Today's Stichomancy for Antonio Banderas

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson:

looking after me in silent dudgeon, as I crossed the bridge and entered the county of Gevaudan.

UPPER GEVAUDAN

The way also here was very wearisome through dirt and slabbiness; nor was there on all this ground so much as one inn or victualling- house wherein to refresh the feebler sort.

PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.

A CAMP IN THE DARK

THE next day (Tuesday, September 24th), it was two o'clock in the afternoon before I got my journal written up and my knapsack repaired, for I was determined to carry my knapsack in the future

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

before he made a move. I left the cabin too to see him out of the ship. But he hung about the quar- ter-deck.

"It is my misfortune," he said in a steady voice.

"You were stupid to blurt it out in such a man- ner. After all, we don't hear such confidences every day."

"What does the man mean?" he mused in deep undertones. "Somebody had to die--but why me?"

Falk

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad:

this way managed in time to pour lots of Indian Ocean into the main hatch. The bright stream flashed in sun- shine, fell into a layer of white crawling smoke, and van- ished on the black surface of coal. Steam ascended mingling with the smoke. We poured salt water as into a barrel without a bottom. It was our fate to pump in that ship, to pump out of her, to pump into her; and after keeping water out of her to save ourselves from being drowned, we frantically poured water into her to save ourselves from being burnt.

"And she crawled on, do or die, in the serene weather.

Youth

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 Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain:

and although he stayed at his post half an hour longer, she came no more.

Toward noon he dropped in at the judge's and talked with Mrs. Pratt about the great event of the day, the levee of the distinguished foreigners at Aunt Patsy Cooper's. He asked after her nephew Tom, and she said he was on his way home and that she was expecting him to arrive a little before night, and added that she and the judge were gratified to gather from his letters that he was conducting himself very nicely and creditably--at which Wilson winked to himself privately. Wilson did not ask if there was a newcomer in the house, but he asked questions that would have brought light-throwing answers as to that matter if Mrs. Pratt had had any light to throw; so he went away