| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: to have possessed a great stone room of my own. My restrictions
as a prisoner gradually disappeared, so that some of the visions
included vivid travels over the mighty jungle roads, sojourns
in strange cities, and explorations of some of the vast, dark,
windowless ruins from which the Great Race shrank in curious fear.
There were also long sea voyages in enormous, many-decked boats
of incredible swiftness, and trips over wild regions in closed
projectile-like airships lifted and moved by electrical repulsion.
Beyond the wide, warm ocean were other cities of the Great Race,
and on one far continent I saw the crude villages of the black-snouted,
winged creatures who would evolve as a dominant stock after the
Shadow out of Time |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: After the first week out we fell in with foul winds and heavy
weather. The sea was high. The NONESUCH, being an old-fashioned
ship and badly loaden, rolled beyond belief; so that the skipper
trembled for his masts, and I for my life. We made no progress on
our course. An unbearable ill-humour settled on the ship: men,
mates, and master, girding at one another all day long. A saucy
word on the one hand, and a blow on the other, made a daily
incident. There were times when the whole crew refused their duty;
and we of the afterguard were twice got under arms - being the
first time that ever I bore weapons - in the fear of mutiny.
In the midst of our evil season sprang up a hurricane of wind; so
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: cling to the memory more lastingly.
[1] Or, as others think, "in a summary."
Agesilaus reverenced the shrines and sacred places even of the enemy.
We ought, he said, to make the gods our allies on hostile no less than
on friendly soil.
He would do no violence to a suppliant, no, not even if he were his
own foe; since how irrational must it be to stigmatise robbers of
temples as sacrilegious and yet to regard him who tears the suppliant
from the altar as a pious person.
One tenet he never wearied of repeating: the gods, he said, are not
less pleased with holy deeds than with pure victims.
|
