Today's Stichomancy for David Geffen
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: she has tamed and calls a wolf, and came making that pitiful noise
again, and shedding that water out of the places she looks with.
I was obliged to return with her, but will presently emigrate again,
when occasion offers. She engages herself in many foolish things:
among others, trying to study out why the animals called lions and
tigers live on grass and flowers, when, as she says, the sort of
teeth they wear would indicate that they were intended to eat each
other. This is foolish, because to do that would be to kill each
other, and that would introduce what, as I understand it, is called
"death;" and death, as I have been told, has not yet entered the
Park. Which is a pity, on some accounts.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: that flamed out at last in all these things. The evidence of a
pathetic, perpetually thwarted urgency to make something, is one
of the most touching aspects of the relics and records of our
immediate ancestors. There exists still in the death area about
the London bombs, a region of deserted small homes that furnish
the most illuminating comment on the old state of affairs. These
homes are entirely horrible, uniform, square, squat, hideously
proportioned, uncomfortable, dingy, and in some respects quite
filthy, only people in complete despair of anything better could
have lived in them, but to each is attached a ridiculous little
rectangle of land called 'the garden,' containing usually a prop
The Last War: A World Set Free |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: efforts were crowned with the brilliant success that so justly
attends those of Eugene Sue. His first appearance was by a
collection of stories in a long series of volumes entitled
"Contes deux fois racontees." The titles of some of his more
recent works (we quote from memory) are as follows: "Le Voyage
Celeste a Chemin de Fer," 3 tom., 1838; "Le nouveau Pere Adam et
la nouvelle Mere Eve," 2 tom., 1839; "Roderic; ou le Serpent a
l'estomac," 2 tom., 1840; "Le Culte du Feu," a folio volume of
ponderous research into the religion and ritual of the old
Persian Ghebers, published in 1841; "La Soiree du Chateau en
Espagne," 1 tom., 8vo, 1842; and "L'Artiste du Beau; ou le
Mosses From An Old Manse |
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 Youth by Joseph Conrad: the skipper and shook him by the shoulder. At last he
opened his eyes, but did not move. 'Time to leave her,
sir,' I said, quietly.
"He got up painfully, looked at the flames, at the sea
sparkling round the ship, and black, black as ink farther
away; he looked at the stars shining dim through a thin
veil of smoke in a sky black, black as Erebus.
"'Youngest first,' he said.
"And the ordinary seaman, wiping his mouth with the
back of his hand, got up, clambered over the taffrail, and
vanished. Others followed. One, on the point of going
Youth |
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