Today's Stichomancy for Kurt Vonnegut
| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: true lovers," answered the yeoman's wife, after a pause; "but
I'll speak as truly to you as if these were my dying words.
Though my husband told you some of our troubles, he didn't
mention the greatest, and that which makes all the rest so hard
to bear. If you and your sweetheart marry, you'll be kind and
pleasant to each other for a year or two, and while that's the
case, you never will repent; but, by and by, he'll grow gloomy,
rough, and hard to please, and you'll be peevish, and full of
little angry fits, and apt to be complaining by the fireside,
when he comes to rest himself from his troubles out of doors; so
your love will wear away by little and little, and leave you
The Snow Image |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: hymn, when I caught sight of John Mayrant. What lady was he with? It was
just this that most annoyingly I couldn't make out, because the unlucky
disposition of things hid it. I caught myself craning my neck and singing
the hymn simultaneously and with no difficulty, because all my childhood
was in that hymn; I couldn't tell when I hadn't known words and music by
heart. Who was she? I tried for a clear view when we sat down, and also,
let me confess, when we knelt down; I saw even less of her so; and my
hope at the end of the service was dashed by her slow but entire
disappearance amid the engulfing exits of the other ladies. I followed
where I imagined she had gone, out by a side door, into the beautiful
graveyard; but among the flowers and monuments she was not, nor was he;
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: What was going on down there? And how strong, how damp the seaweed smelt
in the hot sun...
The green blinds were drawn in the bungalows of the summer colony. Over
the verandas, prone on the paddock, flung over the fences, there were
exhausted-looking bathing-dresses and rough striped towels. Each back
window seemed to have a pair of sand-shoes on the sill and some lumps of
rock or a bucket or a collection of pawa shells. The bush quivered in a
haze of heat; the sandy road was empty except for the Trouts' dog Snooker,
who lay stretched in the very middle of it. His blue eye was turned up,
his legs stuck out stiffly, and he gave an occasional desperate-sounding
puff, as much as to say he had decided to make an end of it and was only
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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 Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: "But, monsieur--" Excited by the nervous crisis through which she had
passed, and by the fate of her daughter, which brought forth all her
tenderness and all her powers of mind, Madame Grandet suddenly
observed a frightful movement of her husband's wen, and, in the very
act of replying, she changed her speech without changing the tones of
her voice,--"But, monsieur, I have not more influence over her than
you have. She has said nothing to me; she takes after you."
"Tut, tut! Your tongue is hung in the middle this morning. Ta, ta, ta,
ta! You are setting me at defiance, I do believe. I daresay you are in
league with her."
He looked fixedly at his wife.
Eugenie Grandet |
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