Today's Stichomancy for John Lennon

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell:

of feeling--but it was not a medley, exactly; rather it was successive layers of feeling, in which one could not say which layer was undermost--struggled inside him.

The spasm passed. He put the white knight back in its place, but for the moment he could not settle down to serious study of the chess problem. His thoughts wandered again. Almost unconsciously he traced with his finger in the dust on the table:

2+2=5

'They can't get inside you,' she had said. But they could get inside you. 'What happens to you here is FOR EVER,' O'Brien had said. That was a true word. There were things, your own acts, from which you could never recover.

1984

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell:

regions where there are men of inferior races to exploit. Again: the skilled worker of the present day is an aristocrat in the world of labor. It is a question with him whether he shall ally himself with the unskilled worker against the capitalist, or with the capitalist against the unskilled worker. Very often he is himself a capitalist in a small way, and if he is not so individually, his trade union or his friendly society is pretty sure to be so. Hence the sharpness of the class war has not been maintained. There are gradations, intermediate ranks between rich and

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn:

bitterly did she weep that Sonjo felt as if his heart were being torn out while he listened. And the woman cried to him: "Why,-- oh! why did you kill him? -- of what wrong was he guilty?... At Akanuma we were so happy together,-- and you killed him!... What harm did he ever do you? Do you even know what you have done? -- oh! do you know what a cruel, what a wicked thing you have done?... Me too you have killed,-- for I will not live without my husband!... Only to tell you this I came."... Then again she wept aloud,-- so bitterly that the voice of her crying pierced into the marrow of the listener's bones; -- and she sobbed out the words of this poem:--

Hi kurureba

Kwaidan

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 Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson:

there's deils in the deep sea would yoke on a communicant! Eh, sirs, if ye had gane doon wi' the puir lads in the CHRIST-ANNA, ye would ken by now the mercy o' the seas. If ye had sailed it for as lang as me, ye would hate the thocht of it as I do. If ye had but used the een God gave ye, ye would hae learned the wickedness o' that fause, saut, cauld, bullering creature, and of a' that's in it by the Lord's permission: labsters an' partans, an' sic like, howking in the deid; muckle, gutsy, blawing whales; an' fish - the hale clan o' them - cauld-wamed, blind-eed uncanny ferlies. O, sirs,' he cried, 'the horror - the horror o' the sea!'

We were all somewhat staggered by this outburst; and the speaker