Tuesday March 21st 2006 02.30
Chun Fun: Spring Equinox
Richard Ashworth
Feng Shui Diaries
Chun Fun: Spring Equinox
Solar fortnight beginning:
Tuesday March 21st 2006 02.30
Hour Day Month Year
wood earth metal fire
yi chi sun bing
chow yuw muw xu
ox rooster rabbit dog
Month: sun muw, the Metal Rabbit.
Solar Fortnight: Chun Fun Spring Equinox
Cakes in the Rain
The second half of the month of the Metal Rabbit. There’s an opening to conjure with. Days are now officially longer than nights. Here in Surrey, things are not yet as green as they should be. Is this global warming or the Fire Dog? I’m sitting here listening to Jimmy Webb’s version of McArthur Park which is as emotionally powerful as it is technically flawed, while I ponder. Emo it ain’t.
I notice that the queue outside the Japanese Restaurant in Guildford is winding clockwise – that is yang – instead of anticlockwise. The chi has changed but so, I notice, has where they post the menu outside.
A Future in furniture removal
We visited our friend Agnes this weekend. Agnes is 83 and registered disabled. We look after her paperwork; making sure her bills are paid on time and so on. It can take some attention to ensure she gets the correct allowances and clear up the paper trail each time another charming young man switches her utility supplier. She can be cantankerous and she holds strong opinions.
“Are you still moving people’s furniture?” she aks me and I have to admit I am.
Agnes’ working life was “in service.” One patrician employer coughed up a couple of grand at her retirement and another now back home in the USA, buys her weekly groceries via the internet. But she has no family. We are the closest she’s got.
I have done all sorts of subtle chi movement for her over the years and for a widow whose husband left her nothing – not even a pension – she is doing pretty well. A few years ago we obtained a four-figure refund from the local authority who had misinterpreted her benefit entitlement. She may even have to spend some money soon.
I’ve never placed any blatant cures because she has never asked me to. It’s not because she has “beliefs;” she has communion brought to her every Sunday which is a pretty good way of guaranteeing at least one regular visitor. And she has experimented with what she calls the “spiritless” church. But I’m like Angel in “Buffy”; you have to ask me in.
And perhaps she never needed to. What she does have is a South-facing home with naturally supportive feng shui; that is height at the back and a luxuriant open ming tang or bright hall at the front. It is a living illustration of the value of good landscape. The chi arrives from a healthy direction, is assembled at the front and held at the back. This is the essence of good feng shui.
Getting there is a bit of a hike and she is gracious enough to recognise it. Sometimes when I return from taking a binliner to her wheely bin or watering a plant, and I leave my jacket over a chair, I find a tenner in the top pocket.
Although she has gained substantially from the benefits reform since 1997, she is by inclination a clothcap Tory and she can bang on a bit about her carers. Her house is spotless and she still does her own dusting. If it took me forty painful minutes to walk round my bungalow I’m not sure my mind would be free of blame.
In keeping with my specialist skills she often has me adjust her Royal Wedding plates or plumping up cushions.
Agnes claims she talks to Jesus every day and I have no reason to doubt her.
“That furniture, they don’t always move it where you tell them, do they?” she says.
No they don’t, I have to agree.
Things go bump in the night.
Simon called me because he thought he and Saida had a poltergeist in their flat. They planned to move and wanted neither to leave it behind or take it with them.
Saida had been very ill, he told me. Young, beautiful and talented, she was on the brink of an exciting career when she had fallen ill. Now she is in hospital.
I visited them. My tape-recorder would not work. We changed the batteries. Still no.
I try to avoid tight definitions of such things; as we apply labels we reduce the ways we can deal with them. A “poltergeist” dictates exorcism and ghostbusting and when and if they fail what do you do? Not defining it at all allows us to do anything we want.
This place was opposite a church and on a North East/SouthWest axis. These are clues in classical feng shui: the “ghost gate” is in the North East and a taoist principle holds that wherever the trouble is we should look in the opposite direction.
Saida’s ba zi was very distinctive. I spent an hour or so working through it with her. There were difficult choices there, family patterns that were very persuasive. Our families may be dysfunctional but often they are all we know.
There was a pocket of very sticky energy in the South West. This was where their bedroom was. They said they had had fierce arguments here, arguments that did not represent their relationship. It felt to both of them like other people fighting.
We – Simon and I – stood and breathed it in. He unsurprisingly has a gift for this. It felt angry in a suppressed sort of way. Another way to say this is that at that point I felt angry in a suppressed sort of way. For which I had no immediate reason. We can not feel things for which we have no reason but the telltale that we are feeling something outside ourselves is that we have no immediate reason. All emotional stuff actually is within our experience but the trick is to know when an emotion is if you like, not “justified.” And the mind is so quick to make up reasons, we have to be alert. Suffice it to say there was upset there that made no sense if it was mine. And I – that is we – just felt it. Then I looked at the opposite end of the flat: the North East,
This was the place to apply the bandage, so to speak; the bathroom that was on top of a bit of the flat next door. Odd twisted configuration; a dead give away. The light bulb had gone so often he’d given up replacing it. And smells lingered. Not ideal for a toilet.
I did some traditional compass feng shui here, placing a jiu shape called a t’ang lung.
This week I visit the new place which is the acid test.
All you need is Love- again.
Alex rang me. She is in love. Again. This one’s got an ecological and ethical agenda. She is young and beautiful. What she wants is a soulmate. And of course, he’ll be that if that’s what it takes.
She asked me to draft his ba zi. He is passionate about conservation and ecological living. So must she be. Or else. The ba zi shows a man in thrall to his father, a man whose every decision is in reaction. His father is probably a successful businessman which is what if he were following the tao rather than trying to prove points, he would be himself. As it is he is defined by not being a business man. And it’s no real help me telling Alex all this – though I have . The heart has its reasons. And the last thing she needs is opinions: not from ladies who would not stand for this nor from blokes who can see his point of view. She needs to quietly form her own conclusions. But I do hope she gets it this time.
And it remains true; the Beatles were right. Love is all you need.
Feedback is encouraged including that you never want to hear from me again if that happens to be the case.
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Richard Ashworth
Richardashworthfengshui@hotmail.com
Names have been changed to protect ..uh…me