| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: well-to-do farmer, combined with the good-natured
shrewdness of a small shopkeeper. With his shaven
chin, round limbs, and heavy eyelids he did not look
like a toiler, and even less like an adventurer of the
sea. Still, he toiled upon the seas, in his own way,
much as a shopkeeper works behind his counter.
And his ship was the means by which he maintained
his growing family.
She was a heavy, strong, blunt-bowed affair,
awakening the ideas of primitive solidity, like the
wooden plough of our forefathers. And there were,
Falk |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: prisoner, savage, peasant, spirit, camel's leg or lion, a devil or a
genie, a slave or a eunuch, black or white; always ready to feign joy
or sorrow, pity or astonishment, to utter cries that never vary, to
hold his tongue, to hunt, or fight for Rome or Egypt, but always at
heart--a huckster still.
At midnight he returns--a man, the good husband, the tender father; he
slips into the conjugal bed, his imagination still afire with the
illusive forms of the operatic nymphs, and so turns to the profit of
conjugal love the world's depravities, the voluptuous curves of
Taglioni's leg. And finally, if he sleeps, he sleeps apace, and
hurries through his slumber as he does his life.
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs: belt caught his eye; he appropriated them. A copper anklet
also took his fancy, and this he transferred to his own leg.
He examined and admired the tattooing on the forehead
and breast. He marveled at the sharp filed teeth.
He investigated and appropriated the feathered headdress,
and then he prepared to get down to business, for Tarzan
of the Apes was hungry, and here was meat; meat of the kill,
which jungle ethics permitted him to eat.
How may we judge him, by what standards, this ape-man
with the heart and head and body of an English gentleman,
and the training of a wild beast?
Tarzan of the Apes |
