Tuesday October 8th 2008 06.26

Roast Ham in Dog

Richard Ashworth

Feng Shui Diaries

Solar fortnight beginning:

Tuesday October 8th 2008 06.26

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Roast Ham in Dog

Whenever you read this (yes I know it’s late even by my standards) now is the month of the Water Dog and David Garrick’s huge mansion near Hampton Court has been badly damaged by fire. Garrick himself, the Kenneth Branagh of his time, was not at home of course, largely because he died in 1779. It’s a lovely building with its Orangery and glazed outbuildings overlooking the Thames, now long since converted to slap-up apartments. I have mixed feelings about the blaze because earlier this year, I told my friend Melina not to buy into this development. Some orientations I can’t make work even if they have been standing since 1750. Or at least I don’t want to have to. The worst by the way is the one that faces the Ox in the North East.

Are we human or are we dancer? The Killers are asking me as I drive across the Surrey Hills. Now there’s a question. Markets are tumbling as I predicted earlier this year which it seems to me, is not 100% awful if it ushers in an age of compassion and especially if it eats up John McCain’s lead over Barack Obama in the polls.

Melina, one of my favourite clients, is an Earth Dog: I’m a Water Dragon so she is supposed to be my nemesis. As it happens, this month’s Water Dog is my favourite doggy. All of the Dogs – water, wood, fire, earth and metal – are faithful, loyal and trustworthy but the Water Dog is the one that can be relied upon to bring home the goods. Those who were born in 1982 possess these sterling qualities but if you were born in October, early evening and certain days you’d need a Chinese Calendar to identify, you may boast them also.

As a Dragon I am often told I should avoid Dogs. I don’t find this helpful. Yes the capricious, often egotistical Dragon is at odds with the dogged Dog and they are diametrically opposed to each other on the clock face but to know this is to have enough information not to be run by it. Some of my best friends are Dogs. There are things about me that rub them up the wrong way and vice versa but that allows me simply to contain the difference and love them. Why else learn this stuff?

Still glamorous at 60-something, Melina was widowed fourteen years ago. In a sense she is still in mourning. There is often a sense of “Why does it always happen to me?” about her. She has every right to this. When her husband died, she was left with teenagers, now all aged around thirty. I don’t think there is a moment she is not concerned about them. Nor a day she does not think wistfully about her husband. When we finally move her into her new apartment, after rejecting a dozen or so other possibilities, it is dominated with furniture he chose two moves ago. This you might say, if you were looking for simple explanations is the Dog: loyal to the grave.

I’ve gottroubled thoughts and the self-esteem to match. Fall Out Boy. I am playing a compilation my son Joey has put together for me. He is 13 and therefore wears underpants visible above the waist. If I think he’s an emo I really don’t understand. Some of this music – Panic at the Disco, The Academy Is, The Hush Sound – is wonderful: melodic, poignant and literate.

He is curious about my er hu (two strings) music. Chinese five elements theory has its roots in musical scales, I have told him. Each of ten notes represents an element, one yin one yang. The plunking of Chinese music, largely meaningless to the Western ear carries all sorts of information. He humours me.

Yesterday I spoke with Paula. When I surveyed her home, she told me all the good men were taken. Is that so? As well as the various procedures, I offered to set up a dinner party with half a dozen of the presentable good hearted available men I know.She declined but we put an awful lot of red in her bedroom.

Some women after decades, complain that manipulation is the only language their partners understand. Many have given up and some have moved onto women. Some would if they could. Much of my feng shui addresses this.

Melina isn’t looking for a partner but she does exactly and precisely what I tell her to do. Such a brave old thing, Melina. But Paula insisted loneliness was a woman’s problem and rejected the dinner party. Not long after my survey however, it turns out, she found someone. Hurrah for the feng shui man.

Sally, Ah Me.

Today I am surveying Sally’s big mock-Tudor house near Guildford. I park on the gravel approach, the house concealed by hedge.

I’m here to advise on their new extension. I notice that there is a church on one side and dark slow water on another. It’s a bright day but I expect gloom.

As I approach I can see plenty of room for an extension in their large garden. And I spot a nice homely area around a little swimming pool. This is a family that likes to spend time together.

My friend feng shui Master Howard Choy, says that no building is complete without xing, that is affection. He sees it in broad rounded entrances and in the respect of a building’s design for the culture that surrounds it. He is particularly scathing about St Pancras Station. I tend to see xing more readily in families. The fact is that when people care about each other things change.

Mock-Tudor usually means chilly. And dark. There were technical reasons for Tudor windows being so low; they didn’t know how to make big panes is one. So they built thick walls to compensate. But not Sally’s. Her house is pretty nippy throughout because in the 1930’s they constructed Tudor without thinking Tudor. Beautiful house though.

Sally is a smart city lawyer who she has been home all summer sitting out the financial crisis. Her husband Jim has not been happy and Sally who has seemed until this moment, a matter-of-fact sort of gel, cries as she tells me.

“I watched him mowing the lawn,” she says, “He usually enjoys that.” She pauses. “He looked so defeated. Like it was all just too much.”

This is such a naked expression of love that I am close to tears myself. She weeps not because she is alone nor because she can’t find a partner or because hers is not up to it but because she cares deeply about the one she has. I think even Howard would call this xing.

“I’m sorry,” she says as if emotion is somehow shameful.

“Don’t be, everybody cries around me. My book carries a government health warning.”

“I know,” she says. “I’ve read it. That’s why I called you in.”

I never take tears for granted. They are an honour that I respect every time.

In the little dark kitchen with its pale Western light, there’s a certain dullness which I comment on. I feel a kind of vagueness as I talk ba zi before I launch into the survey.

