Monday July 23rd 2007 14.01

Dublin your money

Richard Ashworth

Feng Shui Diaries

Solar fortnight beginning:

Monday July 23rd 2007 14.01

Hour Day Month Year

earth earth fire fire

ji wu ding ding

wei wu wei hai

goat horse goat pig

Month: ding wei the fire Goat

Solar Fortnight: siu shu Slight Heat

Dublin your money

A weekend in Dublin: one survey, two ba zis and a great deal of rain but first, the hell that is Gatwick Airport.

It is the wettest it has been for 60 years; as the cycle central to Chinese metaphysics indicated it would be. The last time there were such floods was in 1947. Who knows? Perhaps there’s something in this stuff.

The rain is again beating at the window as Joey and Sheila get up at 3 am to fly to Ireland ahead of me. How many consecutive days of downpour is that? I have been offered a slot on ITV’s This Morning so I will follow tonight. I am to be picked up at 6. My survey of Thomas Mckinley’s apartment in Dublin will now be on Saturday, not Friday as planned. I have two ba zi sessions Sunday morning and then we fly back Sunday afternoon. There are worse ways to earn a living but it is a pity that the weekend has been soaked up. Joey has wanted to go to Ireland since he was tiny. I abused Irish hospitality a great deal in the 70’s when I was a yuppy but I want to share this visit with him and Sheila.

At Gatwick, security has got more and more tedious for everybody but I bring trouble on myself by wearing my DMs with the attention-seeking steel toe caps. The boots are on, then off, then on again, finally not bothering to re-lace them, I go back and forth through the x-rays like Shirley Bassey on the Morecambe and Wise Show.

My great-uncle Mick who worked for the Bank Of England for forty years and was the nearest my mother knew to a proper father, would polish his black leather shoes every night until they shone like marble. He never expressed an opinion but he never used liquid or stain. His staple was traditional boot black. Brush on, brush off, burnish with duster, polish again; every night before bed. It’s a bit of a sledgehammer to crush a walnut but generally I polish my DMs the same way. Doesn’t impress Passport Control though.

Finally I’m in the Departure Lounge and can chill while looking over Thomas’ ba zi before my flight is called. He is an earth Horse which is a perverse combination: the earth stem of 1978 like every year stem, represents the apparent shape of things while the animal or branch is more about what is actually going on. The restless passionate fire of the Horse feeds the inertia of the yang earth stem: window-dressing supported by the truth. What is unusual about Thomas’ ba zi is that this combination appears three times out of a possible five. This usually speaks of concealed habitual or addictive behaviour running down the generations and a certain attached shame.

There is no tannoy at Gatwick so my concentration is constantly interrupted as I check the indicator board, juggling sparkling elderflower and toasted sandwich from EAT. A woman pointedly moves my clutter along the counter to give herself more space. She moves her lips in an inaudible “tut”. Fair cop: I have spread out a bit.

Does this stuckness apply to everyone born in 1978? Up to a point, yes but Thomas’ duplicated pillars make his case chronic rather than casual. Interestingly on the This Morning show, crammed up next to the drop-dead gorgeous Claire Petulengro who must be the most glamorous astrologer there is as well as being among the most gracious as well as the likeable, unassuming medium-to-the-stars, Gordon Smith, I am presented with it-girl Jodie Marsh who was born the year after Thomas. Jodie has booked a wedding ceremony for September and is in search of missing central ingredient: the bridegroom. It’s been all over the tabloids apparently but I only ever see the fronts when I’m buying petrol – though my children are often amazed what I learn this way.

With her weapons-grade cosmetics and pornstar wardrobe, she is not enigmatic but she seems a good sort. The question never reaches me but it is this: will she find Mr Right in time? Based on the progression from Thomas’ birth year to hers, I think so but it will be someone she knows already and in her loveable wilfulness has ignored in favour of this carnival.

Uncle Mick’s mother was Jewish but what he thought of as his family home was a place called Glin on the mouth of the River Shannon. As my grandmother was his sister, his family is in a sense, my family, his home, my home. His father who fled Ireland to become a GP in London, brought up his half-caste children C of E. Go figure. I was an adult before I knew I had Jewish as well as Irish blood.

