Today's Stichomancy for Jack Kerouac

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

exertions. It may be the slowest of all roads to success, but I shall lay my head on the pillow at night untroubled by evil thoughts. Is there a greater thing than this--to look back over your life and know that it is stainless as a lily? I and my life are like a young man and his betrothed. Vautrin has put before me all that comes after ten years of marriage. The devil! my head is swimming. I do not want to think at all; the heart is a sure guide."

Eugene was roused from his musings by the voice of the stout Sylvie, who announced that the tailor had come, and Eugene therefore made his appearance before the man with the two money

Father Goriot

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

And as we cannot see one thing without at the same time seeing another, different objects hang together in recollection, and when we call for one the other quickly follows. To think of the place in which we have last seen a thing is often the best way of recalling it to the mind. Hence memory is dependent on association. The act of recollection may be compared to the sight of an object at a great distance which we have previously seen near and seek to bring near to us in thought. Memory is to sense as dreaming is to waking; and like dreaming has a wayward and uncertain power of recalling impressions from the past.

Thus begins the passage from the outward to the inward sense. But as yet there is no conception of a universal--the mind only remembers the

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

the tide, without speech, without movement, without heat! Indestructible--and, perhaps, immortal!

VII

With the sublime indifference of a man who has had a glimpse through the open doors of Paradise and is no longer careful of mere life, Lingard had followed Belarab's anxious messengers. The stockade was waking up in a subdued resonance of voices. Men were getting up from the ground, fires were being rekindled. Draped figures flitted in the mist amongst the buildings; and through the mat wall of a bamboo house Lingard heard the feeble wailing of a child. A day of mere life was beginning; but in the Chief's

The Rescue

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 Poems by Oscar Wilde:

The soft brown limbs, the wanton treacherous face Of woodland god! Queen Dian in the chase, White-limbed and terrible, with look of pride, And leash of boar-hounds leaping at her side! Or Hylas mirrored in the perfect stream.

O idle heart! O fond Hellenic dream! Ere long, with melancholy rise and swell, The evening chimes, the convent's vesper bell, Struck on mine ears amid the amorous flowers. Alas! alas! these sweet and honied hours Had whelmed my heart like some encroaching sea,