Today's Stichomancy for Salvador Dali

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Light me with your little candle, Ere upon my bed I lay me, Ere in sleep I close my eyelids!"

Woodrow W. Morris April 1, 1991

The Song of Hiawatha Introduction

Should you ask me, whence these stories? Whence these legends and traditions, With the odors of the forest

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad:

"You, too!" it seemed to say, "you, too, shall taste of that peace and that unrest in a searching intimacy with your own self--obscure as we were and as supreme in the face of all the winds and all the seas, in an immensity that receives no impress, preserves no memories, and keeps no reckoning of lives."

Deep within the tarnished ormulu frame, in the hot half-light sifted through the awning, I saw my own face propped between my hands. And I stared back at myself with the perfect detachment

The Shadow Line

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Betty Zane by Zane Grey:

For a hundred years the stories of Betty and Isaac Zane have been familiar, oft-repeated tales in my family--tales told with that pardonable ancestral pride which seems inherent in every one. My grandmother loved to cluster the children round her and tell them that when she was a little girl she had knelt at the feet of Betty Zane, and listened to the old lady as she told of her brother's capture by the Indian Princess, of the burning of the Fort, and of her own race for life. I knew these stories by heart when a child.

Two years ago my mother came to me with an old note book which had been discovered in some rubbish that had been placed in the yard to burn. The book had probably been hidden in an old picture frame for many years. It belonged to my great-grandfather, Col. Ebenezer Zane. From its faded and time-worn

Betty Zane

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 The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

He who is always coming never comes, Or comes too late, you may have told yourselves; And I may tell you now that after me, Whether I stay for little or for long, The wolves are coming. Have an eye for them, And a more careful ear for their confusion Than you need have much longer for the sound Of what I tell you -- should I live to say More than I say to Caesar. What I know Is down for you to read in what is written; And if I cloud a little with my own