As I finish my tuna melt and am about to claim a unique free latte from Starbucks (long story) I am shocked to notice that the display shows the flight has been cancelled. Instantly I join a queue, at the front of which after 40 minutes or so I am directed to another queue. An hour later at the front of this 2^nd queue I am directed to another of four hours duration after which it is explained to me that I didn’t need to be in it in the first place. I am now booked into the Gatwick Hilton overnight which frankly is a lot better than Darfur but solidifies two tiresome facts: I’m not getting to Ireland today and I have another 3am call tomorrow. A wave of bloodymindedness presents itself for inspection.

Heaven and hell are available right here on earth and if we’re in a hurry we can have them right away and kicking my luggage along an endless queue snaking round the North terminal at Gatwick with no idea of why or where or when it will end, for me is close to what Dante must have had in mind. Perhaps I need to get out more.

Thomas’ ba zi suggests he is something in finance. There is an educated precision there. This makes him a bright boy but as we have observed, not a happy one.There is something here that looks like someone throwing themselves away. He is 29. Why would he want to do that?

It’s as wet in Dublin as in England I discover, as the taxi takes me through the cloudburst to a hurried breakfast with Sheila and Joey. It is, the driver tells me, 60 years since an Irish golfer won the Open and Padraig Harrington is poised to seal victory tomorrow. It is on the tip of my tongue that I have predicted that the week from the 8^th to the 15^th will see drier weather and then from the 22^nd onwards but I don’t stick my neck out and tell the taxi driver.

The Irish papers are full of the English flood.

“Much more and you’ll be building an ark,” says my driver.

This acknowledges the implacable nature of an act of God but I point out that building on the floodplain as they have in Chichester and several places in the North is asking for trouble. Feng Shui is wind and water. The broken walls and ruined homes are testament to their power. We are so arrogant and yet so helpless in the face of natural forces. Water goes wherever it wants to. It’s as simple as that. No point in arguing.

“Have you seen Evan Almighty?” the driver asks. It concerns he tells me, a modern-day Noah.

“No. Jim Carrey sort of cancels out Morgan Freeman, doesn’t he?” I say, gesturing like a a pair of scales.

“Steve Carrel is in this one. You’re thinking of Bruce Almighty.” All these almighties; I must be among God-fearing people.

Sheila and Joey are deep in Harry Potter but park their bookmarks for me; it’s great to get a little time together. Earlier this year I was literally working seven days a week; now it’s back down to five. Self-abuse is not a good idea nor indeed martyrdom. It is pretty much a given that anyone working too hard is running from something and I learn so much more by standing still. We agree to meet around 6pm. Eight hours is plenty time enough for a survey.

Thomas lives in the Christchurch district, hard by St Patrick’s Cathedral which is interestingly, both Protestant and the actual site of the saint’s mass-conversions in the 6^th century.

The taxi passes the Molly Malone statue.

“The tart with the cart,” he quips, “Or the trollope with the scallop.” Dublin is a lot busier and more excitable than I remember it.

“You should see it at 3am,” he says. “Every man for himself.”

Those familiar with Dark Ages history will know that but for the Celtic missionaries baptised by St. Patrick and his successors, a Europe ravaged by pagans from Edinburgh to the Alps might never have rediscovered Christianity. The Irish seem to have taken to it because it so resembled their existing practices. Who was Mary Mother of God but the Morrigan? And the Apostles the Red Branch without swords? What is of more immediate interest perhaps is that the hundreds of feet high cathedral is clearly the incoming Dragon or source of chi (that is energy) to Thomas’ flat. There is a slight incline against the traffic-flow to the left and with it to the right but for me St Paddy’s, itself on a mound, is the mountain.

This idea by the way, of the incoming Dragon is one of those unquestioned dogmas of feng shui. Many see it as the central skill: just where is the chi coming from? What’s it like? How strong? How usable? But after all this time I have concluded that there must be several sources. The trick is to find one that we can use. And I go for St Paddy’s.

As expected Thomas is bright and well-intentioned as well as troubled. Talented too but we’ll get to that. He gets himself into a bit of a pickle, not wanting to leave his apartment door open while he lets me into the block although the distance between the doors is feet. His confidence has recently been shaken by someone on the 3^rd floor of this smart building, screaming in the night. Despite his gentle challenge they would not stop. Hours and hours of desperate anger, he says, that would not be relieved. He had feared for some time that the voice would follow him downstairs. He appears puzzled rather than terrorised. Whatever scar tissue he bears is deeper than this.

All communication is love or a cry for help, I tell him, quoting Chuck Spezzano. And everything is a communication.

