Friday April 20th 2007 19.40
Dungeons and Dragons
Richard Ashworth
Feng Shui Diaries
Solar fortnight beginning:
FridayApril 20th 2007 19.40
Hour Day Month Year
wood wood wood fire
chia chia chia ding
xu shen zhen hai
dog monkey dragon pig
Dungeons and Dragons
The second fortnight of the Dragon month. Now the heavy yang earth of the Dragon’s true nature hangs in the air. The sky is thick with unseasonal pollen.
Ana calls me on my mobile phone in Starbucks where I am preparing ba zis. We have not met. She is of the Bosnian persuasion. She talks from the off in unbroken strings of words:
“You must help me Richard I do not work for three years I am read your book I have being so sick my daughter is at university I want so much better for her I get these headaches I have stomach cramping I am what is the word nauseous.”
She pronounces it “nowzeous”
“Now I have this lovely man he drives me everywhere he goes to supermarket I have not moved since three years in my flat where I should I put my water fountain and my pictures my daughter I cry I want so much I am better I am read your book.”
This is serious distress.
Deep Purple used to sing that April was a cruel month as I recall, not that that’s an unimpeachable source but it is often a sullen sort of time. There may be early heat waves, sunshine that can not be enjoyed because it is 12 weeks ahead of the holidays. It is warm but it is not summer.
As I put the phone down, Paul calls me. He is waiting for his swimming pool to be dug. The installation has been delayed and can not now be done before May. He is anxious. We are nearing completion of a 2-year project. Ideally the swimming pool would have been in all this time. He is a good talented man with limitless bottle and nearly as much faith. I feel for him.
“Some people call such times the Dead Zone,” I tell him.
“Mine or everybody’s?”
“Both.”
“What do I do?”
“Be gentle with yourself and wait.”
The Chinese Dragon comes like all other Chinese year animals or branches, in five varieties: one for each element, wood, fire, earth, metal and water. Just as the Dragon rules every 12th year so it rules every 12th month which is April. The cycle of months is easier to master than the tai sui or great year (of 12 years) because there are twelve months.
It is often said that the Dragon of Chinese mythology, the master of dark arts and keeper of treasure, is unlike the hapless lizard that fell to the swords of St George, Perseus, Lancelot, Galahad and the rest. It is true that the Imperial Dragon has five claws and if the one on your mantelpiece has fewer he is a downmarket fraud but there are many similarities also. In the Chinese Zodiac or Mansions of the Moon, for instance, the Basket is considered a constellation of good fortune. This is because it sits under the tail of the Dragon which is said to poo gold. Digestive systems apart, this is not much different from the role of the Dragon that Siegfried encounters in the Ring Cycle.
All Dragons tend to be on the fence between light and darkness, between success and failure, between expression and brooding but now is particularly intense. This is a time of waiting. The Snake of June brings action.
I ask Ana for her date, place and hour of birth. As I am already preparing a ba zi session I am surrounded by calculation stuff: Chinese calendar, tables of stems, branches, palaces, Life Houses and so on. I study her dates for half an hour and ring her back. I can see serious violence in the ba zi.
“Where are you?” I ask.
“In Brighton,” she says.
“Well I expect to be there later in the month. Can you hold yourself together till then?”
“Of course.”
Something in the way she speaks of him tells me that the violence is not in the lovely man.
More unpunctuated strings of words, I notice again how often non-native speakers of English employ “of course” when what the phrase qualifies is far from routine.
A week passes. She emails. The lovely man’s name is Kevin which she pronounces “Kay Veen” like a Star Wars character. He has sent the email on her behalf. She is decorating. She has sent me a hand-drafted plan of her apartment. Will I tell her what colour to paint her bedroom? I will have to rely on her compass readings if she wants an answer now. With this proviso, I respond.
The bedroom location, I note is fine (assuming she has the orientation of the block correct) in relation to the ba zhai or 8-House system. The ba zhai – surprise! – arranges houses into 8 possible configurations. Every building belongs to one of two groups: East Group consisting of buildings backing onto the East, South East, South and North, and West Group which comprises the rest.
