| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: If it was done a little sharply, what matter? It was done thoroughly, and
it had to be done.
VII.
And a new life begins for us--a new time, a life as cold as that of a man
who sits on the pinnacle of an iceberg and sees the glittering crystals all
about him. The old looks indeed like a long hot delirium, peopled with
phantasies. The new is cold enough.
Now we have no God. We have had two: the old God that our fathers handed
down to us, that we hated, and never liked: the new one that we made for
ourselves, that we loved; but now he has flitted away from us, and we see
what he was made of--the shadow of our highest ideal, crowned and throned.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: inert, shut up in a small cabin with the solace of a good bodily
appetite. When about to make the land, the spirit of the ship's
commander is tormented by an unconquerable restlessness. It seems
unable to abide for many seconds together in the holy of holies of
the captain's state-room; it will out on deck and gaze ahead,
through straining eyes, as the appointed moment comes nearer. It
is kept vigorously upon the stretch of excessive vigilance.
Meantime the body of the ship's commander is being enfeebled by
want of appetite; at least, such is my experience, though
"enfeebled" is perhaps not exactly the word. I might say, rather,
that it is spiritualized by a disregard for food, sleep, and all
The Mirror of the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll: And some of them fainted away.
Then the Snark pronounced sentence, the Judge being quite
Too nervous to utter a word:
When it rose to its feet, there was silence like night,
And the fall of a pin might be heard.
"Transportation for life" was the sentence it gave,
"And *then* to be fined forty pound."
The Jury all cheered, though the Judge said he feared
That the phrase was not legally sound.
But their wild exultation was suddenly checked
When the jailer informed them, with tears,
The Hunting of the Snark |