As the ba zi I have done is only a sketchy one for the purpose of the survey my conclusions are not that developed.Very distinctive pattern though. Sometimes I identify tall dark strangers this way and woo-woo stuff but that’s not in the warranty and less likely with the abbreviated draft.

Thomas is visibly insulted when I call his apartment a “flat” but we remain friends while I enlist the help of a tree within the bounds of St Patrick’s. I touch the bark ostentatiously but he is a bit reluctant to join in. The tree sits squarely on a kwa on the compass that will numerologically fasten together the cathedral and the apartment but talking to it is still weird. The trick is to get the landscape and the home to work as a team. I figure St Patrick’s should be on his side.

The incoming Dragon, the point identified as the source of the chi, dictates the palaces the doors sit in. These can imply anything from plagues of boils to scandal. His do neither but they are awkward. Why not if there are many sources, recalculate? Centrally because this awkwardness fits the facts. I can mitigate the effect but I want a clear picture first.

Thomas is not a bad-looking bloke in a Yeatsy, Wildean sort of way but he is not as we say, in a committed relationship. His outfit suggests a man who threw on whatever he trod on first as he got up, his hair is neither kempt nor shevelled and his glasses are greasy. One of the hallmarks of a man who is loved is that he appears cared-for. His clothes will suit him and his hair will tend to be under some sort of control. Show me a man out with brown moccasin loafers and a blue cardboard suit sporting the haircut that was cool when he was seventeen and I’ll show you a man who is lonely. For the haircuts of my own generation Rod Stewart has a lot to answer for.

Who should be paying attention? Wife? Lover? Mother? It flickers through my mind that attention to the geometry is a higher priority but I do not catch it or I would recognise its fatuity.

“If you want to look good, “ I say, “Get a woman to dress you.” We settle on his sister.

His frontroom is full of a grand piano. Aha.

He has he tells me, recently passed Grade 8.

“What’s your favourite music?” I ask.

“Late Beethoven.”

There is a tiny bust of Ludwig van on the lid. Like Schroder out of Peanuts.

“Play me a piece,” I say.

And he does, from memory. His playing is full of feeling though his touch is a little heavy for such a solidly Germanic piece. But he can play for sure and it takes some application to make it to Grade Eight as a full-time working adult.

“I’ll never be a concert pianist,” he says and I respect him all the more for volunteering this. Here is the passion. Then he tells me about a beautiful young singer-songwriter he has been working on songs with.

“Do you have a chance?”

“Oh I don’t think so but Jees she’s beautiful,” he says. He is not needy but there is longing here. “And it’s a good song we’re writing just now.”

“Is she any good?”

“Oh I think she’ll be making it.”

The anatomy of a miracle is to tell the truth about what is so and about what we want and then let the universe do the rest. Feng shui expresses this with alterations in the landscape and the environment. We are beginning to touch on what matters. Perhaps wisely he has written himself out of involvement with this muse. Certainly a beautiful woman will often value a friend above a suitor. Why else are so many women so charmed by gay men? But again there is this self-writing-off.

Partnerless and unexcited by his quite-demanding job but passionate about his music; the palaces are consistent with this and the way forward seems clear. Accordingly I apply mumbo jumbo to change the emphasis. Let’s stimulate relationship and creativity

We talk as I work and then there is quiet as I draft the chi map which is no spectator sport. I prescribe an artful colour scheme: first I use a succession of colours in the productive cycle to draw relationship energy from the hallway into the bedroom. Then I turn his bed around so that he faces into the SouthWest which is generally reckoned to be about romance as opposed to the North East which is suggestive of stopping, endings and retention. The North East is the Mountain where involvement in life and love is exchanged for retreat. It was Somerset Maugham in Razor’s Edge who said “It is easy to be a wise man on the top of a mountain.” As it was, Thomas’ sleeping head was under one of those over-the-head wardrobes.

“Worries, preoccupation, headaches or worse.”

“Psychos shouting on the 3^rd floor?”

We look at the wardrobe and yes the metaphor is apt; if we map the wardrobe onto the front of the building the shouter would be somewhere around the sock drawer. Not much accommodation in there.

“The bellowing loonie is no longer over your head but get rid of it just the same.”

“Maybe he’ll turn up at my feet?

“Maybe.”

Thomas’ bathroom is to the North and it’s grisly. A real bloke’s bathroom; stained pan, mirror threateningly balanced on the sink, no natural light or clean towels. I suggest he has it completely revamped.