A bedroom should be in one of the fortuitous sectors. Identifying these is very simple: each orientation within the East Group is beneficial for every member of the group. So a bedroom in the South East is fine for an East backing home and so on. The same applies to an office within the home but the reverse is true of a kitchen.
Three weeks later, the night before I go to Brighton, I have a dream. It concerns Jason and the Argonauts. I don’t usually recall dreams. Jason, you will recall sought the Golden Fleece which had been detained in Thrace which is roughly 70’s Yugoslavia. Jason sowed Dragon’s teeth to raise an army. But what the dream concerns centrally is the enchantress Medea who fled her father’s court with Jason and the stolen fleece. She slowed down her father’s fleet by dismembering her younger brother and throwing the pieces in the water. I awake with a shudder.
The concern of the dream appears clear: the violence that is passed down the generations.. On the other hand it could be about Turkey’s controversial application to the EU.
I have a busy day on: first a ba zi session and debrief for Ingrid who is putting a new floor onto her bungalow. This involves raising the roof which most agree makes it a new building with fresh chi. I am getting her to alter the orientation of the home by placing a new wall at the rear of her new conservatory. She has young daughters. There have before her time been uh… shenanigans here. A local showbiz personality with a priapic turn of mind. We want the powerful energy but we want it housetrained. And the new roof is an opportunity to start all over again.
Next I am to revisit Barbara’s home which I walked round * last year. She has progressed spectacularly. In particular, money which was tight last year is in abundance. This is part attitudinal, part bank account. The two tend to coexist. After all this time I don’t actually believe in causality. I ask about her son who has been wet at night. He still is and she has not moved the aquarium that, albeit through a wall, is at his feet. But she is radiating vitality and it is a joy to see her again.
“This house is totally different, “ I say. She beams. The living room is now clear open space where the chi can gather. The sunshine playing through the french windows focuses a joyous poignance. So different from last year’s darkness. She has done well.
* Less thorough brief survey: 3 hours no paperwork
I squeeze in Ana next. I have to be with Simon, who has an eco-shop across town in two hours. I allow for this time to be spent with her. I have no expectation of payment. There has been no discussion of this in the long trails of words. I can recognise an emergency when it is thrown at me. Kay Veen rings from his office to ensure I find the place.
“Oh Richard it is so good you come where do I put my pictures we do not finish the bedroom what colour my daughter’s room I have water feature I do not sleep I wake with the pain I have headaches my digestion is not right I take pills* I take vitamins I take food sooplements.” That is supplements. “No difference where should I sleep should my sofa be here or here or here I am not working Kay Veen he look after me.”
The very small u-shaped 2nd floor flat is full of unopened boxes. I wince inwardly; high rise can be hard to work with anyway. There is about 40% more stuff here than it can hold along with people.
“Now,” I say gently but firmly, “I want you to not interrupt me for a couple of minutes. Is that okay?”
She nods. That is a good start.
“Today we can make a lot of this better but I expect to need to come back to complete. Do you understand?”
She nods again. She is a very beautiful woman. I have privileged information, having drawn up her ba zi but she could be a dozen years younger than she is.
It is quite warm in here; outside is the blazing sun of the April heatwave. Dragon (or Draco) I recall, is a common name in Bosnia.
“There is a lot of violence in your ba zi. Was your father a violent man?”
She nods. He would beat her, she tells me, and her mother and her sisters. Sometimes fists, sometimes feet.
“Now he is old man he tell me he love me he is my father my mother she love him I leave…”
I look at her admonishingly: “You promised.”
She falls silent.
“And your lovers since. Did they hit you?”
She nods. She left, it turns out, her last boyfriend when she woke up half way through a savage beating.
I can feel pain in her chin, the left side of her jaw. I gesture.
“Punches here?”
A nod.
And her left eye-socket. It thrums like a migraine. This I guess is the nowzea.
“And here?”
She nods.
“But he did not hit your stomach or lower?”
She nods.
“That is different.”
I ask her to take a deep breath, feel the eye-socket.
“You love your father,” I say, holding my right palm away from my body and well away from her. She is sitting on her sofa, flanked by boxes and bulging carrier bags. She nods.
“He hit you regularly,” I add, holding out my left hand.
She nods.
“Breathe, feel the pain in your temple.”
She breathes in deeply.
“Do I hold it?”
