| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: the sort of day most favorable for a stranger attempt-
ing the passage: a clear day, just windy enough for
the sea to break on every ledge, buoying, as it were,
the channel plainly to the sight; whereas during a calm
you had nothing to depend on but the compass and the
practiced judgment of your eye. And yet the suc-
cessive captains of the Sofala had had to take her
through at night more than once. Nowadays you could
not afford to throw away six or seven hours of a
steamer's time. That you couldn't. But then use is
everything, and with proper care . . . The channel
End of the Tether |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: so many violent blows without being worn out. As my bricks had been
in a chimney before, though I did not read the name of
Nebuchadnezzar on them, I picked out its many fireplace bricks as I
could find, to save work and waste, and I filled the spaces between
the bricks about the fireplace with stones from the pond shore, and
also made my mortar with the white sand from the same place. I
lingered most about the fireplace, as the most vital part of the
house. Indeed, I worked so deliberately, that though I commenced at
the ground in the morning, a course of bricks raised a few inches
above the floor served for my pillow at night; yet I did not get a
stiff neck for it that I remember; my stiff neck is of older date.
Walden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Confessio Amantis by John Gower: That al wakende I dreme and meete
That I with hire al one meete
And preie hire of som good ansuere:
Bot for sche wol noght gladly swere,
Sche seith me nay withouten oth;
And thus wexe I withinne wroth,
That outward I am al affraied,
And so distempred and esmaied.
A thousand times on a day
Ther souneth in myn Eres nay, 60
The which sche seide me tofore:
Confessio Amantis |
