| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: I saw myself alone there, palely watching,
Wearing a masque of grief so deeply acted
That grief itself possessed me. Time would pass,
And I should meet this girl,--my second wife--
And drop the masque of grief for one of passion.
Forward we move to meet, half hesitating,
We drown in each others' eyes, we laugh, we talk,
Looking now here, now there, faintly pretending
We do not hear the powerful pulsing prelude
Roaring beneath our words . . . The time approaches.
We lean unbalanced. The mute last glance between us,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: that made Mrs. Almayer look significantly at Babalatchi.
"Listen," she said. "He has drunk much."
"He has," whispered Babalatchi. "He will sleep heavily
to-night."
Mrs. Almayer looked doubtful.
"Sometimes the devil of strong gin makes him keep awake, and he
walks up and down the verandah all night, cursing; then we stand
afar off," explained Mrs. Almayer, with the fuller knowledge born
of twenty odd years of married life.
"But then he does not hear, nor understand, and his hand, of
course, has no strength. We do not want him to hear to-night."
Almayer's Folly |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Witch, et. al by Anton Chekhov: as he went away. And a little later Aksinya sat up and sighed
heavily with annoyance, then got up and, gathering up her
bedclothes in her arms, went out.
"Why did you marry me into this family, mother?" said Lipa.
"One has to be married, daughter. It was not us who ordained it."
And a feeling of inconsolable woe was ready to take possession of
them. But it seemed to them that someone was looking down from
the height of the heavens, out of the blue from where the stars
were seeing everything that was going on in Ukleevo, watching
over them. And however great was wickedness, still the night was
calm and beautiful, and still in God's world there is and will be
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