Today's Stichomancy for Pablo Picasso

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland:

the cloth, and under one of them put the five little balls. When he placed the cup we watched carefully; there were no balls under it. When he raised it up, behold, there were the five little balls. He removed the cups from one place to another, and asked us to guess which cup the balls were under, but we were always wrong. There was a large company of us, ranging from children of three to old men and women of seventy-five, and from Chinese schoolboys to a bishop of the church, but none of us could discover how he

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay:

gradually departed, and was replaced by the normal light of Threal. The rhythmical beats continued, but a very long way ahead - neither was able to diminish the distance.

"What kind of man are you?" Corpang suddenly broke out.

"In what respect?"

"How do you come to be on such terms with the Invisible? How is it that I've never had this experience before I met you, in spite of my never-ending prayers and mortifications? In what way are you superior to me?"

"To hear voices perhaps can't be made a profession," replied Maskull. "I have a simple and unoccupied mind - that may be why I sometimes

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Love Songs by Sara Teasdale:

Made new by walls of moving mist receding The more we follow. . . . What a silver night! That was our bench the time you said to me The long new poem -- but how different now, How eerie with the curtain of the fog Making it strange to all the friendly trees! There is no wind, and yet great curving scrolls Carve themselves, ever changing, in the mist. Walk on a little, let me stand here watching To see you, too, grown strange to me and far. . . . I used to wonder how the park would be

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 Main Street by Sinclair Lewis:

knows I want to be fair. But I expect others to be fair, too. And you're so high and mighty about people. Take Sam Clark; best soul that ever lived, honest and loyal and a damn good fellow----"

("Yes, and a good shot at ducks, don't forget that!")

("Well, and he is a good shot, too!) Sam drops around in the evening to sit and visit, and by golly just because he takes a dry smoke and rolls his cigar around in his mouth, and maybe spits a few times, you look at him as if he was a hog. Oh, you didn't know I was onto you, and I certainly hope Sam hasn't noticed it, but I never miss it."