Today's Stichomancy for Ricky Martin

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Misalliance by George Bernard Shaw:

Where was I? This repulsive mask--Yes. _[Explosively]_ What is death?

MRS TARLETON. John!

HYPATIA. Death is a rather unpleasant subject, papa.

TARLETON. Not a bit. Not scientifically. Scientifically it's a delightful subject. You think death's natural. Well, it isnt. You read Weismann. There wasnt any death to start with. You go look in any ditch outside and youll find swimming about there as fresh as paint some of the identical little live cells that Adam christened in the Garden of Eden. But if big things like us didnt die, we'd crowd one another off the face of the globe. Nothing survived, sir, except

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London:

singing too wild a song for mere playfulness. All things had been in the naming of his name--reproach, refined away by gratitude, and all compounded of joy and love.

She stepped forward and caressed the mare, and again turned and looked at the man, and breathed:--

"Oh, Elam! "

And all that was in her voice was in her eyes, and in them Daylight glimpsed a profundity deeper and wider than any speech or thought--the whole vast inarticulate mystery and wonder of sex and love.

Again he strove for playfulness of speech, but it was too great a

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac:

full of heather, with a touching gesture. This plaintive expression of grievous doubts and hidden sorrows is indescribable. Daniel understood them all; and he looked at the princess with keen emotion.

"And yet, the night on which I last saw him, after the revolution of July, I was on the point of giving way to the desire I felt to take his hand and press it before all the world, under the peristyle of the opera-house. But the thought came to me that such a proof of gratitude might be misinterpreted; like so many other little things done from noble motives which are called to-day the follies of Madame de Maufrigneuse--things which I can never explain, for none but my son and God have understood me."

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 An Open Letter on Translating by Dr. Martin Luther:

anything about it to the priests and monks! It can,however, be easily proven that there has always been a great deal of secret murmuring and complaining against the clergy throughout the world, and that they are not treating Christendom properly. And the papal asses have courageously withstood such complaining with fire and sword, even to the present day. This murmuring proves how happy Christians have been over these blasphemies, and how right they have been in doing them! So out with it, you papal asses! Say that this is the teaching of Christendom: these stinking lies which you villains and traitors have forced upon Christendom and for the sake of which you