Today's Stichomancy for Oliver Stone
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela: "Look here, man, don't be surprised if I confide in you
right off. I am so anxious to find someone intelligent
among this crowd, that as soon as I get hold of a man
like you I clutch at him as eagerly as I would at a glass
of water, after walking mile after mile through a parched
desert. But frankly, I think you should do the explaining
first. I can't understand how a man who was correspond-
ent of a Government newspaper during the Madero re-
gime, and later editorial writer on a Conservative jour-
nal, who denounced us as bandits in the most fiery ar-
ticles, is now fighting on our side."
The Underdogs |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: heart. It seems to me that his intellectual life was divided into
three marked phases.
Under the impulsion, from his earliest years, of a precocious
activity, due, no doubt, to some malady--or to some special perfection
--of organism, his powers were concentrated on the functions of the
inner senses and a superabundant flow of nerve- fluid. As a man of
ideas, he craved to satisfy the thirst of his brain, to assimilate
every idea. Hence his reading; and from his reading, the reflections
that gave him the power of reducing things to their simplest
expression, and of absorbing them to study them in their essence.
Thus, the advantages of this splendid stage, acquired by other men
Louis Lambert |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: reared itself against the sky. The gorge between these precipices
ran east and west and was full of the morning sunlight, which lit
to the westward the mass of fallen mountain that closed the
descending gorge. Below him it seemed there was a precipice
equally steep, but behind the snow in the gully he found a sort of
chimney-cleft dripping with snow-water, down which a desperate man
might venture. He found it easier than it seemed, and came at last
to another desolate alp, and then after a rock climb of no
particular difficulty, to a steep slope of trees. He took his
bearings and turned his face up the gorge, for he saw it opened out
above upon green meadows, among which he now glimpsed quite
|
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 Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: the mainland, which was about five miles distant.
On the whole island there were but three miserable huts, and one
of these was vacant when I arrived. This I hired. It contained
but two rooms, and these exhibited all the squalidness of the most
miserable penury. The thatch had fallen in, the walls were unplastered,
and the door was off its hinges. I ordered it to be repaired,
bought some furniture, and took possession, an incident which
would doubtless have occasioned some surprise had not all the
senses of the cottagers been benumbed by want and squalid poverty.
As it was, I lived ungazed at and unmolested, hardly thanked
for the pittance of food and clothes which I gave,
Frankenstein |
|
|
