| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: ugliness of their disorder, and a caricature of the sleeping
Almayer appeared on the dirty whitewash of the wall behind him in
a grotesquely exaggerated detail of attitude and feature enlarged
to a heroic size. The discontented bats departed in quest of
darker places, and a lizard came out in short, nervous rushes,
and, pleased with the white table-cloth, stopped on it in
breathless immobility that would have suggested sudden death had
it not been for the melodious call he exchanged with a less
adventurous friend hiding amongst the lumber in the courtyard.
Then the boards in the passage creaked, the lizard vanished, and
Almayer stirred uneasily with a sigh: slowly, out of the
Almayer's Folly |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: with a roar of rage sprang for my throat; just as Xodar
had upon the deck of the cruiser. The results were identical.
I ducked beneath his outstretched arms, and as he lunged
past me planted a terrific right on the side of his jaw.
The big fellow spun around like a top, his knees gave
beneath him and he crumpled to the ground at my feet.
The blacks gazed in astonishment, first at the still form
of the proud Dator lying there in the ruby dust of the pathway,
then at me as though they could not believe that such a thing could be.
"You asked me to bind Thurid," I cried; "behold!" And
then I stooped beside the prostrate form, tore the harness
The Gods of Mars |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: Canute helped him put it on and gently wrapped his head in his big
muffler. Then he picked him up and carried him out and placed him
in his buggy. As he tucked the buffalo robes around him be said:
"Your horse is old, he might flounder or lose his way in this
storm. I will lead him."
The minister took the reins feebly in his hands and sat
shivering with the cold. Sometimes when there was a lull in the
wind, he could see the horse struggling through the snow with
the man plodding steadily beside him. Again the blowing snow would
hide them from him altogether. He had no idea where they were or
what direction they were going. He felt as though he were being
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
