthy, well-established; why should
she bother?"
 The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: soul he distributed into figures at once round and elongated, and he called
them all by the name 'marrow'; and to these, as to anchors, fastening the
bonds of the whole soul, he proceeded to fashion around them the entire
framework of our body, constructing for the marrow, first of all a complete
covering of bone.
Bone was composed by him in the following manner. Having sifted pure and
smooth earth he kneaded it and wetted it with marrow, and after that he put
it into fire and then into water, and once more into fire and again into
water--in this way by frequent transfers from one to the other he made it
insoluble by either. Out of this he fashioned, as in a lathe, a globe made
of bone, which he placed around the brain, and in this he left a narrow
|