| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: warning me just in time that the ship had gathered sternaway.
"Shift the helm," I said in a low voice to the seaman standing still
like a statue.
The man's eyes glistened wildly in the binnacle light as he jumped
round to the other side and spun round the wheel.
I walked to the break of the poop. On the over-shadowed deck
all hands stood by the forebraces waiting for my order.
The stars ahead seemed to be gliding from right to left.
And all was so still in the world that I heard the quiet remark,
"She's round," passed in a tone of intense relief between two seamen.
"Let go and haul."
The Secret Sharer |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: And when you hear his dying note lash your
long flanks of polished brass
And take a tiger for your mate, whose amber
sides are flecked with black,
And ride upon his gilded back in triumph
through the Theban gate,
And toy with him in amorous jests, and when
he turns, and snarls, and gnaws,
O smite him with your jasper claws! and bruise
him with your agate breasts!
Why are you tarrying? Get hence! I
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: "That ain't got anything to DO with it, Huck Finn.
All HE'S got to do is to write on the plate and throw
it out. You don't HAVE to be able to read it. Why,
half the time you can't read anything a prisoner writes
on a tin plate, or anywhere else."
"Well, then, what's the sense in wasting the plates?"
"Why, blame it all, it ain't the PRISONER'S plates."
"But it's SOMEBODY'S plates, ain't it?"
"Well, spos'n it is? What does the PRISONER care
whose --"
He broke off there, because we heard the breakfast-
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |
