Today's Stichomancy for David Geffen

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol:

men in Russia, and for whom he had conceived such an unbounded respect. Hitherto only for rank or for opulence had Chichikov respected a man--never for mere intellectual power; but now he made a first exception in favour of Kostanzhoglo, seeing that he felt that nothing undertaken by his host could possibly come to naught. And another project which was occupying Chichikov's mind was the project of purchasing the estate of a certain landowner named Khlobuev. Already Chichikov had at his disposal ten thousand roubles, and a further fifteen thousand he would try and borrow of Kostanzhoglo (seeing that the latter had himself said that he was prepared to help any one who really desired to grow rich); while, as for the remainder,

Dead Souls

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James:

he were kept straight for instance by the knowledge that the hated Pudneys would have more to tell us if they chose. He was lying low, but unfortunately it was common wisdom with us in this connexion that the biggest splashes took place in the quietest pools. We should have had a merry life indeed if all the splashes had sprinkled us as refreshingly as the waters we were even then to feel about our ears. Kent Mulville had been up to his room, but had come back with a face that told as few tales as I had seen it succeed in telling on the evening I waited in the lecture-room with Miss Anvoy. I said to myself that our friend had gone out, but it was a comfort that the presence of a comparative stranger deprived

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London:

happenings of that other world rise up before me in vast phantasmagoria, and I know that to you they would be rhymeless and reasonless.

What to you the friendship of Lop-Ear, the warm lure of the Swift One, the lust and the atavism of Red-Eye? A screaming incoherence and no more. And a screaming incoherence, likewise, the doings of the Fire People and the Tree People, and the gibbering councils of the horde. For you know not the peace of the cool caves in the cliffs, the circus of the drinking-places at the end of the day. You have never felt the bite of the

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 Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale:

Secrets rushing without sound Crying from your hiding places -- Let me go, I cannot bear The sorrow of the passing faces.

-- People in the restless street, Can it be, oh can it be In the meeting of our eyes That you know as much of me?

Evening: New York

Blue dust of evening over my city, Over the ocean of roofs and the tall towers