| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: not a canoe on the water, not a bird in the air, not a cloud in the sky.
In this breathless pause at the threshold of a long passage we seemed
to be measuring our fitness for a long and arduous enterprise, the appointed
task of both our existences to be carried out, far from all human eyes,
with only sky and sea for spectators and for judges.
There must have been some glare in the air to interfere with one's sight,
because it was only just before the sun left us that my roaming eyes
made out beyond the highest ridges of the principal islet of the group
something which did away with the solemnity of perfect solitude.
The tide of darkness flowed on swiftly; and with tropical suddenness
a swarm of stars came out above the shadowy earth, while I lingered yet,
The Secret Sharer |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: go round by the outskirts, and not run the gauntlet of the market-
place, where, in the concourse of people, they stood the more
imminent peril to be recognised and slain.
This course was a long one. It took them not far from the house by
the beach, now lying dark and silent, and brought them forth at
last by the margin of the harbour. Many of the ships, as they
could see by the clear moonshine, had weighed anchor, and,
profiting by the calm sky, proceeded for more distant parts;
answerably to this, the rude alehouses along the beach (although in
defiance of the curfew law, they still shone with fire and candle)
were no longer thronged with customers, and no longer echoed to the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: great magician one must surrender oneself to occult and
irresponsible powers, either outside or within one's breast. We
have all heard of simple men selling their souls for love or
power to some grotesque devil. The most ordinary intelligence
can perceive without much reflection that anything of the sort is
bound to be a fool's bargain. I don't lay claim to particular
wisdom because of my dislike and distrust of such transactions.
It may be my sea training acting upon a natural disposition to
keep good hold on the one thing really mine, but the fact is that
I have a positive horror of losing even for one moving moment
that full possession of my self which is the first condition of
A Personal Record |
