Today's Stichomancy for Chow Yun Fat
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: "Be patient, for the world is broad and wide."
Section 1. Of the Nature of Flatland
I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so,
but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers,
who are privileged to live in Space.
Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles,
Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining
fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface,
but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much
like shadows -- only hard and with luminous edges -- and you will then
have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen. Alas,
 Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: wouldn't last very long.
"Couldn't YOU perhaps take her, independent, unencumbered as you
are?" I asked of Mrs. Meldrum. "You're probably, with one
exception, the sanest person she knows, and you at least wouldn't
scandalously fleece her."
"How do you know what I wouldn't do?" my humorous friend demanded.
"Of course I've thought how I can help her--it has kept me awake at
night. But doing it's impossible; she'll take nothing from me.
You know what she does--she hugs me and runs away. She has an
instinct about me and feels that I've one about her. And then she
dislikes me for another reason that I'm not quite clear about, but
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth: You come in, and you get a large pot of coffee, tea, or cocoa,
and a hunk of bread. You can go into the wash-house, where you can
have a wash with plenty of warm water, and soap and towels free.
Then after having washed and eaten you can make yourself comfortable.
You can write letters to your friends, if you have any friends to
write to, or you can read, or you can sit quietly and do nothing.
At eight o'clock the Shelter is tolerably full, and then begins what
we consider to be the indispensable feature of the whole concern.
Two or three hundred men in the men's Shelter, or as many women in the
women's Shelter, are collected together, most of them strange to each
other, in a large room. They are all wretchedly poor--what are you
 In Darkest England and The Way Out |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: net, he will sometimes discover him to be a much finer, better man
than the other individual, whose wrong at this particular criminal's
hand set in motion the machinery of justice. Several times that
has happened to Muller, and each time his heart got the better of
his professional instincts, of his practical common-sense, too,
perhaps, ... at least as far as his own advancement was concerned,
and he warned the victim, defeating his own work. This peculiarity
of Muller's character caused his undoing at last, his official
undoing that is, and compelled his retirement from the force. But
his advice is often sought unofficially by the Department, and to
those who know, Muller's hand can be seen in the unravelling of
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