“No, let it go. I don’t want you blue in the face.”
It is a comic moment. She smiles.
I am a bit of a breathing nazi. I often interrupt people to get them to take a deep breath when there is extreme emotion going on. When we breathe in all the way, we feel everything that is going on with us. At such times we can move lifetimes’ worth. Breathing alone can in principle take us to samsara.
“You love him, he loves you,” I say, keeping my right arm firmly outstretched.
“Yes.”
“You feel pain,” I say, addressing my left hand and letting it flop down. “Now breathe into it, let it go.”
“I think you have Magyar roots,” I say.
“My grandmother was Hungarian,” she says, “How did you know?”
“I don’t know.”
* I stress she must continue taking anything prescrbed. We don’t want any Glenn Hoddle stuff.
Here in our island fortress we take nationality for granted. It’s why the multicultural experiment is to many so unthreatening. Foreign starts at Dover. For Estonians, Lithuanian, Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, even Poles, it’s much more complex. Race, culture and religion bind when borders don’t.
“Now your stomach,” I say. “This relates to the mother. Head is father, stomach mother,” I explain. Detail follows, over which I will draw a veil. One of the hardest tricks the mind can play is to associate pain with physical love.
I place her water feature. She fusses over a vast cake she has made in my honour. I am humbled. There are pastries too. I confirm that her bedroom is located fine. There is an inflatable mattress up against the wall beseiged by packages, most of which will have to go.
“We I do not know how to say this have not slept together I feel foolish he is so kind.”
We pile and shove boxes until there is space for the bed to lie flat. Then I orient it to her best direction on the ming kua system.
There is serious courage in this woman and although I have not met this Kay Veen he is clearly a special man. I promise to return in a month.
Simon’s new shop-cum-warehouse is empty at the NorthWest and missing the North East. To welcome him he has received some damning-with-faint praise from his father. Simon is looking for investors to help expand his business which trades in ecologically sound gadgets: lightbulbs, water savers, recycled stuff. His father has recommended the business to his friends as a tax loss. To those who are not paying attention, this means the business must fail for the investors to gain. His father’s recommendations are well-meant of course.
Simon wants to save the world. Simon’s father can’t see that this is a business proposition. Interestingly several wealthy potential investors who have come to Simon via other routes, can.
I surveyed Simon’s flat two years ago. It is an odd shape with missing bits. Mostly it was earth that was missing although I compensated as far as I could. He was running the business from home which from my standpoint is hard to work with. What we have succeded in is getting him better known. We placed one of the patent red-spikey-nine-South arrangements that I have been using since the mid-90’s to raise profile and he has been getting positive press and radio all over the place. But these do not pay the rent and I am glad he is separating work from home.
“How’s your love life?” I ask Simon.
This may sound like gratuitous intrusion but in the Chinese metaphysic, wife and money are a single type of chi (or energy) called choi. Simon’s choi derived from his ba zi, is earth. Interesting. He is missing the North East which is one of the earthiest parts of the compass and he needs water to get things moving. We can tie the two things together: water placed where results should be quick plus a sturdy yang plant in the North East in a position that coordinates him, the plant and the water. The calculation falls magically into place. Bingo.
The refinancing has bogged him down with paperwork,
“People generally get bogged down to avoid something,” I say, “How about you?”
“It’s a fair cop,” he says.
He has been trying to be a proper business man. This is not what people have been investing in.
“I imagine they’re still looking for an inspired nutter,” I say.
“Takes one to know one,” he says, writing me a very small cheque.
My super-duper revamped website is at www.imperialfengshui.info and
my book The Feng Shui Diaries is out now!
If you’re feeling rash you can order it from:
Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk/Feng-Shui-Diaries-Richard-Ashworth/dp/1846940176/sr=8-4/qid=1166798863/ref=sr_1_4/026-3383613-4930062?ie=UTF8&s=books
Waterstones www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/displayProductDetails.do?sku=5567853)
or indeed Tescos.
My good friend Ann-Marie Woodall aka The High Heeled Healer holds a workshop this weekend which like all her work, is about relationship She is wonderful and so will it be. Details from: 01903.725995 or highheeledhealer.com.
Names have been changed.
Richard Ashworth