“No woman with any self-respect would be comfortable using that, “ I say. This is more evidence of wasting himself. But why? The North represents the Second Son indoors and the Mother outside. He tells me he has two brothers but is closer to one than the other although both live nearby. What about his Mother, outside as she appears to be? He volunteers nothing on this subject.

I arrange artful colours to draw creativity into the front room and tell him to place the piano so as to face into the West as he plays. The West is about song and speech and performance. I have him place a muse image in his line of sight on a carefully chosen compass point.

“My upbringing was hard,” he says.

“The ba zi suggests people who didn’t talk to each other. There is a head-in-the-clouds quality to these repeated pillars; lessons not being learned, going back generations. It looks like a family of sleepwalkers. Does that make sense?”

He smiles a baffled smile.

“Not really,” he says but tells me his parents appeared to have fallen out of love over his father’s apparent financial mismanagement sometime in the mid-80’s. After that it was mostly shouting and silences. He and his brothers made for the metropolis as soon as they could. A deep breath; anguish. What is this?

Finally rather than find out, I have drafted the chi map and drawn from it bullet points which will support creativity, music and lurve. It is 5pm.

As is often the case, we have moved nothing but the place is changed. But I know the job is still frustratingly incomplete. There is something unattended to here.

Crowded Dublin double-deckers pass the window every minute or so. St Patricks churchyard remains full of tourists.The tree that is on our team looks no different; it is not winking or anything.

The ring on my luopan indicating the three so-called missing numbers can be interpreted several ways. One is that occupants whose birth kwas correspond with these numbers are unaffected by the feng shui. Another is to match the numbers up with members of the family; 9 is Second Daughter, 3 First Son and so on for reasons that relate to what is called the Later Heaven Arrangement of Hexagrams and which I will not push my luck by going into here. There are eight possible numbers, one per Hexagram of which six can apply to any given property. The Number 2 which relates to the Mother appears twice. This is against the odds.The luo pan appears to be saying that his Mother can’t get in. I study the dial of the compass as if it will give me more if I stare.

“Has your mother ever been here?” I ask without much awareness of why I am asking.

A beat. He clears his throat.

“My mother is unfortunately dead,” he says. His voice is clear and level as if he has said this a thousand times before. Its tone is no longer connected to the information it carries. Is anyone fortunately dead?

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought you’d figure it out.”

I’m not sure I had actually figured it out at all. The powers-that-be had shoved it at me despite my neurotic need for good draftsmanship. This is what I should have been addressing all along and now it’s 5.30.

“Well in the nick of time, here we are.”

I look around feeling a deep foreboding. His, not mine, I think. There is so much hurt in that flat tone.

“What did she die of?”

“We don’t really know. Hypothermia, probably. My mother was an alcoholic.”

Again the formality. Not “she.”

“Go on.”

“She went out one night and didn’t come back. They found her in a ditch.”

Come in Number 21, your time’s up as Adam Faith used to say in Budgie. It all rolls into place: loneliness, lack of relationship, pride in property, careless grooming, shame, regret, helplessness. A man throwing himself away.

“How long ago did this happen?”

“About 2? years ago?”

“About”? This is his mother we’re talking about. He will know the precise minute.

“Give me a deep breath.”

He does but his tone remains flat.

“I’m okay,” he says numbly. This, ladies, is almost always a lie when a bloke says it.

I realise that I have been tested. And I have sort of failed and sort of succeeded. My aim is simply to leave people happier than I found them and I do not much mind how that is achieved. If we move forward on the assumption that this millennia-old discipline works, you may need to throw me the odd bone.

But it is him I am concerned with. He’s got a flawless chi map and dynamite décor changes but it is his hurt that needs attention. Or is it? Everything works out as it is supposed to; there is no such thing as a mistake. We are all responsible and no one is to blame. Nonetheless I feel empty and the emptiness is for him. We agree I will be back and we will work with this.

“I’m okay,” he says again and I am close to tears myself.

The two ba zi sessions I conduct on Sunday are more straightforward. Both clients come with an agenda and both ba zi’s obligingly show sai (death) under the Father palace so I can say confidently and accurately that the problem stems from the premature death of the subject’s father. This is not however before we have been kept up by alcoholically-enhanced Irish blokes threatening each other with all sorts of imaginative violence, the kicking of doors and consequent exchanges of pleasantries. The last sound in my ears as I finally sleep around 3am is a lascivious howling that turns to a keening as I lose consciousness. 6 out of 10 for this trip.

Names have been changed to protect..uh..me..

Richard Ashworth