| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: chalice set with gems; doubtless one of the sacred vessels saved from
the pillage of the Abbaye de Chelles. Beside a ciborium, the gift of
royal munificence, the wine and water for the holy sacrifice of the
mass stood ready in two glasses such as could scarcely be found in the
meanest tavern. For want of a missal, the priest had laid his breviary
on the altar, and a common earthenware plate was set for the washing
of hands that were pure and undefiled with blood. It was all so
infinitely great, yet so little, poverty-stricken yet noble, a
mingling of sacred and profane.
The stranger came forward reverently to kneel between the two nuns.
But the priest had tied crape round the chalice of the crucifix,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: and her easel, rammed into the earth so nervously, was at the wrong
angle. And now that she had ut that right, and in so doing had subdued
the impertinences and irrelevances that plucked her attention and made
her remember how she was such and such a person, had such and such
relations to people, she took her hand and raised her brush. For a
moment it stayed trembling in a painful but exciting ecstasy in the
air. Where to begin?--that was the question at what point to make
the first mark? One line placed on the canvas committed her to
innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions. All that in
idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex; as the waves
shape themselves symmetrically from the cliff top, but to the swimmer
To the Lighthouse |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: Merriam was with her every moment that was possible.
On a little plateau under a grove of palms and calabash
trees they were going to build a fairy bungalow. They
were to be married in two months. Many hours of the
day they had their heads together over the house plans.
Their joint capital would set up a business in fruit or
woods that would yield a comfortable support. "Good
night, my world," would say Mrs. Conant every evening
when Merriam left her for his hotel. They were very
happy. Their love had, circumstantially, that element
of melancholy in it that it seems to require to attain
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