Today's Stichomancy for Billy Joel

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac:

mark for coming philosophers the great transition which welds a period of material enterprise to the period of intellectual strength? Our century will bind the realm of isolated power, abounding as it does in creative genius, to the realm of universal but levelling might; equalizing all products, spreading them broadcast among the masses, and being itself controlled by the principle of unity,--the final expression of all societies. Do we not find the dead level of barbarism succeeding the saturnalia of popular thought and the last struggles of those civilizations which accumulated the treasures of the world in one direction?

The commercial traveller! Is he not to the realm of ideas what our

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling:

Most faithful-foolish-fond; Making her mere-breathed name Their bond upon their bond.) So thank I God my birth Fell not in isles aside -- Waste headlands of the earth, Or warring tribes untried -- But that she lent me worth And gave me right to pride.

Verses 1889-1896

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

Where no spark ever was; and thus we die, Still searching, like poor old astronomers Who totter off to bed and go to sleep, To dream of untriangulated stars.

XIV

With conscious eyes not yet sincere enough To pierce the glimmered cloud that fluctuates Between me and the glorifying light That screens itself with knowledge, I discern The searching rays of wisdom that reach through The mist of shame's infirm credulity,

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 Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare:

When I come where he cals, then he's gone. The Villaine is much lighter heel'd then I: I followed fast, but faster he did flye;

shifting places.

That fallen am I in darke vneuen way, And here wil rest me. Come thou gentle day:

lye down.

For if but once thou shew me thy gray light, Ile finde Demetrius, and reuenge this spight. Enter Robin and Demetrius.

Rob. Ho, ho, ho; coward, why com'st thou not?

A Midsummer Night's Dream