| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: bodily awkwardness, an later by a wholesale acquisition of scientific,
historic, artistic, and anthropologic knowledge; an acquisition
carried on with feverish zest and with a wholly abnormal absorptive
power. Then a sudden return of rightful consciousness, intermittently
plagued ever after with vague unplaceable dreams suggesting fragments
of some hideous memory elaborately blotted out.
And the close
resemblance of those nightmares to my own - even in some of the
smallest particulars - left no doubt in my mind of their significantly
typical nature. One or two of the cases had an added ring of faint,
blasphemous familiarity, as if I had heard of them before through
Shadow out of Time |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: Bordeaux, daughter of a little clerk long since dead of shame, was
lucky enough to be possessed of a mother with a head on her
shoulders, who, after having cursed her, had made it up again at the
end of a year of reflection, being minded, at any rate, to save a
fortune for her daughter. The latter was twenty-five years old and
very passionless and was held to be one of the finest women it is
possible to enjoy. Her price never varied. The mother, a model of
orderliness, kept the accounts and noted down receipts and
expenditures with severe precision. She managed the whole household
from some small lodging two stories above her daughter's, where,
moreover, she had established a workroom for dressmaking and plain
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: Have I not already seen the fairest of the angels dwelling in this
mire? Is this child more or less crazed than I am? Has he taken a
bolder step in the way of faith? He believes, and his belief no doubt
will lead him into some path of light like that in which I walk. But
though he is as beautiful as an angel, is he not too feeble to stand
fast in such a struggle?"
Abashed by the presence of his companion, whose voice of thunder
expressed to him his own thoughts, as lightning expresses the will of
Heaven, the boy was satisfied to gaze at the stars with a lover's
eyes. Overwhelmed by a luxury of sentiment, which weighed on his
heart, he stood there timid and weak--a midge in the sunbeams.
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