Today's Stichomancy for Kurt Cobain

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy:

household, surprising the prefect by his memory of minute details relating to the court.

He showed an interest in trifles, joked about de Beausset's love of travel, and chatted carelessly, as a famous, self-confident surgeon who knows his job does when turning up his sleeves and putting on his apron while a patient is being strapped to the operating table. "The matter is in my hands and is clear and definite in my head. When the times comes to set to work I shall do it as no one else could, but now I can jest, and the more I jest and the calmer I am the more tranquil and confident you ought to be, and the more amazed at my genius."

War and Peace

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

Lageos, that one day will try the feet And tie the tongue: purples and early-ripes, And how, O Rhaetian, shall I hymn thy praise? Yet cope not therefore with Falernian bins. Vines Aminaean too, best-bodied wine, To which the Tmolian bows him, ay, and king Phanaeus too, and, lesser of that name, Argitis, wherewith not a grape can vie For gush of wine-juice or for length of years. Nor thee must I pass over, vine of Rhodes, Welcomed by gods and at the second board,

Georgics

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot:

are taken: it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.

202. _V._ Verlaine, PARSIFAL.

210. The currants were quoted at a price 'carriage and insurance free to London'; and the Bill of Lading, etc., were to be handed to the buyer upon payment of the sight draft.

Notes 196 and 197 were transposed in this and the Hogarth Press edition, but have been corrected here.

210. 'Carriage and insurance free'] 'cost, insurance and freight'--Editor.

218. Tiresias, although a mere spectator and not indeed a 'character', is yet the most important personage in the poem, uniting all the rest. Just as the one-eyed merchant, seller of currants, melts into

The Waste Land

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 A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson:

The howling dog by the door of the house, The bat that lies in bed at noon, All love to be out by the light of the moon.

But all of the things that belong to the day Cuddle to sleep to be out of her way; And flowers and children close their eyes Till up in the morning the sun shall arise.

XXXIII The Swing

How do you like to go up in a swing, Up in the air so blue?

A Child's Garden of Verses