Today's Stichomancy for Steven Spielberg

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather:

I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it. I did not believe that my dead father and mother were watching me from up there; they would still be looking for me at the sheep-fold down by the creek, or along the white road that led to the mountain pastures. I had left even their spirits behind me. The wagon jolted on, carrying me I knew not whither. I don't think I was homesick. If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt, what would

My Antonia

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Arizona Nights by Stewart Edward White:

mighty lucky they didn't have any meat. If they had, we'd probably have killed ourselves with it. I suppose the calabash was about the best thing for us under the circumstances. The Mexican went out to hunt up his horse. I called the girl back. "How far is it to Mollyhay?" I asked her. "A league," said she.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner:

The hair on Trooper Peter Halket's forehead slowly stiffened itself. He had no thought of escaping; he was paralyzed with dread. He took up his gun. A deadly coldness crept from his feet to his head. He had worked a maxim gun in a fight when some hundred natives fell and only one white man had been wounded; and he had never known fear; but tonight his fingers were stiff on the lock of his gun. He knelt low, tending a little to one side of the fire, with his gun ready. A stone half sheltered him from anyone coming up from the other side of the kopje, and the instant the figure appeared over the edge he intended to fire.

Then, the thought flashed on him; what, and if it were one of his own comrades come in search of him, and no bare-footed enemy! The anguish of

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 Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson:

Lest the gay navy there should splinter on it, And fearing waved my arm to warn them off; An idle signal, for the brittle fleet (I thought I could have died to save it) near'd, Touch'd, clink'd, and clash'd, and vanish'd, and I woke, I heard the clash so clearly. Now I see My dream was Life; the woman honest Work; And my poor venture but a fleet of glass Wreck'd on a reef of visionary gold.'

`Nay,' said the kindly wife to comfort him, `You raised your arm, you tumbled down and broke