| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: Our earth is everywhere corrupted and corroded; and even the land which is
fairer than the sea, for that is a mere chaos or waste of water and mud and
sand, has nothing to show in comparison of the other world. But the
heavenly earth is of divers colours, sparkling with jewels brighter than
gold and whiter than any snow, having flowers and fruits innumerable. And
the inhabitants dwell some on the shore of the sea of air, others in
'islets of the blest,' and they hold converse with the gods, and behold the
sun, moon and stars as they truly are, and their other blessedness is of a
piece with this.
The hollows on the surface of the globe vary in size and shape from that
which we inhabit: but all are connected by passages and perforations in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: girlish spar-maker composed itself into a post-Raffaelite picture
of extremest quality, wherein the girl's hair alone, as the focus
of observation, was depicted with intensity and distinctness, and
her face, shoulders, hands, and figure in general, being a blurred
mass of unimportant detail lost in haze and obscurity.
He hesitated no longer, but tapped at the door and entered. The
young woman turned at the crunch of his boots on the sanded floor,
and exclaiming, "Oh, Mr. Percombe, how you frightened me!" quite
lost her color for a moment.
He replied, "You should shut your door--then you'd hear folk open
it."
The Woodlanders |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: that delightful city where accurate time-pieces are made
for all the rest of the world, but whose own clocks
never give the correct time of day by any accident.
Geneva is filled with pretty shops, and the shops are
filled with the most enticing gimacrackery, but if one
enters one of these places he is at once pounced upon,
and followed up, and so persecuted to buy this, that,
and the other thing, that he is very grateful to get
out again, and is not at all apt to repeat his experiment.
The shopkeepers of the smaller sort, in Geneva,
are as troublesome and persistent as are the salesmen
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