Today's Stichomancy for David Bowie

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken:

We eddy about her, move away in silence. We hear slow tollings of a bell.

III. PALIMPSEST: A DECEITFUL PORTRAIT

Well, as you say, we live for small horizons: We move in crowds, we flow and talk together, Seeing so many eyes and hands and faces, So many mouths, and all with secret meanings,-- Yet know so little of them; only seeing The small bright circle of our consciousness, Beyond which lies the dark. Some few we know-- Or think we know. . . Once, on a sun-bright morning,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Adventure by Jack London:

look 'm copra-house; look 'm grass-land; look 'm river; look 'm whale-boat--my word, plenty big fella look 'm too much."

"What fella man them two fella?" she queried.

"Big fella marster along white man," was the extent of his description.

But Joan decided that they were men of importance in the Solomons, and that their examination of the plantation and of its accounts was of sinister significance.

At dinner no word was dropped that gave a hint of their errand. The conversation was on general topics; but Joan could not help noticing the troubled, absent expression that occasionally came

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri:

And I thereafterward: "The things profound, That here vouchsafe to me their apparition, Unto all eyes below are so concealed,

That they exist there only in belief, Upon the which is founded the high hope, And hence it takes the nature of a substance.

And it behoveth us from this belief To reason without having other sight, And hence it has the nature of evidence."

Then heard I: "If whatever is acquired Below by doctrine were thus understood,

The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

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 Turn of the Screw by Henry James:

little brain puzzled and his little resources taxed to play, under the spell laid on him, a part of innocence and consistency. "No, never--from the hour you came back. You've never mentioned to me one of your masters, one of your comrades, nor the least little thing that ever happened to you at school. Never, little Miles--no, never--have you given me an inkling of anything that MAY have happened there. Therefore you can fancy how much I'm in the dark. Until you came out, that way, this morning, you had, since the first hour I saw you, scarce even made a reference to anything in your previous life. You seemed so perfectly to accept the present." It was