| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: on the walls and on the floor, and when I look at them I feel as
though the night had come and with it my accursed sleeplessness.
I lie on my bed, then get up and walk about the room, then lie
down again. As a rule it is after dinner, at the approach of
evening, that my nervous excitement reaches its highest pitch.
For no reason I begin crying and burying my head in the pillow.
At such times I am afraid that some one may come in; I am afraid
of suddenly dying; I am ashamed of my tears, and altogether there
is something insufferable in my soul. I feel that I can no longer
bear the sight of my lamp, of my books, of the shadows on the
floor. I cannot bear the sound of the voices coming from the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: never looks desolate when man has not yet laid his hand upon her breast;
she is only lonely. But when man has been, and has passed away, then
she looks desolate.
"Well, I passed into the kraal, and went up to the principal hut. In
front of the hut was something with an old sheep-skin kaross thrown over
it. I stooped down and drew off the rug, and then shrank back amazed,
for under it was the body of a young woman recently dead. For a moment
I thought of turning back, but my curiosity overcame me; so going past
the dead woman, I went down on my hands and knees and crept into the
hut. It was so dark that I could not see anything, though I could smell
a great deal, so I lit a match. It was a 'tandstickor' match, and burnt
Long Odds |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: what she now did with the hours of her absence. There were other
churches, there were other altars, there were other candles; in one
way or another her piety would still operate; he couldn't
absolutely have deprived her of her rites. So he argued, but
without contentment; for he well enough knew there was no other
such rare semblance of the mountain of light she had once mentioned
to him as the satisfaction of her need. As this semblance again
gradually grew great to him and his pious practice more regular, he
found a sharper and sharper pang in the imagination of her
darkness; for never so much as in these weeks had his rites been
real, never had his gathered company seemed so to respond and even
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