| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and
closer onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be
marble time, and next mumbletypeg, and next tops and hoops,
and next kites, and then right away it would be summer
and going in a-swimming. It just makes a boy homesick
to look ahead like that and see how far off summer is.
Yes, and it sets him to sighing and saddening around,
and there's something the matter with him, he don't know what.
But anyway, he gets out by himself and mopes and thinks;
and mostly he hunts for a lonesome place high up on the
hill in the edge of the woods, and sets there and looks
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest: As when my every deed is known;
To live undaunted, unafraid
Of any step that I have made;
To be without pretense or sham
Exactly what men think I am.
To leave some simple mark behind
To keep my having lived in mind;
If enmity to aught I show,
To be an honest, generous foe,
To play my little part, nor whine
That greater honors are not mine.
A Heap O' Livin' |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: have told him that Nina had said, "It has set at last." He would
have been extremely surprised and perhaps have dropped his
precious banjo. Neither could I have told him that the sun of my
sea-going was setting, too, even as I wrote the words expressing
the impatience of passionate youth bent on its desire. I did not
know this myself, and it is safe to say he would not have cared,
though he was an excellent young fellow and treated me with more
deference than, in our relative positions, I was strictly
entitled to.
He lowered a tender gaze on his banjo, and I went on looking
through the port-hole. The round opening framed in its brass rim
A Personal Record |
