| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Cruise of the Jasper B. by Don Marquis: ridicule the idea publicly if anyone had dubbed him "the
psychological detective." That, to his mind, would have savored
of charlatanism. He would have said: "I am nothing so strange
and mystifying as that--I am a plain business man." But in
reality there was no new discovery of the investigating
psychologists of which he did not avail himself at once. His
ability to clothe himself with the thoughts of the criminal as an
actor clothes himself with a role, was marvelous; he knew the
criminal soul. That is to say, he knew the human soul. He
refused to see anything extraordinary in this. "It is only my
business to know such things," he would say. "We know many
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: the last of the ship. And so the boats drifted about that
night, heaving and setting on the swell. The men dozed,
waked, sighed, groaned. I looked at the burning ship.
"Between the darkness of earth and heaven she was
burning fiercely upon a disc of purple sea shot by the
blood-red play of gleams; upon a disc of water glitter-
ing and sinister. A high, clear flame, an immense and
lonely flame, ascended from the ocean, and from its sum-
mit the black smoke poured continuously at the sky. She
burned furiously, mournful and imposing like a funeral
pile kindled in the night, surrounded by the sea, watched
Youth |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: of grass slope crowned with a low long bungalow with
an immensely steep roof of palm thatch, and clad to the
eaves in flowering creepers. While the Sofala was being
made fast he strolled in the shade of the few trees left
near the landing-place, waiting till he could go on
board. Her white men were not of his kind. The old
Sultan (though his wistful invasions were a nuisance)
was really much more acceptable to his fastidious taste.
But still they were white; the periodical visits of the
ship made a break in the well-filled sameness of the
days without disturbing his privacy. Moreover, they
End of the Tether |
