| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: was purposely deadening the words by the aid of the piano.
"My God! How my heart leaped! What were my imaginations! When
I remember the beast that lived in me at that moment, I am seized
with fright. My heart was first compressed, then stopped, and
then began to beat like a hammer. The principal feeling, as in
every bad feeling, was pity for myself. 'Before the children,
before the old nurse,' thought I, 'she dishonors me. I will go
away. I can endure it no longer. God knows what I should do if.
. . . But I must go in.'
The old nurse raised her eyes to mine, as if she understood, and
advised me to keep a sharp watch. 'I must go in,' I said to
The Kreutzer Sonata |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Poems by T. S. Eliot: After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts
that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while If one, settling a
pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: into their faces. . . . Well, paint was the one medium those
dead eyes could see through--see straight to the tottering
foundations underneath. Don't you know how, in talking a foreign
language, even fluently, one says half the time not what one
wants to but what one can? Well--that was the way I painted; and
as he lay there and watched me, the thing they called my
'technique' collapsed like a house of cards. He didn't sneer,
you understand, poor Stroud--he just lay there quietly watching,
and on his lips, through the gray beard, I seemed to hear the
question: 'Are you sure you know where you're coming out?'
"If I could have painted that face, with that question on it, I
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