Today's Stichomancy for Michael Jordan

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Proposed Roads To Freedom by Bertrand Russell:

A life lived in this spirit--the spirit that aims at creating rather than possessing--has a certain fundamental happiness, of which it cannot be wholly robbed by adverse circumstances. This is the way of life recommended in the Gospels, and by all the great teachers of the world. Those who have found it are freed from the tyranny of fear, since what they value most in their lives is not at the mercy of outside power. If all men could summon up the courage and the vision to live in this way in spite of obstacles and discouragement, there would be no need for the

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson:

'It is well,' he said. 'Be seated. I should be glad to hear some news - if that can be called news that is already twenty years old - of how I have the pleasure to see you here.'

By the coldness of his address, not more than by the nature of the times that he bade me recall, I was plunged in melancholy. I felt myself surrounded as with deserts of friendlessness, and the delight of my welcome was turned to ashes in my mouth.

'That is soon told, MONSEIGNEUR,' said I. 'I understand that I need tell you nothing of the end of my unhappy parents? It is only the story of the lost dog.'

'You are right. I am sufficiently informed of that deplorable

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon:

[18] Lit. "to the enomotarch."

When the right moment for encamping has come, the king is responsible for that, and has to point out the proper place. The despatch of emissaries, however, whether to friends or to foes, is [not][19] the king's affair. Petitioners in general wishing to transact anything treat, in the first instance, with the king. If the case concerns some point of justice, the king despatches the petitioner to the Hellanodikai (who form the court-martial); if of money, to the paymasters.[20] If the petitioner brings booty, he is sent off to the Laphuropolai (or sellers of spoil). This being the mode of procedure, no other duty is left to the king, whilst he is on active service,

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 Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac:

conjectures by which they mutually believed that the Dauphin was living,--rescued from the Temple in the hollow of a huge log of wood. Who could have helped laughing to hear them assert and prove, by reasons evidently their own, that the King of France alone imposed the taxes, that the Chambers were convoked to destroy the clergy, that thirteen hundred thousand persons had perished on the scaffold during the Revolution? They frequently discussed the press, without either of them having the faintest idea of what that modern engine really was. Monsieur Birotteau listened with acceptance to Mademoiselle Gamard when she told him that a man who ate an egg every morning would die in a year, and that facts proved it; that a roll of light bread eaten