| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: of furniture and shoes never wear out, the place has the character
of an immense collective apartment, in which Piazza San Marco
is the most ornamented corner and palaces and churches,
for the rest, play the part of great divans of repose,
tables of entertainment, expanses of decoration. And somehow
the splendid common domicile, familiar, domestic, and resonant,
also resembles a theater, with actors clicking over bridges and,
in straggling processions, tripping along fondamentas. As
you sit in your gondola the footways that in certain parts edge
the canals assume to the eye the importance of a stage, meeting it
at the same angle, and the Venetian figures, moving to and fro
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: vapor and gave it the appearance of a moving milky way. The sun was
visible through the haze like a globe of red fire. Though winter still
lingered, puffs of warm air laden with the scent of the birch-trees,
already adorned with their rosy efflorescence, and of the larches,
whose silken tassels were beginning to appear,--breezes tempered by
the incense and the sighs of earth,--gave token of the glorious
Northern spring, the rapid, fleeting joy of that most melancholy of
Natures. The wind was beginning to lift the veil of mist which half-
obscured the gulf. The birds sang. The bark of the trees where the sun
had not yet dried the clinging hoar-frost shone gayly to the eye in
its fantastic wreathings which trickled away in murmuring rivulets as
Seraphita |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: asked for a bill, the doctor used to go home, estimate what his
services were worth for that period, divide it in half--I don't
think he kept any books--and send father a statement, in a
cramped hand, on a sheet of ruled white paper. He was an honored
guest at all the weddings, christenings, and funerals--yes,
funerals--for every one knew he had done his best, and there
was no gainsaying the ways of Providence.
Ah, well, Doctor Wainwright is gone, and I am an elderly woman
with an increasing tendency to live in the past. The contrast
between my old doctor at home and the Casanova doctor, Frank
Walker, always rouses me to wrath and digression.
The Circular Staircase |
