Today's Stichomancy for M. C. Escher

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft:

vastly larger significance. In many places the buildings were totally ruined and the ice sheet deeply riven from various geologic causes. In other places the stonework was worn down to the very level of the glaciation. One broad swath, extending from the plateau’s interior, to a cleft in the foothills about a mile to the left of the pass we had traversed, was wholly free from buildings. It probably represented, we concluded, the course of some great river which in Tertiary times - millions of years ago - had poured through the city and into some prodigious subterranean abyss of the great barrier range. Certainly, this was above all a region

At the Mountains of Madness

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne:

Captain Nemo's caprices drag us once more to the bottom of the Polar Seas, or lead us into Oceania, I ask to leave the Nautilus."

I wished in no way to shackle the liberty of my companions, but I certainly felt no desire to leave Captain Nemo.

Thanks to him, and thanks to his apparatus, I was each day nearer the completion of my submarine studies; and I was rewriting my book of submarine depths in its very element. Should I ever again have such an opportunity of observing the wonders of the ocean? No, certainly not! And I could not bring myself to the idea of abandoning the Nautilus before the cycle of investigation was accomplished.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Yates Pride by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman:

about your age."

"Then she isn't young?"

"She is better than young."

"Well," agreed the young man, "being young and pretty is not everything."

"Pretty!" said Harry Lawton, scornfully, "pretty! She is a great beauty."

"And not young?"

"She is a great beauty, and better than young, because time has not touched her beauty, and you can see for yourself that it lasts."

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 U. S. Project Trinity Report by Carl Maag and Steve Rohrer:

zero, received an exposure of 15 roentgens. A second tank driver, also an Army sergeant, received an exposure of 3.3 roentgens. Three members of the earth-sampling group, all of whom traveled in the tank to ground zero, received exposures of 10, 7.5, and 5 roentgens. An Army photographer who entered the test area six times between 23 July and 20 October received 12.2 roentgens (1).

Four individuals involved with excavating the buried supports of the TRINITY tower from 8 October to 10 October 1945 received gamma exposures ranging from 3.4 to 4.7 roentgens. Film badge readings for this three-day period indicate that the two individuals who operated mechanical shovels received 3.4 and 4.3 roentgens, while the two who