Today's Stichomancy for Sarah Silverman

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale:

As rain beats down the bright, proud sea, Beaten my body, bruised my soul, Left me nothing lovely or whole -- Yet I have wrested a gift from you, Day that dies in dusky blue:

For suddenly over the factories I saw a moon in the cloudy seas -- A wisp of beauty all alone In a world as hard and gray as stone -- Oh who could be bitter and want to die When a maiden moon wakes up in the sky?

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart:

there, a familiar figure in blue, the very gown in which I always thought of her, the one she had worn when, Heaven help me - I had kissed her, at the Carter farm. And she was not alone. Bending over her, talking earnestly, with all his boyish heart in his face, was Richey.

They did not see me, and I was glad of it. After all, it had been McKnight's game first. I turned on my heel and made my way blindly out of the station. Before I lost them I turned once and looked toward them, standing apart from the crowd, absorbed in each other. They were the only two people on earth that I cared about, and I left them there together. Then I went back miserably to the office

The Man in Lower Ten

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare:

And with her personage, her tall personage, Her height (forsooth) she hath preuail'd with him. And are you growne so high in his esteeme, Because I am so dwarfish, and so low? How low am I, thou painted May-pole? Speake, How low am I? I am not yet so low, But that my nailes can reach vnto thine eyes

Hel. I pray you though you mocke me, gentlemen, Let her not hurt me; I was neuer curst: I haue no gift at all in shrewishnesse; I am a right maide for my cowardize;

A Midsummer Night's Dream

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 Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac:

murmuring their sadness to the heart, cherishing its hidden transports, its unuttered hopes, its illusions which gleam and fall to fragments like the gossamer of a summer's night?

Such neutral pleasures help to soothe a nature irritated by long contemplation of the person beloved. They were to me, I dare not say to her, like those fissures in a dam through which the water finds a vent and avoids disaster. Abstinence brings deadly exhaustion, which a few crumbs falling from heaven like manna in the desert, suffices to relieve. Sometimes I found my Henriette standing before these bouquets with pendant arms, lost in agitated reverie, thoughts swelling her bosom, illumining her brow as they surged in waves and sank again,

The Lily of the Valley