Today's Stichomancy for David Geffen

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde:

[They converse together. LORD WINDERMERE moves uneasily about the room watching MRS. ERLYNNE.]

LORD DARLINGTON. [To LADY WINDERMERE.] How pale you are!

LADY WINDERMERE. Cowards are always pale!

LORD DARLINGTON. You look faint. Come out on the terrace.

LADY WINDERMERE. Yes. [To PARKER.] Parker, send my cloak out.

MRS. ERLYNNE. [Crossing to her.] Lady Windermere, how beautifully your terrace is illuminated. Reminds me of Prince Doria's at Rome.

[LADY WINDERMERE bows coldly, and goes off with LORD DARLINGTON.]

Oh, how do you do, Mr. Graham? Isn't that your aunt, Lady Jedburgh? I should so much like to know her.

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

other. I have to listen and examine. I must try to sift the truth. Or there is some one whom I have to blame or praise before my friends, or I must arbitrate between some close connections and endeavour to enforce the lesson that it is to their own interests to be friends not foes.[23] . . . We are present to assist a general in court;[24] we are called upon to censure some one; or defend some other charged unjustly; or to prosecute a third who has received an honour which he ill deserves. It frequently occurs in our debates[25] that there is some course which we strongly favour: naturally we sound its praises; or some other, which we disapprove of: no less naturally we point out its defects.

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson:

for the student of the cold northern chamber, and the writer of the sorrowful lines; and this was a knowledge to disarm a brute. To flee was more than I could find courage for; but I registered a vow of unsleeping circumspection.

As I turned from the window, my eyes alighted on the portrait. It had fallen dead, like a candle after sunrise; it followed me with eyes of paint. I knew it to be like, and marvelled at the tenacity of type in that declining race; but the likeness was swallowed up in difference. I remembered how it had seemed to me a thing unapproachable in the life, a creature rather of the painter's craft than of the modesty of nature, and I marvelled at the

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 Anthem by Ayn Rand:

prescribe for you. For the Council of Vocations knows in its great wisdom where you are needed by your brother men, better than you can know it in your unworthy little minds. And if you are not needed by your brother man, there is no reason for you to burden the earth with your bodies."

We knew this well, in the years of our childhood, but our curse broke our will. We were guilty and we confess it here: we were guilty of the great Transgression

Anthem