Today's Stichomancy for Jack Kerouac

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson:

199 The virtues of Rabbi Abraham's magnet. 200 Asper's complaint of the insolence of Prospero Unpoliteness not always the effect of pride. 201 The importance of punctuality. 202 The different acceptations of poverty. Cynicks and Monks not poor. 203 The pleasures of life to be sought in prospects of futurity. Future fame uncertain. 204 The history of ten days of Seged, emperour of Ethiopia. 205 The history of Seged concluded. 206 The art of living at the cost of others. 207 The folly of continuing too long upon the stage.

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

The Altar of the Dead

CHAPTER I.

HE had a mortal dislike, poor Stransom, to lean anniversaries, and loved them still less when they made a pretence of a figure. Celebrations and suppressions were equally painful to him, and but one of the former found a place in his life. He had kept each year in his own fashion the date of Mary Antrim's death. It would be more to the point perhaps to say that this occasion kept HIM: it kept him at least effectually from doing anything else. It took hold of him again and again with a hand of which time had softened but never loosened the touch. He waked to his feast of memory as

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft:

I vaow afur Gawd, I dun't know what he wants nor what he's a-tryin' to dew.' That Hallowe'en the hill noises sounded louder than ever, and fire burned on Sentinel Hill as usual; but people paid more attention to the rhythmical screaming of vast flocks of unnaturally belated whippoorwills which seemed to be assembled near the unlighted Whateley farmhouse. After midnight their shrill notes burst into a kind of pandemoniac cachinnation which filled all the countryside, and not until dawn did they finally quiet down. Then they vanished, hurrying southward where they were fully a month overdue. What this meant, no one could quite be certain till later. None of

The Dunwich Horror

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 Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

And found truth in my eyes; And all my wrongs you've righted With lies, and lies, and lies.

"You've killed the last assurance That once would have me strive To rouse an old endurance That is no more alive. It makes two people chilly To say what we have said, But you -- you'll not be silly And wrangle for the dead.