| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: we had carefully refrained from even hinting it to each other.
There could now be no further merciful doubt about the nature
of the beings which had built and inhabited this monstrous dead
city millions of years ago, when man’s ancestors were primitive
archaic mammals, and vast dinosaurs roamed the tropical steppes
of Europe and Asia.
We had previously clung to a desperate alternative
and insisted - each to himself - that the omnipresence of the
five-pointed motifs meant only some cultural or religious exaltation
of the Archaean natural object which had so patently embodied
the quality of five-pointedness; as the decorative motifs of Minoan
At the Mountains of Madness |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne: cashier's table, that functionary being at the moment engaged in registering
the receipt of three shillings and sixpence. Of course, he could not have
his eyes everywhere. Let it be observed that the Bank of England reposes
a touching confidence in the honesty of the public. There are neither guards
nor gratings to protect its treasures; gold, silver, banknotes are freely
exposed, at the mercy of the first comer. A keen observer of English customs
relates that, being in one of the rooms of the Bank one day, he had the
curiosity to examine a gold ingot weighing some seven or eight pounds.
He took it up, scrutinised it, passed it to his neighbour, he to the next man,
and so on until the ingot, going from hand to hand, was transferred to the end
of a dark entry; nor did it return to its place for half an hour. Meanwhile,
Around the World in 80 Days |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: 'moods of my own mind,' are worth all the rest of my more active
days. Then, instead of looking forwards, as I did in youth, and
forming for myself fairy palaces, upon the verge of the grave I
turn my eyes backward upon the days and manners of my better
time; and the sad, yet soothing recollections come so close and
interesting, that I almost think it sacrilege to be wiser or more
rational or less prejudiced than those to whom I looked up in my
younger years."
"I think I now understand what you mean," I answered, "and can
comprehend why you should occasionally prefer the twilight of
illusion to the steady light of reason."
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