“I thought it was me,” Sally says.

I lose my train of thought twice so it clearly isn’t. The Flying Stars (or temporary energies) show a 7:9 pattern here. Often this speaks of over-busy minds. Sally’s she tells me, is never still. It is constantly scolding her, mostly in her mother’s voice. Par for the course, I’d say. She’s well overdue for some contemplation: perhaps some travel, a spot of ashramming? I am told that of all professions, lawyers have the highest incidence of Altzheimers: it’s all that detail and the need to be right. I think.

She turns out to be a Rooster and Jim a Snake which is a pretty good pairing. I tell her so and she smiles. He’s a lawyer too.

In the room next door, one of their teenage daughters is curled up watching tv: Jeremy Kyle, if she’s anything like my daughters. She is quite quiet. She has expressed interest in the “funny compass” but so far has not been brave enough to investigate.

We examine the sketchy ba zis I have drafted so that I know who I am talking to.

Jim’s ba zi shows that his Big Fate changed in June.

The Big Fate represents the moment a child sort of arrives, the time we get that we are broadly alone and have a job to do. It can open as early as birth – which usually suggests birth trauma, twin lost in the womb, rapid adoption and so on – or as late as eleven which implies either a sheltered upbringing or a deep withdrawal. My own, for instance starts at 14 months. I have twin sisters who are 14 months younger than me. That wouldn’t take a psychic to work out.

The Big Fate consists of a unique pair of characters which change just once a decade.

Often the date it changes is crucial in identifying what is wrong with a house. We choose where we live of course. This is a lovely place but the rooms are all a bit pokey and I don’t trust the extended East Wing. Not quite right.

Jim was obviously a smarter child than me because his Big Fate starts almost exactly when his younger brother was conceived. The elements that represent the chi at that point in his life suggest that he was wounded by his mother’s apparent preference for the new baby. Wrong.

A mistake. A mother loves; it’s as simple as that. The best way she can. Such mistakes just make all of them human of course. The Course in Miracles suggests that everything is good or a mistake. There’s nothing else.

The sun is quite strong now but the house remains chilly. We walk around the garden. I can see there is a hedge needed behind the pool to cut off the stagnant water beyond. There’s a sealed but exposed sewage pipe in the stream. Also my luo pan tells me the front door is not letting chi in.

The new characters in Jim’s ba zi suggest what is called a “harm”. This is ominous. But the great thing about Chinese metaphysics is that it is expressed in imbalance of elements and imbalance can be rebalanced. This is the reason (as well as the fact that it would invalidate my Professional Indemnity) that I don’t call a ba zi a Chinese Horoscope .I suggest I draw up their ba zi’s more fully. Sally’s will inevitably reflect his in some way. We choose who we live with too.

As I survey inside, I bump into another teenage daughter bustling around the house. And I discover that the master bedroom in that suspect East wing is host to the Flying Star pattern 9:2. When Sally and I enter, I noticeit feels jangly as well as chilly, as if settling to sleep here is hard.

Jim doesn’t sleep well, I learn. I offer Sally a cure for insomnia.

“Get out of bed. Go to the tai chi. Six deep breaths. Back to bed. Sleep.”

“Does it work?”

“Try it and see.”

“Why does it work?”

“We are kept awake not by what we think but by what we feel. Or rather what we won’t feel. We try to think ourselves out of the feelings: worry, anger, grief. “Is this going to happen? “Is that going to happen? “Why didn’t that? “What if this?” The thinking only puts them off. After we feel we sleep. And the feeling doesn’t hurt; it’s just a couple of breaths usually. Simple as that.”

For those who have recently joined us, the Flying Star numbers mean fire (9) is overshadowed by the powerful visiting earth of the 2. This is as dampening as it sounds. And another mistake of course but one that hurts and one that Jim’s Big Fate suggests is finally up for examining, moving through and leaving behind. I am sure Jim’s mother did her best just like my mother and yours, but this room suggests a mother who smothers.

This is great news: great because it can be identified so clearly. Sally and Jim can simply shift to another bedroom and we can talk bazi. And as it happens there is a guest bedroom in the 6:8 stars which is just about perfect. Don’t you just love it when that happens?

All they have to do is remove the nasty metal bed that’s in there. Metal beds are a magnet for geopathic stress and in addition to the church on one side and the sewage outflow, the water table is very high. Stuff sticks in still water. This of itself often coincides with chronic upset.. Actually so do the other two things but all of this is handleable. Just as well it’s not a real Tudor house.

I inspect the family room underneath the master bedroom. One of the girls has been studying GCSE English History, I see, and her textbook is open at a page that deals with the scandal of the Andover Workhouse that led to a change in the Poor Laws. Interesting: I have just been surveying the Workhouse for a tv pilot. Nasty place. Perhaps there’s another lawyer in the making.

Now the extension. The plan was to put it in the West/NorthWest where planning permission was easy. The Flying Stars there are 5:7 which was prosperous until 1996 but now is nasty.

“Plagues of boils,” I tell Sally.

“Really?”

No but at the very best it speaks of Jim becoming further withdrawn.

I persuade Sally to build towards the front in South/SouthWest where the stars will support health, wealth and happiness. In point of fact they fill a gap created by the master bedroom which sticks out to the East. The new extension will be in effect a balancing wing. Everybody gains. It’s going to need plenty of light though.

Are we human or are we dancer? sing The Killers. What does that mean?

Richard Ashworth © 2008

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

My (still) super-duper (still) revamped website is atwww.imperialfengshui.infoand my book The Feng Shui Diaries is available now from:

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